Conger

The Rt. Rev. Hugo Pina Lopez

The Rev. Charles Holt, Rector of St Peter’s Episcopal Church, Lake Mary and deputy to General Convention.

The Hon. Council “Butch” Wooton, Jr., Chancellor of the Diocese of Central Florida

The Rev. Canon Ernest Bennett, Canon to the Ordinary and chairman of the diocesan deputation to General Convention

The Rev. Canon Nelson Pinder, DD.  National President of the Union of Black Episcopalians, emeritus priest of the diocese, and deputy to General Convention

The Very Rev. Eric Turner, Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Melbourne and Dean of the Southeast Deanery.

The Very Rev. Scott Holcomb, Rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Deland and Dean of the Southwest Deanery.

The Very Rev. W. Donald Lyon, Rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Deland and Dean of the Northeast Deanery.

The Very Rev. Timothy Nunez, Rector of the Church of St Mary, Belleview and Dean of the Northwest Deanery.

The Very Rev. Anthony Clark, Dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando. Deputy to General Convention and Secretary of the Standing Committee.

The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe

A new wave of parish defections has washed across the Episcopal Church with congregations in Tennessee, Pittsburgh and Central Florida quitting the national church in protest to its leftward drift.

The response to American church secessions however, has differed from past battles with a premium being placed on an amicable parting of the ways.

The new wave of defections has also come from “Windsor Dioceses”—dioceses whose leaders have been opposed to the innovation in doctrine and discipline made in recent years by the national church’s leadership.

While united in their opposition to the actions of the last two General Conventions, conservatives have been divided on what tactical programme to purse. With the breakaway groups now soliciting defections from conservative dioceses, traditionalist leaders within the Episcopal Church are concerned that turf battles over the remaining conservatives may weaken the remaining Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic witness within the Episcopal Church.

In the Diocese of Tennessee the bulk of Trinity Church in Winchester on Jan 6 quit the diocese for CANA, while the rector and members of Holy Cross in Murfreesboro announced that day they had joined the Church of Uganda.

Bishop John Bauerschmidt lamented the secessions, saying they were unnecessary as “Tennessee has on several occasions committed itself to the recommendations of the Windsor Report.” He noted that he was “committed to the Camp Allen principles of compliance with the recommendations of the Windsor Report” articulated by Archbishop Rowan Williams in his Advent letter.

The Bishop of Central Florida, the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe told his diocesan convention on Jan 25 that eight congregations, including the diocese’s second and fourth largest parishes, were withdrawing from the Episcopal Church.

Bishop Howe told The Church of England Newspaper the last three months had been the most difficult of his life, and the negotiations had left him exhausted. However “we have done something that has not been accomplished anywhere else. We are on the best of terms with all those leaving. And we are committed to rebuilding where there have been losses.”

In his Convention address Bishop Howe stated he understood there were some who for reasons of conscience had to withdraw. “I understand that. I don’t agree, but I don’t believe we should punish them. We shouldn’t sue them. We shouldn’t depose the clergy. Our brokenness is a tragedy. The litigation that is going on in so many places is a travesty,” he said.

“And although some seem to be trying to do so, I don’t think you can hold a Church together by taking everybody you disagree with to court,” he said.

The Diocese of Central Florida is “poised for a new round of significant growth,” after three months of tense negotiations with clergy and lay leadership from nine congregations seeking to leave The Episcopal Church, according to Bishop John W. Howe.

At the conclusion of the diocesan convention Jan. 25-26 at St. James’ Church, Ormond Beach, Bishop Howe told a reporter for The Living Church that though exhausted, he was pleased with the negotiations.

“We are on the best of terms with all those leaving,” he said. “And we are committed to rebuilding where there have been losses.”

In his address to convention, Bishop Howe said the last three months had been the worst period of his life. However, amicable solutions had been reached with the members of the eight congregations who sought to withdraw from the diocese.

“There are those who simply have to leave The Episcopal Church for conscience sake,” he said. “I understand that. I don’t agree, but I don’t believe we should punish them. We shouldn’t sue them. We shouldn’t depose the clergy. Our brokenness is a tragedy. The litigation that is going on in so many places is a travesty. And although some seem to be trying to do so, I don’t think you can hold a church together by taking everybody you disagree with to court.”

During the business portion of the meeting, delegates passed the first reading of an amendment to Article III of the diocese’s constitution, designed to strengthen the diocese’s ties to the wider Anglican Communion.

