Archive for September, 2008
Written by: Mr. Mark McCall
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
Prior to the meeting of the House of Bishops last week The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. warned that the “proceeding against Bishop Duncan clearly belong[s] to a larger effort to create an office of Presiding Bishop, and a way of proceeding in the present season, at odds with the constitution and canons of this church.” Following the questionable vote, ACI noted that “the legitimacy of the House’s action and the Presiding Bishop’s leadership has been placed in serious question before the eyes of the Communion and the larger public. No one should minimize the role this may play in the unfolding re-establishment of the Communion’s common life.”
ACI’s concerns about canonical abuse and procedural legitimacy are not allayed by the purported “Sentence of Deposition” of Bishop Duncan now made public. In her memorandum to the House of Bishops, dated September 12, 2008, the Presiding Bishop addressed the question whether the canonically required vote by the House of Bishops was “by a majority of bishops present at the meeting at which the matter is presented or, on the other hand, by a majority of all the voting members of the House whether or not in attendance.” She concluded that “the vote must be by a majority of all the bishops who are at the meeting at which the vote must be taken and who are entitled to vote.”
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September 23 2008 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Russell Levenson, Jr.
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
The list of Bishops and Rectors associated with the Communion Partners Plan continues to grow, and is in the embryonic stages of planning opportunities to offer mutual support and strengthen its among Partner Rectors and Bishops, but also a growing number of Archbishops from around the Anglican Communion.
At present, fourteen Bishops from around the Episcopal Church continue to build bridges of communication and support with over 35 rectors, with a constituent baptized membership of over 35,000.
With the support of the Communion Partner Bishops*, an advisory Board for the Plan is guided by Communion Partner Rectors, The Reverend Dr. Russell J. Levenson, Jr., rector of St. Martin’s, Houston; The Right Reverend Anthony Burton, Rector, Church of the Incarnation in Dallas; The Reverend Dr. Charles Alley, Rector, St. Matthews, Richmond, Virginia; The Very Reverend Anthony Clark, Dean, St. Luke’s Cathedral, Orlando, Florida and The Reverend Leigh Spruill, Rector, St. George’s, Nashville.
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September 22 2008 | Articles
Written by: Mr. Mark McCall
Friday, September 19th, 2008
I would like to thank Dr. Gundersen, a church historian, for reviewing my recent paper, “Is The Episcopal Church Hierarchical?”. Reading her response, one could perhaps be forgiven when informed that my paper contains a “fatal flaw” for thinking that she had discovered that TEC’s constitution did in fact contain explicit technical legal language identifying General Convention as the supreme or highest authority. But she makes no such claim. Nor did she discover that the Church of England, contrary to the claims in my original paper, lacked a “Supremacy Act” and an “Oath of Supremacy” at the time TEC was being formed. Or that the governing legal instruments of other churches widely-regarded as hierarchical are actually devoid of the legally-precise hierarchical language identified in the original paper. Because those points are at the heart of the argument developed in that paper, one senses right away that the “fatal flaw” is unrelated to the main lines of the paper. What is not so quickly apparent, however, is that Dr. Gundersen’s critique itself contains a “fatal flaw”: she overlooks my discussion of the very topic she says is not there. It is Dr. Gundersen who engages in an anachronistic and legally uninformed reading of the text, and it is she who clearly misunderstands legal terminology, preferring to use colloquial definitions and references to an ordinary dictionary for the legal terminology analyzed in the original paper.
What follows is necessarily technical, but to avoid the anachronistic reading Dr. Gundersen gives the language in question some technical understanding is required.
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September 19 2008 | Articles
Written by: Bishop Bruce MacPherson
Friday, September 19th, 2008
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
This is being sent to you from the House of Bishops meeting in Salt Lake City , and is to provide preliminary words from me about what has transpired here. Many have no doubt read the House of Bishops voted yesterday to depose the Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Rt. Rev’d Robert W. Duncan, on charges of “abandoning the Communion.” The vote was by roll call, and consisted of 88 in favour, 35 against, and 4 abstentions. I voted in opposition to the resolution to depose.
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September 19 2008 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Friday, September 19th, 2008
The Anglican Communion Institute receives favorably the news that considerable canonical discussion took place, or was sought, by as many as 36 Bishops in yesterday’s proceedings. It is significant that over a quarter of the House of Bishops (and, including the probable votes of those not present, it would be close to a third) voted against this deposition, many apparently on the basis that the Presiding Bishop and her supporters were overturning the constitutional and canonical foundations of the church on this matter. The legitimacy of the House’s action and the Presiding Bishop’s leadership has been placed in serious question before the eyes of the Communion and the larger public. No one should minimize the role this may play in the unfolding re-establishment of the Communion’s common life.
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September 19 2008 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
We have been alerted by a group called “Progressive Episcopalians in Pittsburgh” that they are to post a response to Mr McCall’s essay which appeared earlier on the ACI website. We have seen the response of Dr Gundersen, and we understand it is now before the public. It is vital that there be an opportunity for discussion of these important issues. Our comment for now is as follows.
