Ex-TEC Cleric Installed As

Bishop Of Nigerian Offshoot

It was another milestone in Anglican realignment May 5, as Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola formally installed prominent ex-Episcopal priest Martyn Minns in Virginia as bishop for Nigeria’s missionary arm in the U.S.

In so doing, Akinola defied late calls from the Archbishop of Canterbury and The Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop for him to desist from an action they said would heighten tensions.

At the non-denominational Hylton Memorial Chapel in Woodbridge, Virginia, an ebullient congregation of some 1,000 - including at least 13 bishops - looked on as the British-born Minns, who was consecrated a bishop in Nigeria last August, was installed as shepherd of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). The jurisdiction was set up by Akinola and his province to minister to Nigerians in the U.S. as well as other orthodox Anglicans who are unable in good conscience to worship within The Episcopal Church (TEC).

Dressed in a gold cope and miter, Archbishop Akinola handed the pastoral staff to CANA’s new “missionary bishop” on the chapel’s stage, asking him to show himself “a true apostle of Christ.”

Other than this action, the Nigerian leader, though known for regularly irking liberals with his vocal support of biblical faith and morality, kept a low profile during his visit; he did not preach or celebrate during the service, and skipped a press conference and an expected appearance at another local church over the weekend. But he told those at the Hylton Chapel that the Nigerian Church, while of limited resources, was offering CANA “on behalf of the (Anglican) Communion. If we had not done this many of you would be lost to other churches, maybe to nothing at all.”

CANA is among salient pastoral provisions that foreign Anglican provinces and prelates have made - over the protests of Episcopal leaders - for American Anglicans who feel they must shun TEC because of its revisionist approach to scriptural authority and homosexuality, which in 2003 led to the consecration of gay cleric Gene Robinson. By early May CANA had amassed around 35 parishes (about one-third of which are ethnically Nigerian, Minns says), some 50 clergy and about 7,000 members. It is linked to the Communion’s most populous province - there are about 19 million Anglicans in Nigeria - and is seen by some as a potential nucleus for a faithful province of the Communion in America.

“I see [CANA] as a building block for that,” Bishop Minns said at a news conference preceding his installation. He said his convocation would work with other conservative Anglican groups to create a successor to TEC.

It is that possibility that adds to liberal Episcopal leaders’ protests against foreign intervention in the American Church. But Episcopal bishops themselves seemed to have further opened the door for a potential Communion substitute for TEC in their recent rebuff of the communique from February’s meeting of Anglican primates (provincial leaders) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. TEC’s House of Bishops (HOB) (and lately TEC’s Executive Council) rejected the primates’ call to cooperate in the creation of a parallel leadership for the conservative minority of Episcopalians, and gave no sign that they would accede to the primates’ request that they pledge not to support the consecration or blessing of those in same-sex relationships. The primates gave the bishops until September 30 to offer this pledge, after which a refusal could mean TEC’s demotion within or expulsion from the Communion.

“The Communion is wrestling with irreconcilable truths,” Minns said, something which puts Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in “an impossible situation...It’s not clear how it will turn out.”

Meanwhile, though, Minns sees CANA as an answer for those “who want to serve God as Anglicans, but who cannot do so in [TEC] at it is currently led… We want a church where all are welcome, but none leave unchanged.”

A 64-year-old native of Nottingham, England, Minns is a former Mobil Oil executive and the immediate past rector of the some 1,500-strong Truro Church, Fairfax, one of 15 parishes, including the also-formidable Falls Church, that recently left the Diocese of Virginia and TEC, most of them for CANA. The diocese and national church are now suing 11 of the seceded parishes for their properties.

“It’s sad that [TEC] has gone off the track the way it has...but I feel honored to stand with these churches which have taken this step of faith,” Minns said.

Violating “Ancient Customs”?

As earlier noted, Minns had already been consecrated last August as missionary bishop for CANA, but it was his installation at Akinola’s hands on American soil that Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Archbishop Rowan Williams found most provocative, though, perhaps surprisingly, not all conservatives cheered the move, either. A few of the latter wondered why it was necessary to make a big splash of installing Minns in the U.S., when that for which he was being consecrated was clear at last year’s rite in Nigeria.

Dr. Williams’ letter asking Akinola to cancel his U.S. visit does not appear to have been made public. But in Schori’s letter urging the Nigerian leader to reconsider plans to institute Minns - evidently not received by Akinola until after he was in the U.S. - she contended that such an action would “violate the ancient customs of the church” (canons of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.) relating to sacrosanct boundaries of individual bishops’ jurisdictions. (Episcopal News Service noted that the primates had agreed to discontinue international boundary-crossing aimed at pastoring beleaguered faithful, but failed to mention that this was contingent on the implementation of the primates’ pastoral scheme for the U.S., which the HOB rejected.) Schori contended as well that Akinola’s action would not help reconciliation efforts she claimed were underway in TEC and the Communion as a whole, and would display to the world unChrist-like “division and disunity.”

Virginia Bishop Peter Lee also chimed in, speaking in a letter to his flock about “impatient forces” that were “seeking to provoke conflict.” He complained about unauthorized boundary-crossing, reaffirmed TEC’s autonomy, and maintained that, contrary to Akinola’s contention, Dr. Williams had made clear that “CANA is not a branch of the Anglican Communion.”

In responding to Dr. Williams’ letter - which evidently was not received by the African prelate until after Minns’ institution - Akinola pointed out that, despite the great amounts of time, travel and resources committed to the issues at stake, divisions in the Communion have only deepened. “The decisions, actions, defiance and continuing intransigence of [TEC] are at the heart of our situation,” he said.

“If we fail to act, many will be lost to the church and thousands of souls will be imperiled,” he said. “It is imperative that we continue to protect those at most risk while we seek a way forward that will offer hope for the future of our beleaguered Communion.”

CANA, he said, is not something that brings any financial or political advantage to his province. Rather, it has been “a very costly initiative,” but a necessary one “if we are to remain faithful to the gospel mandate.” Though CANA is a Nigerian Church endeavor “and therefore a bona fide branch of the Communion,” it is for the Communion and can be surrendered to it “once the conditions that prompted our division have been overturned.”

IN RESPONDING TO BISHOP SCHORI, meanwhile, Akinola reminded that the American province ignored the primates’ warning in 2003 that if TEC proceeded to consecrate Robinson it would “tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level.” Despite considerable effort since then, “the brokenness remains, our provinces are divided, and so the usual protocol and permissions are no longer applicable,” he maintained. The response of TEC’s House of Bishops to the primates’ recommended pastoral scheme makes it clear that the pastoral protection offered by CANA “is even more necessary.”

Akinola rejected Schori’s appeal to ancient church canons, noting that those regulations were “intended to protect the church from false teaching, not to prevent those who hold the traditional teaching of the church from receiving faithful episcopal care.” Moreover, he said he found the P.B.’s resort to the Church’s ancient customs “curious” when TEC’s “deliberate rejection” of historic Church teaching had “prompted our current crisis.”

And he questioned Schori’s concern for reconciliation efforts, noting that she was “still...continuing punitive legal actions against a number of CANA clergy and congregations,” in contravention to the primates’ discussion in February on the importance of resolving current differences without resorting to civil courts.

He said the Nigerian Church still hopes for better from TEC, and “will be the first to restore communion on the day that your province abandons its current unbiblical agenda.”

SOME CONSERVATIVES also have reservations about CANA, saying they feel that it merely adds to the confusing array of faithful Anglican groups and bodies that have been formed over the last 30 years, and/or disapprove of the way CANA was created, i.e., without seeking consensus among U.S. conservatives or other Anglican leaders; Akinola simply announced a few years ago that he was launching CANA, though at that time it was focused chiefly on expatriate Nigerian Anglicans. Another body, now known as the Anglican Mission in the Americas, which began with the surprise consecration of two U.S priests in 2000, came into existence at the initiative of two other Global South Anglican archbishops. Now seeing brisk growth, AMiA, whose prelates are all part of the Rwandan House of Bishops, has enjoyed increasing but still mixed acceptance among co-religionists and in the Communion generally. Notably, both it and CANA were cited by name in the primates’ recent communiqué.

A check by The Washington Times found a number of conservative Episcopal leaders avoided the installation service. For example, several conservative Episcopal dioceses, such as South Carolina and Rio Grande, sent no representatives.

“As more conservatives bolt The Episcopal Church, their leaders are disagreeing privately over strategy,” the Times report added. “Some prefer the [Anglican Communion Network’s] method, staying in [TEC], but others say it’s time to leave. Others say the issue is not Bishop Minns but his sponsor, the outspoken Archbishop Peter Akinola.”

“There’s a sense that Akinola is a very strong leader. Does he want to take over?” asked Bishop John Rodgers, a retired AMiA bishop. He said CANA is perceived as recruiting into its ranks churches aligned with the Network (a minority of which are outside TEC), “although I know,” he added, that “Martyn just wants a safe place where people can be orthodox.”

“No one can be sure if they’re competing against us or cooperating with us,” a Network source was quoted as saying by the Times.

HOWEVER, NETWORK MODERATOR, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, attended the installation ceremony, along with several other conservative prelates, including six prelates who flew from Nigeria, and two bishops from the extramural Anglican Province of America and Reformed Episcopal Church.

Churchmen from England, Canada and Uganda also were said to be on hand. One of them, Gerry O’Brien, a lay member of the Church of England’s General Synod from the Diocese of Rochester, offered greetings from some 30 Synod members, including the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, and Bishop George Cassidy of Southwell and Nottingham, Minns’ native diocese.

As well, the Rev. David Banting, the chairman of Reform in England and a trustee of the British-based Anglican Mainstream, was at the service to represent both networks.

Acknowledging that the missionary thrust, which historically has been from north to south, is now starting to reverse itself, the Rev. Canon David Anderson of the American Anglican Council, said that: “The energy and zeal of the Church of Nigeria have come to the U.S. through CANA, and we pray that the results will be a re-strengthening of the historic, biblical Anglican faith in this nation after decades of accelerating moral and theological decline in The Episcopal Church.” Anderson himself earlier transferred his canonical residence from TEC to CANA. Traveling the same road more recently was a former Episcopal prelate, David Bena, who just retired as Suffragan Bishop of Albany.

CANA also just took in, among others, a major Colorado parish, Grace and St. Stephen’s, and its rector, the Rev. Don Armstrong; the congregation made the switch from TEC after what it saw as a campaign of harassment of the outspokenly conservative Armstrong by Colorado Episcopal Bishop Robert O’Neill, who inhibited the cleric several months ago on charges of financial impropriety; the cleric denies the charges. In attendance at Minns’ installation, Armstrong said it was “one of the most spiritually powerful events I have experienced since being ordained nearly 30 years ago…”

No Lambeth Invitation

Within a few weeks of the installation rite, though, Archbishop Williams took an unexpected swipe at boundary-crossing conservatives. In sending out invitations to the 2008 Lambeth Conference surprisingly early, he excluded gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson, as widely expected, but also Minns and AMiA bishops - apparently on the basis that neither CANA or AMiA are recognized Communion bodies - while including TEC revisionist bishops. Minns responded with some calm analysis. But Akinola signaled that the Nigerian bishops may boycott the Conference, based partly on an earlier agreed document that eschews attendance at Lambeth if prelates who have rejected the last Conference’s sexuality resolution are invited.

Whatever happens in its relationship to the Communion, however, the Nigerian Church appears destined to remain a powerhouse for the Lord. Its CANA operation is only a fraction of the province’s activity. Akinola’s determination to have an evangelistic presence in all parts of Nigeria recently led his province, after careful preparation, to elect 20 new bishops in one prayer-filled night, and then consecrate them all in a single service March 4, attended by more than 7,000 people!

Even before the March 4 consecrations, Akinola had midwifed the creation of 45 new dioceses in Nigeria in just the last five years, as part of his overall plan, which is focused on spirituality, rural evangelism, caring, ecumenism and self-reliance. Besides CANA, the province also has one other external mission, to the Congo. n

Sources included The Washington Times, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, The New York Times, VirtueOnline, Episcopal News Service, The Church of England Newspaper, Christian Newswire

ACC, UECNA, Sign

Communion Agreement

Two longstanding Continuing Church bodies, the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) and United Episcopal Church of North America (UECNA), have entered into an agreement which restores or reaffirms communion between the two jurisdictions.

The pact was inaugurated on Ascension Day, May 17, at St. Stephen’s Pro-Cathedral, Athens, Georgia, by Archbishop Mark Haverland of the ACC and Presiding Bishop Stephen Reber of the UECNA. The agreement came into immediate effect, though it still needs to be ratified by the ACC Provincial Synod and the UECNA Convention.

“This comes at a time when Anglicanism in the USA is at a crossroads, when people are looking for firm ground to stand on and a place to belong,” said Bishop Leo Michael of the UECNA, who was present at the event along with Bishop Presley Hutchens of the ACC. After signing the pact, the four bishops celebrated Ascension Day with a noon Eucharist.

The effect of the ACC-UECNA concord will be to make explicit the continuation of the communion that many believe has always persisted between the two churches, both of which stem from the January 1978 consecrations of four Continuing bishops in Denver by the Rt. Rev. Albert A. Chambers, the late Episcopal Bishop of Springfield (IL). A previous agreement between the ACC and the UECNA was signed in January 1992 by the late ACC Archbishop, William O. Lewis, and then-UECNA Presiding Bishop Albion Knight, but lapsed later in the decade.

The UECNA was originally begun as a low church alternative to the ACC, but Bishop Michael recently told TCC that his church’s “evolution has been toward the Anglo-Catholic tradition.”

“We recognize in each other the presence of the essentials of the Christian faith, Catholic order, apostolic succession, Anglican worship and Christians morals,” Archbishop Haverland said after signing the new pact.

Under the agreement:

• Members of both churches will be welcomed at the altars of both bodies, and the clergy of both will be available for baptisms, funerals and marriages as needed.

• Each church will consult with the other in all matters affecting the other, including episcopal acts and ecumenical relations with other bodies and churches; and

• Both churches pledge to work toward full organic union in a patient, unhurried manner, meanwhile respecting inessential differences and the other church’s internal integrity.

A release from the two bodies acknowledged that both are linked to a 1977 meeting that served as the springboard for the Continuum.

“The 1977 Congress of St. Louis, thanks to the efforts of the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen (FCC), was an answer from faithful Episcopalians and Anglicans, both laity and clergy, to the exigencies of changes wrought by the [U.S.-based Episcopal Church (TEC)],” said the release. Its decision to ordain women to the priesthood and episcopate, and approve “the doctrinally controversial 1979 Book of Common Prayer necessitated the birth of the Continuing Church. The churches were determined to ‘continue in the Catholic Faith, Apostolic Order, Orthodox Worship and Evangelical Witness of the traditional Anglican Church, doing all things necessary for the continuance of the same.’

“Thirty faithful years later, impelled by the commonness of origin and the common participation in the one holy catholic and apostolic church, the ACC and the UECNA have come forth with a pastoral provision.”

“His church is trustworthy, not because it depends upon men, but because it depends upon Him who endowed it with power and who is ever present in its council called in His name,” said Archbishop Reber.

“This agreement constitutes an important movement towards restoring the unity of the Continuing Church, which stems from the Congress of St. Louis and the Denver consecrations,” said Archbishop Haverland. “It is the contention of both that this Continuing Church subsists in the ACC, the UEC, and the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK). The organic unity of these three Churches remains our first and most urgent ecumenical task.”

(This assertion about the composition of the Continuum is, of course, not accepted by all in that fold: Not only does it ignore a couple of other mainstream Continuing bodies, at least one of which also has roots in the St. Louis movement, the APCK declined to accept the bases on which the post-St. Louis Continuum, chiefly represented by the ACC, was built, and has never signed a formal communion agreement with the ACC.)

