Conger

Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper

The Province of the Southern Cone has begun work to amend its Constitution and Canons to permit parishes and dioceses outside of South America to affiliate with the church.

In an address to the Diocese of Fort Worth on May 3, Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables of Argentina said his province had agreed to accept the diocese of San Joaquin into the South American church as a “pastoral” and interim response to the divisions within the US Episcopal Church. Work was now underway to alter the church’s constitution, removing language that limited membership to dioceses located in South America.

The “Anglican Communion in the United States has been hijacked,” Bishop Venables said, by a liberal clique that is less concerned with theological integrity than with power. They do not “mind what happens as long as they control it,” he said according to a report prepared by the diocese’s communications officer.

Bishop Venables told Fort Worth that the question before them was “whether or not you can stand with a group of people who have denied that Jesus is the Son of God and that the Bible is the Word of God.”

He conceded that the invitation to the Diocese of San Joaquin made following its December decision to quit the Church and affiliate with the Southern Cone was irregular. However, “if we don’t do something,” he said, we would be “complicit” in their oppression.

The Argentine archbishop’s visit to Texas provoked a letter from US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori asking him to cancel his trip. His visit to Fort Worth was an “unprecedented and unwarranted invasion of, and meddling in, the internal affairs of this province,” and would prevent “needed reconciliation from proceeding” within the US church, she said.

Fort Worth Bishop Jack L. Iker dismissed Bishop Schori’s complaints as “rude” and erroneous. “Far from being ‘an unwanted interference,’ [Bishop Venables] is coming at my request as an honored visitor and guest speaker,” he said, noting she had no authority to vet his invitations to foreign bishops.

The Presiding Bishop was not being entirely straight forward in her characterizations either, Bishop Iker said. “There are no efforts at reconciliation proceeding within this province, which is one reason why faithful people continue to leave [the Episcopal Church] in droves,” he said. “Your attitude and actions simply reinforce alienation and bring further discord.”

“Once again you are the one meddling in the internal affairs of this diocese, and I ask you to stop your unwelcome intrusions,” the Fort Worth bishop said.

Three conservative bishops of the Episcopal Church are under fire from the church’s national leaders and are being threatened with dismissal for seeking to pull their dioceses out of the church in protest of its leftward drift.

The attempted purge of conservative bishops Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, Jack L. Iker of Fort Worth, and John-David Schofield of Fresno by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori marks a new stage in the battle over church doctrine and discipline that has threatened to split the Episcopal Church since the hotly contested 2003 consecration of a non-celibate gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire.

On January 11, Bishop Jefferts Schori stated that a secret review panel had handed down an indictment against Bishop Schofield for “abandoning the Communion” of the Episcopal Church. In November delegates to his diocese’s annual convention voted to pull out of the Episcopal Church and seek the oversight of an overseas archbishop from the Anglican Communion.

Read it all in Christianity Today.

Affiliating with the Province of the Southern Cone would safeguard the Anglo-Catholic heritage of the Diocese of Forth Worth, its bishop and standing committee told the diocese in a Jan 9 letter.

Bishop Jack Iker and the leaders of the diocese reported that after a review of the constitution and canons of the South American Church, “we have concluded that the structure and polity of the Province of the Southern Cone would afford our diocese greater self-determination than we currently have under the General Convention of The Episcopal Church.”

In November the Texas-based diocese voted to remove references to the Episcopal Church from its constitution and canons and begin the process of withdrawal. Quitting the US Church requires a second reading of the proposed constitutional changes at the diocese’s 2008 synod.

Moving the diocese to the oversight of Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables of Argentina would give a degree of autonomy “in the areas of property ownership, liturgy, holy orders, and missionary focus.” The issue of women’s orders would be left to the diocese, allowing Fort Worth to maintain its traditionalist stance.

Quitting the Episcopal Church would not “change in the day-to-day” life and work of the diocese, but “we expect a significant change in attitude and focus of the clergy and people,” Bishop Iker and the Standing Committee wrote.

Bishop Jack Iker addressing his diocesan convention in Fort Worth. Bishop William Wantland looks on from his left. ENS photo.

The Diocese of Forth Worth’s annual synod voted last week to begin the process of quitting the Episcopal Church.

