Archbishop’s Sudan peace plea: CEN 6.26.09 p 7. June 30, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England Newspaper, Episcopal Church of the Sudan.comments closed
Writing in support of the June 18 “Sudan Day of Action” organized by Baroness Cox and the Sudan Action Group, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams has called upon Khartoum government and the former rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement to act swiftly to implement all of the terms of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
“I saw the first benefits of peace myself when I visited Sudan in February 2006, just one year after the signing of the agreement,” Dr. Williams said.
“The CPA brought new hope to Southern Sudan after long and destructive conflict. Families could be reunited after long years of separation. New development opportunities opened up such as the church’s widespread programmes of teacher training and classroom building. For the first time, Southern Sudan had the opportunity to establish its own government as an autonomous region within the country.”
However the delay in implementing all of the terms of the CPA has “threatened the sustainability of this peace,” Dr. Williams warned. “There is now an urgency for both parties to the agreement and the international community which helped to broker and support it to demonstrate their renewed commitment to implement the agreement fully.”
He called upon the treaty partners to complete the disarmament and address the “widespread problems of insecurity,” rebuild South Sudan’s devastated infrastructure of roads, settle the on-going disputes over disputed border territories, and move swiftly to hold free and fair elections.
Dr. Williams also urged the international community not to be sidetracked by the “continuing horrors” of Darfur. “We need to recognize that unless the commitments around the CPA are honoured there is no chance of settling the conflict in Darfur,” he said.“I therefore urge a renewal of commitment and a readiness to work for measurable results as soon as possible,” the archbishop said.
Indian bishop wins court case: CEN 6.26.09 p 6. June 30, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of South India.comments closed
An Indian appeals court has overruled the Moderator of the Church of South India (CSI), and ordered the church to permit the Bishop of Madras, Dr. V. Devasagayam, to serve until he reaches the retirement age of 65.
On June 19 the court dismissed a lawsuit brought by lay members of the diocese seeking the early retirement of the bishop. In May the Madras Supreme Court asked the Standing Committee of the CSI to advise it on the pertinent canon law governing the tenure of bishops.
In a response filed on June 8, the Moderator of the CSI, Dr. John Gladstone said the church supported the lay petition and had dismissed the bishop. However, in his opinion, Justice K. Chandru said Bishop Devasagayam was entitled to serve as bishop until he reached the age of 65.
The court held that the CSI was a voluntary association under Indian law and was governed by its by-laws, or canons. Actions taken outside the parameters of the canons were ultra vires, or without legal foundation. No group or individual within the CSI could curtail, annul, amend or modify the canons, except in accordance with the terms of canon law.
The CSI’s decision to remove the bishop as a “manifest illegality”, the court held, as the diocese was bound to act “strictly as per the rules.”
The church was free to seek to remove the bishop for cause, under the procedures set down by canon law the judge said, but could not construe the plain language of a retirement age of 65 against its natural meaning to serve a short political goal.
Bishop–Prayers needed amid Honduras turmoil: TLC 6.30.09 June 30, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Honduras, Living Church.comments closed
First published in The Living Church magazine.
The Bishop of Honduras has written to the House of Bishops, asking their prayers for his country after Sunday’s ouster of President Mel Zelaya.
“So far, the entire clergy, lay leadership and our families are all well,” the Rt. Rev. Lloyd Allen wrote on June 29 in an e-mail to the House of Bishops.
The Rev. Canon Kathleen Pennybacker, the Diocese of Central Florida’s canon to Honduras, told the Central Florida Episcopalian that Bishop Allen and the diocese’s mission groups in Honduras that she contacted were carrying on with their work but trying to avoid nonessential travel, and trips to the capital, Tegucigalpa.
“We knew this was coming,” Canon Pennybacker said. “Everyone was prepared, and it’s pretty quiet right now, but we don’t know how it will all develop.”
Bishop Allen reported “political tension” in Honduras centered around President Zelaya’s plans to hold a “non-binding referendum which opponents said would open the gate for him to rewrite the constitution to run for re-election despite a one-term limit.”
“I predict that you will be hearing a lot more about all that has happened,” Bishop Allen said. “A month ago the country was shaken by a 7.1 earthquake and now this. What next, and how much longer can this impoverished country survive?”
He added that the events of recent days would set the country “back in time, which will take us many years to recover and regain confidence in international eyes.”
Bishop Allen called upon The Episcopal Church “to keep this diocese and the Honduran people highly in prayers. I really don’t know what the future will bring. The Honduran delegation is ready to participate with you all at General Convention. However, if the course of actions does not improve in the next few days, I may have to reconsider.”
Cuba fails to elect a bishop: TLC 6.30.09 June 30, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Cuba, Living Church.comments closed
First published in The Living Church magazine.
The Diocese of Cuba failed to elect a bishop for the fourth time in 20 years when a special meeting of diocesan convention in Havana split along faction lines.
None of the three candidates on the ballot received the requisite two-thirds majority from the lay and clergy delegates, and the voting was halted after 10 ballots. Four candidates were nominated to succeed the Rt. Rev. Jorge Perera, who retired in 2003.
One candidate withdrew before the voting balloting began, leaving the Rev. Emilio Martin, the Rev. Ivan Gonzalez, and the Rev. José Angel Gutierrez on the ballot. While Fr. Martin received a majority of votes cast, he did not receive a plurality. When successive ballots returned the same results, and none of the candidates withdrew, voting was suspended.
The Ven. Michael Pollesel, general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, who oversaw the election, told the Anglican Journal the diocese appeared to be divided into two camps. “I guess one would be considered more moderate and middle of the road. The other might be considered a little more traditional,” he said.
A one-time member of The Episcopal Church, the diocese withdrew in 1967 in the wake of the political tensions between the U.S. and Cuba. A Metropolitan Council comprised of the archbishops of Canada and the West Indies and the American Presiding Bishop has since exercised jurisdiction over the diocese.
A special convention to elect a successor to Bishop Perera in 2003 split along factional lines, and in 2004 the Metropolitan Council asked the Bishop of Uruguay, the Rt. Rev. Miguel Tamayo, to serve for three years as interim bishop. A native of Cuba and former dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Havana, Bishop Tamayo was reappointed interim bishop in 2006 to a second three- year term.
In a bid to break the logjam, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Archbishop Fred Hiltz of Canada appointed two bishops suffragan from the two factions. In 2007, the two primates consecrated the Rev. Nerva Cot as Bishop Suffragan of Western Cuba and the Rev. Ulises Aguero as Bishop Suffragan of Eastern Cuba.
The failed election will be referred back to the Metropolitan Council for further action.
Nuns on the run from Episcopal Church liberalism: CEN 6.26.09 p 7. June 29, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Mission Societies/Religious Orders, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
The American branch of the Anglican women’s religious order, the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, has announced that all but one of its members have quit the Episcopal Church and on Sept 3 will be received into the Roman Catholic by the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore.
Founded in 1851 in London, the mother house of the English order is located in Oxford. However in the Nineteenth century the order had over 400 members spread across houses in India, South Africa, Scotland and the United States. In 1872 the Sisters were invited by the rector of Mount Calvary Episcopal Church in Baltimore to open a house in Catonsville, Maryland to work with the poor.
According to its website, the All Saints Sisters of the Poor are a “traditional religious community, living under the evangelical vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.” Speaking to the Living Church magazine, the superior of the order Mother Christina said the 12 sisters in the US had come to believe that this discipline was not welcome in the Episcopal Church.
“We tried to be faithful in The Episcopal Church as we understand scriptures, but we seem to be drifting farther and farther apart,” she said. “For the past two years in particular we felt as if we were no longer making a difference in this church. We felt as if we no longer belong.”
Mother Christina added that the order had found it hard to attract new members as many of those drawn to lives of religious devotion and service to the poor within the discipline of the order were dissuaded from joining due to the reputation of the national Episcopal Church.
Religious orders in the Episcopal Church are free from diocesan ecclesial supervision and hold their property independent of the national church, the Episcopal Church’s canons state, making it unlikely the national church will try to seize the nuns’ 80-acre convent.
Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.
More Australia dioceses see falls in investments: CEN 6.26.09 p 7. June 29, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
Brisbane and Melbourne have joined the Diocese of Sydney in reporting significant declines in the value of their investment portfolio due to the downturn of the global capital markets.
The value of investments held by the Diocese of Melbourne has fallen by over half, from £1.2 million at year’s end in 2007 to £446,000 today, the diocese reported. Over the same period the Diocese of Sydney’s portfolio value fell from £100 million to £50 million.
On June 20, the Archbishop of Brisbane Dr Phillip Aspinall told his diocesan synod “all is not rosy on the financial front,” and that the diocese continues to face significant financial challenges.
“We have been hit particularly in 2009 and will be in 2010 by the global financial situation and the significant reduction in interest and investment income,” he said, noting “interest rates have fallen to a third of what they were and my understanding is there has been a similar fall on other investments so that puts pressure on our diocesan budget.”
The Brisbane synod also adopted a motion asking Dr. Aspinall to voluntarily waive the legal defence of the statute of limitations in cases arising from clergy sexual abuse of children. The motion asked the “archbishop in council to continue its ethical lead by undertaking negotiations with the diocesan insurers to establish a protocol for dealing with claims by victims of child sexual abuse when the diocese considers it appropriate not to invoke the time limitations defence, but without losing indemnity from the insurers”.
Claims arising from clergy abuse of children have led to multi-million dollar payouts to victims from the Diocese Adelaide. The original motion presented to synod asked the diocese to waive unilaterally the statute of limitations defence, however it was noted the diocesan insurers managed the church’s litigation in this area, and a case by case basis was the best way forward in the circumstances.
Ofwat attacked over refusal to stop rain water tax bills: CEN 6.26.09 p 5. June 28, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.comments closed
Ofwat’s claims that the Church of England’s £15 million bill for surface water run-off charges is justified by pleas to save the environment are nonsense, the Second Church Estates Commission Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesborough) (Lab) told Parliament last week.
Speaking in response to a question from Ann McIntosh (Vale of York) (Con) on June 18 on the financial impact the new rate scheme would have on the Church of England, Sir Stuart stated surface water charges by area will cost “at least £5 million and a further £10 million for highways drainage contributions.”
The Church Commissioners had been pressing the government and Ofwat—the Water Services Regulation Authority—to review these charges, and though they had “heard some encouraging noises” in response, we had hoped “for something more tangible and, from the Church’s point of view, for a broad, permanent exemption,” he said.
A member of the House Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op), told the House the junior minister at DEFRA, Huw Irranca-Davies had assured the committee on June 17 that Ofwat had “not only a brief but a duty to ensure that charging systems are fair and avoid creating hardship.” He urged the Church Commissioners to “make strong representations to ensure that Ofwat delivers” on its promises.
Sir Stuart responded that “our difficulty appears to be that water companies” had adopted a pricing scheme that charged churches as “if they were big businesses. We are seeking to argue that that cannot be morally or ethically right and that it is not a balanced approach.”
He added that the government had responded, “but whether they do so sufficiently and significantly is another matter.”
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con), however, rose to protest the government’s inaction, and urged the Second Church Estates Commission to “redouble his efforts.”
A member of General Synod, Sir Patrick told the House he had been corresponding with Ofwat’s chairman, Philip Fletcher, on this issue. “Although charming and courteous, he has not delivered as he should have.” He turned to Sir Stuart and asked whether it was not “extraordinary that the body set up to protect the public is creating this appalling problem.”