According to its website, the UECNA has 27 congregations in 13 states, mostly in the South and Midwest. The ACC reports having, within the U.S., 93 parishes and missions in 29 states, as well as about 60 more congregations in Colombia, Haiti, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Venezuela.

*IN RELATED NEWS, the College of Bishops of the Holy Catholic Church (Anglican Rite), another Continuing body, also has reaffirmed that its members are now and always have been “in full communion” with the UECNA.

Assuming that it is reciprocated by the UECNA (no one from the latter responded to an e-mail inquiry on this point), the HCC-AR communion statement, agreed April 27, presents an interesting ecumenical situation: The HCC-AR was the result of a breakaway in the latter 1990s from the ACC; now, both bodies are in communion with the UECNA, but (still) not with each other, though perhaps the recent ecumenical movement portends an improvement in relations.

The HCC-AR resolution was signed by Bishops Thomas Kleppinger, James McNeley, A. David Seeland, Kenneth Kinner, and Henry King. n

Sources included The Trinitarian

The Saga Of Fr. Don Armstrong

Targeted By Theft Charges And Tossed Pies,

Episcopal Pastor And Flock Defect

Report/Analysis By Lee Penn

In another widening of the Episcopal split, the largest parish in the Diocese of Colorado, Grace and St. Stephen’s, Colorado Springs, voted in late May to leave The Episcopal Church (TEC) and join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), backed by the Nigerian Church.

The action follows the move by Colorado Bishop Robert O’Neill to inhibit the conservative parish rector, the Rev. Don Armstrong, over allegations of financial wrongdoing involving more than $1.1 million.

Now, the parish and diocese are pursuing civil suits against each other for control of the parish property.

Armstrong, who has been rector of the 135-year-old Grace and St. Stephen’s for 20 years, firmly maintains that the diocesan charges against him are trumped up, and that he is being persecuted because of his outspokenness against the revisionist agenda of the bishop and diocese.

Other conservative supporters agree. Fr. David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council, said in March, “This is all about terror - the ability of the church and bishops with deep pockets to terrorize mom and pop (members) in their churches.”

One thing evident is that, whether warranted or not, the diocese’s method of making financial accusations has been effective in breaking up formerly cohesive conservative forces within and outside the parish.

In April, two conservative Anglican organizations based in Colorado, the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) and Communion Laity and Clergy (CLC), both declared neutrality in the fight between Armstrong and O’Neill, despite the previous close ties between Armstrong and the two groups. The CLC spokesmen, who include well known theologian, Fr. Ephraim Radner of Colorado, went further, stating that they did not believe the charges against Armstrong had been “trumped up” or used to “silence an outspoken critic of the diocese.” However, they said they stood “ready to acknowledge any evidence that refutes these allegations against our colleague,” and cited concern that the presumption of innocence he is due has been “compromised.”

Certainly the diocese is not dropping the case in light of Armstrong’s transfer to CANA. It is pressing ahead with plans to try him, asserting that he is still a priest of the Colorado diocese, since he “has neither renounced his ordination vows nor...been deposed,” said diocesan Communications Director Beckett Stokes.

High drama in ecclesiastical and legal spheres has been accompanied by low farce in the streets. Mischief-makers opposed to the parish’s and rector’s public stance against the gay movement tossed a cream pie at Fr. Armstrong during a Sunday service (and missed); took pictures to “prove” that he violates parking regulations, and scrawled graffiti on the parish building.

Two-Stage Vote To Secede

The parish’s movement out of TEC and into CANA began with a 10-1 vestry decision on March 26. Armstrong had transferred his canonical residency to CANA the preceding week. The vestry changed the parish’s name to Grace and St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, and called for a congregational vote to ratify their decision.

In its March 26 statement, Grace’s vestry declared allegiance to “the historic, orthodox Christian faith common not only to Anglicans, but to all believers.” It asserted that “Episcopal revisionism” has “fatally contaminated” TEC. Because Episcopal bishops had “spurned” the February communique by Anglican primates and nullified the election of conservative Fr. Mark Lawrence as Bishop of South Carolina, it was evident that “orthodox clergymen, congregations, and dioceses...have no hope of perpetuating their faith, witness, and ecclesial life in The Episcopal Church.” Therefore, the vestry determined to leave TEC but to “remain in the Anglican Communion” by affiliating with CANA.

The congregation confirmed the vestry decision in a vote that ran from May 20 to May 26; the balloting was conducted, it was maintained, with the rigor of a municipal election (with oversight by a local official who, however, also is a pro-CANA parishioner). A total of 92 percent of the voters opted to move to CANA; 78 percent also voted to have Grace and St. Stephen’s vie for control of the parish property. Of the 822 eligible voters in the congregation, 370 cast ballots in the election.

In its May 26 response to the vote, the diocese explained the low turn-out, saying that the vestry of the remnant congregation loyal to the diocese had “encouraged members not to take part in the invalid vote organized by the secessionist group.”

After the vote, Fr. Armstrong said, “The Episcopal Diocese of Colorado is dying and has lost 60 percent of its market share of Colorado’s population during the last 60 years. The decision for Grace Church and St. Stephen’s was a simple choice between death with [TEC] or spiritual life and vitality with CANA.”

The diocese rejects this congregational vote, holding that individuals may leave TEC, but parishes cannot leave as a body. The May 26 diocesan statement said, “The ‘vote’ being taken this week by the secessionist group that now illegally occupies Grace and St. Stephen’s Church in Colorado Springs has no legal validity or bearing on the current efforts by The Diocese of Colorado to regain rightful control of its property. Because [TEC] is a hierarchical church, parishes are not established by the vote of a congregation, but only by actions taken by a diocesan convention and ecclesiastical authority. Conversely, no vote taken by a congregation or by its vestry can dissolve a parish or change its affiliation to another religious body. The seizing of property rightfully belonging to [TEC] is nothing more than a sadly misguided effort to restore to a position of public trust a priest who is currently under ecclesiastical indictment for the misappropriation of church funds.”

AFTER THE PARISH’S JURISDICTIONAL CHANGE Armstrong did return to Grace and St. Stephen’s, defying the bishop’s inhibition, a ruling which since December 27 had barred the rector from going to the parish, contacting its members, or speaking publicly about the allegations made against him.

On Palm Sunday, the first Sunday after the vote, over 800 worshipers were at Armstrong’s service, while 100 wishing to remain with TEC worshiped separately. More recently, separate sources claimed that about 250-300 TEC loyalists were worshiping together, while around 500 continued at Armstrong’s parish. A source in the parish said, though, that she notices little difference between turnout at Grace’s services now and before the vote.

Money Matters

On March 27, the day after the vestry’s vote to withdraw, the diocese sent a letter to parishioners accusing their rector of tax fraud, theft, unlawful loans, “improper use of clergy discretionary funds,” and “false or fraudulent” accounting. Bishop O’Neill said that a yearlong diocesan investigation had revealed over $1 million of such errors during the last ten years. Armstrong’s alleged misconduct includes over $392,000 in unauthorized payments for educational and personal expenses for the cleric’s family, and tax fraud involving over $548,000 in non-salary income and benefits not reported to the IRS. These charges are the basis of the diocese’s March 26 presentment (formal charges) against Armstrong.

O’Neill asserted that the vestry’s decision to leave TEC “on the day that the Diocesan Review Committee issued its presentment calls into question the motivation for making such a decision. That the vestry decided to restore Fr. Armstrong to a position of leadership - particularly in light of the allegations against him - and has justified that decision on the basis of safeguarding the Church’s moral integrity defies comprehension.” Additionally, O’Neill removed the vestry as officers of Grace and St. Stephen’s.

In a March 30 letter to his parishioners, Armstrong denied all the charges in the diocesan presentment. He said, “we are confident that the operation of our church and my participation in parish decisions will be fully exonerated. The reality of my innocence, however, is a possibility Rob O’Neill is unwilling to let disrupt his own fantasy that I have done something terribly wrong, and his fierce determination to destroy me has made it impossible for anyone to participate in granting me a fair hearing in the ecclesial system of the Diocese of Colorado for fear of their own professional well being. I have not been afforded due process in any way. I have been prevented by inhibition from responding to the allegations against me. I have been treated as guilty until proven innocent. The oppressive environment created by the bishop’s obsession has led investigators to ignore clear evidence refuting his assumptions, and to create over their year-long investigation a report in which every accusation contains a fine print footnote that admits a lack of crucial and decisive information to be certain of their assumptions.”

According to a local source, Armstrong is not a signer on checks drawn from parish accounts.

The cleric pledged to share with the congregation at an April 14 meeting “copies of my tax returns showing that I have always declared on my taxes the value of the church-provided rectory, as well as any gifts or gratuities I might have received for doing a wedding or funeral. In addition, the church financial records are being subjected to an independent forensic audit...” The embattled priest defended the church-granted college scholarships for his children, saying that “This is a common practice in the church and our own system for doing this was patterned after other Episcopal churches of a similar size and budget to Grace Church.”

Armstrong said that in prior years, he had used the rector’s discretionary fund in “paying for parishioners’ therapy, taking people out for coffee, having parishioners for dinner,” and other purposes. Once he became aware of “newer rules” that the discretionary fund can only be used for the poor, he changed his practice accordingly. He added that, “In the past our parish has been generous in granting pay advances for our staff. Through this investigation we have been informed that...Colorado statutes do not allow such advances or loans. This is a practice we will now cease as the recent vestry letter indicated.”

On April 13, 19 former vestry members from Grace and St. Stephen’s issued an open letter scoring the rector and supporting the presentment against him. “Between us, we served almost every year when Fr. Don Armstrong was rector,” they said. “Though we represent a variety of views on the moral issues facing our church, those issues are not in question here. At issue is the commandment: Thou shalt not steal. Armstrong is exploiting theological divisions within [TEC] to avoid a canonical investigation about his alleged financial wrongdoing. He has defied church and civil law by occupying and taking property from the church he and his allies left...

“Is he trustworthy?” the former vestry members asked. They noted in part that, contrary to Armstrong’s claim in his March 30 letter, the inhibition “never prevented his private response to diocesan representatives. “Diocesan representatives asked for his explanations or evidence eight times. He refused every time.”

The former vestry members continued, “Is he guilty of financial wrongdoing? The presentment alleges that Armstrong took nearly $400,000 for his personal expenses and for his son and daughter’s education, rent, cars, cell phones and computers. It alleges that he personally directed incorrect accounting entries for many of these checks. According to the presentment, he himself initialed many incorrect accounting entries. Such entries made it unlikely that those reviewing parish financial statements would identify payments benefiting Armstrong. The presentment alleges these sums and an additional $150,000 were never reported to the IRS. It also alleges that two checks totaling $3,433 received by Armstrong every month since 2001, suddenly began to be treated as taxable salary the month after the diocesan audit began. If so, this new practice is a tacit admission of previous wrongdoing. In his March 30 letter, Armstrong admits the parish paid unlawful pay advances and loans and that questions have arisen regarding his use of funds set aside for the poor. Will he admit that he was the recipient? Has he repaid these sums? In the same letter, Armstrong argues the ‘scholarships’ for his children represent ‘a common practice in the church,’ saying that staff financial arrangements were ‘handled by the wardens.’ We served as vestry members. We never gave the wardens blanket authority to negotiate ‘financial arrangements’ for Armstrong. We know of no provision in the parish governing documents or canon law giving wardens this authority. If such payments were a lawful ‘common practice,’ why not report them to the IRS?”

At the April 14 parish meeting, Armstrong told the 300 supporters and opponents who attended that he had done nothing wrong. The Rocky Mountain News said “the split was evident as Armstrong’s presentation got both standing ovations as well as scattered shouts of disapproval. The Q & A portion, which lasted about 90 minutes, was evenly split between statements of support and critical questions.”

Replying to the former vestry members’ open letter, the priest said that if the signers were so in the dark about how the parish’s finances were handled, then they also have to admit they failed their fiduciary responsibility as vestry members.

Using a large overhead screen, he reviewed an itemized list that reflected documents he said had been promptly turned over to a battery of lawyers, accountants and the IRS. Armstrong said that since 2003, he had made about $140,000 annually, including $40,000 in scholarships for his children. He got a standing ovation when he said, “I’ve done a good job as your rector and I feel warranted to receive the income.”

The diocese had requested Armstrong’s tax records, which the rector refused, but he asked for a voluntary review of his returns by the IRS. At this writing, no law enforcement or tax authority had brought charges against the cleric.

The Property Fight

Armstrong’s group sued in April to claim full legal control of the parish property, valued at $17 million; in early May, the diocese counter-sued for the land and building. The rector and his supporters believe they have an edge, in that Grace and St. Stephen’s was founded 14 years before the diocese, and has held its own property title since the land was donated to the congregation in the 1870s by Gen. William Palmer, the founder of Colorado Springs. n

Sources included: Grace and St. Stephen’s, The Living Church, The Church of England Newspaper, Rocky Mountain News, VirtueOnline, Colorado Springs Gazette, Colorado Springs Independent

Massive Property Battle

Gets Underway In Virginia

The Washington Times called it the “mother of all lawsuits pitting Episcopalian against Anglican,” and it kicked off May 21 in County Circuit Court in Fairfax, Virginia.

The legal campaign by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia to claim the property of 11 parishes that recently seceded from it and The Episcopal Church (TEC) has amassed numerous court filings and two dozen lawyers. It targets the clergy and lay leaders of the offending parishes, and by extension the 19 million-member Nigerian Anglican Church; the latter took the ex-Episcopal churches under its wing in its Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), which was established to minister to expatriate Nigerian and other Anglicans alienated by TEC’s revisionist approach to scriptural authority, particularly on the issue of homosexuality.

Some of the nation’s top law firms are involved in the fight, including the 750-attorney firm Goodwin Procter. One of its partners, David Beers, is the chancellor for TEC, which has joined the diocese in the legal battle for the properties. Hourly rates for partners at the firm go as high as $475, according to filings in a 2006 case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Times reported.

The defendants are having to pony up huge amounts as well. The Falls Church, the oldest of the 11 churches, announced a special collection June 10 to defray $342,576 in unpaid legal expenses.

Virginia Theological Seminary historian Robert Prichard said that, in terms of the number of individuals and fair-market value of the historic properties, this may be The Episcopal Church’s largest lawsuit ever.

Circuit Judge Randy Bellows, no stranger to high-profile cases, is presiding. He is the former assistant U.S. attorney who was the lead prosecutor on the “American Taliban” case of John Walker Lindh, and the investigator called upon to examine how the FBI bungled its espionage probe of Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee.

“The plaintiffs’ main complaint is not that several thousand people have exited the diocese, but that they took millions of dollars of church property with them,” the Times observed.

The suit also charges that members who wanted to stay Episcopalian - mostly tiny minorities, but in two cases, one-quarter of the parish - were not granted separate services on church property.

“There were people who wanted to worship as Episcopalians,” diocesan spokesman Patrick Getlein said. “They were denied that.” There were “Episcopalians turned out of their churches.”

Leaders of the disaffiliating parishes said that no one has been made to leave and that the diocese has made it impossible for 21 departing clergy - all of whom have been inhibited by Virginia Bishop Peter Lee - to function as Episcopal priests.

Mary McReynolds, chancellor of the Anglican District of Virginia within CANA, also reminded that a diocesan panel appointed by Lee earlier worked with the churches to hammer out a “protocol” allowing departing conservative congregations to negotiate settlements by which they could retain their property. The diocese said it never agreed to the protocol, and on January 31 filed lawsuits against the seceding churches.