By margins of 4 to 1 in both the clergy and lay orders, on Nov 17 Fort Worth approved six amendments to its constitution and canons that provide the legal and canonical foundations for its withdrawal from The Episcopal Church. A second reading and passage at the 2008 convention is required for the changes to come into legal effect.

Bishop Jack Iker said the voted “marked a firm resolve about moving forward together, recognizing that there are parts that are not fully behind the path we’ve chosen, but the debate is always characterized by respect and honesty.”

Delegates also unanimously thanked the Province of the Southern Cone for its offer of a safe haven. Bishop Frank Lyons of Bolivia addressed the gathering, answering questions from delegates about the implications of a possible transfer to the South American province.

Bishop Lyons noted the canonical structure of the South American church closely mirrored the model envisioned by Archbishop Rowan Williams, where the diocese, not the province was the primary ecclesial entity of the church. The South American church, spread over six countries historically had developed a de-centralized federated model of church polity, allowing dioceses to adopt canons and policies that reflected the national character of each diocese.

Church canonist and retired bishop of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Bishop William Wantland gave a canonical and legal analysis of the Episcopal Church’s constitution, noting that claims of national church sovereignty over all aspects of church life were foreign to the Episcopal Church’s history and canons.

Objections that while people may leave the Episcopal Church, but parishes and congregations may not, were rejected as specious by Bishops Iker and Wantland.

“You will find that statement no place anywhere in the constitution and canons,” Bishop Iker said, that supported this assertion by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

“That statement comes from the communications officer of [former Presiding Bishop] Frank Griswold who circulated it as a memo shortly after the 2003 General Convention where Gene Robinson was confirmed as Bishop of New Hampshire,” he said.

“Since when does a memo from the communications officer of the Presiding Bishop set policy for The Episcopal Church?” he asked. “It is my belief that we voluntarily form an association with the General Convention,” he said. “If we decide to end that association, we shall.”

Bishop Iker told a press conference after the meeting the diocese would be able to support the costs of litigation, if Bishop Schori made good upon her threats and brought suit.

“Several key families of the diocesan family have come forward and assured us of their financial support in the event of litigation,” he said, however, “the first and most important goal is to avoid litigation.”

The US Presiding Bishop has threatened the Bishop of Fort Worth with legal censure eight days before his diocese debates adopting a secession clause at its synod meeting today.

In a letter released last Friday, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori stated she was “grieved” by the proposed legislation that would allow the diocese to quit the Episcopal Church, and noted that in her view such an action would “violate the Church’s Constitution.”

Bishop Iker’s “statements and actions in recent months demonstrate an intention to lead [his] diocese into a position that would purportedly permit it to depart from the Episcopal Church,” Bishop Schori wrote.

She urged him to desist and to use his offices to counsel synod to step back from secession.

If he did not, “I shall regrettably be compelled to see that appropriate canonical steps are promptly taken to consider whether you have abandoned the Communion of this Church — by actions and substantive statements, however, they may be phrased — and whether you have committed canonical offences that warrant disciplinary action.”

Bishop Iker responded that he would not be cowed.

Bishop Schori’s charge that he was abandoning the Communion was “baseless” as “I have abandoned nothing, and I have violated no canons,” he said. Bishop Iker stated it was “highly inappropriate” for Bishop Schori to “misuse [her] office in an attempt to intimidate and manipulate this diocese.”

“The threatening tone of your open letter.” he wrote on Nov 12, made no attempt at “reconciliation, mediation, or even dialogue” but was designed to “intimidate.”

Twenty-five years ago the “newly formed Diocese of Fort Worth voluntarily voted to enter into union with the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. If circumstances warrant it, we can likewise, by voluntary vote, terminate that relationship,” he said.

Bishop Schori’s letter would likely produce the opposite effect than was intended, he noted, saying “your missive will now be one of the factors that our Convention will consider as we determine the future course of this diocese.”

The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Fort Worth has called for the diocese to begin the process of secession from the American Episcopal Church.

“We believe it is time to separate our diocese from [the Episcopal Church] General Convention religion and to join an orthodox province of the Anglican Communion,” the standing committee said on Oct 1.

Six resolutions will come before the Nov 16-17 convention that present a range of options for the diocese from affirming the status quo to secession.