Sir Stuart responded that Ofwat was not responding in an entirely straight forward manner to the Church’s concerns. Ofwat was “misdirecting itself on these issues” by claiming the “new charging regime is an ecologically sound policy. Let me say that the Church takes environmental issues seriously, and that we do not necessarily accept that argument.”
Sir Stuart added that he had already pressed the government to “intervene robustly” and stated he would be “happy to repeat that request.”
Creation of second Anglican church for conservative Episcopalians draws praise from Vero Beach people: Press Journal 6.27.09 page B5 June 27, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, Press Journal.comments closed
VERO BEACH — The creation of a second Anglican church in America for conservative Episcopalians angered by the liberal drift of their denomination has drawn high praise from the members of a Vero Beach church who attended the new denomination’s founding convocation in Texas this week.
“I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment,” said Judy Stull of Christ Church in Vero Beach, one of ten members of the church’s delegation to the Anglican Church in North America founding convocation held June 22-25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.
Formed in 2007 after the clergy and a majority of the members of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach withdrew from the Diocese of Central Florida, the new church meets in the former Indian River County Tax Assessor’s Office in Majestic Plaza off U.S. 1 in Vero Beach. The 500-member church is one of 700 congregations comprising 100,000 former Episcopalians in the U.S. and Canada that make up the ACNA.
Led by the former Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, the ACNA was created by conservative Episcopalians following a 30-year fight within the 2 million member church over the interpretation of Scripture, which began with disputes over the ordination of women but has since focused on homosexuality.
Not all conservative Episcopalians have joined the new group. The Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida, the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe has urged conservatives to hold fast, arguing that it is possible to be “both Episcopalian and Anglican,” and has vowed work toward reforming the Episcopal Church from within.
The interim rector of Christ Church, the Rev. Bob Stull, said he was “overjoyed” by the creation of the new group, which hopes to become the second American province alongside the Episcopal Church of the 80 million member Anglican Communion.
Christ Church members Ed and Martha Barrett said the meeting had delivered a “powerful” and “positive” message of hope for the future. A point made by Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker, who with his diocese, pulled out of the Episcopal Church last year. .
The four days in Texas were “significant” for Episcopalians as it marked “the beginning of the recovery of confidence in Anglicanism as a biblical, missionary church,” he said Wednesday.
The convocation’s three main speakers each urged the 800 delegates and guests to Bedford to put the past fights with the Episcopal Church behind them. The break with the Episcopal Church was now complete, Archbishop Duncan said. “There is no one here who will go back.”
Read it all in the Vero Beach Press Journal.
Bishop dismisses claims of church investigation: CEN 6.26.09 p 5. June 26, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
The Bishop of The Murray has dismissed claims that an Episcopal Standards Commission has been convened by the Anglican Church of Australia to investigate charges leveled against him of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.
The Rt. Rev. Ross Davies stated there is “no formal inquiry and there are no formal allegations against me. I have asked for particulars; none have been provided.”
An April 2, The Church of England Newspaper reported a investigation had been initiated by the Archbishop of Adelaide, Dr. Jeffrey Driver, after he stated he could “confirm” that “an investigation is underway” of Bishop Davies.
Dr. Driver stated that he had been asked by The Murray’s diocesan council “to consider ways to assist in resolving issues raised in that Diocese related to the Bishop. A preliminary investigation will take place in the first instance to enable me and those advising me to understand the issues and determine how best to proceed.”
However on May 28, Bishop Davies released a statement castigating Dr. Driver, writing the archbishop had “no authority to intermeddle in the affairs” of the diocese “without my permission.”
“He hasn’t asked for it and I haven’t given it,” Bishop Davies said. “I am gravely concerned about the Constitution propriety of what is happening and what I see as a lack of due process and natural justice.”
On Sept 22, Bishop Davies returned to work after a year’s sick leave taken in the wake of charges that he failed to appropriately respond to allegations that his archdeacon had engaged in sexual misconduct.
An internal church report in 2005 found that the allegations against Archdeacon Peter Coote were “credible”, however, Bishop Davies is alleged to have taken no action other than refer him to a therapist. A initial inquiry found insufficient evidence to bring the bishop before the church’s Episcopal Standards Commission for conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.
“I have not committed any breaches of the Laws of the Anglican Church,” Bishop Davies said last week, adding that he was disappointed with Dr. Driver. “In essence, the Archbishop has appointed someone to go fishing in The Murray to see if a case can be mounted against me,” the bishop said.
Terry Waite backs statement in support of Aung San Suu Kyi: CEN 6.24.09 June 26, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Myanmar, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
Terry Waite
First published in The Church of England Newspaper
Terry Waite, Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie’s Assistant for Anglican Communion Affairs, has joined over 100 former political prisoners in endorsing a statement calling for the release of Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Ky and for the UN to impose an arms embargo on the military junta ruling the country.
Currently in her 14th year of house arrest, Madame Suu Kyi is being tried for violating the terms of her jailing for permitting a disturbed American man to swim across a lake to visit her house in Rangoon in early May. The imprisoned Burmese leader faces an additional five years confinement if found guilty of the charge.
The statement endorsed by 107 former political prisoners, including former Czech president Vaclav Havel, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim, Ingrid Betancourt of Colombia, the former president of South Korea Kim Dae-jung, and Yuri Orlov, nuclear physicist and onetime Soviet dissident signed the 64-word statement to Madame Suu Kyi to mark her 64th birthday on June 19.
“The continued denial of your freedom unacceptably attacks the human rights of all 2,156 political prisoners in Myanmar. As those also incarcerated for our political beliefs, we share the world’s outrage. We call on the United Nations Security Council to press the Myanmar Government to immediately release all political prisoners, and to restrict the weapons that strengthen its hand through a global arms embargo.”
Shao Jiang a Chinese student leader and democracy activist stated, that “As a survivor of Tiananmen Square, I know the true value of democracy and freedom. The international community, including the United Nations Security Council, needs to take strong action to ensure the immediate release of all political prisoners in Burma. Citizens around the world, let’s unite and bring down the dictators!”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown also recorded a strongly worded message of support for Madame Suu Kyi, stating her detention was an “intolerable injustice.” The prime minister said he hoped that the democracy activist’s coming birthday would be the “last you spend without your freedom.”
Pastor Rick Warren at the ACNA June 26, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Album (Photos), Anglican Church of North America, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
The Rev. Rick Warren at the ACNA founding convocation in Bedford, Texas on June 23, 2009. First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America June 25, 2009
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'AUTHENTICALLY ORTHODOX': Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America said the Orthodox and the Anglican Church in North America share a common apostolic heritage and morality. He announced June 24 the OCA is abandoning relations and dialogue with the Episcopal Church in favor the ACNA.
This photo with the caption printed above was first printed in The Living Church on 6.24.09.
OCA Synod ‘Enthusiastic’ About Dialogue with ACNA: TLC 6.24.09 June 25, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, Living Church, Orthodox Church in America.comments closed
First printed in The Living Church
If Anglicans foreswear Calvinism, female priests, and the filioque clause, the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) would be ready to begin a dialogue leading to the possible recognition of Anglican orders and full Eucharistic fellowship.
In a June 24 address, His Beatitude Jonah, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada of the OCA, said the Orthodox and the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) shared a common apostolic heritage and shared morality. He also announced that his church had switched ecumenical ties, abandoning all relations and dialogue with The Episcopal Church in favor of the ACNA.
“We can come together as the bastion and bulwark of an authentically orthodox church,” the archbishop said. “We can come together to bear witness to the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as handed over by the fathers.”
Metropolitan Jonah told the ACNA assembly the OCA’s synod of bishops was “enthusiastic about the opportunities” dialogue would bring. His offer of a dialogue on full communion was made only on behalf of the OCA, he said. He added that he was traveling from Fort Worth to New York for a meeting of the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA), the umbrella group of all Orthodox churches in the Americas. The SCOBA bishops were “anxious to hear of my report on this meeting,” he said
The Presiding Bishop’s Deputy for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations, the Rt. Rev. C. Christopher Epting, told The Living Church he was not aware of the OCA’s plans, but said the announcement was not unexpected.
“We’ve not had formal ecumenical relations with the OCA since I joined the Presiding Bishop’s Office” in 2001, he said. Bishop Epting said he had sought to foster dialogue with the Orthodox churches in America based on the Anglican-Orthodox agreed statement, The Triune Faith. However, the Orthodox had not responded.
The archbishop, 49, told the assembly that he had been raised as an Episcopalian at St James by the Sea Church, La Jolla, Calif., but as a college student came to Orthodoxy through a study of the Tractarians in search of the true church.
“The goal of my life is to live and actualize, to participate in as fully as I can, the full integrity of the Catholic Church, the full integrity of the Orthodox Church,” he said.
There have been relations between Anglicans and the Russian Orthodox Church since the Elizabethan settlement, he noted, and said 100 years ago that “that relationship became extremely strong” in the United States under the leadership of Metropolitan Tikhon.
“St. Tikhon had a vision of unity … that vision of unity resulted in the time of the proclamation by about half of the Orthodox churches of the validation of the Anglican orders,” he said. However, “it fell apart on the Anglican side with the affirmation of a protestant identity more than a catholic identity. This shattered the unity. We need to pick up where they left off.”
To complete the work of St. Tikhon, who hoped The Episcopal Church could be “declared a fellow Orthodox church,” he proposed a dialogue whose goal was a “unity in faith” where it “can be celebrated together in the sacrament of the Eucharist.” To get there, “there are some issues we have to resolve,” he said.
“One hundred years ago, St. Tikhon came to the Anglican Church with arms wide open. I am the successor of St Tikhon. I occupy the place, the throne, that St. Tikhon held as the leader of the OCA. Our arms are wide open,” he said to a standing ovation from the delegates.
In response to the Metropolitan’s address, the dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, the Very Rev. Chad Hatfield, said that “in times of crisis Anglicanism by nature always turn east.” It is a “time for a huge opportunity, let’s not miss it.”
Reactions from the ACNA delegates broke along party lines. One Fort Worth delegate said there was hardly anything the OCA had proposed that Anglo-Catholics could not accept. However, an AMiA delegate was less sanguine, saying rejecting Calvinism was tantamount to rejecting Anglicanism.
Turning back on women’s orders was also problematic for many of the evangelical delegates, and is a point of contention within the new province.
Archbishop Duncan and Metropolitan Jonah June 24, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, Living Church, Orthodox Church in America.comments closed
Metropolitan Jonah and Archbishop Robert Duncan on the podium during the ACNA's founding convocation on June 23, 2009
OCA To End Relations with TEC, Forge Ties to ACNA: TLC 6.24.09 June 24, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, Living Church, Orthodox Church in America.comments closed
First printed in The Living Church.
His Beatitude, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) announced recently that his church has ended its ecumenical relations with The Episcopal Church, and will establish instead formal ecumenical relations with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).
Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA made the announcement June 24 at a plenary session of the ACNA’s founding convocation at St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas.
An autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, the OCA was established by eight Russian monks in 1794 on Kodiak Island, Alaska. Known as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America, it was granted autocephaly, or autonomy, by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1970. The OCA has 700 congregations, monasteries and communities spread across the United States and Canada.