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September 18 2008 | Articles
Written by: Philip Turner and Christopher Seitz
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
It is no secret that the bishops who assembled at Lambeth were asked to complete a survey soliciting their views on the proposed Anglican Covenant. It is now no secret, based upon public statements made by TEC Bishops, that, while most American bishops may favor some version of the first two sections of the proposed covenant, they oppose the third section and the appendix. Here are outlined the likely consequences should a Province exceed the limits of diversity generally accepted by the Communion as a whole. Opposition to the appendix indicates that the Episcopal Church (TEC) espouses a minimalist view of the requirements of communion—one that emphasizes relations of hospitality and mutual aid but down plays or utterly avoids issues of common belief and practice.
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September 16 2008 | Articles
Written by: Mr. Mark McCall
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
ACI has consistently sought to secure the mission and identity of The Episcopal Church within the larger Anglican Communion. Events such as the published proceeding against Bishop Duncan clearly belong to a larger effort to create an office of Presiding Bishop, and a way of proceeding in the present season, at odds with the constitution and canons of this church. We are for this reason concerned to publish the timely statement of Mark McCall.
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September 14 2008 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
The Anglican Communion is currently pursuing a number of activities in response to the acrimonious struggle over sexual teaching and discipline within our churches. These activities have been encouraged by the Communion’s leadership, including at the recent Lambeth Conference. I have, to various degrees, been a supporter of these activities, not least because I have trusted those who have promoted these means towards ecclesial healing. I am increasingly skeptical, however, that the way these activities have been framed – descriptively and practically – represents the true nature of our disputes.
Categories like “moratoria” and “reception” and “listening”, for instance, are now prominent elements in our strategic ecclesial discussions. Unfortunately, they no longer appear to be useful categories, in large part because they do not accurately reflect the actual relationship of expectation and possibility that the disputing parties hold, one to another and with respect to their own commitments. When one party says, while responding to the request for a “moratorium” on specific actions, “yes we will consider it; but there is no going back on our underlying commitments”; and another party says at the same time, “yes we will consider it; but only on the condition that you others give up your practical commitments”, then the very category of “moratorium” functions in very different ways in each case. Similarly, when “reception” is a “process” that seeks to discern the Christian authenticity of an innovative practice, but also does so by the very means of rooting that practice within the life of the church in different areas, the notion that discernment has a possibly restraining role to play seems practically undercut. Or when “listening” presumes an ecclesial practice even as it refuses to evaluate that practice, one is not so much listening as receiving justification ex post facto.
Indeed, the practical logic of the situation we are now in as a Communion has exposed the inadequacy of these categories, and has raised questions about the very nature of “council”, consensus, and decision-making. With this, our churches have been challenged to reconsider from the ground up whether or not we are capable of maintaining the integrity of our common life at all.
The “practical logic of the situation we are in” is one, quite simply, where our Communion, and the churches within it, are beset by radically unequal – or asymmetrical – engagements with the presenting issue of sexuality. It is not simply that the views of gay inclusivists and traditionalists are “incompatible” and “irreconcilable” (although this may be true, theologically). Rather, because the practical asymmetry of these two views’ applications has been ignored and the two engagements have been forced one upon the other incoherently, a dynamic has been set loose that can move in one of only two directions: either the extinguishing of the traditionalist party itself as a vital ecclesial existence, or the dissolution of a church that holds both parties together. This fact has enormous implications for the practical realities of a number of activities that are currently demanding our attention as a Communion. These include the vexed debates over “moral equivalence” between the requested “moratoria”; the process of “reception”; the “listening process”; even the argument over Rowan Williams’ putative hypocrisy (or “mental illness” as one person called it) over having held personal views theoretically “open” to gay inclusion, even while he now firmly promotes ecclesial adherence to the traditionalist teaching of the Church.
How would I describe these unequal engagements? In short: we have reached a situation where it is clear, in the sense that people have stated the conclusion and demonstrated it, that a change of practice is both unexpected and impossible for gay inclusivists, while a change of attitude for conservatives is both expected and theoretically still possible.
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September 09 2008 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Saturday, September 6th, 2008
Near the center of the struggle now going on about the future of the Anglican Communion lays a dispute over the nature of the polity that ought to order its life in the years ahead. From the beginning of the debate, The Episcopal Church (TEC) has claimed that its form of governance is unique, and that the Communion as a whole ought to take this fact into account as decisions are made about future relations between its various Provinces.
ACI has received a paper from Mark McCall (a lawyer) showing that the polity of TEC is indeed unique, but in ways far different from those commonly sited. To be precise, the paper arrives at the sober conclusion that TEC is a church with no constitutionally established hierarchy above the level of the individual dioceses of which it is comprised. We are aware of the historical realities governing this assessment and believe the paper reaches an accurate set of conclusions. The implications of TEC’s novel form of governance both for TEC and the Anglican Communion are far reaching and of very serious import.
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September 06 2008 | Articles