Individual parishes will be given the option of dissenting from the majority decision and withdraw from the diocese, the standing committee said, as “we do not wish to compel any parish in the diocese to remain with us as we pursue this course of action.

Should the diocese opt for secession from the Episcopal Church, the change would not take place until after the 2008 synod as “constitutional changes do not go into effect until they are approved by two successive diocesan conventions,” the committee noted.

Dean Ryan Reed, the president of the standing committee-the diocese’s governing body between meetings of convention, or synod— stated Fort Worth had “always been a traditional, conservative diocese, adhering to the beliefs and practices of the historic catholic faith.”

“This means it has often found itself in conflict with decisions of the General Convention, which has continued a series of innovations in liturgy, theology, and the sacraments.” Fort Worth is one of three dioceses in the US that do not ordain or license women priests.

“To submit to and comply with the current direction of the General Convention would mean for us to embrace a distortion of the Christian faith that our forebears would not recognize as a continuation of ‘the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship’,” they stated.

The Episcopal Church’s national offices have dismissed suggestions that a diocese may secede from the General Convention, the church’s triennial synod, arguing that dioceses are creations of the General Convention—a point disputed by conservatives who argue General Convention is a creation of the dioceses and powers not explicitly subordinated to the General Convention remain with the diocese.

The National Church’s constitution remains silent on this point, and the issue has not been tested since the secession of the southern dioceses during the American civil war in 1862.

Bishops Jeffrey Steenson of the Rio Grande and Jack Iker of Fort Worth during a quiet moment in the House of Bishops on Sept 21, 2007.

Failure of the US House of Bishops to respond appropriately to the Primates’ Dar es Salaam Communiqué may force three American dioceses to quit the Episcopal Church.

On Sept 11 the dioceses of Pittsburgh and Quincy announced their upcoming diocesan synods would sever their ties to the national Episcopal Church, while a Sept 6 letter from the Bishop of Forth Worth reported “the realignment of the Anglican Communion is well under way.”

Fort Worth Bishop Jack L. Iker reported that the leaders of the conservative movement had had “some very encouraging meetings and conversations” with the leaders of the Global South coalition of Anglican provinces, and were prepared for action.

This week’s House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans would most likely reject the primates’ requests, Bishop Iker said, forcing the diocese “to choose in favor of the Anglican Communion majority at the expense of our historic relationship with the General Convention Church.”

The Diocese of Quincy announced that it too would consider amendments to its bylaws “that would cut its ties with the General Convention of the Episcopal Church if leaders of that church continue to pull away from mainstream Anglicanism.”

“Leaders of the Anglican Communion have repeatedly asked The Episcopal Church to repent and heal the schism they’ve caused in our Communion. The Episcopal Church has simply refused,” Bishop Keith Ackerman said.

Quincy had “gone the extra mile in demonstrating patience,” but there was “no sign” the Episcopal Church would “turn back from the destructive path it is on,” the president of the diocesan standing committee, the Rev. John Spencer, said.

“While we continue to pray for the House [of Bishops], we must also prepare for the very real possibility they will not respond favorably” to the Primates’ communiqué, the president of the Pittsburgh diocesan council, the Rev. David Rucker, said.

The proposed legislation would allow Pittsburgh to create parishes outside its geographical boundaries, welcoming any “parish formed and desiring union with the diocese.”  The diocese will also seek to allow it the option of withdrawing from the Episcopal Church and affiliate with “such province of the Anglican Communion as is by diocesan canon specified.”

Mr. Rucker said Pittsburgh hoped the House of Bishops would act in such a way as to make these “votes unnecessary”, but was prepared to act if they did not.

The Anglo-Catholic movement has come to an end, the former Bishop of Fort Worth Clarence Pope told The Church of England Newspaper following his reception into the Roman Catholic Church.

The Catholic movement, which has been part of “Anglicanism from the time of the Elizabethan Settlement,” Bishop Pope argued, had “gradually dissipated” into a style of clerical dress.

Groups such as Affirming Catholicism are “simply using words which do not describe them,” he said. They “are not catholic” in a doctrinal sense but are “extremely liberal in their views while often dressing in catholic vesture.”

“Without the stable center provided by the Holy See of Peter” the catholic movement with Anglicanism will “ultimately die away.”