Leaders of those parishes, she added, suspect the diocese was pressured by church headquarters in New York to fight for the property, despite a policy of deferring all property matters to the diocesan bishop.

Falls Church rector, the Rev. John Yates, said the May 21 court session was a scheduling conference for all parties, which also developed a process to govern the resolution of the primary issues in the case. Pivotal to the dispute is a state law stipulating that, in the event of a division within a denomination, the congregation can determine which branch of the church it will align with and take its property with it.

The diocese’s position is that the properties are owned by the trustees as long as the congregation remains Episcopal. If it leaves the denomination, it forfeits ownership.

Over the summer, the court will receive briefs and hear initial arguments. n

Source: Washington Times report by Julia Duin, VirtueOnline

Harassed Octogenarian Bishop

Exits TEC For Southern Cone

By The Rev. Samuel L. Edwards

Conservative retired Bishop William Cox, 86, has left The Episcopal Church (TEC) and been received into the province of the Southern Cone, after an attempt to bring him to trial in a TEC court that left many observers stunned and appalled.

During the March meeting of the Episcopal House of Bishops (HOB), it was announced that a panel of prelates had concluded that there was enough evidence to try Bishop Cox on charges of performing sacramental acts without first getting the local bishop’s approval. Bishop Cox, who before his retirement served successively as suffragan bishop in Maryland and assistant bishop in Oklahoma, now resides in Tulsa.

The charges, filed by Bishops Dean Wolfe of Kansas and Robert Moody of Oklahoma, derive from two services in 2005 in which Bishop Cox acted on behalf of Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi at Christ Church in Overland Park, Kansas. After negotiating a withdrawal from the Diocese of Kansas and TEC in April of that year, Christ Church and its clergy affiliated with the Ugandan Anglican Church. At a service there in June ‘05, Bishop Cox ordained two priests and a deacon for the Ugandan Church, at Orombi’s request. The following month, Cox returned to administer confirmation.

Bishops Wolfe and Moody regarded Cox’s actions as canonical offenses against Wolfe’s prerogatives as Bishop of Kansas and an invasion of his jurisdiction. A TEC review panel agreed that evidence of an offense was strong enough to warrant a trial.

Writing on an Internet listserve, one priest who has known Bishop Cox for two decades said, “To see him persecuted at this point in his life...is a pathetic and cowardly display...To put this in perspective: How many ecclesiastical charges has Jack Spong faced over the years? Oh, dumb question. Spong may have denied the entirety of the Christian faith, but he never broke a canon.”

In an interview with cyber-journalist David Virtue, Bishop Cox admitted that he had intentionally performed the acts, but went on to say that, “This was not a matter of geographical boundaries but a matter of jurisdiction. The Archbishops of Uganda (Orombi) and the Southern Cone (Gregory Venables) both had jurisdiction over the congregations I visited...The truth is this is not a question of the violation of the faith but a question of geographic jurisdictions and pure legalism. It is about process, not the faith.”

Formal notification of the charges against Bishop Cox was sent to his attorney, Wicks Stevens, in late March, but no date or site for the trial had been set at this writing. In any event, it appears unlikely that there will be a trial at all, unless TEC wishes to further exacerbate tensions among the members of the Anglican Communion. On March 29, Bishop Cox informed TEC Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori that he had been received into the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone (of South America), and was no longer a member of TEC or its House of Bishops.

In an interview with The Living Church, Bishop Cox explained his move by saying, “I don’t want a fight amongst Christians...I would hope this transfer will enable me to be of service to congregations in this country that have already affiliated with the Southern Cone.” He went on to say that he wishes to remain in active ministry within the Anglican Communion, which could have been jeopardized had he been tried and deposed. He believed deposition to be likely, given the current constitution of TEC’s ecclesiastical courts; hence, he removed himself from their jurisdiction.

Should TEC elect to go forward with a trial, said Bishop Cox, they would have to conduct it without his participation. TEC spokesmen had no comment at the time of writing on whether the process would continue. n

Sources: American Anglican Council, Brotherhood of St. Andrews, The Living Church, Tulsa World, World Net Daily, VirtueOnLine, kimgrams.org

Albany Bishops Follow

Different Paths Out Of TEC

Conservative Albany Bishop Dan Herzog and his suffragan, David Bena, both retired on January 31 and left The Episcopal Church (TEC), but went in different directions.

Bishop Bena transferred his episcopal orders to the Anglican Church of Nigeria upon his retirement. Bishop Herzog, who had issued his colleague letters dimissory (transfer letters) prior to his own retirement, was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in mid-March, together with his wife, Carol. The move was described as a “return to their roots.”

Received by Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, Bishop Bena is now serving as a missionary bishop in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a pastoral provision sponsored by the Nigerian Church and presided over by Bishop Martyn Minns of Fairfax, Virginia. Asserting that “there is much disenfranchisement in the land today, with a consequent need for strong pastoral oversight,” Bishop Bena said that, “as God gives me strength, I will offer such leadership.”

Bena is not liable to presentment in TEC, as he was lawfully transferred from one province of the Anglican Communion to another; hence “I am neither renouncing my orders as a bishop nor am I abandoning the communion of this Church,” Bena said.

Bishop Herzog resigned his orders in TEC and assumed the status of a Roman Catholic layman. In a letter to his successor, Bishop William Love, Herzog noted the “turmoil which has enveloped The Episcopal Church” since 2003, saying that the power that General Convention claimed to exercise “negated any previous authority on which I relied.” Herzog said he had undergone three years of focused prayer and study, including “a fresh examination of apostolic teaching and authority,” before becoming Catholic. He also said a “sense of duty to the diocese, its clergy and people required that I not walk away from my office and leave vulnerable this diocese which I love.” He said the election and consecration of his conservative successor gave him the liberty to follow his conscience.

Bishop Bena also was careful to state that his departure was in no way to be understood as a negative judgment on the Albany diocese.

Bishop Love, in a letter to his clergy after his predecessor’s decision was announced, wrote that “Dan and Carol have been and continue to be good friends of the Diocese of Albany and will always be welcome at all functions in the diocese.”

He said he was concerned “that others in the diocese are also struggling with the current issues that threaten to divide the church. Please know that I am here for you as we work through these issues.” He added that, “It is absolutely essential that we stick together, as one body in Christ, loving, supporting and upholding one another.” n

Sources: Diocese of Albany, The Living Church, The Church of England Newspaper

"Gay" and Rich In God’s Service

“Budget Shortfall” Spurs Lay-offs At

Cathedral, While Gay Dean Gets A Raise

Commentary Report By Les Kinsolving

The Seattle Times reported [in April]: “A recent decision to lay off two priests and an administrator from St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral - one of the area’s most prominent religious institutions - has left parishioners divided and in turmoil, with some saying they are leaving the church.

“In a forum on Sunday and one last week, parishioners expressed anguish over the layoffs of the Rev. Janet Campbell, director of liturgy and the arts; the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, director of faith formation; and arts administrator Heather Hodsdon.

“The Very Rev. Robert Taylor, dean of the cathedral, informed parishioners in a March 21 letter that the church fell short of its annual fundraising goal and would be laying off the three women.”

What makes this news outrageous is the Times report of Taylor’s recent raise in salary:

“Church leaders...said Taylor’s raise was to make his salary - $175,000 - comparable to those at Episcopal churches of similar size and was funded through gifts for that purpose.”

With additional benefits, including a provided home and car allowance, this cathedral dean accepted a raise...worth nearly one-quarter of a million dollars; at the same time he fired three women, including two who are clergy.

I tried three times in one day to reach Dean Taylor by telephone. Courteous assistants told me he would be available to talk with me at 5:30 p.m.

When at that scheduled time I telephoned, I was informed: “This is Holy Week and the dean is very busy.”

Considering Holy Week, I wondered if this cathedral dean believes that any one of Jesus’ 12 apostles were ever paid the equivalent of $175,000 a year in salary - which is so much more than the average salary in the United States.

I wanted to ask this dean if he had ever considered taking a cut in pay down to $75,000 or $50,000, so that these two clergywomen and one other lady employee would not become unemployed, even as Dean Taylor got wealthier.

But he (suddenly) became “too busy” to talk...

Does the law in Seattle and the state of Washington permit such treatment of female associates for the reason of a male dean’s financial aggrandizement? And even if this is legally tolerated, is this treatment of females to be considered Christian?

[One wonders if there is any correlation between] Dean Taylor’s appalling treatment of these women [and] the widely reported news - at the time he was nominated to be bishop in San Francisco - that he is a practicing and announced homosexual.

Seattle Times reporter Janet Tu told me by phone that her news story has not evoked any protest from Dean Taylor. That story reported:

“About 100 fewer families pledged for 2007 than the 630 who gave last year, with parishioners divided and some announcing they are leaving the church. The first Sunday after the announcement (of Taylor’s firing the three women), some parishioners held signs at services supporting those laid off.” n

Les Kinsolving is White House correspondent for World Net Daily and hosts a daily talk show for WCBM in Baltimore. His radio commentaries are syndicated nationally. His show can be heard on the Internet from 9-11 p.m. Eastern each weekday. Before going into broadcasting, Kinsolving was a newspaper reporter and columnist, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary.

But Of Course

TEC’s Gay Bishop Eyes Civil Union,

And Gay Former NJ Governor TEC Seminary

By Lee Penn

It came recently as a sort of one-two punch - a pair of developments emblematic of today’s Episcopal Church (TEC).

First, there was word that the divorced, actively gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, plans to seek a civil union with his partner, after a New Hampshire law allowing such unions takes effect in January.

Then it emerged that former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey - who resigned in 2004 after admitting he is gay and had cheated on his wife with a man he had put into a high security position - has left the Roman Catholic Church for TEC, and plans to attend General Theological Seminary (GTS) in New York City.

IN MAY, Governor John Lynch signed a bill that made New Hampshire the fourth state to allow same-sex civil unions. New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, California and Washington allow either civil unions or domestic partnerships, and Oregon will join the list with New Hampshire in January. Hawaii extends certain spousal rights to same-sex couples and cohabiting heterosexual pairs. Only Massachusetts permits gay “marriage.”

Robinson said that he and his partner of 18 years, Mark Andrew, “look forward to taking full advantage of the new law” permitting same-sex unions. He thought the law a “huge leap forward,” but said there would not be “full equality” until gays were allowed to marry.

He said he planned to have separate civil and church blessing ceremonies for himself and his partner.

The one crumb Robinson threw to objectors was that he would not direct clergy in his diocese to bless same-sex unions, but is allowing them according to each individual cleric’s discretion.

MCGREEVEY was publicly received into TEC on April 29 at St. Bartholomew’s parish in Manhattan. Earlier terming himself a “devoted Roman Catholic,” the New Jersey Democrat had, however, been publicly at odds with the Catholic Church over his support for abortion, stem cell research, and same-sex domestic partnerships.

Within a few days of being received into TEC, McGreevey announced plans to enroll this fall in GTS, the oldest of TEC’s seminaries. Initially, he stated that he would enter a three-year Master of Divinity program (a degree often sought by candidates for Episcopal priesthood), with the sponsorship of St. Bartholomew’s. After a week of public controversy about the possibility of McGreevey seeking ordination, it became clear that he had gotten a bit ahead of the normal process followed by aspirants to Episcopal priesthood. According to The Living Church, after McGreevey was “advised of the guidelines for ordination in the Diocese of New York,” he decided to enter GTS next September “as a full-time non-degree student rather than as a student in the Master of Divinity program...The classes and course work are identical and the change does not rule out the possibility of his entering the (church’s) discernment process at a later date.”

David France, who last year co-authored McGreevey’s memoir, The Confession, is not surprised by the former governor’s plans to enter the seminary. France said that his subject’s “spiritual life has always been central to who he is. From the time he was a kid, he thought about going into Catholic seminary a number of times. The idea of going into the Episcopal seminary has been in his mind for at least a couple of years.” McGreevey began attending Episcopal services regularly soon after his 2004 resignation from the New Jersey governorship.

His resignation followed the August 2004 revelation that he had engaged in an extramarital affair with a man whom he had appointed to be his homeland security adviser. According to The Associated Press, the adviser “denies having an affair and claims he was sexually harassed by the former governor.” Another odd part of the story is the brief time that elapsed between the twice-married McGreevey’s formal change of religious affiliation and his move toward seminary study in his newly chosen church.

According to the Newark Star-Ledger, “News of McGreevey’s plans [to enter the seminary came] a day after his estranged wife, former first lady Dina Matos McGreevey, released her own tell-all memoir, called Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage. The McGreeveys are embroiled in a nasty divorce and custody battle...A central point of contention between [them]...is whether their 5-year-old daughter, being raised Catholic by Matos McGreevey, should be allowed to accept communion while at services with her father.”

In response to her ex’s plans to enter seminary, McGreevey’s most recent wife said, “I certainly wouldn’t go and confess my sins to him.”

Remarkably, the former governor has already started teaching courses at a New Jersey university on ethics and leadership, which the head of the state’s Republican Party likened to “Doctor Kevorkian teaching health maintenance.” n

Sources: Episcopal Life, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN/Reuters, The Associated Press, The Washington Times, Fox News, The Star-Ledger, The Living Church, WNBC.com

TEC Places Pricey Ad

To Boost Church Image

Report/Analysis By David W. Virtue

The U.S.-based Episcopal Church (TEC) paid a cool $51,897 for a one-time quarter-page block advertisement in the op-ed section of The New York Times on May 12, extolling the virtues of becoming an Episcopalian.

In an apparent bid to counteract ongoing media reports of Episcopal/Anglican conflict and parishes leaving, the ad plays up TEC’s impressive American historical connections (never mind the considerable theological gap between the historical and contemporary Episcopal Church), and reminds readers of the denomination’s various impressive cathedrals and churches. In other words, there is no talk of things like the Divine Commission or scriptural fidelity, but the ad scores highly on the warm-fuzzy meter.

Frequent Episcopal commentator, the Rev. Canon Gary L’Hommedieu, saw it as a blatant attempt to “[use] dead men’s money to rewrite the history of these honorable dead, in order to create the perception that TEC is the same historic entity that occupied their properties four centuries, or even four decades, ago.”

Headlined, “The Episcopal Church, Marking a Milestone, Moving Forward” the ad began, “Somewhere near you, there’s a blue-and-white sign bearing the familiar slogan: The Episcopal Church Welcomes You. It represents some 7,400 congregations that trace their beginnings in North America to a small but hopeful group of English Christians who arrived May 14, 1607 at a place they called Jamestown - the first permanent English settlement in the New World.”

The ad continued: “You may know us as Washington’s monumental National Cathedral, site of historic services and ceremonies, or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, still unfinished, but already the largest cathedral in the world.”

The ad points also to the denomination’s Boston landmark, the “Old North Church, founded in 1723 and made famous by serving as the beacon for Paul Revere’s revolution-spurring ‘midnight ride.’ And Philadelphia’s Christ Church, home parish of 15 signers of the Declaration of Independence, [was] host to the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1785.”

TEC is also “Trinity Parish on Wall Street in New York, formed in 1698, and St. Paul’s Chapel just down the street, frequented by George Washington and the spiritual healing center of Ground Zero since September 11, 2001.”

“It’s also Epiphany Church in Los Angeles, where Cesar Chavez rallied the United Farm workers. And Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Cumberland, Maryland, whose basement was a major stop on the Underground Railroad to freedom for enslaved African-Americans.

“It’s a parish in Iowa. A campus ministry in Georgia. A mission in Dinetah - the Navajo Reservation. A cathedral in Utah. Even a house church in Vermont.”