Metropolitan Jonah, 49, was reared in The Episcopal Church, but joined the OCA while a student at the University of California, San Diego, in 1978. He was elected metropolitan last year as a reform candidate, 11 days after he was consecrated Bishop of Fort Worth.
Asked what the OCA’s stance toward ecumenism might be under his tenure, Metropolitan Jonah said, “If the matter concerns The Episcopal Church USA, then this dialogue has stopped.
“We engage in dialogue with Episcopalian traditionalists, many of whom embrace the Orthodox faith,” Jonah told a Moscow-based weblog. “And I personally, and our entire synod, give great attention to bringing these people into the fold of the Orthodox Church in America.”
New US Province is formed: CEN 6.24.09 June 24, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Anglican Communion’s 39th Province-in-waiting was formed this week, as the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) held its founding convocation at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.
God, history, and provinces representing the overwhelming majority of the members of the Anglican Communion were on the side of the ACNA, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told the 234 delegates drawn from the ACNA’s 28 founding jurisdictions including four former dioceses of the Episcopal Church, representing some 700 congregations and 100,000 Anglicans in the US and Canada.
The break with the Episcopal Church was now complete, Bishop Duncan said. “There is no one here who will go back.”
Delegates attending the June 22-25 convocation formally adopted the ACNA’s Constitution and Canons and were also addressed by Bishop Duncan—who was elected archbishop on June 21 by a meeting of the ACNA’s House of Bishops—and California megachurch pastor Rick Warren, and Metropolitan Jonah, the head of the Orthodox Church in America.
Archbishop Duncan lauded the comprehensiveness and unity of the new province, which bridged the traditional theological divide between High and Low churchmen, Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, in addition to the modern question of the ordination of women.
It was a “miracle” that those who “believe the ordination of women” was a “grave error” along with those “who see it as a being justified by Scripture” can “work together towards mission,” he said.
The themes of martyrdom and mission were central to the new archbishop’s vision. The ACNA served to win souls for Christ, while also providing a haven for those “who are harassed because of him.” He also urged the province to take up the “battle cry” of muscular Christianity as its own—“No cross, no crown.”
The future for the new province was bright, he argued. “We are proud to be part of the great reformation of the Christian church” now taking place as there was “an ever growing stream of North American Protestantism that has embraced” a foundational view of Scripture, while “at the same time Pentecostals and Evangelicals are moving towards Tradition.”
The ACNA was the outworking of this movement of the Spirit within North American Anglicanism, he argued, as the “whole world is looking here to Bedford.”
“Our adversary, the devil, is also interested in what is happening here,” he said, for a “reformed Anglican Church in North America is one of the enemy’s greatest concerns,” and he will “try to draw us into old ways and old fights.”
“It is essential that we stand together” and “move on,” Archbishop Duncan said.
California evangelist Rick Warren built upon Archbishop Duncan’s comments on the second day of the convocation, also telling the ACNA to let go of the hurts of the past and focus on the future.
Referring to the lawsuits over parish property and the recent spate of California decisions in favor of the Episcopal Church, Pastor Warren said “you may lose your steeple, but you won’t lose your people,” and urged the ACNA to make making relationships not location the “glue” holding the church together.
In his first speech since he offered the invocation at the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January, Pastor Warren gave the ACNA his full support, telling the delegates his “heart was full for you.”
For the ACNA to prosper and grow, it now had to put aside the past and focus on evangelism. “A great commitment to the great commandment and the great commission will grow a great Communion,” Pastor Warren said.
The work of building the new province lay with the parish priest, he said, urging them to be faithful their ministries and eschew politics and secular temptations. “If God has called you to serve in a local church, as a parish priest, lay leader, staff member, don’t you ever step down to become the president of the United States, or anything else, because nothing matters more,” he said.
This commitment to faith first, should be kept in mind when contemplating litigation over parish properties, he added. “Christ did not die for property,” he said. “God’s agenda is that he is building a family” of believers.
To do this he told the ACNA must model its ministry on the Trinity. “Get the Father’s perspective, follow the Son’s pattern, and appropriate the spirit’s power,” he said, but do not use the tools and weapons of this world. “I have no interest in politics,” Pastor Warren said, adding that if “you can change hearts through politics, I would have been a politician.”
“Jesus did not die for America, he died for Americans,” he said, urging the ACNA not to make the mistake of asking God to bless what it wanted to do, but to be patient and ask for God’s blessings that will allow it to be faithful to his word.
During its two afternoon business sessions, delegates ratified the ACNA’s constitution and canons offering only minor changes to drafts first published in December. “We have done the work dear brothers and sisters. The Anglican Church in North America has been constituted,” Archbishop Duncan said at the close of business on June 22.
The Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of Religion served as the theological bases for the canons, which were designed to permit structural flexibility while assuring confessional unity as expressed in questions of Faith and order. The new province permits women priests, but not bishops—but allows dioceses to opt out of women clergy, vests the ownership of parish property with the congregation and church wardens, requires a clergyman wishing to remarry after a divorce to seek a licence from his bishop, and adopted a strong stance against abortion on demand.
At the close of the business sessions, the Bishop of Okigwe-North in the Church of Nigeria, the Rt. Rev. Alfred Nwaizuzu rose to congratulate the delegates. He noted that his province had been criticized for its intervention in the United States in recent years, but today “Archbishop Akinola is happy.” For “today it is America solving the problem.”
The convocation continues through June 25, with presentations by Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America—who is expected to welcome the ACNA as its dialogue partner with Anglicans in the US, presentations on church planting, and the formal ceremony of installation for the new primate, Archbishop Duncan.
ACNA speakers table, June 23 2009 June 24, 2009
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His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA, Archbishop Robert Duncan of the ACNA, Pastor Rick Warren, and the Very Rev. Ryan Reed, Dean of St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas, on the dias of the founding convocation of the ACNA on June 23.
Pastor Rick Warren speaking to the ACNA on June 23: TLC June 24, 2009
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Pastor Rick Warren speaking to the ACNA, June 23, 2009
First published in The Living Church
Evangelist Encourages ACNA Assembly: TLC 6.23.09 June 24, 2009
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First published in The Living Church.
Evangelist and mega-church pastor Rick Warren told the founding convocation of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) to focus its energies on mission and evangelism, and let go of the entanglements of the past.
“You may lose your steeple, but you won’t lose your people,” Pastor Warren told delegates and guests of the ACNA assembly June 23 in a tent on the precincts of St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas. He serves as senior minister of the 25,000-member Saddleback Community Church, a four-campus congregation he founded in southern California.
Pastor Warren told the ACNA his “heart was full for you” and that the ACNA’s work was of “extreme importance” for the reformation of the wider Christian church. It should not be “reactionary,” Pastor Warren said, but forward thinking, going out to “build disciples” one by one.
“A great commitment to the great commandment and the great commission will grow a great communion,” Pastor Warren said. The work of building this new church lay with the parish priest, he said. He urged priests to be faithful to their ministries and to eschew politics and secular temptations.
“If God has called you to serve in a local church, as a parish priest, lay leader, staff member, don’t you ever step down to become the president of the United States, or anything else, because nothing matters more,” he said.
This commitment to faith first should be kept in mind when contemplating litigation over parish properties, he added. Harking back to comments he made during the “Hope and a Future Conference” in Pittsburgh for Anglican traditionalists in 2005, Pastor Warren said the church “has never been a building,” noting that his congregation used 79 different locations in its first 13 years.
“Christ did not die for property,” he said. “God’s agenda is that he is building a family” of believers.
The Rt. Rev. David Bane, Bishop of Southern Virginia from 1998 to 2006, told The Living Church he was moved by Pastor Warren’s address. “So much of what he said is what we have always believed,” Bishop Bane said.
Bishop Duncan…Break with TEC Now Complete: TLC 6.22.09 June 24, 2009
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First published in The Living Church.
Telling delegates the break with the Episcopal Church is now complete, Bishop Robert Duncan opened the Inaugural Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) June 22 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.
The ACNA’s archbishop-designate stressed the themes of martyrdom and mission in his opening address to the assembly. He said St. Alban’s Day, the feast of the first British martyr, had been specifically chosen for the start of the assembly session. He also urged delegates to take up the battle cry of “muscular Christianity”: “No cross, no crown.”
Bishop Duncan recounted the birth pangs of the new province, concluding that the break with the Episcopal Church was absolute.
“How is it that a once great tradition has lost its moorings?,” he asked. “We compromised, we were silent, we looked away. No more!
“There is no one here who will go back.”
Asserting that “what is ahead of us is what really counts,” Bishop Duncan said “we are proud to be part of the great reformation of the Christian church” now taking place.
“There is an ever-growing stream of North American Protestantism that has embraced” a foundational view of scripture, he said, while “at the same time Pentecostals and Evangelicals are moving towards tradition.”
While internally divided over the issue of women’s ordination, Bishop Duncan told delegates it is a “miracle” that those who believe the ordination of women was a “grave error” can “work together toward mission” with those who see it as a being justified by scripture.
Questions over pro-gay cash to support ‘Indaba’: CEN 6.19.09 p 6. June 24, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Consultative Council, Church of England Newspaper, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue.comments closed
Questions have been raised by a conservative American church pressure group over the impartiality of the Anglican Consultative Council’s “Continuing Indaba Process” following disclosures that the funding for the project came from a single American Episcopal priest linked to pro-gay activist organizations.
During the May meeting of ACC-14 in Jamaica, the ACC announced that it had been given a $1.5 million grant to continue the Listening Process on human sexuality. Delegates were told the grant, the largest in the ACC’s history, was made by the Satcher Health Leadership Institute of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
However, when pressed by a reporter for the American Anglican Council (AAC) in Kingston, the ACC conceded the Satcher Institute was a conduit for a gift made by the Rev. Marta Weeks, a retired Episcopal priest and philanthropist in Miami, Florida.
Long active in social justice issues, Mrs. Weeks endorsed the Jan 200 Religious Declaration on Sexuality, Morality, Justice and Healing that called for the “full inclusion of women and sexual minorities in congregational life, including their ordination and the blessing of same sex unions” as well as “a faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment.”
Mrs. Weeks told the AAC that she had been approached by the Satcher Institute to fund the programme, and had agreed due to her long standing relationships with the Institute’s Center for Excellence for Sexual Health
According to public records the primary funder of the Center for Excellence for Sexual Health is the Ford Foundation, which gave Morehouse a $3 million grant to to start the programme. The Ford Foundation, the ACC charges, is a well known combatant in the US’s culture wars, and has denounced traditionalist Christian views on sexual morality.
In a 2005 paper the Ford Foundation warned that “conservative and fundamentalist forces” were using “sexuality to attack progressive sectors that work on reproductive health, women’s rights, girls’ education and other issues. Often using religion to justify their actions, these groups see sexuality and sexual rights-particularly women’s control of their own sexuality and LGBT rights-as a tremendous threat to the status quo that they want to maintain (or a former order they are seeking to restore).”
The AAC questioned the propriety of the ACC accepting funds from left wing advocacy groups, who have a vested interest in a particular outcome. “It’s like letting [brewer] Anheiser-Busch fund an AA programme,” a spokesman told The Church of England Newspaper. “It just doesn’t pass the smell test.”
A spokesman for the Satcher Institute stated that “no strings” had been attached to the grant give to the ACC, save that it use the money for the purposes described in its grant application.
