US bishop comes home from Rome: The Church of England Newspaper, May 7, 2010 p 6.

The Rt. Rev. Daniel Herzog

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

A former American bishop, who quit the Episcopal Church for the Roman Catholic Church in 2007, has been restored to the ordained ministry of the Episcopal Church.

However, the method used to restore the Rt Rev Daniel Herzog of Albany does not conform to church law, legal scholars note, and was accomplished by a questionable canonical legerdemain that leaves his current status in doubt.

On April 30, Bishop Herzog was received back into the Episcopal Church. US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori stated she had “issued an order” reinstating the Anglo-Catholic leader and was “delighted at his return to ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church.”

The news of Bishop Herzog’s return was made public earlier that day by Albany Bishop William Love at a diocesan clergy retreat in Greenwich, New York. “Though he has never really been absent from our common life, I want to formally welcome Bishop Dan and [his wife] Carol back to the full communion of the Diocese and the wider Church,” Bishop Love said.

“During the past three years, they have continued to support the work of the Diocese and to participate in a non-ordained capacity. His restored role will be of help in carrying out the work of the Church, and I will be asking him to assist in this Diocese under my direction as is true of any retired bishop,” Bishop Love said in a statement released by the diocese.

Bishop Herzog said he wished to thank Bishop Love and Bishop Jefferts Schori for their “kindness and pastoral solicitude. Carol and I are grateful for the continuing opportunity to serve our Lord and His church in the Diocese of Albany. My only plan is to assist in any way Bishop Bill directs. We are honoured to resume a fuller place among the clergy and laity of the Diocese.”

Four Episcopal Bishops in recent years have left the Episcopal Church for the Roman Catholic Church. In March 2007, Bishop Herzog renounced his orders in the Episcopal Church under the terms of Canon III.12.7 and entered the Roman Catholic Church as a layman.

In September 2007 the Bishop of the Rio Grande, the Rt Rev Jeffrey Steenson resigned his see to enter the Catholic Church, while Bishop John Lipscomb of Southwest Florida who took early retirement due to ill health, announced in November 2007 he would be joining the Catholic Church. Both bishops were subsequently ordained in 2009 as Catholic priests.

In 1994 the former Bishop of Fort Worth, the Rt Rev Clarence Pope announced he was joining the Roman Catholic Church. Received into the Roman Catholic Church by Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, Bishop Pope applied for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge but was refused. He returned to the Episcopal Church in 1995, but left for Rome a second time in 2007.

While conservatives have welcomed the return of Bishop Herzog to Anglicanism, canon lawyer Allen Haley noted that while Canon III.12.7 allows a bishop to renounce his orders in the Church, “it does not provide a means for him to be reinstated upon his “rescinding” his earlier renunciation.”

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori does not have the power to “retract” her acceptance of Bishop Herzog’s previous resignation and to rewrite the canons to “suit a desired outcome,” he said.

This “latest manoeuvre of the Presiding Bishop,” Mr Haley said, “sets one more precedent for failing to follow the canons. As a result, the Episcopal Church (USA) is now a Church with one sole gatekeeper, who decides which bishops shall leave, which shall stay, and which shall be allowed to return.”