The resolution “does not change the constitution,” the Very Rev. Eric Turner told the convention, but “clarifies what once did not need clarifying.”

Proposed by the diocesan board, the resolution appended a sentence to the constitutional article defining the diocese’s “purpose,” stating the diocese was a “constituent member” of the Anglican Communion.

The amendment defines the Anglican Communion as a “fellowship of those duly constitution Dioceses, Provinces and regional Churches in Communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.”

The Rev. Thomas C. Seitz, Jr., rector of Good Shepherd, Lake Wales, endorsed the resolution, saying it “more accurately reflects who we are and have been.”

The Very Rev. Donald Lyon objected to the amendment. He said he was a “constitutional minimalist.” As there “was not an explicit need to state this,” he counseled against adopting “unnecessary” language.

After a half hour’s debate, a roll call vote by orders was called, and the resolution passed among the clergy 89-66 and in the laity 139-91.

Following a joint meeting of the standing committee and diocesan council, the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, Bishop of Central Florida, announced Nov. 15 that they were unable to agree upon a protocol for congregations desiring to secede from The Episcopal Church.

The rejected proposal would have permitted a departing congregation to purchase church property from the diocese provided that they made adequate provision for those members who desired to remain Episcopalians and participated in a parish discernment process devised and supervised by the diocese.

The diocese’s special task force on property would seek to revise the document, Bishop Howe said, for reconsideration at a joint meeting on Dec. 13.

Participants to the joint meeting were able to agree on the language of a proposed amendment to the diocesan constitution for consideration at the annual convention to be held Jan. 25-26, 2008, at St. James’, Ormond Beach. The proposed revision to Article 3 of the diocesan constitution would delete a statement that the diocese gives an unqualified “adhesion” to the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church.

The proposed revision states that Central Florida is a “constituent member of the Anglican Communion, a fellowship of those duly constituted dioceses, provinces, and regional churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding the propagating the historic faith and order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. So long as The Episcopal Church is the constituent member province of the Anglican Communion with rightful jurisdiction in this country, the Diocese of Central Florida declares its adhesion to the same and accedes to its constitution and canons.”

The proposed revision to the constitution passed the joint meeting on a unanimous voice vote.

Published in The Living Church

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter to the Bishop of Central Florida on the ecclesiology of the Church has sparked mixed reactions in the United States.  Liberals have roundly condemned the letter, while conservatives have offered mixed responses, breaking along church party lines.

The Episcopal Church’s national hierarchy has remained silent in the wake of the Oct 14 letter, and at this week’s meeting of the Church’s Executive Council, no public discussion on the implications of the letter took place.

Immediate reactions from the left to the letter were sharp.  The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, a deputy to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention and a frequent contributor to the discussion list for the church’s bishops and deputies called the letter a “great betrayal.”

“Any respect I have been able to maintain for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and any hope for the survival of the Anglican Communion as we currently know it, died,” he stated.

Canon Mark Harris of Delaware, a member of the Church’s executive council and respected liberal commentator noted that Dr. Williams’ “comments to Bishop Howe, however pastoral they might have been, increase the thin and wispy, and perhaps irrelevant, character of the Communion.”

From the right the Anglo-Catholic diocese of Fort Worth welcomed Dr. Williams’ letter finding in it a support in its battle with the national church.  Citing Lambeth Palace’s clarifying statement that “the diocese is more than a ‘local branch’ of a national organization,” Fort Worth commented: “Clearly, provincial alignments are intended for the benefit of the dioceses, and not the reverse.”

“As the realignment of the Anglican Communion continues to unfold and take shape in the months ahead, we pray for the continued guidance of the Holy Spirit for all those who seek truth and unity in Jesus Christ, and we urge that such separations as must take place may be accomplished without rancor and litigation,” the diocesan leadership stated.

Evangelical leader, Prof. Stephen Noll, however warned the letter “asserts the primacy” of the Archbishop of Canterbury over the primates.  It advances a theory that “being Anglican in the fullest sense means being in communion with Canterbury, which is no doubt what he considers an essential of ‘Catholic’ ecclesiology.”

By giving primacy to “Catholic ecclesiology”, Prof. Noll argued, Dr. Williams was privileging process over substance, and “ignoring the actual culture and polity of The Episcopal Church” in its relations with traditionalists.

A spokesman for the Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh told The Church of England Newspaper the Anglican Communion Network viewed Dr. Williams’ comments with interest, but noted at this late stage of the Anglican crisis it would not sway many minds.

