Presiding Bishop backs US deal: CEN 2.23.08 February 23, 2008
Posted by geoconger in Archbishop of Canterbury, Central Florida, Church of England Newspaper, Dallas, Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Property Litigation.comments closed
| US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has endorsed a programme of alternative Episcopal oversight brought to her by a group of conservative American bishops.
The “Anglican Bishops in Communion” seeks to meld the Primates’ Dar es Salaam pastoral council scheme with the “Episcopal Visitor” programme created by Bishop Schori in a bid to hold the fissiparous elements of American Anglicanism together until an Anglican Covenant is agreed. “This is a step forward, albeit a small one,” the Bishop of Central Florida, the Rt Rev John W Howe noted, that permits freedom of conscience for traditionalist while preserving good order in conformance to the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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More US Parishes Quit: CEN 6.08.07 p 3. June 7, 2007
Posted by geoconger in CANA, Church of England Newspaper, Colorado, Connecticut, Dallas, Florida, Panel of Reference, Property Litigation, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
Parish defections and litigation are continuing to mount in the United States, with five parishes quitting the Episcopal Church last month for oversight from Nigerian and Ugandan bishops.
Members of the Diocese of Colorado’s largest parish ratified the March decision by their rector the Rev. Donald Armstrong, and the vestry to join CANA.
On May 26 the Grace & St Stephen’s Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado announced that 370 of the parishes 822 members had caste ballots in the secession referendum, with 348 voting to leave and 22 to stay. The Diocese has condemned the vote, saying it was illegal and non-binding, arguing that while individuals may leave the Episcopal Church, congregations may not.
The congregation which claimed over 1500 communicants before the conflict between the parish and diocese reached a head in March, has divided with approximately three quarters of the worshippers loyal to the parish leadership and a quarter loyal to the diocese—meeting in a chapel of nearby Colorado College under the cure of an assistant priest of the parish who did not support the secession.
Litigation over the £9 million property between the parish and diocese is on-going.
CANA announced last week that three other US congregations had quit the Episcopal Church to join the Nigerian missionary district led by Bishop Martyn Minns. One of the Connecticut 6 parishes—a group of traditionalist parishes involved in a long-running dispute with diocesan Bishop Andrew Smith, quit the diocese on May 29.
Founded in 1754, before the creation of the Diocese of Connecticut, Trinity Church in Bristol will seek to retain its property, Bishop Minns said, while moving under Nigerian oversight.
Members of Holy Trinity Church in Garland, Texas, in the Diocese of Dallas, have withdrawn from the Episcopal Church, forming Holy Trinity Anglican Church. In Florida the parishioners and vicar of St. Cyprians Episcopal Church, a predominantly African-American congregation, have quit the diocese to form Christ the King Anglican Church in St. Augustine, led by their former priest in charge, the Rev. David Allert.
The parish at the center of the Panel of Reference’s report on the Diocese of Florida has also been forced out of its church buildings following a court order from a Florida judge.
Last month a court ordered the secessionist clergy and members of the Church of the Redeemer in Jacksonville led by the Rev. Neil Lebhar to vacate their property, turning it over to the control of Florida Bishop John Howard. Approximately 90 percent of the congregation has followed Mr. Lebhar, with only 10 families remaining at Redeemer under the supervision of a vicar appointed by the Diocese.
Four U.S. Bishops Endorse Call for Repentance: TLC 9.21.04 September 2, 2004
Posted by geoconger in 74th General Convention, Central Florida, Dallas, Living Church, South Carolina, Southwest Florida.Tags: church discipline, homosexuality
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First printed in The Living Church magazine.
The bishops of Dallas, South Carolina, Central Florida and Southwest Florida have endorsed an international proposal calling for the expulsion of the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion unless it repents within two years of the decisions taken by the 74th General Convention.
The Rt. Rev James M. Stanton, Bishop of Dallas; the Rt. Rev. Edward Salmon, Bishop of South Carolina; the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, Bishop of Central Florida; and the Rt. Rev. John Lipscomb, Bishop of Southwest Florida, were joined by overseas and U.S. bishops and other church leaders in endorsing a submission prepared by the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) to the Lambeth Commission on Communion (LCC) titled “Drawing the Line.”
“Drawing the Line” calls for a “clear and publicly recognized distinction between the continuing Anglican Communion and those provinces whose witness diverges from the Communion.”
The Episcopal Church “must therefore be seen and known to be a quite separate church or denomination” from Anglicanism. The consequences of the August votes by the 74th General Convention affirming the election of a partnered homosexual priest as Bishop of New Hampshire and recognizing rites for the blessing of same-sex unions have become “too literally, a ‘life and death’ issue” for Churches in the developing world and in Muslim majority countries, the paper averred.
The document states that neither the Episcopal Church nor the Anglican Church of Canada should be permitted to “use the label ‘Anglican’ in a way that identifies them as part of the Anglican Communion.” The paper argues that should the two churches desire a continuing relationship with Canterbury, it “must be of a qualitatively different kind from that which Canterbury will maintain with (what will become) the continuing Communion.”
The signatories ask that a démarche be given by the primates to General Convention that declares the Episcopal Church has “entered a period of restorative discipline, the purpose of which is to provide time for your reconciliation to the larger Communion and its teaching.” This discipline “will come into force with immediate effect” for “up to 2 years” and failure to recant would be “taken as a clear and conscious signal that you yourselves are unwilling to continue as constituent members of the Anglican Communion.”
Conger 