More bishops deposed in USA: CEN 6.19.09 p 6. June 24, 2009
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US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has deposed two more retired American bishops, announcing on June 12 that she had accepted the voluntary renunciation of ministry of the retired Bishop of Quincy the Rt. Rev. Edward MacBurney and the retired Bishop of Southern Virginia the Rt Rev. David Bane.
However, the two bishops have stated they have not renounced their orders, but were being accepted into the House of Bishops of the Province of the Southern Cone under Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables.
A press release from the presiding bishop’s office said the two bishops were “being removed from ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church ‘for causes which do not affect (their) moral character,’ ” the release said, citing the words of the church’s voluntary renunciation canon.” The release noted this action did not purport to defrock the two bishops and would not affect their ecclesial standing in other provinces of the Anglican Communion.
Bishop Jefferts Schori’s use of the voluntary renunciation canon has come under sharp criticism from canonical scholars such as the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI), who have argued the canons do not permit the presiding bishop to act in the way she has.
However, the Presiding Bishop said her decision had the “full support of her Council of Advice” of bishops.
Bishop Bane presently serves as an honorary assistant bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh under Bishop Robert Duncan, while Bishop MacBurney is retired from active ministry.
Since her election in 2006, Bishop Jefferts Schori has overseen the departure of 13 US bishops—four of whom were received into the Roman Catholic Church and nine to Anglican provinces in the Global South.
ACNA gathers for its formal launch in Texas: CEN 6.19.09 p 6. June 24, 2009
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The third province movement in North America will take legal and physical form next week at the inaugural convocation of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.
Some 232 delegates along with approximately 750 other participants are expected to endorse the constitution and canons of the ACNA, creating a new Anglican province in the United States and Canada.
“This is a new Province. It is not a new Church,” said Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, the archbishop-designate of the ACNA. “Our hope” is that the ACNA “is the re-constitution of a faithful—that is biblical, missionary and united—Church in Anglican form.”
While the ACNA will not automatically be seated at the Anglican Consultative Council as the Communion’s 39th province, representatives from over a dozen Anglican provinces, representing two thirds of the active membership of the Anglican Communion are expected to endorse the new group—recognizing its legitimacy.
The new province will gather together much of the disparate Anglican diasporas in North America, reuniting groups such as the Reformed Episcopal Church—which quit the Episcopal Church during the High Church/Low Church battles of the Nineteenth century, with breakaway congregations and dioceses that have left the Episcopal Church over the past decade.
The new province will be formed into 28 dioceses and ministry clusters. With over 700 congregations and an average Sunday attendance of over 100,000 the ACNA is larger than 13 of the Communion’s 38 provinces, including the Church in Wales.
Meeting from June 22 to 25, the ACNA will hold several “up and down” votes on the new provinces canons. Bishop Duncan stated six principles “stand out” in the new canons: confessional unity, expressed in matters of Faith and Order; subsidiarity in administration; a missionary focus; flexibility; disciplinary reforms; and collegial accountability.
“Constitution and Canons are not meant to be exciting, only a framework,” Bishop Duncan said. “What is exciting is the rebirth of the biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America for which so many have prayed for so long and that the proposed constitution and canons represent.”
Plenary speakers scheduled to address the meeting include the Rev. Rick Warren, the pastor of California’s Saddleback Church, and Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America.
ACNA Opens Inaugural Assembly: TLC 6.22.09 June 24, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, Living Church.comments closed
First published in The Living Church.
The Inaugural Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) attracted more than 900 attendees to St. Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas. This week, the gathering will formally create an Anglican church with 28 dioceses and dioceses-in-formation, more than 700 congregations and 100,000 members, according to the organization’s website.
“Though the journey took its toll, we know that we have been delivered, and have found that deliverance very sweet indeed,” said Bishop Robert Duncan, archbishop-designate for the ACNA, addressing delegates, attendees, and other guests during the assembly’s opening worship service. “Our God is up to something very big, both with us and with others. The Father truly is drawing his children together again in a surprising and sovereign move of the Holy Spirit. He is again re-forming his Church.”
ACNA announced that more than 35 Anglican and ecumenical guests from around the world, including the primates or official delegations from eight Anglican provinces, are observing or participating in the assembly. The Rt. Rev. Santosh Marray, retired bishop of the Seychelles in the Province of the Indian Ocean, is attending as the official pastoral visitor of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
Los Angeles wins court case over property: CEN 6.19.09 p 6. June 19, 2009
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A California appeals court has ruled in favor of the Diocese of Los Angeles, holding that the congregation of St. Luke’s Church in La Crescenta could not take its property with it when it quit the diocese.
On June 9 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld a 2007 lower court decision which ruled against the congregation, which in 2006 had quit the Episcopal Church for the Church of Uganda.
“The long history of the Episcopal Church in La Crescenta will continue with new leadership and the potential for sustained growth, and as an open source of full inclusion for all humanity,” Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno told the Episcopal News Service after the decision was released.
On June 11, the Rev. Rob Holman, rector of the breakaway congregation stated his congregation had “shed many tears at the thought of being deprived of our house of worship for these past 85 years.”
“That the Bishop of Los Angeles would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the courts to wrest all, down to even the small wooden processional cross from the hands of our youngest acolytes, is unfathomable to the Christian heart,” he said.
The appellate court’s action in the St Luke’s case will not affect any other California church lawsuit, however, as it was issued as an unreported decision—meaning the court will not publish its ruling, preventing other courts or litigants from relying upon it for precedential value.
The court stated that it based its decision upon the Jan 5, 2009 decision by the California Supreme Court in the case of St James’ Newport Beach—a case currently under appeal before the US Supreme Court and returned to the lower courts for trial in Orange County, California.
In its decision, the Court said the congregation’s reliance upon the 1981 Barker case that found in favor of breakaway Episcopal congregations on the theory of neutral principles of law, was ill-advised.
The Barker case was distinguishable “largely due to the passage of time” as it was decided before the creation of the current crop of canons that seek to vest trusteeship of parish property with the diocese and the national church and because the “appellate court in Barker did not mention any of the general church’s canons. Accordingly, that decision does not control a dispute that, here, arose 25 years after the high court decision” and adoption of the new property canons.
Canonical expert A.S. Haley told The Church of England Newspaper that in the current legal climate “it’s always dangerous, these days, to rely on what has gone before”. The best strategy for a parish to follow nowadays is never to concede any facts, but to make [the Episcopal Church] prove every jot and tittle of its claims,” he observed.
Anger over abuse fall-out: CEN 6.19.09 p 6. June 19, 2009
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The Church of Ireland’s Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross has condemned the moves by pressure groups to use the findings of the Ryan Report on child abuse in Roman Catholic-run institutions to advance their own special interests and political campaigns.
In the first public statement on the Ryan Report by an Anglican cleric in Ireland, Bishop Paul Bolton told his diocesan synod the needs of the victims of abuse should take precedence. “They must be the centre of all our concerns and efforts,” he said on June 13.
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), also known as the Ryan Report after the commission’s chair Justice Seán Ryan examined the extent and effect of child abuse after 1936 in Reformatory and Industrial Schools operated by Roman Catholic religious orders and funded and supervised by the Irish Department of Education.
Released to the public on May 20, the report said it heard credible testimony of abuse of children by priests, brothers and nuns, and that some church officials covered up the crimes of pedophiles serving in the church, shielding them from arrest and prosecution through a “culture of self-serving secrecy.”
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Seán Brady said he was “profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that children suffered in such awful ways in these institutions. This report makes it clear that great wrong and hurt were caused to some of the most vulnerable children in our society. It documents a shameful catalogue of cruelty: neglect, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, perpetrated against children.”
Bishop Colton told the Cork Synod the findings of the Ryan Report revealed a “national trauma.” However, some groups had sought to use the report for their own ends, he noted.
“Some people in Ireland have used this report as a springboard towards a secularising agenda,’’ he said, while “others have called unthinkingly for the withdrawal of all churches from their modern-day engagement with education in a country, which, according to the last census, is still manifestly religious in its affiliation.”
“Still others use an old-fashioned and distorted republicanism and link what happened with injustices in the pre-independence era,” he said while some commentators “expose the limitations of their own understanding of the modern, pluralist Ireland by speaking as if, even now in 2009, there is only one Christian denomination or religious grouping in this State.’’
Bishop Colton stated that “in the aftermath of the report, people who were abused should be the priority of this nation, its institutions and of all of us.”
“What I would say is that this shame must prompt us all in every church and in every institution in society to take a good hard look at ourselves, and to ask what abuses or inhuman injustices we are responsible for perpetuating or exacerbating today,” he told synod.
Boys ‘most likely to be victims of abuse’: CEN 6.19.09 p 5. June 19, 2009
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Boys aged between 10 and 15 years of age are the most frequently targeted victims of clergy sexual abuse, a report presented on June 13 to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Church of Australia’s General Synod has found
Prepared by Professor Patrick Parkinson and Professor Kim Oates of the University of Sydney the “Study of Reported Child Sexual Abuse in the Anglican Church” examined 191 cases of abuse reported to diocesan officials between 1990 and 2008 from 17 of the church’s 23 dioceses—three rural dioceses declined to participate in the study while three others reported no incidents of abuse.
The study was commissioned by the 2004 General Synod and sought to identify the “characteristics of accused persons” and their victims and the circumstances of the offence, as well as “ascertain patterns of abuse in relation to similarities or differences in gender and age of the child complainants,” in order to “inform the Church on what steps could be taken towards better prevention of sexual abuse within church communities.”
Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Brisbane stated, that “while this report is aimed at strengthening our child protection protocols as we look to the future, it also reminds us of the tragic events of the past and of the pain which still exists. We reiterate our apology, our sorrow and our deep regret for abuse which has occurred.”
“The Australian Church has been developing processes which include screening of those working with children and young people, a code of conduct and safe ministry training. The General Synod commissioned this report to ensure the Church continues to be proactive in the important matter of child protection.”
The study found that unlike patterns of abuse in the general population but closely akin to patterns of abuse documented in studies of Roman Catholic clergy in the United States who had committed child abuse, three quarters of the victims were boys aged 10 to 15 at the time of the abuse. Boys were also less likely to speak out promptly about the abuse than girls, with the average delay between the abuse and the complaint being 23 years, the study found.
The study also found that most of the accused were either clergy or were involved in some form of voluntary or paid youth work. Of those accused of abuse, 27 men accounted for 43 percent of all cases—a total of 135 clergy and church workers were accused of abuse: 133 men and 2 women.
Over half of those accused were adjudged guilty of the crime, while a third were acquitted due to insufficient evidence. The remainder either died before the investigations were carried out, while only 2 percent of the accusations were deemed false.
In explaining the disproportionately high rate of abused boys to girls, the study speculated that child abuse was often a crime of opportunity, and that boys were more likely to be in situations where they were alone with their abusers as compared to girls.
“The report contains a series of recommendations, ranging from a review of the education measures in place in dioceses through to a more coordinated national and uniform approach for the selection and accreditation of leaders of youth groups,” Dr. Aspinall said.
“While the Anglican Church has made very real progress over recent years in the area of child protection, the recommendations in this report will provide an important focus and impetus to our continued efforts in this area. It may well be that they are of assistance to other churches as well,” he said.