The Diocese, not the national church or province, is the primary ecclesial entity within the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury has stated in a letter written to an American bishop.

Dr. Williams’ elucidation of his views on the ecclesiology of the Communion has sparked outrage from liberals in the US, who have condemned the letter as undermining the special “polity” of the Episcopal Church. The letter has also prompted conservatives to rethink plans for secession, as the letter shifts the political dynamic within the American church by undermining the importance of left’s long march through the Church’s central administrative apparatus.

However a spokesman for Dr. Williams told The Church of England Newspaper the letter was not an ex cathedra statement but a pastoral response to a particular local situation that broke no new ground.

On Oct 14 Dr. Williams sent an email to the Bishop of Central Florida, the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, in response to a note outlining the strife within his conservative evangelical diocese.

Dr. Williams told Bishop Howe traditionalist secessions from traditionalist dioceses were misguided. Central Florida’s place within the Communion was not at risk, he said.

“Any Diocese compliant with Windsor remains clearly in communion with Canterbury and the mainstream of the Communion, whatever may be the longer-term result for others in The Episcopal Church,” he said.

“The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such,” Dr. Williams said.

“Separatist solutions” would weaken “that basic conviction of Catholic theology and in a sense treating the provincial structure of The Episcopal Church as if it were the most important thing.”

“The Bishop and the Diocese” were the “primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the ‘national church’,” he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury urged traditionalists to hold fast.

“Action that fragments their Dioceses will not help the consolidation of that all-important critical mass of ordinary faithful Anglicans in The Episcopal Church for whose nurture I am so much concerned. Breaking this up in favour of taking refuge in foreign jurisdictions complicates and embitters the future for this vision.”

While noting the stresses the current environment had placed on faithful priests, Dr. Williams called upon the Central Florida clergy to exercise discipline and obey their bishop.

“Priests in a diocese such as yours ought to maintain their loyalty to their sacramental communion with you as Bishop,” he said.

A statement issued by Lambeth Palace clarified Dr. Williams’ email, explaining it was “neither a new policy statement nor a roadmap for the future but a plain response to a very urgent and particular question about clergy in traditionalist dioceses in TEC who want to leave TEC for other jurisdictions.”

“A priest is related in the first place to his/her bishop directly, not through the structure of the national church; that structure serves the dioceses,” the statement said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Oct. 14 letter to Bishop John W. Howe of Central Florida was not a statement of Anglican Communion policy but a particular response to a local situation.

In a formal statement released on Oct. 23, Archbishop Rowan Williams said the letter “was neither a new policy statement nor a roadmap for the future but a plain response to a very urgent and particular question about clergy in traditionalist dioceses in TEC who want to leave TEC for other jurisdictions, a response reiterating a basic presupposition of what the Archbishop believes to be the theology of the Church.

“The primary point was that - theologically and sacramentally speaking - a priest is related in the first place to his/her bishop directly, not through the structure of the national church; that structure serves the dioceses. The diocese is more than a ‘local branch’ of a national organisation,” the statement noted.

Archbishop Williams responded to a note from Bishop Howe concerning strife within the diocese. Nine congregations have entered into formal secession talks with Bishop Howe, in response to what they see as The Episcopal Church’s rejection of traditional Anglican doctrine and discipline.

Archbishop Williams told Bishop Howe traditionalist secessions from traditionalist dioceses were misguided. Central Florida’s place within the Communion was not at risk, he said.

“Any diocese compliant with Windsor remains clearly in communion with Canterbury and the mainstream of the Communion, whatever may be the longer term result for others in The Episcopal Church,” Archbishop Williams wrote. “Those who are rushing into separatist solutions” were “weakening that basic conviction of Catholic theology and in a sense treating the provincial structure of The Episcopal Church as if it were the most important thing.”

The Archbishop’s letter offered a theological rationale for conservatives to hold fast and not quit the church. “The organ of union with the wider church is the bishop and the diocese rather than the provincial structure as such,” according to Archbishop Williams.

“Dr. Williams is clear that, whatever the frustration with the national church, priests should think very carefully about leaving the fellowship of a diocese,” according to the statement. “The provincial structure is significant, not least for the administration of a uniform canon law and a range of practical functions. Dr. Williams is not encouraging anyone to ignore this, simply to understand the theological priorities which have been articulated in a number of ecumenical agreements, and in the light of this not to increase the level of confusion and fragmentation in the church.”

Published in The Living Church.