On Aug 6, Bishop Pope, the second Bishop of Fort Worth, wrote to US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori resigning from the House of Bishops. He is the second US bishop to join the Roman Catholic Church this year and the fifth bishop to leave the American Church.

The Anglo-Catholic movement had been hijacked, he argued, by political correctness. The leaders of the Oxford Movement had not sought to revive ritual, but were engaged in “an attempt to recover Catholic theology” for the Church of England and its daughter churches.

The triumph of “political correctness” over sound doctrine in recent years meant it was time for catholic Anglicans to go. The vision of corporate reunion “put forth by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop [of Canterbury Michael] Ramsey, can now never be realized.”

Bishop Pope urged the Church of England to think carefully about consecrating women to the episcopate. Should it proceed “it would end ARIC as there would be no hope for the discussions. Rome would consider men ordained by women bishops as invalid and, consequently, there would be a geometric progression of the problem.”

The underlying issue he said was one of authority and the “unbroken Tradition of the Church to which Anglicanism used to adhere. There is no assurance that the product of the decision to consecrate women as bishops will be authentic.”

His move to Rome was not a rejection of Anglicanism, he explained, but a culmination of a spiritual journey. “My love of Anglicanism is very deep,” he said and it had “shaped and brought to my present understanding” of the faith and was the “the final step for which this preparation was, I think, intended.”

His crossing the Tiber, Bishop Pope explained, was not motivated by hopes of creating an Anglican ghetto within the Roman Catholic Church free from the vagaries of General Convention, but “by a desire for wholeness and settlement in the home I believe God has erected.”

The Catholic movement in The Episcopal Church has degenerated from a theological imperative into haberdashery, the retired Bishop of Fort Worth, the Rt. Rev. Clarence C. Pope, Jr., told a reporter for The Living Church, explaining his departure to the Roman Catholic Church.

On Aug. 6, Bishop Pope wrote to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, resigning from the House of Bishops, and telephoned his successor, the Rt. Rev. Jack L. Iker, to announce his decision.

Bishop Pope said the Catholic movement, which has been part of “Anglicanism from the time of the Elizabethan Settlement, has gradually dissipated until we are left with lots of ‘catholic’ vestments worn in areas of The Episcopal Church where ‘low church’ used to be the order of the day.”

The movement has reached its end within the current institutional structures of The Episcopal Church, Bishop Pope asserted, and as a matter of conscience, it was time for him to go.

“Without the stable center provided by the Holy See of Peter,” he said, the Catholic movement within the church will “ultimately die away.”

The culprit in what he believes to be the death of Anglo-Catholicism is the usurpation of powers and prerogatives by General Convention. Bishop Pope argued that over the past generation, the “vote” in General Convention had led to the triumph of “political correctness” over sound doctrine. The vision of corporate reunion “put forth by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop [of Canterbury Michael] Ramsey can now never be realized.

“General Conventions are not General Councils but they have come to behave as such,” he said. “Doctrinal changes concerning holy matrimony, holy orders, and matters of sexual morality have put The Episcopal Church outside the limits of the Vincentian Canon, and marginalize everyone within it from the Catholic world.”

Bishop Pope said he regretted his return to The Episcopal Church in 1995, after having spent a year as a Roman Catholic. He explained that shortly after he was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, “I was discovered to have advanced prostate cancer and that because it had spread so aggressively, I probably would not survive.”

The series of chemotherapy treatments and radiation he underwent left him “very impaired in my thinking,” he explained. The toll of his treatment and his tepid reception from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge, which had refused him ordination as a priest, provoked depression.

“In the midst of all this sense of losing any awareness of belonging, Presiding Bishop Ed Browning called to see how I was,” Bishop Pope said. His classmate from the 1954 seminary class at Sewanee encouraged him to return to The Episcopal Church.

“Needing some ground of belonging, I gave in to his nudging and, as he claimed never to have received my letter of resignation, I drifted back to The Episcopal Church,” Bishop Pope said. He asserts now that “being of sounder emotional stability and out from under a fog bank of severe depression, I would never have made such a return.”

He characterizes his move to Rome not a rejection of Anglicanism but as a culmination of a spiritual journey.