Jesus is mentioned twice in the ad: the first time is in reference to the church’s social ministries, and the second time in reference to transforming the world, to one of “justice, peace, wholeness, and holy living,” the latter presumably including same-sex unions.

Indeed, according to the ad, St. John’s Church in Greenwich Village is “a meeting place for gay and lesbian action following the 1969 Stonewall uprising.”

The ad explains recent reports of turmoil in TEC by saying that: “Episcopalians struggle with the same issues that trouble all people of faith: how to interpret an ancient faith for today...how to maintain the integrity of tradition while reaching out to a hurting world...how to disagree and yet love and respect one another.

“Occasionally those struggles make the news. People find they can no longer walk with us on their journey, and may be called to a different spiritual home. Some later make their way back, and find they are welcomed with open arms.”

This laissez-faire attitude would probably come as a surprise to parishes being sued for their property or clergy deposed for “abandonment” when they find “a different spiritual home” in another part of the Anglican Communion.

“The ad is a classic example of revisionist history making,” wrote L’Hommedieu. “The long term purpose of [it] is to enable TEC to reinvent itself,” not only setting itself up to become a rival Anglican Communion, if necessary, but “by claiming a direct line between the Jamestown pilgrims in 1607 and Greenwich Village lesbigay activists in 1969. I’m sorry - the ad didn’t call them ‘pilgrims’ as they are commonly known, but ‘a small but hopeful group of English Christians’, thus removing every trace of historical context. The real pilgrims of course were English Calvinists, who fled to this continent to escape the first Episcopal Establishment.” n

See Canon L’Hommedieu’s full, hard-hitting analysis of TEC’s Times ad in “bonus reports” linked to this issue at www.challengeonline.org. See more reports by David Virtue at www.virtueonline.org.

TEC Bishop Tells African

Archbishop To Get Lost;

Primate Hits Back

The stressed fabric of fellowship between the U.S.-based Episcopal Church (TEC) and the wider Anglican Communion frayed further with a recent public tiff between just-retired Maryland Episcopal Bishop Robert Ihloff and Archbishop Justice Akrofi of West Africa.

The drama began when Akrofi and six other Global South Anglican primates refused to take Holy Communion together with Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori during the February 13-19 meeting of Anglican primates (provincial leaders) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

On the basis of this, Ihloff retaliated. On February 17, while the Tanzanian meeting was still in session, the liberal Maryland bishop sent Akrofi a letter withdrawing a previous invitation for him to preach, celebrate the Eucharist and speak in Maryland in late March and early April. He said this action had the Diocesan Council’s approval, and told Akrofi he regretted this end of their “personal relationship.”

“I am disappointed you would use the Holy Sacrament of our Lord’s Body and Blood as a political tool - I had assumed your sacramental theology was more thoroughly Anglican,” the Maryland prelate wrote the African primate. It appears that Ihloff made the letter public before it reached Akrofi’s hands.

Despite Ihloff’s bitter verbiage, also accusing Akrofi of not being honest with him, he said that the eight-year companion diocese relationship between Maryland and Akrofi’s Diocese of Accra, and various projects already begun as a result of that relationship, could continue, although “this development puts that relationship at risk. I am content to let the Holy Spirit guide our dioceses into appropriate discernment (a discernment which will take place after my retirement and without my input).” Ihloff retired April 19.

Over the course of two replies to the Maryland bishop, Akrofi regretted that “there has been cause for pain,” and prayed that God would “purge any guile” that had developed between the two parties, but rejected “the charge of dishonest deception.” He indicated that his boycott of eucharistic fellowship with Bishop Schori at Dar es Salaam was a continuation of his refusal to commune with former TEC Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold at Lambeth Palace in October 2003 and at Dromantine in February 2005. The Archbishop said “it is not ‘using’ the Sacrament...as a political tool. It is a consistent stance informed by...fidelity to what I believe to be biblical faith...”

He also said he was “bound to reflect the stances of my constituency.”

Akrofi reminded Ihloff, too, that “we have shared in the Holy Communion together a few times in Maryland and in Accra,” even though “for years I have known your stance.” He promised to remember Ihloff at the Eucharist on the occasion of his retirement.

The Archbishop’s letter cited Scripture and the writings of the saints; Ihloff’s brush-off had been devoid of such references.

Akrofi accused his Episcopal colleague of using a “big brother America” attitude: “Your point about politicization has also unfortunately touched a raw nerve here, which crudely put is as follows: ‘Typical big brother, America attitude and style – because of your little contribution to our life and mission, [you] want us to sing [your] tune and we have no voice and attitude of our own.’”

He also noted the unfortunate timing of the “tiff,” which occurred when Ghana was celebrating 50 years of independence from colonialism and the 200-year anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, and therefore hearing “much rhetoric [regarding] the wickedness of imperialism and colonialism.”

But Akrofi ended on an irenic note, expressing openness to a continued relationship with the Maryland diocese, whose flock “we have come to respect and love...Please, we are not interested in the bond because of some material benefits. We may be the poor part of the sibling’s relationship, but we are not down and out...Please extend to your flock our gratitude for what the fellowship together has been and meant, our continued well-wishes and continuing prayers.” n

Sources included American Anglican Council, TitusOneNine, VirtueOnline

Florida Bishop Rebuffs

Panel Recommendations

Florida Episcopal Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard has rejected the recommendations from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference for handling the “serious theological dispute” between him and Redeemer Anglican Church in Jacksonville.

Eighteen months after Florida conservatives filed an appeal for relief, the Panel, established in 2005, proposed a plan involving a legal cease-fire between the bishop and the parish and an alternate arrangement for oversight by a “neighbor bishop” who would share decision-making responsibilities with the diocesan bishop.

Redeemer, under the leadership of the Rev. Neil G. Lebhar, is one of six Florida congregations that first appealed to Bishop Howard for alternate episcopal oversight; this, because the bishop – in spite of his professed opposition to the pro-homosexual agenda in The Episcopal Church (TEC) – declined a request from the parishes that he discontinue communion with participants in the consecration of practicing and professing homosexual priest V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

Howard offered another prelate under the TEC bishops’ DEPO (Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight) plan, but the terms of this arrangement were not acceptable to the six parishes. In August 2005, the parishes filed a petition with the Panel of Reference concerning their situation and began making their own arrangements for alternate oversight; their petition was not referred to the Panel by Lambeth Palace until June 2006. Eventually, one of the parishes aligned with the Anglican Province of Rwanda, one with the Kenyan province and four with that of Uganda. At least six other congregations have left the diocese since then.

Redeemer’s clergy came under Ugandan oversight in January of 2006, when Fr. Lebhar and his assistant, Shawn Porter, were accepted into the Diocese of Madi/West Nile by its Bishop, Joel Obetia.

At that time, Bishop Howard filed his own appeal to the Panel of Reference, asking it to intervene because “jurisdictional lines are being violated in contravention of the primates’ communiqué and the Windsor Report, paragraph 155.”

In March 2006, the diocese filed a property lawsuit against the rector, wardens, and vestry of Redeemer Church. (The diocese continued to pursue this even after being requested by members of the Panel to desist at least until the conclusion of their deliberation.)

In response to the pair of petitions made to them, the Panel of Reference sent two of its members, Bishop Maurice Sinclair, former primate of the Southern Cone, and Robert Tong, an attorney from Sydney, Australia, on a fact-finding mission to Florida. This was done in late September and the information gathered was given to panelists to assist in framing a response.

Since, as of February 2007, Redeemer was the only one among the six original parishes that was still pursuing a solution through the Panel of Reference, the latter’s recommendations were directed only at that particular situation. However, the report expressed a hope that they might “provide a way forward in relation to the other parishes and congregations as well.”

The Panel’s February 27 report asked Redeemer to accept the authority of Bishop Howard and return to active participation in the fiscal and corporate life of the diocese. In return, Bishop Howard was asked to lift the inhibition imposed on Lebhar, end litigation, and permit alternate episcopal oversight for the parish from a “neighbor” bishop acceptable to both parties. The “`good neighbor’ episcopal ministry” would continue for “an agreed period of years,” and be renewable by mutual agreement. The oversight extended by the diocesan to the alternate bishop (not named, but possibly Bishop Salmon of South Carolina) would include “effective and necessary sharing of decisions with regard to clergy appointments for the parish and ordination process.” Once all these conditions had been met, the foreign oversight arrangement would cease, and Redeemer, having resumed a degree of participation in diocesan life, would work toward reconciliation between the majority Anglican congregation and the minority Episcopal members.

The day after the Panel’s report was given to the concerned parties (it was not made public until March 16), Fr. Lebhar and Redeemer’s vestry agreed to abide by the Panel’s recommendations, provided that the diocese accepted them before a court hearing scheduled for March 2. However, parish leaders said an additional condition imposed by Bishop Howard, that the parish enter into “full communion” with him, was a hoped-for objective but not appropriate at that stage.

On March 1, Howard wrote to Lambeth Palace saying that, while the diocese was “open to considering” the Panel’s recommendations, there was no point in discussing their implementation unless Redeemer came into full communion with the bishop and diocese.

Also on March 1, Bishop Howard sent a letter to his clergy expressing negative views about the February communiqué issued by the Anglican primates (archbishops) - which proposed alternate primatial leadership for TEC conservatives as a whole - and proposals for an Anglican covenant to give the Communion an explicit and agreed doctrinal basis. In both cases his overarching concern appeared to be how the autonomous power-polity of TEC and its diocesan bishops might be undermined. “The Anglican Communion has never been, and was never intended to be, a sort of Anglicized replica of the Roman Catholic Church...There exists no magisterium, no office for the enforcement of doctrines of faith...Each [province] has always been free to chart its own course and live into the faith as it sees fit,” he wrote.

On March 2, the litigation initiated by the diocese to claim Redeemer’s property reached its next stage as a court hearing was held on the diocese’s motion for summary judgment. “Despite the primates’ communiqué, our earlier request for a stay was opposed by the diocese and then rejected by the judge,” wrote Fr. Lebhar to Christopher Smith of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s staff.

In early April, the state court ruled in favor of the diocese, and ordered the Anglican Church of the Redeemer’s 300 members to leave their property, valued at $4 million. Fr. Lebhar urged parishioners to “see the move as a new chance to serve the Lord and glorify him.” He expects the synagogue in which his flock is now worshipping to be the church’s home for about two years. Meanwhile, a small remnant Episcopal congregation continues at their former building. n

Sources: Anglican Communion Office, Anglican Church of the Redeemer, VirtueOnLine, The Living Church, Christian Post, The Church of England Newspaper, firstcoastnews.com, Times-Union

Ruling On Women Bishops

Sought In Australian Church

The highest court of the Anglican Church of Australia (ACA) is deciding whether women can be made bishops even though the ACA’s General Synod has so far failed to approve the innovation.

In early April, the church’s Appellate Tribunal began sitting to consider whether the ACA constitution contains any barriers to women becoming bishops. Lawyers for those supporting the change had argued that it does not at a four-hour hearing before the Tribunal in Sydney on March 31. They maintained that the sole canonical requirements for consecration to the episcopate were that a person be baptized, over 30 years of age, and a priest. Supporters of the church’s traditional teaching argued, however, that the decision to permit women bishops must not be made through legal sleight of hand but through an act of General Synod.

Robert Tong, chairman of the Anglican Church League and a member of the Anglican Communion’s Panel of Reference, told the Sydney Morning Herald that if the Tribunal rules that supporters of female bishops could bypass Synod to achieve their aims, it would set a precedent of allowing dioceses to determine constitutional and doctrinal issues on their own.

A decision in the case from the Tribunal’s seven members - three bishops and four lawyers appointed by General Synod - was not expected for months. n

Sources: Ecumenical News International, The Church of England Newspaper

Forward in Faith Responds

To Affirming Catholicism Critique

By The Rev. Samuel L. Edwards

Does the Church of England’s Canon A4 positively require its lay and clergy members, on pain of excommunication, to recognize all persons – female as well as male – ordained in the English state church as being in fact deacons, priests or bishops?

That was the issue at stake in a recent submission by a working party of the U.K. traditionalist organization, Forward in Faith (FIF). After the liberal group, Affirming Catholicism, responded with a critique of the submission, FIF issued a sharp rejoinder.

In July 2006, the C of E’s General Synod authorized the preparation of legislation to permit the consecration of women as bishops. At the same time, it directed the preparation of additional legislation that would enable “those conscientiously unable to receive the ministry of women bishops to remain within the church...consistent with Canon A4.” Though there is much opposition to the idea, this legislation could result in the constitution of a “free” or third province of the C of E that would have no female clergy - a solution that FIF-UK has supported for several years.

The canon at issue says that “those who are so made, ordained or consecrated bishops, priests, or deacons, according to the...Ordinal (annexed to The Book of Common Prayer), are lawfully made, ordained, or consecrated, and ought to be accounted, both by themselves and others, to be truly bishops, priests, or deacons.”

In its submission to the Synod’s Drafting Group for the proposed legislation, FIF pointed out that the language of the canon regarding recognition of orders is “exhortatory” or aspirational rather than “prescriptive” or mandatory. In other words, where it could say all canonically ordained persons “shall be accounted” to be what the law says they are, it instead says that they “ought” to be so recognized. This usage, which is rare in English canon law, makes room in the C of E for those who believe the alteration of the traditional understanding of the subject of ordination is beyond even the Church’s competence (let alone the state’s).

In its own submission to the Drafting Group, Affirming Catholicism (which is largely made up of persons of Anglo-Catholic liturgical tastes but revisionist theological predilections) asserted that FIF’s arguments about the meaning of Canon A4 “cannot be sustained.” While conceding that both Lambeth Conference resolutions and synodical and parliamentary enactments provide for conscientious doubt, Affirming Catholicism’s working party seemed to assert that such doubts should not be permitted to reach the level of publicly expressed dissent. In other words, it would be acceptable for a Church of England member to believe that no woman could be ordained, so long as he did or said nothing to express or otherwise act on that belief.

In its rejoinder to the Affirming Catholicism submission, FIF charged that “the main purpose of the submission, it appears, is a thoroughly un-Anglican attempt to repress and stifle dissent.” The recommendation that future clergy be required to teach that the English Church in fact ordains women as well as men was described as “both logically and morally indefensible.”

By contrast, said FIF, its own objective has been “to set out proposals for future structured arrangements which take account of a genuine difference of opinion on a matter which affects, but does not necessarily destroy, the unity of the Church. They are proposals which would allow women to be – in every sense – bishops in the dioceses to which they were called. They would reserve to those conscientiously opposed the necessary freedom to act upon their convictions with integrity.” It was made clear that, for FIF’s constituency, “No arrangements can work” once women become bishops “which do not provide opponents with bishops who have real and actual jurisdiction. Suffragans of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York” (as are the “flying bishops” under the current state of affairs) “will not do and will not work.” n

Sources: Forward in Faith, Affirming Catholicism

Troubled C Of E Is Focus

Of Association’s “Think Tank”

Focusing on the soul of an ailing Church of England, the British-based Anglican Association has set up a “think tank” to study and comment on several areas of Anglicanism, possibly including the rehabilitation of the very word “Anglicanism.”

The Anglican Association was founded in 1969 to give voice to great concern over the Anglican-Methodist plans for unity at that time. It was intended to be a non-party group - in the sense that it was concerned to defend, for its positive value, the doctrine and ethos of the Church of England as, over the years, church members had received the same. But the Association was to find much else to draw its attention, as it became clear that, in the C of E, catholic faith and order were being imperiled by revisionist theology - as seen in debates and decisions on liturgy, the interpretation of doctrine, church unity, remarriage of the divorced, and ordination. After a waning period for the Association that began in the latter 1990s, word of a substantial bequest before Christmas 2006 has enabled the organization to plan a renewed campaign for orthodoxy in the C of E.

