While it is for Episcopalians to debate their theological differences, the sadness that attends the decision by a majority of Pittsburgh-area parishes to secede from the Episcopal Church and join a South American province of the Anglican Communion goes beyond the immediate circle of the faithful.

Meeting in Monroeville on Saturday, lay representatives of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted 119-69 to leave, as did clergy by a 121-33 margin. The diocese will be a remnant of what it was -- only 17 or so congregations of 74 elected to remain with the national church.

This sad day was a long time coming, but the lack of surprise does not mitigate the sorrow. For decades, conservative and liberal factions in the Episcopal Church have argued over an array of doctrinal and biblical issues, a friction that became more acute with the appointment of an openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire in 2003.

It is possible to say that schism is at least clarifying -- that the strong convictions of the disputing parties have brought them to the only place where conscience could have taken them. It is possible to look around the American landscape, indeed the world, and everywhere see splinters of denominations big and small. For a church that itself was born of an age-old schism, all this might be historically reassuring.

But divorce -- the most apt analogy -- is most frequently painful. In a church, no less than in a marriage, there is pain when those who loved each other are put asunder.

Bitterness is a likely outcome of the various strands of unraveling in this union -- through arguments about who was right and who was wrong, legal disputes over church property and perhaps even uneasiness over what the dissident party wishes to call itself. Both will say they are the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, but one will add -- confusingly to outsiders -- "of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone." Bishop Robert Duncan, deposed last month by the Episcopal House of Bishops, is likely to become leader of the breakaway congregation.

Yes, it is not for others to take sides, but it is for others to join their hands in prayer for a faith community divided.