Packer responds to Ingham: CEN 4.25.08 p 8. April 25, 2008
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Canada, Church of England Newspaper, Property Litigation.trackback
Canadian theologian James I Packer and eight other evangelical clergymen have issued a statement affirming they have not abandoned the Anglican Communion by seceding from the Diocese of New Westminster and the oversight of Bishop Michael Ingham.
Writing in response to Bishop Ingham’s “Notice of Presumption of Abandonment of the Exercise of the Ministry” the nine priests and deacons on April 21 said they it was their “intention to remain members of the Anglican Church,” but under the jurisdiction of a different Province of the Communion.
In February Bishop Ingham served notice on the six clergy after their congregations voted to quit the Anglican Church of Canada and affiliate with the Anglican Network in Canada under the jurisdiction of Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone.
The six wrote that Bishop Ingham’s Notice had failed to affect their status on moral, canonical and legal grounds. The Notice was insufficient under Canadian canon law, they explained as it did not enumerate the grounds for their alleged abandonment. However, they acknowledged that they had quit the Anglican Church of Canada as it, and Bishop Ingham had “departed from historic orthodox Anglican teaching and practice in defiance of the Lambeth Conference, the Windsor Report and the Primates of the global Anglican Communion.”
In order to be faithful to their “ordination vows, we must leave your jurisdiction, and by this letter, we hereby relinquish the licences we hold from the Bishop of New Westminster. Each of us will receive a licence to continue our present parish ministries from Bishop Donald Harvey, who, as you know, is under the jurisdiction of the Primate of the Southern Cone. In this way, we will be able to continue our Anglican ministry within the Anglican Church, under the jurisdiction of and in communion with those who remain faithful to historic, orthodox Anglicanism and as part of the Anglican Communion worldwide,” they said.
The conservative clergymen’s response to Bishop Ingham, came the same day as a protest from Bishop Ingham and Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz over a scheduled visit by Bishop Venables to the breakaway congregations on April 25-26.
“Your visit to Canada is without any reference to or consent from my office or that of the bishop of the diocese of New Westminster. This represents a breach in what is considered normative in protocol among primates and bishops throughout the Communion,” Archbishop Hiltz wrote.
Bishop Venables noted Archbishop Hiltz’s request to “stop interfering in the life of this province” was not germane as the congregations were not members of the Anglican Church of Canada.
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