“We do not go forward as believing that everything past was good and that the present is totally bad,” said the Association’s immediate past president, the Rev. Prof. Raymond Chapman. “We defend Anglican integrity while welcoming and wishing to join in the ecumenical spirit which is a blessing for our time. The assaults of a growing secularism and the tendency to privilege other faiths above Christianity are the greatest danger, and whatever we try to achieve in our own church must be directed towards the universal proclamation of salvation in Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever.”

Anthony Kilmister OBE, former national chairman of the Prayer Book Society, was elected president of the Association. Wiltshire accountant Robin Davies was elected as treasurer and Dr. Thomas Miskell of London, an analyst and economist, was tapped as secretary. The Association’s newly-elected committee includes Prof. Chapman, of Barnes; Canon Arthur Middleton from County Durham, Canon Geoffrey Neal from Bedfordshire; and Cost of Conscience expert, the Rev. Francis Gardom of Greenwich. n

TAC: “Hero Of The Faith” Marks

30 Years Of Episcopal Ministry

By The Editor

Anyone who meets him encounters a member of that too-small fraternity of truly godly bishops.

The Rt. Rev. Robert Mercer, C.R., is a guileless soul, always pastoral and never political. His successor, Bishop Peter Wilkinson, describes him as a “quiet” but “definite” man, “an astute theologian, an all-round scholar, a brilliant preacher, and, of all the graces, the ability to love his enemies.” England’s New Directions magazine terms him “a hero of the faith.”

Clearly, we here at TCC have abandoned any pretense of objectivity in talking about Bishop Mercer, who just celebrated the 30th anniversary of his consecration, yet we know of no one who would challenge what we say about this former Bishop of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, who later led the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC). Doubtless we have annoyed or embarrassed him, but we would humbly beg his indulgence on this one occasion.

Mercer’s road to prelacy within the Anglican Communion and later within the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), an international Continuing Church fellowship, began when he was ordained a priest in 1960 in Matabeleland, his home diocese in what was then Rhodesia. Mercer was a curate there in his hometown for three years before traveling to England to enter the novitiate of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield, Yorkshire, the oldest surviving monastic order for men in the Anglican Communion.

After profession in 1965 and a year later, he spent three years in Wales before his order sent him as prior and rector to Stellenbosch in South Africa. Just two years later, he and one of his brethren were deported for vigorously supporting the Church’s policy against racial discrimination.

He returned to Zimbabwe and his eventual consecration in 1977 as the fourth Bishop of Matabeleland, a part of the Anglican province of Central Africa.

Realizing that a black bishop would better serve Matabeleland, Bishop Mercer resigned in 1987 and returned to his monastery in Mirfield.

Amazingly - from the viewpoint of those who benefited from his next move - Bishop Mercer agreed in 1989 to help steady Continuing Anglicans, and in a decidedly unAfrican climate to boot: He accepted the invitation to be the third Bishop of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, succeeding Bishops Carmino de Catanzaro and Alfred Woolcock (whom he assisted for several months after arriving in Canada). Bishop Wilkinson took his place after Mercer retired to England a few years ago.

Over the course of his ministry, Bishop Mercer has had encounters with both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI (as illustrated by memorable photos of him speaking gently but forthrightly to both pontiffs!).

A MASS IN CELEBRATION of Mercer’s consecration three decades ago, attended by well-wishers from several countries, took place May 5 at St. Agatha’s in Portsmouth, England, a well known church built in 1894 and formerly served by famous Anglican priest, Fr. R.R. Dolling; it is now part of the TAC.

With Mercer himself celebrating, the preacher for the May 5 rite was Fr. Keble Prosser, former headmaster of St Augustine’s School, Penhalonga, Zimbabwe, where Bishop Mercer served as chaplain. The music for the Mass, provided by a special choir and orchestra, was Haydn’s Nelson’s Mass - especially appropriate since Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, is permanently anchored about three-quarters of a mile from St. Agatha’s.

Attendees at the Anniversary Mass included former clergy, missionaries, and parishioners from Matabeleland; former students from the College of the Resurrection; and numerous friends, both clergy and lay, from The Traditional Anglican Church (TTAC - TAC’s English branch), the Church of England, and the Roman Catholic Church. Also present were the C of E’s Bishop of Fulham, John Broadhurst, the international head of Forward in Faith; and several TAC bishops from Canada, the USA, and Australia, the latter including Australian-based TAC Archbishop John Hepworth.

St. Agatha’s is in the midst of a long-term restoration process under the leadership of its rector, the Rev. John Maunder. Immediately after the Mass, a newly-completed baptistry gate was dedicated by Bishop David Moyer, episcopal visitor to TTAC, in memory of Fr. Charles Coles, longtime (1911-1954) vicar of St Agatha’s, who spent his final years living in the church’s sacristy after the vicarage was destroyed by bombs in 1941.

Archbishop Hepworth celebrated Mass for the visiting bishops and the TTAC’s vicar general on Sunday morning, after which the party journeyed to Lincoln, between London and York, to visit St. Catherine’s, a large medieval church which, like St. Agatha’s, is now under TAC auspices and being restored. The visitors spent three days at Lincoln with Bishop Mercer, doing some advance planning for the fall 2007 meeting of the TAC’s College of Bishops, discussing the state of affairs in the Anglican world, and exploring ways in which the TAC can make a positive contribution to the work of the greater Church.

TAC now reports a presence in 41 countries. Much of the growth is occurring in struggling or strife-ridden nations, leading to challenges to other parts of TAC as to how to adequately support “this extraordinary thing that has become the TAC,” as Archbishop Hepworth wrote earlier this year.

In view of Hepworth’s punishing travel schedule - he had been in the U.S. and Canada about two weeks before his U.K. sojourn, and was scheduled to be in Africa less than two weeks after returning to Australia from England - Bishop Mercer suggested that the bishops offer their Primate some formal encouragement. The prelates unanimously adopted a resolution expressing their “gratitude for and total confidence in the leadership of John Hepworth as Archbishop of the TAC,” and saying that they “look forward to his continued primatial ministry among us.” The resolution was endorsed by Bishops Mercer, Moyer, Wilkinson, George Langberg, head of the Anglican Church in America, David Chislett of Australia, and Craig Botterill and Carl Reid of Canada.

The party left Lincoln later in the week, with most of the group visiting the shrine at Walsingham before heading home.

*EARLY JUNE brought some sad losses for the TAC, with the deaths of Bishop Trevor Rhodes, who had been serving in South Africa, and Walter Kilian, head of the International Anglican Fellowship, an aid agency for TAC’s mission work. More later. n

Sources included Bishop George Langberg, The Messenger

ACA Leaders Eye Growth, Unity,

Theological Education

The growth of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) and prospects for greater unity among orthodox Anglican bodies were among focuses of a recent meeting of Anglican Church in America (ACA) leaders.

Bishops of the ACA - a part of TAC, a leading international Continuing Church fellowship - and the ACA’s Executive Council met April 17-20 at the Montserrat Jesuit Retreat Center north of Dallas.

The bishops welcomed to their midst two bishops consecrated since their last meeting: the Bishop of the West, Daren Williams, and Suffragan Bishop Brian Marsh of the Diocese of the Northeast.

TAC’s Primate, the Most Rev. John Hepworth, joined the meetings for two days. Bishop Ray Sutton of the Reformed Episcopal Church was a guest for an afternoon.

Archbishop Hepworth reported that the TAC now has a presence in 41 countries. He also spoke at length about TAC’s seminary in Zambia.

As well, the Archbishop and the bishops discussed the quest for greater unity among orthodox Anglican bodies that uphold the teaching of the Church Catholic on Holy Orders, and efforts towards a new relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. The leaders noted the obstacles to both ecumenical efforts, acknowledging that many people within and outside of the TAC have been confused and concerned due to less-than-adequate communication on the bishops’ part, unrealistic expectations in terms of time, and a lack of clarity as to what the leaders are seeking. (Helpful in explaining TAC’s approach to Rome has been a video produced by a Catholic television station in Canada which can be viewed at www.themessenger.com.au/Video/20070329.htm).

In other business, the Executive Committee unanimously accepted the recommendation of the Standing Joint Commission of the General Synod on Education for Holy Orders that the ACA send its postulants for priestly ordination to the Reformed Episcopal Seminary outside Philadelphia (in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania). The REC, a body formed by ex-Episcopalians in the latter 19th century, desires to work with the ACA and is mindful of what is required for the preparation of ACA clergy, said a press release. The REC also is open to having academically qualified clergy and laity from ACA ranks as part of its seminary’s faculty. The historically Evangelical REC has in recent years undergone significant change, and is now in intercommunion with another Continuing Church body, the Anglican Province of America, with an eye toward a merger.

The Joint Commission also made recommendations for other institutions and programs that could be used in light of the needs and circumstances of postulants.

A new Finance Committee was also established to oversee investments and budgeting.

“The ACA praises God for the many new missions and congregations we have, and for the clergy who have come to us recently from [The Episcopal Church] and other jurisdictions and denominations,” said the release. n

Fifty Years A Faithful Priest

Anglo-Catholic International Gathering

Honors Canon John H. Heidt

By William Murchison

A QUESTION YOU MIGHT CALL WIDE OPEN is how many more Anglo-Catholic golden jubilees of priesthood the Anglican Communion may look forward to, given Anglicanism’s present-day turmoil and tumults.

So it was perhaps a bit of nostalgia as well as hope for better times - but chiefly affection for a much-loved priest - that drew some 200 bishops, priests and laity to a Fort Worth suburb in early June to honor one of their own, while resplendently affirming a cherished mode of knowing and worshiping Christ.

The honoree: the Rev. Dr. John H. Heidt, 76, marking 50 years of Anglo-Catholic priesthood in a church only marginally recognizable as the body into which the Rt. Rev. Donald H. V. Hallock, then Bishop of Milwaukee, ordained him.

The Episcopal Church’s ongoing miseries receded ever so slightly behind the smoke from twin thuribles that made the sanctuary, as one congregant cracked, resemble Houston’s skyline during rush hour. Observed another worshipper: “Are we in heaven yet?”

Preaching and teaching for the two-day occasion - a colloquium bracketed by Anglo-Catholic worship experiences of the highest order - looked ahead with expectation rather than backward with misty-eyed regret.

Fr. Heidt, Nashotah House graduate and canon theologian to the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, served out much of his ministry in the dioceses of Dallas and Fort Worth and in the eastern U.S., with time out for a stint in Cheltenham, England (where his congregation included the members of a motorcycle gang).

He holds an earned doctorate of philosophy from the University of Oxford. The author of several books, he turned a couple of years ago to blogging (http://fatherjohnheidt.bloggerspot.com) on theological topics. A son, the Rev. Michael Heidt, is the Anglo-Catholic rector of St. John the Evangelist Church, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

To St. Vincent’s imposing cathedral in the Fort Worth suburb of Bedford, near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, came catholic heavyweights aplenty; e.g., priest-scholar the Rev. Richard Cornish Martin; retired Nashotah House dean, and former Quincy Bishop, Donald Parsons; and Church of England priest, the Rev. Geoffrey Kirk, of Forward in Faith U.K. On hand as well was Pittsburgh’s Evangelical Bishop, Robert Duncan, Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network.

There came, too, a Roman Catholic apologist welcome among virtually all traditional Christians - the prolific and witty Peter Kreeft, of Boston College, who, sporting clip-on horns and tail, delivered an update of C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. It appeared, from Kreeft’s telling, that satanic hearts delight in the reigning relativism of the age.

At a colloquium following the Solemn High Mass, speakers fell to examining the possibility of singing the Lord’s song in a strange land. (A land getting stranger every minute, by all accounts.)

Australian-born English bishop Lindsay Urwin (Horsham), whose Cursillo spiritual director had been none other than Fr. John Heidt, recalled in his sermon at Mass the hallmarks of Anglo-Catholicism as its best - the “rhythm of penitence and praise,” the “sober and skeptical humility and emphasis on perseverance,” “reticence,” “self-criticism,” prayer - “a part of who we are.”

A tone of regret for the decline of authority in ecclesiastical affairs sounded in many of the afternoon’s presentations. Dr. Kirk faulted Anglicans for what he called their “black hole about authority.” Of modern biblical controversies Parsons said, “The issue is not the problem of the authority of Scripture,” but rather “the problem of authority, period.”

How contrary to the outlook of the early church, said Parsons, for which the “two by two’” team approach in evangelism preserved the Christian message from becoming idiosyncratic and hyper-personal. “It’s not me - it’s us,” was the mode of presentation. “Should not we,” the bishop asked, “seek to have the same spirit as our ideal when we do the same?”

Kreeft, taking his turn in the colloquium rota, found Christianity, for all its divisions and authority issues, yearning for reunion.

“Reunion is not an idea,” said Kreeft, “it is a necessity...It is the essence of Christ’s church to be one...Christ is not the bridegroom of a harem.” Our visibly divided church “is tearing Christ’s limbs apart,” he said. As for the reunion timetable, Kreeft said, “God is doing it in our age.”

And how shall we help? “Let the saints lead the theologians...Go out and meet Christians in other churches. Be friends with them. Listen to them, learn from them...The surest way to reunion,” said Kreeft, “is to love God more than reunion.”

All five of the widely scattered children of John and Katherine Heidt made it for the occasion, along with a onetime teen-age parishioner of Fr. John’s from Pennsylvania - Keith Ackerman, currently known as the Bishop of Quincy, and president of Forward in Faith, North America - who repaid old theological debts by preaching at Solemn Evensong and Benediction.

Retired Eau Claire Bishop William Wantland, now assistant bishop in Fort Worth, preached at the closing Evensong and Benediction on Saturday - hours before Trinity Sunday recalled Episcopalians to acknowledgement of what the authority of God looks like every day of the year, smoke or no smoke. n

Texas Bishops Expand

Oversight Provisions

The traditionalist Episcopal Bishop of Fort Worth and the conservative Bishop of Dallas have expanded their 11-year-old pastoral scheme to handle differences over women’s ordination.

In place since 1996 and recently praised by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference, the “Dallas Plan” provides for women in the Diocese of Fort Worth who seek ordination to the priesthood to be referred to Dallas Bishop James Stanton, who supports female ordination. Late last year, Stanton, citing “pastoral concern” for one of his parishes, approached Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker to amend their agreement so that aspirants and parishes in Dallas that are theologically opposed to women’s ordination might come under Bishop Iker’s episcopal care.

The expanded “Dallas/Fort Worth Plan” agreed by the bishops in March was immediately implemented at St. Francis’ Church, Dallas, which Iker is now tending. Under the plan, the parish’s annual assessment will be divided equally between the dioceses. Its property continues to belong to the Dallas diocese.

Stanton maintained that the “primary advantage” of the plan is that it operates under the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church (TEC). “This permits stable ministry to be carried on within discernible Episcopalian and Anglican norms,” he said.

Paragraph 1 of the agreement states, “Should a congregation of either the Diocese of Dallas or the Diocese of Fort Worth believe that there is impaired communion or an impaired relationship between them and their diocesan bishop, they may ask their bishop to arrange for episcopal pastoral care for them from the bishop of the other diocese.”

Both dioceses are members of the conservative Anglican Communion Network. The some 200-member St. Francis’, led by the Rev. David M. Allen, is aligned with the traditionalist Forward in Faith organization.