The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, Bishop of Central Florida preaching at the consecration of the new sanctuary of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach on Dec 15, 2005. This photo was first published in the Central Florida Episcopalian in the Jan 2006 issue.

Bishop John W. Howe of Central Florida and Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, Canterbury Conference Center, Oviedo FL May 15, 2007. This photo first appeared in The Church of England Newspaper on May 25, 2007 with the story:

Episcopal Church Mishandled the Debate on Human Sexuality: CEN 5.25.07 p. 7.

The Episcopal Church has mishandled the debate on human sexuality by misleading the Anglican Communion about its intentions to regularize gay bishops and blessings, the Primate of the West Indies said on May 15. By placing autonomy above unity it has brought the Anglican Communion to the brink of collapse Archbishop Drexel Gomez told the clergy of Central Florida.

Archbishop Gomez criticized the leadership of the Episcopal Church for not being entirely straight forward with the Communion. “You just cannot have collegiality” he explained, “if when you meet with your colleagues you don’t share.”

He also chided the African-led missionary jurisdictions, the AMiA and CANA, operating in the United States, saying they were an unfortunate “anomaly.”

It was “most unfortunate” that the Episcopal Church had hid its intentions to regularize gay bishops and blessings, Archbishop Gomes said, as it had not seen “fit to share with the rest of the Anglican Communion what it intended on doing.”

During the 2003 Primates Meeting in Gramado, Brazil “we had a long discussion on this business of [gay] blessings and same-sex unions,” he said. But at “no time during the meeting, did [US Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold] even indicate that a situation was developing in the Episcopal Church that would lead to the consecration of Gene Robinson.”

“It is not good enough as Frank [Griswold] had said that The Episcopal Church has been wrestling with this issue for 30 years and the spirit has led them to this decision. We were unaware of the problem. It must be a shared discernment if we belong to the body,” Archbishop Gomez said.

ACC-13 in Nottingham was the “first time any presentation had been made by The Episcopal Church” on these issues, he argued.

At the 2003 emergency Primates Meeting at Lambeth Palace, “We said unanimously, including Frank Griswold, if The Episcopal Church were to proceed with the consecration of Gene Robinson that it would tear the fabric of the Communion. And yet it proceeded and the fabric has been torn,” he said.

The consecration of Gene Robinson was “the first time in the history of Christendom that someone has been made a bishop who could not function as a bishop,” Archbishop Gomez argued. “Theologically I do not consider him to be a bishop,” he said.

Bishop Robinson’s episcopal ordination was an example of Augustine’s argument Archbishop Gomez stated that “a sacrament could be valid but non efficacious.” He “has been sacramentally ordained, validly ordained as a bishop, but he cannot function as a bishop in most of the Anglican Communion.”

Archbishop Gomez stated he was also “very concerned” about the formation of rival Anglican jurisdictions in the United States under the sponsorship of overseas primates. These “new groupings are anomalous in Anglicanism” he told Central Florida, adding “I tried hard at the last Primates Meeting to find an answer to that” difficulty, which “complicates the situation.”

One of the triumphs of the Tanzania Primates Meeting, he said, had been the agreement made by the interventionist primates to turn over their US jurisdictions to an international pastoral council. “We got them to the point where they would stop. This was not easy to achieve,” he said.

“I thought the House of Bishops would jump at the opportunity” to end foreign interventions, but they “wouldn’t look at it.” The rejection of the pastoral council by the House of Bishops now makes it “twice as difficult to get this back on the table,” Archbishop Gomez said.

He also stated the Dar es Salaam Communiqué was the first statement by the Primates where each was asked to give their personal assent. At prior meetings “we worked by consensus in our decisions,” but Archbishop Williams “felt that the decision was so important, so critical” that all should be polled for their views.

“Individually [Archbishop Williams] went around and individually every person said yes [to the Communiqué]. [Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori] said yes, but said it would be a difficult sell, but she would try.” The question put to the Presiding Bishop was whether she accepted the communiqué, “and Katharine agreed to the proposal.”

Archbishop Gomez did not expect a decisive response from the House of Bishops to the September 30 deadline for compliance to the Primates’ Communiqué. “On the basis of past actions, certainly over the past ten years, I would presume that the Episcopal Church would seek someway of fudging it. And that would be a consistent pattern,” he stated.

He told the gathering that he had suggested a September 30 deadline for a response from the House of Bishops. “The intention was to give them two full meetings” before an answer was due, although Archbishop Williams had pressed for more time.