“My love of Anglicanism is very deep,” he said, and it had “shaped and brought me to my present understanding” of the faith. Joining the Roman Catholic Church is “the final step for which this preparation was, I think, intended,” and was “by a desire for wholeness and settlement in the home I believe God has erected.”

Published in The Living Church.

The former Bishop of Fort Worth, the Rt. Rev. Clarence C. Pope, Jr., has joined the Roman Catholic Church.

In an Aug 6 letter to his clergy, Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker wrote that his predecessor had “telephoned me this morning” to say that he and his wife had “returned to membership in the Roman Catholic Church, in full communion with the See of Peter.”

Bishop Pope is the second American bishop to join the Roman Catholic Church this year, and the fifth bishop of the Episcopal Church to quit the Church since January.

Elected the second bishop of Fort Worth in 1984, Bishop Pope was one of the Episcopal Church’s leading traditionalists, and was elected the first president of the Episcopal Synod of America, a predecessor of Forward in Faith.

Upon his retirement in 1994 Bishop Pope announced that he and his wife were joining the Roman Catholic Church. Following pleas from Bishop Iker and former Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, Bishop Pope returned to the Episcopal Church in 1995 and was restored to the House of Bishops.

The retired Bishop of Fort Worth, the Rt. Rev. Clarence C. Pope, Jr., has rejoined the Roman Catholic Church.

In an e-mail sent to the clergy of the Diocese of Fort Worth on Aug. 6, the Rt. Rev. Jack L. Iker announced that his predecessor had “telephoned me this morning” to say that he and his wife had “returned to membership in the Roman Catholic Church, in full communion with the See of Peter.”

Bishop Pope is the second Episcopal bishop to join the Roman Catholic Church this year, and the fifth bishop of The Episcopal Church to resign from the House of Bishops since January. The retired Bishop of Albany, the Rt. Rev. Daniel Herzog, also returned to the Roman Church this year. The retired Bishop Suffragan of Albany, the Rt. Rev. David Bena, joined the Church of Nigeria; the retired Assistant Bishop of Oklahoma, the Rt. Rev. William Cox, joined the Church of the Province of the Southern Cone; and the retired Bishop of North Dakota, the Rt. Rev. Andrew Fairfield, joined the Church of Uganda.

Elected the second Bishop of Fort Worth in 1984, Bishop Pope was the first president of the Episcopal Synod of America, and a long-time advocate for corporate reunification with the Roman Catholic Church. Upon his retirement in 1994, Bishop Pope announced that he and his wife were joining the Roman Catholic Church. Citing the Church of England’s 1992 Act of Synod permitting the ordination of women, Bishop Pope said then that the “pilgrimage I had longed to take corporately would now have to be taken alone.”

Received by Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston at a ceremony in a former Episcopal church in Arlington, Texas, Bishop Pope applied for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Bishop of Baton Rouge gave his conditional approval, subject to the agreement of his diocesan priests’ council, but the council refused his request. Following pleas from Bishop Iker and former Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, Bishop Pope returned to The Episcopal Church in 1995 and was restored to the House of Bishops.

In his e-mail, Bishop Iker stated he wished the former bishop and his wife well.

“They both gave 10 years of faithful service and witness here in the Diocese of Fort Worth, and we give thanks to God for their continuing friendship and ministry,” Bishop Iker wrote. “Bishop Pope wanted to assure me that he remains very attached to us and that his affection for the people of this diocese remains unchanged.”

First published in The Living Church.

The Rt. Rev. Jack Iker, Bishop of Forth Worth, and the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh, speaking to the press outside the Columbus Convention Center on June 21, 2006 at the 74th General Convention.

This photo was first published on line by The Living Church.

It was republished by the Church Times on 11.23.07.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference has responded favorably to an appeal by the Diocese of Forth Worth which opposes an amendment to the Canons and Constitution of the General Convention making access to ordination mandatory for women in all dioceses.

“The panel recommends that the Archbishop of Canterbury should discuss with the Presiding Bishop the possibility of the clarification of the ambiguous wording of the 1997 amendment to the relevant canon so as to ensure that the permissive nature of the ordination of women is maintained in any diocese,” states one of several recommendations made by the panel in its six-page report released earlier today in London.

Read it all in The Living Church.