Communists say there may be a God: CEN 6.19.09 p 5. June 18, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Chicago, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.comments closed
THERE MAY be a God after all, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) declared this week, after its Central Committee established a Religion Commission to create a united front with religious progressives against the forces of imperialism and market capitalism.
Writing in the party newspaper, the People’s Weekly World, the chairman of the Religion Commission, Tim Yeager, said the party sought to “reach out to religious people and communities, to find ways of improving our coalition work with them, and to welcome people of faith into the party.”
The CPUSA invited “questions and responses from people who would like to dialogue with us on matters pertaining to religion, Marxism and the struggle for more peaceful, just and secure world,” Mr Yeager said.
An attorney and union organizer for the United Auto Workers in Chicago, Mr Yeager is also an Episcopalian and a member of the Diocese of Chicago’s Peace and Justice Committee, and chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship.
Being a fervent Marxist did not require one to be an atheist, Mr Yeager said, nor did the party require its cadres to be atheists. He noted that in some countries the relations between Communists and the church had been “marked by conflict” but in the United States “our party has been proud to work” with “men and women of faith,” he said. “Marxist parties and religious progressives have worked together against repressive regimes and imperialist intervention.”
A spokesman for the Diocese of Chicago told The Church of England Newspaper the “Peace and Justice Committee of our diocese has no relationship or role with the Communist Party USA or its newly formed Religion Commission.”
Colorado dispute is settled as breakaway group quits: CEN 6.12.09 p 7. June 16, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Colorado, Property Litigation.comments closed
A dispute over the ownership of the Diocese of Colorado’s largest congregation was settled last week after two years of litigation, with the congregation of Grace and St Stephen’s Episcopal Church agreeing to vacate its £10 property, while the diocese has agreed not to seek reimbursement for the millions spent in legal fees to recover the church’s assets.
On March 24 a Colorado Springs judge ruled that trusteeship of Grace and St Stephen’s resided with the diocese, not the parish vestry. “We are very pleased with the court’s ruling which awarded the property to the Episcopal Church, but it is clearly time to relinquish our remaining claims and bring peace to our respective communities,” said Bishop Robert J. O’Neill on June 2.
The breakaway congregations, now called St. George’s Anglican Church agreed “that it will not appeal the court’s decision … (and) both sides agreed to the dismissal of all remaining claims, including damages, with each side to pay its own costs and attorneys’ fees,” Bishop O’Neill said.
On June 3, St. George’s gave a statement to The Church of England Newspaper saying it was also “pleased” with the settlement as it “relieved our staff and vestry members of the burden and expense of defending against [£3] million in unjustified claims brought against them personally by the Diocese of Colorado and the Episcopal Church.
“The settlement reached also means that all the costs associated with maintaining the property of Grace Church and St. Stephens, including payment of the [£1.5 million] mortgage, belong to the Episcopal congregation and the Diocese of Colorado.
In a marathon session of negotiations to settle the diocese’s claims for legal fees and to decided whether the congregation would appeal the March court ruling, the Rev. Donald Armstrong, rector of the breakaway group, and his lawyers were placed in one room, while the bishop and his lawyers were seated in a second room. A negotiator, former Colorado State Supreme Court Justice William Neighbors, shuttled between the two helping them negotiate the deal that ended the dispute.
‘Buddhist’ Bishop failing to win American consent: CEN 6.12.09 p 7. June 16, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Northern Michigan.comments closed
The election of the “Buddhist Bishop” of Northern Michigan will be rejected by the Episcopal Church, a survey of the standing committees of the 111 domestic and overseas dioceses of the Episcopal Church conducted by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
Frank Lockwood, religion editor of the Democrat-Gazette on June 4 reported that a survey of the church’s 111 diocesan standing committees found that a majority, 56, had refused to give their consent to the election of the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester.
On April 24 The Church of England Newspaper reported that early returns from the US House of Bishops found that Dr. Forrester had been unable to hold together the left-liberal bloc of bishops that backed Gene Robinson’s 2003 election as Bishop of New Hampshire. An unofficial tally kept by CEN finds the gap has widened against Dr. Forrester in the last six weeks among the bishops as well, with only 14 of the churches 102 bishops voting to affirm his election while 39 have voted “no”—and the rest not having reported on their vote.
However, an official rejection of Dr. Forrester’s election cannot be made until the close of the official 120-day consent period mandated by canon law. If the bishop-elect and his allies were able to convince some of the “no” votes to switch their votes by the mid-July deadline, Dr. Forrester could squeak through.
Should Dr. Forrester’s election be rejected, it will mark the first time in 77 years that a diocesan bishop has been refused consent. In 1932, the Dean of Arkansas the Very Rev. John Williamson was refused consent for election as Bishop of Arkansas by the House of Bishops after protests were lodged that black clergy and lay delegates had been disenfranchised during the election.
Concerns over Dr. Forrester’s theological and liturgical innovations appear to have prompted the “no” votes. All of the American church’ remaining conservative bishops and dioceses have rejected Dr. Forrester’s election, but liberal stalwarts like Los Angeles have also voted “no”.
Dr. Paul Marshall, the liberal leaning Bishop of Bethlehem and a onetime professor of liturgy at Yale explained his no vote by stating “as a Church we are increasingly a laughing-stock … because we do not consistently proclaim a solid core, words as simple as ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,’ yet ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”
Conservative church leaders outside the US have also questioned the election of Dr. Forrester. “I don’t really see what there is left to say,” the Bishop of Durham, Dr. NT Wright wrote. “The unique incarnation, saving death, bodily resurrection and universal lordship of Jesus are basic to Christian faith and to question that means you are disqualified from being an upholder of that faith in any official capacity in the church. That such a man should be considered even a possibility for a bishop is quite simply extraordinary.”
Dr. J.I. Packer was equally scathing in his remarks, telling the Democrat-Gazette, “this gentleman, apparently, doesn’t believe the creeds. … The doctrine of redemption through the incarnation and atoning work and resurrection and heavenly reign at present and future return of the second person of the Godhead: That is Christianity. Take that away and you have destroyed the Christian religion. Period. That’s what Christianity is about.”
Anger over Rwandan plan to regulate religions: CEN 6.12.09 p 6. June 16, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Rwanda, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.comments closed
Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda is spearheading a drive by the country’s Christian and Muslim leaders to defeat a bill introduced by the government that regulates the formation and finances of the country’s churches and mosques.
Requiring new churches to have at least 100 members and for its ministers or muftis to have an academic degree would have a chilling effect on religious freedom, Archbishop Kolini wrote in a letter to the country’s local government minister Musoni Protais.
On April 16, Protais tabled the Religious Denominations Bill before the Chamber of Deputies. The Bill asks the government to regulate the formation of new religious organizations, and require existing groups to submit to government supervised audits of their finances.
It sets out “procedures for creating such organizations or religious denominations, requirements, and rights and obligations owed to them in their daily activities,” a summary report printed on the website of the Rwandan parliament said.
Archbishop Kolini told Kigali’s New Times that Rwanda’s churches believed the proposed regulations were onerous. By imposing academic tests upon the organizers of new churches, the “freedom of worship is dishonoured,” he said.
Supporters of the Bill argued that the plethora of new African indigenous churches—some of which ignored local zoning laws and engaged in dubious business practices required a firm governmental hand.
However,” you cannot handle churches the same way you handle associations and NGOs. We are different,” Archbishop Kolini told the New Times. “I think if this law is passed, it is likely to cause tension,” he noted.
Budget cuts hits African efforts to combat Aids: CEN 6.12.09 p 6. June 16, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper, Health/HIV-AIDS.comments closed
Budget cuts by Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) have led to a curtailment of HIV/AIDS outreach work in the Diocese of Namibia, Bishop Nathaniel Nakwatumbah told his diocesan synod in Windhoek on May 29.
Bishop Nakwatumbah urged the clergy and lay delegates to redouble local efforts in combating the spread of the disease, but warned that cutbacks by the British and American governments would lead to a reduced diocesan presence in the fight.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s Siyafundisa programme has reached almost 850,000 young people between the ages of 10 to 24. It teaches abstinence until marriage, faithfulness within marriage and monogamous partnerships. But it has been cut back due to the end of support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Siyakha programme, which had been funded by the DfID, was also being scaled back. Siyakha built upon the Siyafundisa programme and sought to strengthen understanding among church and community leaders of HIV and AIDS and reduce the stigma and marginalization surrounding the illness.
Siyakha developed models of care for orphaned and vulnerable children, taught counseling skills, created pilot programmes for voluntary counseling and testing services run by churches in areas not served by the government, and developed HIV/AIDS workplace policies, programmes and materials for church employees, clergy and lay leaders.
The loss of British and American money was a “high setback in our effort to help our people,” the bishop said. “We need to pray that another donor be found to help us pick up the fallen sphere on HIV/AIDS,” he said in his charge to the diocese.
Anglican chief on WCC shortlist: CEN 6.14.09 June 14, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Consultative Council, Church of England Newspaper, WCC.comments closed
| The Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council is on a shortlist of six candidates for the post of Secretary General of the World Council of Churches (WCC).
On May 28 Ecumenical News International reported that Canon Kenneth Kearon was among the six candidates vying to succeed Dr Samuel Kobia of Kenya. On June 5 the WCC stated it had not “officially released any names of candidates and does not confirm the accuracy of the ENI list.” Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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African clergy go on strike as Archbishop sacked: CEN 6.12.09 p 6. June 13, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Roman Catholic Church, Syncretism.comments closed
The Roman Catholic clergy of the Central Africa Republic (CAR) staged a one day strike last week to protest the removal by the Vatican of the Archbishop of Bangui, Msgr. Paulin Pomodimo, for violating his vow of chastity.
Appointed to oversee the country’s nine Roman Catholic dioceses in 2003, the 54 year old archbishop resigned on May 27 after he was found by the Vatican to possess “a moral attitude which is not always in conformity with his commitments to follow Christ in chastity, poverty and obedience.” The archbishop’s resignation follows that of the former president of CAR’s episcopal conference, Bishop François-Xavier Yombandje of Bossangoa, who stepped down on May 16 after a Vatican fact finding mission faulted him for having a common law wife.
Meeting at Bangui’s cathedral, the CAR clergy voted to strike in protest to a “lack of consultation” over the appointment of a new archbishop, prompting the closing of all parishes and the suspension of all religious services and sacramental acts.
In March the Rev. Robert Sarah, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, toured the CAR and issued a scathing report on clergy discipline. The French language Bangui newspaper, Le Confident on May 20 published extracts of a letter written by Cardinal Ivan Dias, the Prefect for the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples to the CAR bishops stating that numerous “bad things” had been done to the Body of Christ through the clergy’s “poor and scandalous comportment.”
The cardinal’s letter said it was “pointless” to deny the accusations of widespread unchastity, nor was there a need to judge the motives or circumstances behind the “evil that has been committed.” Bishops, priests and religious in the CAR had “in one way or another” been accomplices in the scandal and each “shall assume his own culpability proportionally to his own responsibility,” Le Confident reported.
A majority of Roman Catholic parish priests in the CAR have common law wives, local news agency i.media reported and Archbishop Pomodimo and Bishop Yombandje were “reportedly suspected of frequenting women and having children.”
Clergy spokesman Fr. Mathurin Paze Lekissan said the strike was called off after one day to avoid “depriving Christians of the divine word and the body of Christ.”