“People may think we’re extreme, but we’ve taken a much more modest approach than Christ Church, Plano, or St. Matthias,” said Fr. Allen, referring to two Diocese of Dallas parishes that have left TEC in the past nine months. “We don’t want to take such a radical step. We want to remain Episcopal and Anglican. Yet, as a result of events of the last few years, we have lost a quarter of the membership of our parish.

“We have great respect for Bishop Stanton,” Allen said, adding that it “takes a lot of courage” not to take personally the parish’s request for alternate episcopal ministry. But he said the disagreement with the diocese goes back to the mid-1980s, when Bishop Donis D. Patterson began ordaining women to the priesthood.

“The timing of this decision had no reference to anything going on in the rest of the church,” Bishop Stanton said. “It seemed to be quite consistent with our previous agreement, and, indeed, with the DEPO [Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight] arrangement in the House of Bishops. But it had nothing to do with anything external. It had to do with providing a pastorally sensitive response to the concerns of the parish in question.”

The original plan “has worked very well over the years,” Stanton said. Presently two parishes in Dallas have female rectors who began the discernment process under Bishop Iker. An additional provision of the plan, which would allow a Fort Worth parish calling a female rector to have oversight from Bishop Stanton, has never been implemented because no parish in Fort Worth has called a female priest.

The bishops have notified the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Panel of Reference of the amendments to the plan. The arrangement is similar to the “good-neighbor-bishop” solution that the Panel recently recommended to the Diocese of Florida, Bishop Iker noted. In a March 26 announcement to his clergy, he said, “Bishop Stanton and I believe this is a very important step forward, and it provides a model for other parts of the church that remain divided on this issue.” n

Source: The Living Church

Another Dallas Parish Departs

The conservative Church of the Resurrection, Dallas, decided in April to leave The Episcopal Church (TEC), adding to other losses in the region over past year, even though the diocese is also conservative.

A majority of Resurrection parishioners, about 160 of whom usually turn out for Sunday services, voted to establish a new parish in the Dallas area that will affiliate with the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), the initiative backed by the Anglican Province of Rwanda. The new congregation is not attempting to retain Resurrection’s property.

Resurrection’s rector, Fr. Donald R. McLane, said he had no quarrel with Dallas Bishop James James Stanton, but believed it now was necessary to sever the connection with TEC.

Bishop Stanton said he was “saddened that the leadership of Resurrection has chosen to walk apart from the diocese; however, the ministry of the Church of the Resurrection will continue.”

Canon Victoria Heard, who directs church planting for the diocese, was appointed as priest-in-charge of the remnant loyalist congregation with a brief to “direct the process of recasting the ministry of the Church of the Resurrection toward the future.” Part of this transformation will include the institution of a Spanish-language service later in the year.

While the Dallas diocese is largely conservative, a sizeable minority has concluded that its leadership under Bishop Stanton is not moving quickly enough to put distance between the diocese and the revisionist national church.

Christ Church in Plano, which had been the largest parish in the diocese and indeed in all of TEC, negotiated its exit, with its property, in September and is now part of the AMiA. St. Matthias’ Church in Dallas effected its separation, also with its property, in December 2006. The same month saw the loss of the rector and a portion of the congregation of St. Nicholas’ Church in Flower Mound. In March, portions of two congregations and their rectors – Holy Trinity, Garland and Faith, Allen – left the diocese; the former group established a new congregation linked to the Nigerian-backed Convocation of Anglicans in North America; the Faith congregation is continuing to occupy its building for a nominal rent until the diocese decides the future use of the property. Viable remnant congregations, loyal to the diocese, evidently remain in at least two cases.

Dallas’ Canon for Strategic Development, Neal Michell, said that the departures “have all been a parting of friends,” and that sad as they were, they were not devastating to the diocese. He asserted that the losses represented by the congregations other than Christ Church, Plano, have already been made up by ongoing mission work. He noted “breathtaking” results from a new initiative called “Harvest Unlimited,” in which church members call people from their surrounding community asking for their prayer requests and inviting them to church and a welcoming and information dinner. “Harvest” has generated first-time visits by several hundred persons to local Episcopal churches. Property is also being acquired for two new church plants, he said. n

Sources: Episcopal News Service, The Living Church, VirtueOnline

TLC Returns To Roots In

Reasserting “Catholic Anglicanism”

Commentary Report

In a fascinating move, the longstanding weekly Episcopal magazine, The Living Church, announced that it is re-emphasizing its historic mission in support of “catholic Anglicanism,” at a time when The Episcopal Church (TEC) has drifted far from it.

The recent decision of TLC’s Board of Directors to clarify the magazine’s role and purpose came, notably, amid a discussion of the rapidly-changing national and global church scene. Directors also acknowledged that many found a mission statement written for the journal seven or eight years ago “unhelpful,” Editor David Kalvelage told The Christian Challenge (TCC).

Important to the directors’ deliberation, according to a June 3 TLC editorial, were the Articles of Incorporation of The Living Church Foundation, written nearly 80 years ago. They state that the foundation’s purpose is “the publication and distribution of literature in the interest of the Christian religion, and specifically of the Protestant Episcopal Church according to what is commonly known as the Catholic conception thereof...”

On this basis, the board approved a new explanation of the magazine’s purpose in two statements, one on Page 3 of TLC, but the most prominent of them appearing on its cover; there, underneath the masthead, what used to be termed “An independent weekly serving Episcopalians” is now called “An independent weekly supporting catholic Anglicanism.”

Now, one might speculate that the change signals a recognition that TLC needs to be repositioned in light of TEC’s current precarious standing and uncertain future within the Anglican Communion. As one report put it, “the TEC light bulb has grown very dim,” and Anglican realignment is now too active a phenomenon to ignore.

But the TLC editorial stressed that the new explanation of purpose “does not represent a change in our focus,” but rather broadens “what has been our position all along. The Living Church has always served Episcopalians and will continue to attempt to do so, but it has always served other Anglicans as well. For many years this magazine has contained news and articles about other Anglican churches, because we believe the Anglican Communion is important. We have long emphasized the importance of Episcopalians being Anglicans...” Likewise, The Living Church Foundation has long been committed to “the Anglican and catholic concept of the church as an incarnational and sacramental body,” the editorial added. “We attempt to nourish Anglican faith, piety and practice within [TEC].”

Kalvelage said that TLC’s editorial policy has previously reflected this stand, but would now do so more clearly.

Perhaps most surprising about TLC’s move was that it had gotten less reaction than expected (as of late June). The magazine had been briefly “grilled” about it on a listserve, and had received a few letters to the editor -  both positive and negative - and a few inquiries. But overall “there has been little reaction,” Kalvelage said.

Maybe it was just taking a bit of time for the news to register. But the minimal reaction also may say much about the TLC readers’ assessment of the ecclesiastical state of affairs. n

Western Michigan Diocese

Sells Its Cathedral

The Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan is selling its cathedral in Portage, outside Kalamazoo, as well as St. Paul’s Church in the Grand Rapids suburb of Walker, as many members of the diocese wonder if these actions are necessary pruning toward growth, or symbols of demise.

The sale of the cathedral was “the only decision the diocese could make, because we’re out of money, and the building costs quite a bit just to maintain,” said Bishop Robert Gepert after the March 10 diocesan Executive Council meeting that made the decision to sell. “The shame is that we haven’t been good stewards in the past, and this is a resource that could have been used in the future.”

An earlier survey revealed that prospects for a capital campaign to benefit the cathedral were not good. “Respondents voiced overwhelming concern that the cathedral has not realized expectations and aspirations since its inception,” the study report concluded.

The castle-like structure known as the Cathedral Church of Christ the King has been sold to the Kalamazoo Valley Family Church, an independent non-denominational church, for just under $1.3 million - some $400,000 less than its original cost in 1969. The cathedral was built in 1968 during the episcopate of Bishop Charles Bennison, Sr. (hence its nickname, “Fort Bennison”). He relocated the diocesan headquarters to the 30-acre site just off Interstate 94. The cathedral congregation was drawn from existing congregations in the Kalamazoo area, a move that caused some resentment, as did Bishop Bennison’s insistence upon holding most diocesan meetings there.

“I came to this diocese in 1968 and people have been fighting over the cathedral for 20 years,” said the Rev. Michael Fedewa, rector of St. Andrew’s, Grand Rapids, and a member of the diocesan Standing Committee. Fedewa said he liked the structure, but that the diocese “had to either make a full pledge commitment to it or just move on.”

“There are a lot of mixed feelings about the cathedral, but I see it as a sign of refocusing on what we should be about - people not buildings,” said the Rev. Harold Comer, rector of St. Philip’s in Benzie County. Fr. Comer, a member of the Executive Council, said the slumping auto-industry-based Michigan economy is hitting small congregations hard. More than a dozen of the 60 congregations in the diocese are now served by part-time clergy, and most of the larger congregations are seeking new rectors.

The cathedral congregation and all activities will cease by September 1. A deconsecration rite will be planned and decisions made about arrangements for the congregation and various contents of the cathedral, such as its Aeolian-Skinner organ.

ST. PAUL’S, WALKER, closed its doors earlier this year. In 1979, the congregation voted to leave The Episcopal Church (TEC) over the decision to ordain women. A legal battle led to the return of the church property to the diocese.

St. Paul’s decided it could no longer function as a church, and diocesan leaders could not see a way to create a new church start and pay the existing bills, said Council member Anna Cushman.

“I see the two decisions as a sign of growth. The sale gives us the resources we need to plant new churches and help congregations in financial trouble,” she said.

“I see the sales not as a demise, but the church has to come up with new and cutting-edge ways of getting the word out about the gospel,” said the Rev. David Pike, rector of St. David’s, Lansing. But he thought it was “a crime that something didn’t happen out there with St. Paul’s despite the growth in that area.”

“This is a sad day for the cathedral,” said the Very Rev. Cynthia L. Black, dean of the cathedral and rector of the Parish Church of Christ the King, which worships there. “However, the parish will continue to do what it has always done - be a diverse community that practices compassion and welcomes all - just from a different location.” Ordained by ultra-liberal former Newark Bishop John Spong, Black is a former president of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus, a member of the steering committee of the gay group, Claiming the Blessing, and a member of TEC’s Executive Committee.

The late Bishop Charles E. Bennison Sr., was the father of the Rev. John Bennison, an Episcopal priest who resigned his California parish last year when his 1970s record of sexual misconduct emerged; and of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison, who is facing ecclesiastical charges over trust and financial issues, and civil suits stemming from his purported deposition of orthodox cleric David Moyer. n

Sources: The Living Church, VirtueOnline

South Carolina Prepares

For New Election

By The Rev. Samuel L. Edwards

The mid-March nullification of the election of Fr. Mark Lawrence as bishop of the conservative Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina may well have revived the spirit of 1776 (and of 1860) in the Palmetto State’s low country.

A month after the announcement by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori that Fr. Lawrence had failed - on a technicality - to receive enough valid consents from standing committees of Episcopal Church (TEC) dioceses, South Carolina’s own Standing Committee met to decide what to do. The required majority of Episcopal diocesan bishops and standing committees did agree to Lawrence’s consecration, but some of the consents - enough to affect the outcome - had been transmitted by e-mail and were not signed as required by canon. It was the first time an Episcopal bishop-elect had failed to be approved in nearly 75 years.

The consent process in Lawrence’s case had been particularly arduous. Elected overwhelmingly by the South Carolina diocese on the first ballot in September 2006, his loyalty to TEC was called into question by liberals who thought some of the conservative cleric’s statements indicated that he would lead the diocese (which is aligned with the conservative Anglican Communion Network) out of the national church. In repeated denials, Lawrence affirmed his intention to abide by TEC’s constitution and canons. Although enough consents were received from bishops by March 1, eleven days before the 120-day deadline, the issue seemed enough in doubt for South Carolina’s Standing Committee to initiate a virtually unprecedented mail campaign to secure the consents of those dioceses which had not voted and to change the votes of some of those that had voted no. Integral to the campaign was clarification of the bishop-elect’s position on the issue of the diocese remaining in TEC.

Lawrence is rector of St. Paul’s Church in Bakersfield, California, a part of the traditionalist Diocese of San Joaquin, and has been a vocal and thoughtful critic of the direction being taken by TEC’s revisionist majority. His approach is articulate and unapologetically orthodox, and he – together with most in the South Carolina diocese, it would appear – is certain that this is the real reason for the debacle over his consecration. In an interview with The Washington Post following the invalidation, he remarked that because of it, “a curtain has been drawn back on the stage of The Episcopal Church, and everyone can now look into what I would call the theater of the absurd – that those who uphold the trustworthiness of scripture and the traditional teachings of the church are repeatedly put in a position of having to justify our beliefs.”

This sentiment was echoed by formidable Evangelical Anglican theologian C. FitzSimons Allison, himself once Bishop of South Carolina. Writing on VirtueOnLine, Bishop Allison said that “declaring null and void the election of Mark Lawrence, an impeccably faithful example of the very best clergy, elected on the first ballot by the Diocese of South Carolina...is not the result of the Christian faith but the action of an apostate, self-destructive, and different religion.” Allison said he was among those who thought Fr. Lawrence “should go ahead and be consecrated anyway.”

As it turned out, the Standing Committee and Lawrence decided to take another tack that would keep the diocese within TEC’s canonical parameters. On April 17, the committee issued a call to reconvene the current members of the diocese’s convention on June 9 to authorize a new electing convention, which has now been set for August 4. Fr. J. Haden McCormick, chairman of the committee, said that Fr. Lawrence’s name would be the only one on the ballot, though one report said that issue had not been finally decided as of early June. Assuming, however, that Lawrence is re-elected and sufficient consents are received - McCormick said the diocese would be diligent in soliciting timely and correctly-executed consents - his consecration could take place by Christmas. n

Sources: standfirm.org, VirtueOnLine, Episcopal News Service, Christian Post, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Charleston (SC) Post and Courier, The Living Church

Liberal Connecticut Prelate

Dodges Another Bullet

All ecclesiastical charges against liberal Connecticut Episcopal Bishop Andrew Smith have been dropped by the national church’s Review Committee, which found that his alleged offenses were either not canonically actionable or that he did not mean to violate canon law.

The committee, which serves a grand jury-like function in matters relating to alleged wrongdoing by bishops, consists of five bishops (appointed by the presiding bishop), two priests, and two laypersons (all appointed by the president of the General Convention’s House of Deputies). There is no provision for appeal of the panel’s decisions.

The rectors and vestry members of six conservative Connecticut parishes had claimed, among other things, that Bishop Smith had inappropriately applied canon law in declaring that their clergy had abandoned the communion of the church. The six rectors had not left The Episcopal Church (TEC), but disagreed with Bishop Smith’s decision to support the consecration of gay cleric Gene Robinson, and with his refusal to consider any form of alternate episcopal care other than the House of Bishops’ Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO) plan, which most conservative Episcopalians see as woefully inadequate. According to Fr. Christopher Leighton of St. Paul’s, Darien, Bishop Smith offered only the care of another bishop whom the parishes could not accept.

From the beginning of the controversy in 2004, the six parishes have said that alternative oversight would not be necessary if Bishop Smith repented of his pro-homosexual positions and acknowledged that the actions he favored had damaged the Anglican Communion. The bishop complained that that “gave me two choices. Either I change my faith and agree with their faith beliefs, or they should be free to choose their own bishop. What I can offer within the DEPO, the parishioners and clergy will not accept...We are at an impasse.” Relations were damaged further when Smith abruptly took control of one of the six parishes, St. John’s, Bristol, in mid-2005, and suspended and eventually deposed its rector, the Rev. Mark Hansen.

In April, the Review Committee, while deciding that most of the accusations against Smith did not constitute offenses under the canons, found “reasonable cause to believe that one aspect of Bishop Smith’s response violated a canon, but that the violation cannot be the subject of a presentment because the committee could not determine that there was reasonable cause to find that it was an intentional, material and meaningful offense.”

