Author Archive
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Friday, July 17th, 2009
In a joint letter sent today to the Archbishop of Canterbury by the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church and the President of its House of Deputies, the presiding officers of General Convention acknowledged that that body cannot speak for the whole church in crucial matters affecting the life of the Anglican Communion:
Some are concerned [...]
read more...
July 17 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
We deeply regret yesterday’s decision by the House of Bishops to repudiate the Anglican Communion’s moratorium on the consecration of bishops living in homosexual relationships. As recently as May of this year, the Anglican Consultative Council officially affirmed the “implementation” in the Communion of the moratoria called for by the Windsor Report, including the moratorium [...]
read more...
July 14 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
ACI is posting today two pieces about the recently concluded meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. The first, “ACC-14: Did the Members Know What They Were Voting On?” shows that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that a majority of the Council members intended any result other than to approve the Ridley Cambridge text of [...]
read more...
May 28 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
A transcript of the proceedings at ACC-14 on May 8, 2009, when the Council voted in conflicting ways on key votes, raises the important question of how many of its members, including officers and proponents of key amendments, understood what they were actually voting on when they narrowly passed an amendment intended to open Section [...]
read more...
May 28 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
Friday’s session of the Anglican Consultative Council is an embarrassment to Anglicans everywhere, and a sad display of procedural confusion. Members were given complex resolutions right before the vote without sufficient time to study them and understand their consequences. Resolutions that had been distributed earlier were replaced by resolutions drafted by a committee largely composed of members from provinces known to be opposed to the Ridley Cambridge Draft. Before a vote could even be taken on these resolutions, however, Archbishop Aspinall introduced a third resolution that not even the chairman of the resolutions committee had seen. The proponents of these resolutions, the intent of which was to remove Section IV and so significantly alter the Ridley Cambridge Draft, could not describe them to the members in a coherent way even though their first language was English, unlike many of those voting. All three resolutions were being debated at the same time. In consultation with various members present, there is agreement that this was improper.
The first motion to remove Section 4 for review and so alter the Covenant was defeated overwhelmingly by the members of the ACC. But the proponents of delay and alteration attempted yet again to insert the main provisions of the resolution just defeated into the resolution then under consideration. This attempt was rightly ruled out of order by the chair, Bishop Paterson of New Zealand, himself sympathetic to the leadership of TEC. For reasons that are unclear, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had himself called for a vote on Resolution A, personally challenged this ruling of the chair and it was reversed. (It has been suggested that delegates voted against Resolution A because they had an interest in other resolutions. But that should never have been the condition under which voting was taking place, and it requires that 15 of the votes were cast because of this in order actually to approve Resolution A – a matter we cannot ever know because it is pure conjecture. This puts a cloud over the entire logic of voting as such and would clearly suggest the need for a re-vote, not a moving ahead with new resolutions).
read more...
May 10 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
The Rev’d Mr Harris has released via his blog confidential emails not addressed to him. We assume him to be a man of civility and honor, in view of his role as a member of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. The Anglican Communion Institute has long been on record as supportive of the [...]
read more...
April 22 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
We write as Bishops of The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We are joined by distinguished theologians known for their long service throughout the Anglican Communion.
The Historic Episcopate has always been recognized as an essential non-negotiable element of our Anglican identity, including by the Bishops of The Episcopal Church “in Council assembled as Bishops in the Church of God” and recorded in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. Bishops are successors to the apostles and upon their consecration receive the authority and responsibility inherent in the sacred and unbroken apostolic office. The people of God are united in one local church by their communion with their Bishop, and through the communion of all the Bishops in a college of Bishops the people of God around the world are joined in one communion. Resolution 49 of the 1930 Lambeth Conference, quoted in part in the preamble to our Constitution, notes that the Anglican Communion consists of “those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces and regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury” that are “bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference.”
read more...