The CIA World Factbook estimates the former French colony’s religious demography to be 25 percent Roman Catholic, 25 percent Protestant Christian, 15 percent Muslim and 35 percent animist. Anglican evangelists from the Congo are active among the tribe’s along the country’s southern and eastern borders, but no national church has yet been formed. Bangui however is home to Francophone Africa’s only higher Protestant school of theological education the Faculté de Théologie Évangélique de Bangui—a school supported by a number of overseas Anglican mission partners.
Sydney’s investments plummet in recession: CEN 6.12.09 p 5. June 13, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Development/Economics/Govt Finances.comments closed
The value of the Diocese of Sydney’s investments have fallen by more than half this past year due to the collapse of the global financial markets, Archbishop Peter Jensen reports in a parochial letter distributed to the diocese on June 7.
The global financial crisis has taken a heavy toll across the communion, with many dioceses in the United States, Canada, and Australia reporting significant declines in investment and parochial income.
“We have suffered very significant losses to our diocesan capital,” Dr. Jensen reported due to the leveraged investment strategy used by the diocese. “For several years now we have borrowed money to increase the amount invested,” he said, noting this had realized high returns in past years, and had permitted a “special” £10 million “distribution to help purchase land and build new churches” in 2007.
However, when the market moved against the diocese, by year’s end the leveraged strategy had “accentuated our losses. As a result, our investments have fallen by more than half and the distribution of money from our investments has been cut by 50%. Ministries which depend on this funding will be severely impacted.”
Diocesan finances were now “stable,” with no debt and much of the diocese investment funds now held as cash. “But the losses remain,” he said, and would result in a restructuring of operations.
Last week the Episcopal Diocese of Washington also reported that it would be cutting its £2.4 million budget by £250,000 due to a projected shortfall of contributions from its 93 congregations. A spokesman stated the diocese would begin staff cuts to cover the shortfall as well as reduce its contribution to the national church’s coffers by £80,000.
Declining revenues and an aging church membership have strained most of the Episcopal Church’s dioceses. A March report released by the State of the Church committee for July’s General Convention estimated that 68 percent of the church’s dioceses were experiencing financial difficulties.
‘Time is running out for Middle East peace’: CEN 6.12.09 p 5. June 13, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Israel, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
Time is running out for a peaceful two-state solution to the crisis in Israel and Palestine, an open letter to US President Barack Obama endorsed by over 50 American Christian leaders warns.
Representatives from the Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, including US Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori have applauded President Obama’s plan to make peace in the Holy Land a top priority, and endorsed the proposals made in the presidents Cairo speech to the Muslim world last week. But while the world awaits a diplomatically negotiated settlement, the Palestinian Christian community is in danger of being wiped out, they said.
“In the birthplace of our faith, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities is dwindling rapidly, and with them the possibility of a day when three thriving faith communities live in shared peace in Jerusalem,” the June 4 letter said. And unless action is taken soon, “Christians in the Holy Land may cease to exist as a viable community.”
Actions by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government had had dire consequences for the Christian minority. “Continued settlement growth and expansion are rapidly diminishing any possibility for the creation of a viable Palestinian state,” the letter said.
At the same time, “targeting of Israeli civilians through ongoing rocket fire and the insistent rejection by some of Israel’s right to exist reinforces the destructive status quo. These actions, along with the route of the separation barrier, movement restrictions and continued home demolitions, serve to undermine Palestinians and Israelis alike who seek peace. As hope dims, the threat of violence grows and hardliners are strengthened.”
Church leaders urged the Obama administration to act swiftly as the present “window of opportunity” was “rapidly closing” for peace in the Middle East. They urged the president to “present proposals that go beyond the mere principle of two states and lay out a just and equitable solution that provides dignity, security and sovereignty for both peoples.”
Call to make former Tanzanian President a saint: CEN 6.12.09 p 5. June 13, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Politics, Roman Catholic Church.comments closed
The President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni has endorsed the campaign to declare the late President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere (pictured), a saint.
Speaking to pilgrims at the Roman Catholic Martyr’s Shrine in Namugongo on June 2, President Museveni said Nyerere, known as Mwalimu or “teacher” to the people of Tanzania was “blessed with extraordinary wisdom and compassion for the oppressed. He loved freedom and unity for all people, and he was a fearless freedom fighter.”
“He was like the Ugandan martyrs who stood for truth against sin; even at the expense of their lives. I join those who are praying for the canonisation of Mwalimu as a saint. He was not only a freedom fighter, he was also a man of God,” local press reports stated.
On Jan 26, 2006 the Roman Catholic Bishop of Musoma, Tanzania forwarded a request to canonize Nyerere to the Vatican, which that year accorded him the title “Servant of God.”
A convert to Christianity while a student at a rural mission school, Nyerere was the first president of Tanganyika (later called Tanzania after the merger with Zanzibar), and held office from 1961 to 1985.
Educated at the University of Edinburgh, Nyerere sought to blend socialism with African communalism. In 1967 he issued the Arusha declaration which began a voluntary collectivization of Tanzanian agriculture under the Ujamaa or “familyhood” campaign. Nyerere’s “third way,” between Western capitalism and Soviet communism won him admirers among the left.
One of his admirers was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. During a courtesy call paid to the President of Tanzania on Feb 16, 2007, Dr. Williams said that Tanzania had been for him a symbol of hope during his younger days as “Tanzania stood and stands for what can be achieved through democratic development.”
Impatient with the slow pace of voluntary collectivization, in 1973 Nyerere began forced collectivization, uprooting traditional villages to form Ujamaa communities. By 1976 Tanzanian agriculture had declined from being one of Africa’s largest agricultural exporters to its largest food importer. Between 1965 and 1989 Tanzania’s economy declined an average of .2 percent per year, making it the second poorest country in the world, the World Bank reported, while neighboring Kenya, which followed free market principles saw its GDP grow 2 percent per year during the same period, and by the end of the 1980’s had a per capita income three times greater than Tanzania.
Church gay disputes ‘are a struggle for power’: CEN 6.12.09 p 5. June 12, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Ireland, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue, Windsor Report.comments closed
A struggle for power lies behind the Anglican Communion’s divisions over homosexuality, the former Archbishop of Armagh Lord Eames said last week at the annual Lecture to the College of St. George at Windsor Castle.
Speaking to the topic: “The Mechanics of Reconciliation Today,” Lord Eames—the chairman of the commission that prepared the Windsor Report—explored reconciliation’s social, political and theological principles, seeking to define its terms.
The modern world was “experiencing a constant evaluation of the concept we call ‘reconciliation’,” he said. The “fracture of society, the break-down of human relationship, the tensions between nations and how human kind’s failure to understand the deep significance of our contribution to the fracturing of the natural world” had led to a reevaluation of the concept of reconciliation.
“My thesis,” Lord Eames said, was that “short of understanding the mechanics of reconciliation we have yet to define that process itself. So often the process we call ‘reconciliation’ has become a form of retreat when other efforts of human progress fail – a sort of comfort zone when other means of solving problems fall short.”
The “endeavor to overcome division or misunderstanding” had also become an “an end in itself,” defeating its purpose. Reconciliation, he argued, was not a short term goal but an on-going process, for “when agreement is reached it is usually only a beginning to any lasting appreciation of what has been achieved and each stage in the process can produce a fresh evaluation of what we set out to accomplish.”
The Windsor Report was an example. The 2005 report “contained sign-posts, laying out the possible routes to greater understanding of each other’s arguments,” he explained.
However, “Anglicanism has moved on since Windsor. Now the talk is about a Covenant, about parallel jurisdictions. The Windsor Report had not been an attempt at “total reconciliation of the irreconcilable but an encouragement to understand more of others’ approaches and deeply held faith convictions,” he said.
It sought “to produce a road map for greater understanding of the divisions within Anglicanism. Much of that division centered on and stemmed from questions of sexuality, but my experience at that time and since has left me with little doubt that behind the headlines of the main agenda there were significant questions to be asked to do with authority, power and influence.”
There were “sharp divisions over the question of a practicing gay bishop, division that represented contrasting interpretation of Scripture and the understanding of Tradition – but whatever lies ahead for Anglicanism I am convinced that reconciliation must take account of what I have termed those other agendas,” Lord Eames said.
However, a Christian has “no option” but to engage in reconciliation, he said, as “deep in the heart of faith lies the urgent necessity for the follower of Christ to be an agent for reconciliation.”
“It is impossible” he concluded, “to contemplate the God-head of Good Friday and the Cross of Calvary without sensing yet again the relationship of reconciliation between God and wayward humanity.”
Cyclone claims 275 lives: CEN 6.12.09 p 6. June 12, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of Bangladesh, Church of England Newspaper, Church of North India, Disaster Relief.comments closed
Tropical Cyclone Aila, the first major storm of the 2009 monsoon season in South Asia, has come ashore in the Bay of Bengal, drowning at least 275 people and leaving millions homeless.
The Church of North India’s Bishop of Durgapur, Bishop Probal Kanto Dutta reports the situation in the aftermath of the storm is “grave and countless people have lost their lives.”
The cyclone came struck West Bengal and Bangladesh on May 25, triggering tidal surges and widespread flooding. In West Bengal at least 5.1 million people were displaced, with more than one million people stranded in the Sundarban islands alone, most of them without any food or water, government press handouts report. Approximately 100 confirmed deaths have been reported in India and 175 in Bangladesh.
“The tidal surges and floods triggered by Aila have washed away roads, damaged bridges and submerged fields,” said John Gomes, communications officer for World Vision in Bangladesh. “Some areas are just totally inaccessible as they are underwater and there are simply not enough boats to get relief out to these people who are sleeping out in the open with no shelter.”
Writing to supporters in the UK, the Moderator of the Church of Bangladesh, Bishop Paul Sarker reported that “I am sorry to inform you that the storm was not at all a light one [as] I thought yesterday. From yesterday evening it has become very strong cyclone and gone through from the South-West coastal area to the north. The sea water came up to 7-8 feet high and washed away many houses and crops in the coastal area.”
Bishop Dutta wrote that his diocese “has two districts which have been hit by this cyclone. We are yet to take stock of the losses. No vehicles or transports are moving now.”
We request all friends and well wishers of the Diocese of Durgapur to prayer for us,” he said.
Archbishop offers prayers for victims of Air France disaster: CEN 6.12.09 p 6. June 12, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper, Terrorism.comments closed
The crash of Air France flight 447 and the deaths of its 228 passengers and crew last week has prompted the Archbishop of Cape Town to offer his prayers and condolences to the families and friends of the dead.
On June 4 Archbishop Thabo Makgoba stated that since he learned of the disappearance of the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on May 31 he had been praying for all those “affected by this tragedy. We do not know the cause of the crash – and even if we did, it would not alter the way that our hearts weep within us for all those who have lost their loved ones.”
“At times of sudden tragedy, it is right that we should mourn and weep, and honestly face the depths of our grief,” he said, and “inevitably we will ask questions of what has happened and why. Often there will be no easy answers – and even when we can identify some cause or contributory factors, this knowledge cannot turn back the clock, and restore to us those whom we have lost”
It is in these time that God “promises to be a strong, safe refuge,” the archbishop said. Jesus Christ understands the “pains of human mortality” and “himself was prepared to suffer death and pain, on the cross, for our sakes – and so his love and compassion, wrought in the trials of his own experience, can touch us tenderly in our own pain. More than this, his resurrection offers us all a sure hope and comfort that death need not have the final word, as he encourages us to put our hand in his and find in him the reassurance that we need in times of fear and sorrow.”