Bishop Smith violated the canons by compelling Dr. Hansen to appear before him for questioning after he had inhibited the Bristol rector. However (as one report put it), this breach of canon law was not a chargeable offense as the Review Committee believed that the bishop’s intent was primarily pastoral.

Conservatives in the American Church were disappointed by the ruling but not surprised, since, in their view, TEC’s judicial system long ago lost its impartiality. Contrary to the Review Committee’s claim, for example, Dr. William Witt, a vestry member of St. John’s, Bristol, and one of the complainants, said that neither he nor other witnesses to Smith’s seizure of St. John’s had been interviewed by the committee.

THE DISMISSAL of the ecclesiastical complaint strengthens the diocese’s hand, but does not necessarily end Bishop Smith’s woes. Although a federal District Court has dismissed a civil-rights lawsuit filed against him by the parishes, the latter appealed the decision and the case was to be argued early this summer in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Parallel suits, reportedly in preparation in January, may already have been filed in Connecticut state courts.

As well, an external resistance to Smith’s liberalism is gathering. One of the “Connecticut Six” parishes, Trinity, Bristol, has now moved out of TEC and into the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), backed by the Nigerian Anglican Church. Founded in 1754, prior to the organization of TEC, Trinity will likely claim ownership of the church property, said CANA Bishop Martyn Minns.

Already making inroads into Smith’s diocese, moreover, is an Anglican Mission in America church plant in Fairfield, Connecticut. Not only are there 200 people attending the Church of the Apostles, which meets in a school auditorium, the congregation is apparently siphoning off parishioners from Fairfield’s Trinity-St. Michael’s Episcopal Church - whose building the diocese some years ago fought a long battle to wrest away from a former congregation that pulled out of TEC (mainly over matters of holy order and liturgy). According to a recent report from VirtueOnline, average Sunday attendance at Trinity-St. Michael’s has dropped from 60 to 20.

Meanwhile, Bishop Smith announced that four of his churches would merge into one.

Some of the foregoing considerations may be behind a surprising change in approach by Smith recently. In April, the bishop said that he would attend and participate in an ordination at one of the conservative congregations, the Bishop Seabury Church in Groton.

Officiating at the May 12 event was Bishop Henry Scriven, who is assistant to Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, Moderator of the conservative Anglican Communion Network. The ordinand, Deacon Bill Hesse, is a 2006 graduate of Trinity School for Ministry and has been serving on the staff of the Bishop Seabury Church since last fall. He remains canonically resident in the Pittsburgh diocese, but (remarkably) has been licensed to function in Connecticut. Fr. Ron Gauss, the rector of Bishop Seabury Church, was said to have expressed gratitude for Bishop Smith’s consent to the ordination. “It was very gracious of him,” he said.

An announcement on the parish website indicated that Bishop Smith returned to the Bishop Seabury Church to celebrate the Eucharist at two services on June 3. n

Sources: bishopseaburychurch.org, Hartford Courant, VirtueOnline, Greenwich Times, The Living Church, The Church of England Newspaper

    Bishop Bennison May

Be Tried In Church Court

Pennsylvania Episcopal Bishop Charles E. Bennison could face an ecclesiastical court trial for allegedly spending more than $6 million in diocesan funds without proper authorization.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has forwarded a complaint lodged against Bennison last November to the Title IV Review Committee. The complaint, filed by current and now-former lay and clerical members of the Pennsylvania diocese’s Standing Committee, alleges that Bishop Bennison misappropriated diocesan assets, withheld vital information to which the Standing Committee was entitled, and in other ways usurped its canonical authority.

The Review Committee, led by the Bishop of Upper South Carolina, Dorsey Henderson, received the complaint on March 14, and at this writing had not reported back on the matter. But if the committee concludes that it is likely that Bennison committed a canonical offense, it could issue a presentment, the ecclesiastical equivalent of an indictment. The Pennsylvania prelate would then face a trial of fellow bishops who would decide if he should continue to lead the diocese.

Bennison - a thoroughgoing revisionist - had already alienated the orthodox in his diocese, but much of the rest of his flock, including his fellow liberals, now want the bishop gone, citing his handling of fiscal matters and violations of trust. Calls for his resignation, begun by Pennsylvania’s Standing Committee in early 2005, increased at the last diocesan convention, when it was learned that Bennison had covered up, in the 1970s, the sexual exploitation of a teen girl by his brother, a now-former Episcopal priest.

There is no allegation that the bishop has taken diocesan money for his own use. But many of the Standing Committee’s accusations against him concern the October 2004 purchase of land and subsequent construction costs for a summer camp and conference center on the Chesapeake Bay. About 20 of the diocese’s 162 parishes, which serve 80,000 worshippers, have withheld their pledges to the operating budget. Bennison said some were votes of no confidence in him, but some simply could not afford their pledges.

The bishop also faces two civil court lawsuits charging fraud and bad faith filed by orthodox cleric David L. Moyer; they stem from Bennison’s move to depose the now-former Episcopal priest several years ago (despite which Moyer has continued to lead Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and has since become a bishop in the Anglican Church in America, a leading Continuing Church body).

Adding to Bennison’s problems was word from leaders of several major diocesan boards in March that the diocese faces a deficit of as much as $500,000 this year, and that it might not be able to pay its bills by mid-summer. The bishop recently called the situation serious but said, “We will pay our bills.”

Despite repeated calls from within his diocese for him to step down, and even a strong recommendation to that effect by Bishop Clayton Matthews from the national church’s Office of Pastoral Development, Bennison, 62, has repeatedly said he will not leave voluntarily until he reaches mandatory retirement at 72. He has been leader of the five-county diocese for ten years.

He said in late March that the Standing Committee’s allegations were groundless, and that he was “absolutely confident” the charges would be dismissed.

“I respectfully disagree,” said the Rev. Glenn Matis, president of the Standing Committee. “If he was the CEO of a corporation, I think his board of directors would have called him in by now.”

In late March, William Powell, another member of the Standing Committee, said his review of diocesan assets found that Bennison had spent at least $6.37 million in unrestricted net assets between 2003 and 2006. His report found several diocesan endowment funds seriously depleted; the Sherwood Endowment for church property aid, for example, had dwindled from $474,000 to $7,000.

Bennison claimed that “all that money was spent without my permission.” He said he may have “tacitly” allowed use of the money by not objecting, but that all decisions to spend the endowments were made by diocesan convention, the Diocesan Council, and its property and finance subcommittee.

“The reason the standing committee or I did not object was because we did not know we had any authority over those funds,” he said. “If I had known, I would have said there’s a due process that has to be followed.”

He nevertheless defended the use of dedicated endowments to pay for operating expenses.

Powell said he was flabbergasted that Bennison claimed he did not approve spending from the endowment. n

Sources: The Philadelphia Inquirer, VirtueOnline, The Living Church

Anglican Crisis News Briefs:

More Push And Pull

*FACED WITH A MOTION TO AFFIRM FEBRUARY’S COMMUNIQUÉ from Anglican primates - which called on Episcopal bishops to come into line on the gay issue by September 30 and accept parallel oversight for conservatives - delegates to the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan’s April convention punted. They approved only language giving “thanks for the hard work” of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at the Primates’ Meeting and stating their intent to remain part of the Anglican Communion. In other action, the convention called on Bishop Robert Gepert to appoint a theological task force to study the practice of inviting unbaptized persons to receive Holy Communion, an innovation that was spearheaded by the Diocese of Northern California under its former bishop, Jerry Lamb.

*TWO NEW YORK-AREA EPISCOPAL PRIESTS were joined in a civil union in late May. They were identified by The New York Times as the Rev. Mark Alan Lewis, 47, the vicar of Episcopal Church of our Saviour in Secaucus, New Jersey; and the Rev. K. Dennis Winslow, 57, rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in New York. The two were lead plaintiffs in a 2002 lawsuit challenging marriage laws in New Jersey. The case resulted in the 2006 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that led to the state legislature’s legalization of civil unions.

*IN THE DIOCESE OF MISSOURI, a same-sex union was blessed at Christ Church Cathedral within days of the primates’ call for Episcopal Church (TEC) bishops to bar further gay blessings, according to VirtueOnline.

*INDIANA EPISCOPAL BISHOP Catherine Waynick has inhibited two conservative clerics, Fr. Thomas Tirman and Deacon Chuck Conover, from functioning in TEC. The grounds cited for her March 16 move involved the now-familiar charge that the two clerics had “abandoned the communion of this Church.” Both had retired from their ministries at Trinity Church, Anderson, and from TEC at the end of 2006. They then had affiliated with the Anglican Diocese of Bolivia, and started a new Anglican parish in central Indiana called St. Michael the Archangel.

Waynick’s letter notifying the two men of their inhibition took the position that their retirement from TEC and reaffiliation with the Bolivian diocese constitute both a “repudiation” of TEC and “abandonment” of its communion. As in previous cases, it remains unexplained how one can abandon the communion of one member church of the Anglican Communion by transferring one’s ministerial credentials to another member church. It is also unclear why Waynick believes she has authority to inhibit ministers no longer under her jurisdiction. Barring unforeseen developments, Waynick will move to depose the men in September. The prospect seems to leave them unruffled.

*RECENTLY-ELECTED TENNESSEE EPISCOPAL BISHOP John Bauerschmidt, who said at his consecration that he was committed to the principles set out by global Anglican leaders, nonetheless mailed an inhibition notice recently to Fr. Ray Kasch of St. Patrick’s, Smyrna. The parish was established as a part of the Nigerian-backed Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) after 86 percent of the congregation formerly known as All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Smyrna voted last fall to seek foreign oversight. Bauerschmidt “has inhibited me without ever meeting or speaking with me,” Kasch was quoted as saying. “I wrote him a letter...challenging his accusations and calling him to repentance.” But he said he and his congregation, now meeting in rented quarters and looking for land, are out of TEC and “not looking back...I doubt that the handful of people left with the stiff mortgage (at All Saints’) can make that same claim. The diocese had to come up with over $50,000 just to keep All Saints’ afloat.”

*NOTING THAT NINE PARISHES in his jurisdiction had left or suffered some form of split over the past year, San Diego Episcopal Bishop James Mathes told his recent diocesan convention that the church’s order and discipline are under “serious strain.” And in his view, the idea that any Episcopal congregation would have the freedom to disaffiliate is not to be borne. “The notion that a parish of this diocese or any diocese can withdraw from this diocese, The Episcopal Church, and the oversight of the diocesan bishop is one that I and other diocesan leaders must vigorously resist,” he said.

Hence, the February diocesan convention approved a sweeping revision of diocesan canons, tightening restrictions in several areas, including how parishes and missions are to be incorporated, and their responsibilities under the authority of the diocesan bishop, which include mandatory giving. For example, the canonical amendments create a new type of congregation, mission action parishes, which have lost the right to control their own property and other parish status privileges as a result of being found to have transgressed one of a number of offenses cited in the canon. And, all parishes must incorporate with the State of California and include in their certificates of incorporation a clause acceding to the constitution and canons of both the diocese and TEC.

*LIFE AFTER TEC: A Texas Episcopalian congregation kicked out of its home church because of its protests against the consecration and blessing of partnered homosexuals, was to occupy its new home soon. The congregation of Christ Church, Midland, formerly of St. Nicholas’, planned to celebrate its first service June 17 at a new facility in the city, according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram. The rector, the Rev. Jon Stasney, said “the property is twice what we had before - 16.8 acres.” It also will feature more classrooms, which Stasney said was the church’s “greatest need.” Construction on the new church cost about the same as construction of St. Nicholas’, which was just four years old when Bishop Wallis Ohl ordered dissenting members to leave by June 1, 2005. At that time, the congregation was almost finished paying off the construction and was already planning an addition, Stasney said. Though a minority of the congregation stayed behind at St. Nicholas’, Stasney said Christ Church Midland has recouped and slightly increased its membership since cutting ties with the Diocese of Northwest Texas and then joining up with the Diocese of Mityana in Uganda. The congregation’s operating budget has grown significantly as well. While the congregation was still in TEC, donations to the church declined after the consecration of gay cleric Gene Robinson.

*THOSE LOOKING FOR A FAITHFUL ANGLICAN PARISH may wish to check out www.shelterinthestorm.org, whose list of conservative and orthodox parishes now tops 1,300. Each state comes up on its own page, with links to all the other states. The site also has international listings. The listings include parishes that accept and do not accept women’s ordination.

*SMALL BUT STEADY NUMBERS of individual clergy continue to exit TEC, with some opting for other parts of the Universal Church. Bill Lowe, who was an Episcopal priest for 29 years before retiring in 2001, has become the first married Roman Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and serves as an assistant pastor at one of its parishes. He took advantage of the Pastoral Provision, a special dispensation that Pope John Paul II promulgated in 1980 for Episcopal priests who convert to Roman Catholicism. Also ordained a Catholic priest under the Pastoral Provision recently was Eric Bergman, former rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Under the Provision, a former Anglican clergyman may not only be eligible to be ordained a Catholic priest; he may also be appointed the pastor of a Catholic congregation made up of his former Anglican parishioners, who are allowed to use a modified Anglican liturgy for worship, published in the Book of Divine Worship. Several families from Good Shepherd followed Bergman into the Catholic Church on that basis. Taking another path after 47 years as an Episcopal priest, much of it in South Dakota, the Rev. Ron Hennies of Los Alamos, New Mexico, was ordained by the Orthodox Church in America in November. Hennies, 76, is now pastor to a tiny Eastern Orthodox congregation, St. Dimitri’s, in the high desert of northern New Mexico.

TO THE GRATIFICATION, NO DOUBT, of TEC liberals, their church’s revisionist theology - or at least its money - is not without its allure for some in otherwise solidly conservative parts of the Anglican Communion. A Tanzanian Anglican bishop recently broke ranks with his colleagues over TEC and its pro-gay policies, saying his diocese would continue accepting support from the U.S. Church in defiance of a Tanzanian bishops’ statement. Central Tanganyika Bishop Godfrey Mdimi Mhogolo was in turn banned from his cathedral in Dodoma at Easter, though he said he was scheduled to be elsewhere. Some called for Bishop Mhogolo to be ousted after he scored a recent statement by Tanzanian bishops acknowledging a severely impaired relationship with TEC and saying that the Tanzanian Church will not accept money from TEC and its entities that condone homosexual practices. (About half of the Communion’s 38 provinces are in broken or impaired fellowship with TEC.) The Tanzanian statement “carries a lot of weight” but does not “express the will and wishes of the whole Anglican Church of Tanzania,” Mhogolo maintained. Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Schori said she had been told that seven other Tanzanian bishops were ready to support TEC.

*MEANWHILE, IN AN APPARENT “CHARM OFFENSIVE,” TEC is sponsoring seminars in different provinces of the Communion, reports the British-based Anglican Mainstream. The first such seminar took place in the liberal New Zealand province in February. A second one - notably on the subject of stewardship - was held April 23-26 in the Church of England’s Diocese of Edmundsbury and Ipswich; the strongly liberal Bishops of North Carolina and Indianapolis delivered key addresses at the event. The initiative may be aimed at networking with co-religionists around the Communion who might be interested in joining forces with TEC if it is expelled from the Communion.

*WEST INDIES ARCHBISHOP DREXEL GOMEZ, a leading conservative Anglican primate, recently made clear that if the Anglican Communion and TEC go their separate ways, West Indian priests who accept appointments in the U.S. would be leaving official Anglicanism, and priests already working in America would have to make a choice. Several Barbadian priests now serve in Episcopal parishes in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida and other parts of America. The largest number of Anglican or Episcopal priests from the Caribbean now serving in the U.S. comes from Jamaica. Gomez said that while the door would remain open to priests who opted for TEC to return to the West Indies, they simply could not continue with business as usual should the two provinces part ways.