The Episcopal Church “will have to make a decision” whether it will remain part of the Anglican Communion. “The official Episcopal Church speaking through its General Convention places autonomy over its mission. That is the reality we have to face in the Communion,” Archbishop Gomez said.

As Terry Schiavo was clinging to life in a Pinellas Park hospice, two Florida bishops have written to their dioceses offering moral guidance and presenting questions about ethics and the law at the end of life.

In an Easter pastoral to the Diocese of Southeast Florida, the Rt. Rev. Leo Frade wrote Floridians were “challenged by the reality of death in the suffering of a family facing the death of their spouse, daughter and sister. Terri Schiavo is our neighbor, a fellow-Floridian, and our sister in Christ.”

Recounting the medical and legal rationale that led to the court-ordered withdrawal of food and water from Mrs. Schiavo, Bishop Frade expressed his sympathies, writing he had “encountered such a tragic and painful moment myself, at the deathbed of my comatose mother, when my sister and I were forced to decide whether to continue care or to accept our mother’s condition as irreparable.”

Christians, he wrote, must hold firm to the “belief in the sanctity of each human life as a cherished creation of God, but we must reject an attitude that disregards the inevitability of physical death. Our Easter faith assures us that the death of the body is not the end of life.”

Endorsing the decisions of the 1991 General Convention on euthanasia (AO93), he rejected the practice as being contrary to Christian teaching, but noted “there is a difference between allowing a terminally ill person to die of natural causes, even by withholding or withdrawing of heroic and extraordinary life-sustaining treatments, and the initiating of actions that will cause someone’s death. I believe that allowing death to take its course is morally appropriate when death is inevitable and will obviously be the natural outcome.”

Bishop Frade criticized the intervention of the United States Congress in the Schiavo case, saying, “the family should be the proper context for decision-making in this type of determination, and that the government should not intrude in even a surrogate role.”

The courts and not the legislature, he argued was the “proper vehicle” to safeguard individual rights as “the intrusion by politicians is extremely inappropriate.”

Bishop Frade urged the clergy to encourage their parishioners “to provide for advance written directives concerning medical treatment and durable powers of attorney, setting forth medical declarations that make known a person’s wishes concerning the continuation or withholding or removing of life sustaining systems.”

In a letter to his clergy written on Good Friday, the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe wrote that he had been criticized for not having commented previously on this current American tragedy. “I have been damned and threatened with hell-fire,” he wrote, “because I have not spoken out on behalf of ‘saving Terri’s life.’”

Noting “the vast majority of Americans say they would not want their lives prolonged if they faced the circumstances Terri faces,” Bishop Howe, a past president and chairman of the board of NOEL, the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life, stated “my sympathies are overwhelmingly on the side of life — for the very young, the very old, and those who at every stage of life cannot defend themselves.”

The courts, he wrote, “have declined to intervene or command the reinsertion of her feeding tube. This is not because of an ethical consideration on their parts but because of legal considerations.”

“Terri’s gift to this nation could be,” Bishop Howe wrote, “that we explore in the fullest detail the numerous ethical and legal questions that her case, and thousands of cases like it, raise.”

Noting his unease with the roll of Mrs. Schiavo’s husband and the conflict within her family, Bishop Howe asked, “how do we decide who makes life-and- death decisions for a deeply disabled person? If there is the kind of ambiguity we see in Terri’s case, shouldn’t we always come down on the side of life?”

Absent a living will, how do we determine a person’s wishes regarding end-of-life issues?” Bishop Howe asked. And “if the decision becomes not to sustain (artificially) life, how do we best ensure that death will be as painless as possible?”

The 1998 Lambeth Conference addressed several of the issues raised by the Schiavo affair. Conference Resolution 1.14 defined “euthanasia” as “the act by which one person intentionally causes or assists in causing the death of another who is terminally or seriously ill in order to end the other’s pain and suffering.”

“Euthanasia”, the bishops noted, “is neither compatible with the Christian faith nor should be permitted in civil litigation.”

In subsection D of the resolution they wrote the conference “distinguishes between euthanasia and withholding, withdrawing, declining, terminating excessive medical treatment and intervention, all of which may be consistent with Christian faith in enabling a person to die with dignity. When a person is in a permanent vegetative state, to sustain him or her with artificial nutrition and hydration may be seen as constituting medical intervention.”

In a bow to the rapid increases in medical knowledge the bishops chose not to define what a “permanent vegetative state” was.

Read it all in The Living Church.