April 22 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
We note with concern the petition filed by the Presiding Bishop’s chancellor seeking to intervene in the ongoing litigation in Pittsburgh. The Anglican Communion Institute has posted several articles over the past year critical of actions of the Presiding Bishop which are widely perceived to be contrary to the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church. In just the past year alone, she has called diocesan conventions on her own authority and held them without proper notice or quorums. She has dismissed members of diocesan Standing Committees without any authority to do so (or any due process). She has repeatedly removed bishops of The Episcopal Church (and the Church of England) without following proper procedures. Actions of the past contrary to the canons are used as precedents for further such actions.
The attempted intervention in Pittsburgh seeks to enlist the civil courts in a new and more serious challenge to the long-standing polity of The Episcopal Church. The complaint proffered by the Presiding Bishop’s chancellor seeks to turn The Episcopal Church’s governance on its head and asks the court to enshrine this reversal in civil law. It alleges that the polity of The Episcopal Church has as its highest tier of authority the central bodies of the Presiding Bishop, General Convention and Executive Council. Underneath this triumvirate on “the next level” are the dioceses and their bishops. Dioceses are explicitly characterized as “subordinate unit[s].”
read more...
March 12 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
Defenders of the Presiding Bishop are scrambling to re-interpret her extraordinary action of depriving a bishop of the Church of England of the gifts and authority conferred in his ordination and removing him from the ordained ministry of The Episcopal Church. For example, the group supporting the Presiding Bishop in Pittsburgh stated that “[t]his is a routine way of permitting Bishop Scriven to continue his ministry.” In the strange world of TEC, renunciation of orders has become a routine way of continuing one’s ministry.
But it is not routine. Indeed, it has not been used for those transferring from TEC to another province in the Anglican Communion until the Presiding Bishop began what resembles a scorched-earth approach to her opponents within TEC. Not surprisingly, in the past such matters have been handled by letter. One can see the evolution of the Presiding Bishop’s “routine” policy in the treatment of Bishop David Bena, who was transferred by letter by his diocesan bishop to the Church of Nigeria in February 2007. A month later, the Presiding Bishop wrote Bishop Bena and informed him that “by this action you are no longer a member of the House of Bishops” and that she had informed the Secretary of the House to remove him from the list of members. That was all that needed to be done. A year later, however, as her current strategy emerged, she suddenly declared in January 2008 that she had accepted Bishop Bena’s renunciation of orders using the canon she now uses against Bishop Scriven. In other words, if this is now sadly routine, it has only become routine in the past year.
read more...
January 29 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
In recent months ACI has asked with increasing urgency whether the Presiding Bishop is willing and able to comply with the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church. Her most recent canonical misadventure is purporting to remove from the ordained ministry a bishop in the Church of England canonically resident and working in England and subject to the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Oxford and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her canonical overreaching has now extended into the heart of the Church of England, placing in serious question the extent to which the Presiding Bishop continues to perceive herself as in communion with that church and its primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
On January 15, 2008, the Presiding Bishop purported to accept the “renunciation” of ordained ministry by Bishop Henry Scriven. It is now sadly evident that an actual renunciation is no longer a prerequisite for the Presiding Bishop’s “acceptance” of such an extraordinary action by a bishop of the church. In her zeal to remove from office those with whom she disagrees what started only two years ago as the canonically appropriate, if misguided, procedure of using presentments under the disciplinary canons of Title IV quickly evolved into abuse of the “abandonment of communion” canon in order to avoid the procedural protections afforded to those charged with presentment. But even the summary procedures of the abandonment canon require some process, including a vote in the House of Bishops by a majority of the bishops in TEC entitled to vote. The fact that she has been repeatedly unable to assemble such a majority has not stopped the Presiding Bishop from using this canon, most recently in the case of Bishop Duncan, who at the time he was purportedly deposed for “abandonment of communion” was still actively performing his duties as the Diocesan Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. After her widely criticized handling of Bishop Duncan, however, the Presiding Bishop dispensed with canonical process altogether and since then has simply adopted the tactic of “accepting” renunciations that were never given. Bishops of the church are removed with nothing more than the stroke of a pen.
read more...
January 27 2009 | Articles
« Prev - Next »