*CHURCH OF ENGLAND BISHOPS ignore their own official guidelines on homosexuality and civil partnerships, making the C of E (and not TEC) the most gay-friendly church in the world, London reporter Christopher Morgan asserted recently in The Church of England Newspaper. Scored by some conservative Anglican leaders as unorthodox and unworkable from the start, the C of E bishops’ policy allows clergy to register same-sex partnerships, now legal under British law, if they pledge to abstain from sex. It quickly became clear that some bishops would not secure the abstinence pledge from gay clergy, or exercise discipline when civilly-united gay clergy receive church blessings of their unions, which are disallowed by the prelates’ guidelines. Last December, Morgan reported in London’s Sunday Times that more than 50 gay or lesbian priests had “married” in civil partnership ceremonies. The figures on clerical civil partnerships came from Changing Attitude, a gay campaigning organization in the C of E. Objections to this state of affairs voiced at February’s General Synod meeting led only to an agreement for bishops to keep their civil partnerships policy under review. n

Sources: Anglican Mainstream, Diocese of Indianapolis, St. Michael the Archangel Anglican Church, The Living Church, VirtueOnline, Los Angeles Daily News, Midwest Conservative Journal, The Church of England Newspaper, NationNews.com, earthtimes.org, Rapid City Journal, Midland Reporter-Telegram

TEC Gets Only Limited

Participation In NY Case

A New York State Supreme Court justice has granted attorneys for The Episcopal Church (TEC) only limited participation in the lawsuit filed by the Diocese of Central New York to claim the property of the ex-Episcopal St. Andrew’s Church, Syracuse.

Justice James P. Murphy rejected a motion in which the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (the corporate name of TEC) sought to join the suit as a plaintiff. DFMS attorneys had claimed that they had standing to intervene in the suit because all Episcopal Church property is subject to an “express trust” (under the so-called Dennis Canon) that makes the DFMS its ultimate owner, together with the diocese in which it is situated.

In rejecting the petition, Justice Murphy wrote that the national church lawyers’ claim of a right to intervene as a co-plaintiff rests only on their assertion “that St. Andrew’s property is held in trust for the benefit of The Episcopal Church as promulgated by certain Episcopal canons, and as such, the court finds its legal interest to be insufficient.” It appeared that the court was not convinced that it would inevitably have to consider TEC’s property canons in the course of the suit - a rather remarkable development, given the deference shown to the Dennis Canon in several other court battles over church property.

DFMS was granted a limited right to intervene, with the notation that “if the court is ultimately required to review the practices, policies and procedures of the national Episcopal Church, the inclusion of the DFMS may be beneficial to an ultimate resolution.”

The limitations on the national church essentially restrict it to observer status. Lawyers for the diocese are designated as lead counsel for both the diocese and TEC, which means that they will have control over “all discovery, including depositions.” Counsel for DFMS are permitted to “attend any and all discovery proceedings,” but they are expressly forbidden to conduct their own without the court’s permission.

The St. Andrew’s case appears to be the first in the country in which TEC was granted only limited status as a participant in the suit, though reportedly a similar attempt at intervention in three cases in Los Angeles last year was dismissed by the trial judge.

Meanwhile, the Central New York diocese and its bishop, Gladstone “Skip” Adams, are having to deal with two other parishes that want out. Good Shepherd in Binghamton and St. Andrew in Vestal recently indicated a desire to separate from the diocese, not just over the gay issue but TEC’s general departure from orthodox Christianity over the last few decades.

For his part, Bishop Adams responded to the recent demand of the Anglican Primates’ Meeting that TEC indicate clearly by September 30 whether it will ban the consecration and blessing of those in same-sex relationships by saying he “will not sacrifice GLBT (gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered) people for the sake of an unjust unity.” n

Sources: DagueLaw.com, The Living Church, The Post-Standard, Press & Sun Bulletin

“Inappropriate” Conduct Fells

Another Conservative Cleric

For the second time recently, a leading conservative U.S. Anglican clergyman has had to resign over allegations of “inappropriate” conduct with a female parishioner.

A statement issued by the 1,200-member St. James, Newport Beach, California stated that its rector, the Rev. Praveen Bunyan, had confessed to the inappropriate behavior after an investigation by parish leaders, and had therefore resigned as the parish’s spiritual leader.

The ex-Episcopal St. James’ Church is one of three parishes that prevailed against the Diocese of Los Angeles’ attempt to claim their property after the congregations left The Episcopal Church due to theological differences. The parish is now under the oversight of Uganda’s Bishop of Luweero, Evans Kisekka.

At this writing, pastoral care at the parish was being provided by St. James’ rector emeritus, the Rev. Canon David C. Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council; and by the parish’s associate rector, the Rev. Richard Menees. n

Source: VirtueOnline

Chicago Parish Pulls Out

A parish noted for its contemporary style of worship - and for spawning an earlier breakaway from The Episcopal Church (TEC) - recently voted unanimously to quit the denomination.

The Church of the Resurrection, in the DuPage County suburb of West Chicago, claims well over 100 members. Its rector, Fr. George Byron Koch, is a former corporate executive and civil rights activist whose credentials have included the NAACP and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. But Fr. Koch indicated that the decision for separation - a long time in the making - was driven by the refusal of recent General Conventions to reaffirm essential Christian doctrines, and their decisions in favor of homosexuality. Chicago Bishop William Persell, on the other hand, “feels the church has not moved away from its underlying principle,” according to Canon David Skidmore. “The Anglican Church has always accepted a diverse understanding of scripture.”

Bishop Persell and his staff made it clear that, if Koch and his congregation leave TEC, they would have to abandon their building, and the rector would have to resign his orders. Resurrection’s property is worth around $1 million, but the rector and his flock reportedly were willing to surrender them on the principle that, while the diocese will get the buildings, they will still be the church.

This case may be unique in that it represents the second time that a new, non-Episcopalian congregation has originated as the result of a secession from the Church of the Resurrection. In 1993, all but about a dozen of the parish’s members and their priest, William Beasley, left TEC because of their concern with the growing power of the homosexual rights lobby in the local and national church. They formed a new parish now aligned with the Anglican Mission in America.

At this writing, Resurrection’s website indicated that the parish was part of two organizations, the Anglican Communion Network and American Anglican Council, but no new jurisdiction was cited. n

Sources: Diocese of Chicago, The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Daily Herald

80-Year Schism Healed In

Russian Orthodox Church

By Lee Penn

Two branches of the Russian Orthodox Church reunited at a May 17 ceremony attended by thousands at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Moscow.

The Ascension Day reconciliation between the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) ends an 80-year separation caused by the Communist revolution. The Patriarch of Moscow, Alexy II, and the head of ROCOR, Metropolitan Laurus, jointly celebrated the Eucharist after signing a unification agreement.

“Joy fills our hearts,” Patriarch Alexy said. “An historic event has taken place, which we have awaited for many years. The unity of the Church is restored...Church division is being overcome; overcome also is the conflict within society inherited from the days of the revolution. The Church is being strengthened; our Fatherland, too, is being reborn.”

The following Saturday, May 19, Alexy and Laurus jointly consecrated a new church at Butovo in southern Moscow, dedicated to the thousands of Orthodox priests shot there by the Soviets.

Vladimir Putin, the former KGB colonel who is now Russia’s president, was at center stage of the ceremony, after having been a strong supporter of reunification. The Russian leader had met with the ROCOR prelate in September 2003, to convince Laurus to reunite with the MP. At the time, he told the ROCOR leaders in New York, “I want to assure all of you that this godless regime is no longer there...You are sitting with a believing president.” In May 2004, Putin received Patriarch Alexy and Metropolitan Laurus in Moscow, and promised that the Russian government would “do all it can to help in the full revival of the Russian Orthodox Church and its reunification.”

During the reunion service, Putin said, “This is a truly national historic event of immense moral significance...The Church was divided as a result of a deep political split in Russian society itself and bitter confrontation primarily in society...Today’s revival of the Church unity is a crucial pre-condition for restoring the unity of the entire Russian world, which has always seen Orthodoxy as its spiritual foundation.”

During the ceremony, Alexy congratulated Putin for his “service to the faith and country,” and gave him a set of icons.

At a May 19 reception, Metropolitan Laurus told Putin that ROCOR had maintained “our Holy Russian ideals, which we had tried to preserve in the difficult circumstances of exile. And we preserved them in order to serve Russia and our people. It is our moral duty to include ourselves in this process of the rebirth of Russia and fulfill the mission of the Russian emigration, that is, to bring back to Russia the great inheritance given to us by our ancestors.”

Before the May 17 ceremony, Fr. Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy chairman of the MP’s department for external church relations, said, “One of the most grave consequences of the 1917 revolution, the civil war and the Cold War is being overcome. All of the heritage that was preserved by the church abroad...is being returned to Russia. That is a heritage of serving the fatherland, a heritage of a self-sufficient identity in the world, a self-sufficient policy in world affairs, and keeping faith with those historic traditions which developed in Russia up to 1917.”

Russia’s leading Roman Catholic prelate, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, hailed the reconciliation, saying: “The bridging of divisions between Christians always means triumph of a love that overcomes everything.” He added that he hoped the agreement would point the way toward new cooperation between the Catholic and Orthodox leadership of Russia. For his part, Patriarch Alexy has recently indicated his belief that the Orthodox Church can work with the new Pope.

UNDER THE “ACT OF CANONICAL COMMUNION,” MP and ROCOR are now in communion with each other; the laity may receive the Eucharist at either altar, and the priests of the two churches may concelebrate the Divine Liturgy. The Patriarch of Moscow is the leader of the unified church, and ROCOR can be represented at the annual synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. Any new ROCOR bishops must be approved by the MP. ROCOR retains ownership and control of its property (most of which is in North America, Israel, and Western Europe), and its bishops will continue to appoint the priests for the 400 ROCOR parishes.

A minority of ROCOR members oppose reunification. They fear that the MP will use it to take control of ROCOR’s valuable properties, and believe that MP’s hierarchy still includes Soviet-era holdovers. They also oppose MP participation in the World Council of Churches, seeing membership in this liberal ecumenical group as an unacceptable compromise of Orthodox teaching.

ROCOR began in Serbia in 1922, when Orthodox bishops and priests exiled from the Soviet Union proclaimed their own jurisdiction. They moved their headquarters to the U.S., and broke all connection with the MP in 1927, when Patriarch Sergei proclaimed his loyalty to the USSR. ROCOR claims half a million members, and the MP claims the allegiance of about 100 million Russians, 70 percent of the population.

The talks that led to the reunion of MP and ROCOR began soon after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Among the steps taken by the MP to foster reconciliation were the canonization in 2000 of Czar Nicholas II and his family, who had been murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the 2006 reburial in St. Petersburg of the remains of the last Czar’s mother, who had died in exile. (ROCOR had canonized the Czar and his family in 1981.) In 2000, the MP also recognized the sanctity of the New Martyrs of Russia, the victims of Soviet persecution, as ROCOR had previously done. In 2006, the Moscow church disavowed Sergei’s pro-Soviet 1927 proclamation.

The location of the reunion ceremony was symbolic of the revival of the Church in Russia after the fall of the atheistic regime. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior, built in the 1800s with the support of the Czars, was blown up on Stalin’s orders in 1931. A replica of the old cathedral was built during the 1990s on its former site, and was consecrated in 2000; it is the largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world. n

Sources: Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Wikipedia, BBC, Catholic World News, Agence France Presse, Reuters, The New York Times, The Associated Press, International Herald Tribune, Time magazine, Interfax

--LATE NEWS--

Los Angeles Diocese Wins

Right To Parish Buildings

Three ex-Episcopal parishes in California were considering an appeal to the state supreme court, after a state appeals court reversed a prior ruling allowing them to keep their property.

Eric Sohlgren, lead lawyer for the three parishes, said the unanimous ruling by the Fourth District of the California Court of Appeal went against nearly 30 years of state church property law.

“Church property disputes have been looked at through neutral principles: who has the title to the property, who bought it, who maintains it and what state statutes say,” he said. “What the court said here was that if a hierarchical church wants to take control of local church property, all it has to do is pass [an internal] rule.”

According to a press release from the parishes, the appellate court’s ruling returns the lawsuits brought by the Diocese of Los Angeles and The Episcopal Church (TEC) to Judge David Valasquez of the Orange County Superior Court, where the “internal rule” (TEC’s 1979 “Dennis Canon”) will still be at issue.

The parishes involved - St. James’, Newport Beach; All Saints’, Long Beach; and St. David’s, North Hollywood - left the diocese and TEC in 2004 over theological differences.

*AT PRESSTIME, the Los Angeles diocese had also prevailed in its bid to claim the property of another seceded parish, St. Luke’s of the Mountains in La Crescenta, California. n

APCK Bishop Declares

Communion With ACA

Expressing frustration over the fragmentation of orthodox Anglicans, a bishop within the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK), a leading Continuing Church body, has written a pastoral letter to his clergy and people declaring  “a state of genuine unity and full communion” with brethren in the Anglican Church in America (ACA), another part of the mainstream Continuum.

The Rt. Rev. Rocco Florenza, APCK’s Bishop of the Eastern States, wrote that the ACA is “a respected body that has been in real and visible communion with this diocese and with the province.”

The bishop’s unilateral declaration came as the APCK stands at a crossroads. Its longtime leader, Archbishop Robert S. Morse is stepping down, and in late June APCK bishops elected the Rt. Rev. James Provence of the Diocese of the Western States as his successor.

Florenza’s letter drew no public reaction from the bishops’ meeting, which Florenza did not attend. Archbishop Morse is understood to have voiced unhappiness with the eastern bishop in a private letter, but one APCK source called Florenza’s letter “a godly challenge to the current direction of the APCK and...a much needed breath of fresh air and vitality.”

Florenza’s overture was welcomed by Bishop George Langberg and other ACA leaders, as well as by Archbishop John Hepworth of the Traditional Anglican Communion, of which the ACA is a part. At deadline, the ACA House of Bishops said, “We join our brother in Christ in proclaiming that we are in full and unimpaired communion with each other,” and pledged cooperation.

In his letter, Florenza sharply criticized what he called “the brokenness of our witness for Christ as traditional Anglicans.” Some 30 years after the Affirmation of St. Louis, the Continuum’s manifesto, the few major groups rooted in the 1978 Denver consecrations of four Continuing Anglican bishops, “despite sharing communion and in some cases clergy, remain apart.” Some 20 to 40 other groups call themselves “Anglican.”

“How is it possible to remain divided if we share the same apostolic origins, the same theology and the same Sacraments? Such divisions contradict the will of Christ,” hinder “our work for Him in this world,” and harm “our witness as traditional Anglican Christians,” Florenza wrote.

He said it is “in the interest of unity of the Body of Christ” that his diocese has renewed efforts to rectify this situation. As diocesan, he said he had “pledged to increase our cooperation and fellowship with the Anglican Church in America, a respected body that has been in real and visible communion with this diocese and with the province. Therefore, I now declare openly a state of genuine unity and full communion with these our brothers and sisters who hold fast to the same eternal truths as do we.”

The APCK bishop’s plea for Christian unity comes as realignment of North American Anglicanism is in full swing.

*TWO ANGLICAN CATHOLIC CHURCH LEADERS also have commented recently on the subject of unity among Continuing Anglicans. See their statements on our website and/or covered in the next issue. n

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