Flight 447 disappeared en route from Rio to Paris approximately 400 miles off the northeast coast of Brazil. According to Air France CEO, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, the plane broadcast distress signal indicating an electrical fault 15 minutes after passing through heavy turbulence. Airline officials have also speculated the aircraft may have been struck by lightning. The passenger jet was “well advanced” over the Atlantic Ocean before it went missing, according to Brazilian Air Force officials.
However, suggestions the flight may have been brought down by terrorism have been raised by security analysts in the United States. Prof. Douglas Woodwell at the University of Indianapolis speculated the plane may have been targeted by Islamic radicals. On May 27 an Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris was grounded after a bomb threat was made against the flight, the airline reported.
“During the past week, the French government announced the landmark opening of a military base in Abu Dhabi, the first permanent overseas military base the French have opened since they decolonized in the early 1960s,” Woodwell said.
The stationing of US troops on the Arabian Peninsula after the Gulf War “was probably the most important concrete factor motivating Al Qaeda in its subsequent attacks on the United States, including 9/11. The French basing agreement was announced on January 15, which is sufficient time for Al Qaeda sympathizers to organize a response,” he said.
However, no evidence of terrorism has so far been uncovered. As of June 8, 24 bodies had been recovered as have portions of the tail fin and wings. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
Woman arrested over Nepal church blast: CEN 6.10.09 June 10, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Nepal, Terrorism.comments closed
| Nepali police have arrested a Hindu extremist in connection with last week’s bomb blast that killed three and injured 14 at a Roman Catholic church outside Kathmandu.
Wire service reports from the Himalayan republic state that a 27-year-old woman, Sita Shrestha nee Thapa, has been detained by the police and charged with planting the bomb on May 23. A member of the Hindu Rashtra Bachao Samiti — a hitherto obscure Hindu extremist group that seeks to restore the monarchy and expel non-Hindus from Nepal, the suspect is alleged to have attended the worship service and placed her handbag under a cushion. During the middle of the service the suspect left the church, saying she needed to use the toilet. A bomb police believe was secreted in the handbag then exploded. Literature from an allied Hindu militant group, the Nepal Defence Army (NDA) was scattered outside the church after the blast. The NDA’s leader Ram Prasad Mainali, is also being sought by the police for questioning. On May 29 the NDA released a statement saying it wanted “all the 1 million Christians out of the country, if not we will plant 1 million bombs in all the houses where Christians live and detonate them.” First printed in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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Gag order for Bennison: CEN 6.05.09 p 6. June 8, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Church of England Newspaper, Pennsylvania.comments closed
A gag order has been issued against the former Bishop of Pennsylvania forbidding him to make public evidence he believes will exonerate him from charges of conspiracy to cover up sexual abuse.
On April 17, attorneys for the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr., filed a motion with the Episcopal Church’s Court for the Trial of a Bishop asking that it set aside its guilty verdict. The court found that the bishop, when he was a parish rector in California, had committed of two counts of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy for conspiring to cover up the 1973 affair between his brother John Bennison, his parish youth minister, and a 14-year old member of the congregation.
In 2006, John Bennison was deposed from the ordained ministry, and on June 26, 2008 the court held Bishop Bennison was guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy and recommended that he be defrocked. Bishop Bennison appealed the finding and remains suspended from office pending the case’s final disposition.
The April motion states that new evidence—200 letters written by the victim to the bishop’s brother, John Bennison, had been unearthed that impeached the victim’s testimony.
The victim swore under oath that she wanted Charles Bennison to break up the relationship, but the new evidence, his lawyers claimed, shows the victim had sought to hide the affair from Charles Bennison. The victim’s motive was not outrage for having been abused, but revenged for having been abandoned by John Bennison for another woman.
“John Bennison ultimately left his wife, not for [the victim], but for another woman. It was after John married the second woman that [the victim] lodged her allegations of a cover-up against Bishop Bennison, 17 years after the relationship with John Bennison ended,” the bishop’s lawyers claimed.
On May 19 the court directed Bishop Bennison not to release the letters. “The complainant has submitted a sworn declaration from a psychologist who opines that public release of the materials underlying the respondent’s motion could inflict trauma on the victim,” the court noted.
“It is astounding that the church attorney, who on June 26, 2008, issued a statement to the press praising The Episcopal Church for using ‘an open and transparent process that allowed the truth to come to light,’ now seeks to suppress the truth and hide the process from the public,” attorney James Pabarue told the Living Church magazine.
“We believe that the court – having reviewed the contents of the letters – should throw out the conviction and restore the bishop to his position. The bishop has already suffered unjust damage to his reputation and career. The church can do the right thing and avoid the further embarrassment that might ensue with the release of the letters.”
Americans turn more conservative: CEN 6.05.09 p 5. June 8, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Popular Culture.comments closed
Six months after electing Illinois Democrat Senator Barack Obama as President, the United States is moving to the right on moral and social issues in an apparent backlash to the new president’s policies, with a solid majority of Americans opposed to abortion, surveys by the Gallup Organization reported last month.
May 15 polling figures find that of those surveyed, 51 percent describe themselves as “pro-life” or anti-abortion, while 42 percent stated they were “pro-choice,” or pro-abortion. A similar survey conducted in 2008 for the Gallup Values and Belief Survey found that 50 percent described themselves as pro-choice and only 44 percent as pro-life.
A May 20 Gallup poll also reported that only one in three Americans, 36 percent, believed abortion to be morally acceptable. The growing conservative mood was also reflected in declining support for stem-cell research using human embryos, which fell from 62 percent to 57 percent, while support for human cloning fell from 11 to 9 percent.
Support for the morality of cohabitation, or sexual relations between an unmarried man and women, fell from 61 to 57 percent, while the statement that having a child out of wedlock was an morally acceptable act garnered only 51 percent approval.
Divorce was found to be acceptable by 62 percent of those surveyed, down from 70 percent in 2008—while the death penalty was found acceptable by 62 percent of Americans also.
The moral acceptability of homosexual relationships was rejected by 51 percent of Americans. However, 65 percent of Republicans rejected homosexual behavior as immoral compared to 34 percent of Democrats.
The political divide over morality also extended to abortion with a majority of Democrats, 52 percent, saying it was acceptable, while only 23 percent of Republicans found it to be acceptable.
Adultery was viewed with disfavor by Americans across the political line, with 94 percent agreeing that an affair between a married man and woman was immoral.
In its analysis of the results the Gallup Organization speculated that President Obama’s strong support for abortion rights may have spurred a popular backlash. “It is possible that, through his abortion policies, Obama has pushed the public’s understanding of what it means to be ‘pro-choice’ slightly to the left, politically. While Democrats may support that, as they generally support everything Obama is doing as president, it may be driving others in the opposite direction,” the analysis said.
Archbishop announces Covenant working group: CEN 6.05.09 p 5 June 6, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Covenant, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced the composition of a Working Group to review section 4 of the Ridley Draft of the Anglican Covenant. On May 28, Dr. Rowan Williams named the Archbishop of Dublin, the Archbishop of Singapore, the Bishop of St. Asaph and Dr. Eileen Scully of the Anglican Church of Canada to the team.
However, the selection of two liberals and two conservatives for the working group, and with only two days allotted for review of the material make it likely that few changes will be made to the disciplinary sections of the proposed Anglican Covenant.
The mandate for the working group arose from the failed debate on the Anglican Covenant at ACC-14 in Kingston. Disquiet with the management of ACC-14 has also been voiced by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, who contrasted the transparent and thorough deliberative processes of her church’s General Convention, with the opaque and confused workings of the ACC.
Birthed in the confusion of the May 8 debate on the Anglican Covenant, ACC-14 asked that a “small working group” be appointed by Dr. Williams to “consider and consult with the provinces” on Section 4 of the Ridley draft “and its possible revision,” and report its findings to the members of the Primates and ACC joint standing committee for action.
Copies of the Ridley Draft have been circulated amongst the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion seeking comments on section 4. Dr. Williams has requested that these responses be submitted by Nov 13 for the working group to review on Nov 20-21 in London. Their recommendations will then be presented to the Dec 15-18 meeting of the joint standing committee.
In a pastoral letter released on May 26, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori stated the ACC’s deliberative structure was far from ideal or efficient.
Upon arrival in Kingston the ACC delegates were “inundated with long and complex papers on a great variety of subjects” and in contrast to the Episcopal Church’s custom of lengthy debate and legislative hearings, delegates to the ACC were then “expected to make decisions after brief opportunities for small-group discussion.”
The “details of decision-making would surprise most Episcopalians,” she said, as there was “relatively little opportunity for deliberation or alteration” of resolutions, even though the pace of work was “leisurely, with 40 hours of formal work spread over 11 working days.”
Commonly observed rules of parliamentary procedure were not observed, she noted, as the chairman of the meeting exercised “a great deal of discretion in referring or declining to entertain resolutions; elections are not straightforward ballots for a single individual; discussion of any proposed amendment requires the support of 10 members; the president (the Archbishop of Canterbury) steps in fairly frequently to ‘steer’” the sessions.
Speaking to the press at the close of the Kingston meeting, the ACC’s legal advisor Canon John Rees explained that the ACC was not bound by rules of parliamentary procedure. The ACC had moved away from a “western parliamentary way of doing our business,” and now relied upon its chairman to discern “the general assent emerging” from its meetings, Canon Rees said.
61 priests deposed for joining Southern Cone: CEN 6.05.09 p 5. June 6, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, Church of England Newspaper, Fort Worth, Property Litigation.comments closed
The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin has deposed 61 priests and deacons for affiliating with the Church of the Province of the Southern Cone. However the May 26 statement by the reconstituted Episcopal Diocese may be an own goal in its legal fight with the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, as it appears to undermine its claim that it is a properly constituted diocese of the Episcopal Church.
On May 26, San Joaquin Bishop Jerry Lamb stated he was heartbroken, but had been “forced” to remove the clergy from the rolls of the Episcopal Church. They had chosen “to abandon their relationship with the Episcopal Church. They declined to ask for a release from their ordination vows, and I had no option but to bring the charges of Abandonment of the Communion to the Standing Committee last year and take these final steps today. It is a sad day.”
A statement released by the diocese said the clergy who followed Bishop John-David Schofield into the Province of the Southern Cone and had refused to acknowledge the authority of Bishop Lamb “were determined to have abandoned the Communion of the Episcopal Church in October and November 2008. The clergy had six months to deny their abandonment, recant, or renounce their ministry in the Episcopal Church or face removal or deposition from the ministry of the Episcopal Church.”
A special convention called by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in March 2008 to reorganize the diocese and elect Bishop Lamb drew 21 clergy. The 61 clergy who did not attend the meeting remained members in good standing of the diocese until charges were proffered in October and November 2008.
Canon 3.01 of the diocese states that a “quorum shall consist of one-third of all the clergy entitled to seats and votes…If a quorum be not present at any convention, no business shall be transacted except that of adjournment from time to time until a quorum shall be present.”
The absence of the 61 clergy in good standing prevented a quorum from being reached, and subsequently renders Bishop Lamb’s election void ab initio, supporters of Bishop Schofield have charged—a contention supporters of Bishop Lamb have just as vigorously denied.
It was with a “mixture of sadness and joy” that Bishop Schofield received the news of the depositions. While it was “heartbreaking” that the Episcopal Church had proceeded with “such a punitive action,” it had no real significance as “all of these men and women are recognized around the world as priests and deacons in good standing within the Anglican Communion.”
“Clearly, the traditional understanding of what it means to be a member of this historic Communion has been tragically altered by this action,” Bishop Schofield said, “and thereby the Episcopal Church needlessly isolates itself from their brothers and sisters around the world.”
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America rocked over doctor’s church murder: CEN 6.05.09 p 6. June 6, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Abortion/Euthanasia/Biotechnology, Church of England Newspaper, Crime.comments closed
Church leaders have denounced the murder of one of the United States’ leading abortionists, calling the May 30 shooting of Dr. George Tiller a senseless act of violence.
One of only a handful of physicians in the United States that would perform late term abortions—Dr. Tiller claimed to have aborted over 60,000 “fetuses over 24 weeks”—the controversial physician was shot and killed by a lone gunmen in the foyer of a Lutheran church in Wichita, Kansas during Sunday services. A man has been detained by the police and is helping them with their inquiries.
US President Barack Obama released a statement within hours of the shooting, saying he was “shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.”
On June 2 Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori stated she also was “horrified” to learn of the murder, which was “made even more painful for occurring in a place of worship and sanctuary.” She offered her condolences to Dr. Tiller’s family and added that she prayed “pray for those who believe that violence is ever the answer to disputes or differences, that they, too, may be healed.”
The Episcopal Bishop of Kansas and a number of Wichita clergy joined the presiding bishop in denouncing the murder. On June 1 Bishop Dean Wolfe and 12 of his clergy denounced “this terrible act because violence precludes relationship – and to move out of relationship is where sin flourishes.”
“Where can we go if murder is a solution,” they asked. “There is no hope, and there is no discussion if all ends in violence and fear.” The Kansas clergy urged all sides in the contentious abortion debate in the United State to keep talking “even in the midst of differing views. We feel assured that we can disagree without resorting to acts of violence.”
Episcopal pro-abortion activists held a vigil at Boston’s St. Paul’s Cathedral “celebrating” the life and work of Dr. Tiller. The Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School, Dr. Katherine Ragsdale told reporters before the Monday service “this is about the loss of a man who was a saint and a martyr.”
Conservative Christian leaders and pro-life activists were quick to denounce the murder. The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the US’s largest anti-abortion pressure group denounced the murder and offered its condolences to Dr. Tiller’s family.
The NRLC “unequivocally condemns any such acts of violence regardless of motivation,” Executive Director David O’Steen said on May 31. “The pro-life movement works to protect the right to life and increase respect for human life. The unlawful use of violence is directly contrary to that goal.”
The “consensus” of traditional church teaching held that Christians must work within the structures of the state to “persuade governing authorities concerning what is good, right, just, and honoring to God. Those who operate outside of this consensus and perform acts of violence are rightly understood to arrogate authority to themselves in a way that violates not only the laws of men but the law of God,” Southern Baptist leader Dr. Albert Mohler said.
“Civil disobedience may be justified so long as the Christian is willing to suffer at the hands of the governing authorities, but is not justified if the citizen employs violence against the state or against other citizens,” he said.
Row as controversial priest joins Episcopal Church: CEN 6.05.09 June 5, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Roman Catholic Church, Southeast Florida.comments closed
| The reception of Fr Alberto Cutié into the Episcopal Church followed a two-year period of reflection by the Miami Roman Catholic priest and TV host, and was not a spur of the moment decision by the priest or the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, the Rt Rev Leo Frade has stated.
On May 28, Bishop Frade received Fr Cutié into the Episcopal Church, prompting outrage from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Miami and titillation from the American press, who questioned whether Fr Cutié’s newfound appreciation of Anglicanism was prompted by a moving of the spirit, or the publication of compromising photographs of him in a Spanish-language tabloid. The reception of Fr Cutié into the Episcopal Church has been given great prominence in the South and Central American media and provoked contradictory comments from Anglican bishops in the region. Bishop Bill Godfrey of Peru called the publicity surrounding the secession unseemly while the Bishop of Puerto Rico noted that he had recently received two Roman Catholic priests and was in conversation with three others seeking to join his diocese. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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ACC Secretary is Candidate for Top WCC Post: TLC 6.03.09 June 3, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Consultative Council, Living Church, WCC.comments closed
First printed in The Living Church magazine.
The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary of the Anglican Consultative Council, is on the short list of candidates being considered for the position of secretary general of the World Council of Churches.
During the primates’ meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, in February, The Living Church learned that Canon Kearon had been nominated for the post, and had the endorsement of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to succeed the Rev. Samuel Kobia of Kenya.
The WCC’s general secretary serves as the ecumenical organization’s chief executive officer, as a spokesman for its council, and is responsible for promoting the strategic vision of the Geneva-based ecumenical organization.
The general secretary will be elected at the WCC’s Central Committee meeting Aug. 26- Sept. 2. Dr. Kobia announced last year he would not seek a second term of office.
On June 3 the Catholic Information Service of Africa reported that the five other finalists for the post included the Rev. Daryl Balia of the South African Methodist Church; the Rev. Robert Anderson of the Church of Scotland; the Rev. Fernando Enns of the Brazilian Mennonite Church; the Rev. Seon Won Park of the Korean Presbyterian Church; and the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit of the Church of Norway. Official confirmation of the short list could not be made, however.
Archbishops divided over success of recent summit: CEN 5.27.09 p 6. June 2, 2009
Posted by geoconger in ACC 14, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
ACC-14 has received mixed reviews from the members of the Primates Standing Committee, with some archbishops saying the May 2-12 meeting was marked by honest dialogue and healing, while others saw it as a fraud.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams told a May 12 press conference the meeting had produced mixed results. While the work of two years in preparing an Anglican Covenant had been temporarily turned aside, and effectively defeated conservatives charged, there had been less tension in Kingston than at ACC 13 in Nottingham due to the “healing effect of time; the issues are not quite as raw,” Dr. Williams said.
However, he conceded that ACC-14 “hasn’t necessarily dealt with the problems that face the communion, once and for all,” but did “deepen our sense of obligation” to one another within the Communion.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori told the Episcopal News Service she was encouraged by the discussions and by the time spent on issues apart from the disputes over doctrine and discipline that had “made the communion most neuralgic.”
“We are indeed reminded that we are united in the work that we share and the challenges we share,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said, adding “we leave this meeting of the ACC with hope for the future and the reality and realization that we have hard work ahead of us.”
The Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Brisbane—a member of the Primates Standing Committee—saw the meeting of delegates from the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion as a happy, healing time, noting “we worked together in an atmosphere of honesty, openness and vulnerability.”
He conceded that there “were some heated moments but it was a bit like a crucible. The heat was unmistakable but necessary to refine thinking and clarify understanding.”
Author of the resolution adopted by the meeting that called for further work on section 4 of the Anglican Covenant, effectively delaying its roll out for a year, Dr. Aspinall admitted the debate over the proposed Anglican Covenant was challenging, but discounted reports that some of the delegates were confused by the parliamentary proceedings.
“One of the highlights of ACC-14 for me was the spirit with which discernment about these critical issues took place. There was truth telling in love and there was continuity between the discernment groups and resolutions. In the plenary sessions there was straight talking but also gracious restraint in the interests of the whole Communion,” he said.
Dr. Mouneer Anis, the President Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East and Bishop of Egypt was less sanguine. As a member of the Primates Standing Committee he had travelled to Kingston with “hope and anticipation” but was disappointed by the “manipulative process” used to scuttle the Covenant.
“All that was required from the ACC was to agree to send the whole text of the Covenant to the Provinces for discussion and adoption,” he said, but the Episcopal Church and its allies “were strongly opposing the idea of the Covenant especially section 4,” which enumerated its disciplinary procedures.
Dr. Anis faulted the organization of the meeting and its leadership, saying the structures imposed on ACC 14 “helped to undermine the Covenant supporting voices.”
He noted the resolutions committee was composed of five delegates, three of whom were from the Episcopal Church, Scotland and New Zealand “which strongly oppose the Covenant,” while the fourth member, the Moderator of the Church of South India Bishop John Gladstone had “made it clear” that his church could not “adopt an Anglican Covenant because they are a union of different churches.” Going in to the debate, Dr. Anis observed, of the five delegates preparing the resolution, only the delegate from Ghana came from a province in favor of the Covenant.
The small group format was also used to stymie the will of the delegates and sink the Covenant. While the small groups permitted all delegates to share their views, “each group did not know the views of the other groups.”
A member of the drafting committee sat in each small group session and was tasked with reporting the sessions view’s to the committee. Dr. Anis stated that all but one of the small groups “were supportive” of the Covenant, but the drafting committee imposed its contrary interpretation upon the meeting.
The slick parliamentary tricks used by opponents of the Covenant discouraged many delegates from the developing world, he said. Reintroducing a motion that had sought to delay the Covenant, after it had been defeated by a vote was a “shock.” “Many of our African and Asian brothers and sisters were confused by this especially after they rejoiced when resolution A was rejected. Then I objected and requested a legal advice in this matter but the chairman decided not to deal with my request.”
In the midst of this “defeat”, Dr. Anis said there remained “a great opportunity to turn around the whole situation. We can do this if we, as dioceses and Provinces, started to discuss, make comments and adopt the Covenant without any further delay.”
The Primate of Uganda, Archbishop Henry Orombi—a member of the Primates Standing Committee, but absent from the meeting—concurred. Speaking to a men’s retreat in the United States, Archbishop Orombi rejected the usurpation of provincial autonomy and authority by the ACC’s standing committee, which had refused to seat a Ugandan delegate, and voiced criticism of the way in which the meeting was organized and governed.
While the ACC was “broken,” he nonetheless urged individual provinces and dioceses to seize the initiative and begin the work of adopting and implementing an Anglican Covenant.
Bishop opposes Greens on Euthanasia: CEN 5.27.09 p 6. June 2, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Abortion/Euthanasia/Biotechnology, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
The Bishop of Tasmania has called upon the state parliament to reject a voluntary euthanasia bill tabled by the Green Party, saying only God, not man or the state had the right to take life.
On May 27 the leader of the Tasmanian Green Party Nick McKim tabled the Dying With Dignity Bill before the state parliament permitting assisted suicide.
Mr. McKim claimed that a privately commissioned poll found that 78 percent of Tasmanians endorsed assisted suicide or euthanasia, and that his bill contained safeguards to prevent the abuse of the law including a psychiatric evaluation of the person seeking to die, a second medical opinion verifying a life limiting condition, and residency in Tasmania for at least 12 months.
However, Bishop John Harrower urged legislators to reject the bill. “Going down the pathway of euthanasia is literally a way to death, not to life for our society – and it will bring great harm to Tasmania,” he told the local media.
Political leaders have given their members a free vote on the issue, which is expected to come up for debate in August. In 1995, the Northern Territory of Australia legalized euthanasia, passing the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995. Four people took their lives under the provisions of the Act, but in 1997 Australia’s Federal Parliament overturned the legislation. Euthanasia remains a criminal offence in Australia.
