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Friday, March 23, 2007
"...Has the Lord as great delight in burnt
offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to
obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams."
I Samuel 15:22
A Message from Canon Anderson
Beloved in Christ,
There are several items of interest and importance this week. The first is
Bishop John Howard of Florida’s absolute rejection of the Panel of
Reference’s (POR) proposal for Church of the Redeemer and Fr. Neil Lebhar.
The POR’s proposal actually asked a great deal of Redeemer and Lebhar, and
seemed weighted heavily in favor of the Diocese of Florida and Howard. I was
disappointed in their proposal knowing the cost it would exact from those
faithful orthodox Anglicans who had fled a pseudo-orthodox bishop, but it
was not them who revolted. Since much less was asked of Bishop Howard, one
would have thought that he would have agreed with the POR and encouraged
Lebhar back in, but once again under the authority of the Episcopal Church
(TEC). Instead he stuck his finger in the eye of the POR and told them to
stop meddling in his affairs. So much for the authority and power of the POR.
It reminds me of the unarmed British Bobby who orders the armed bank robber
to stop and surrender. At least in Florida, this doesn’t work. What does
this say about the hopes for letting TEC stay in the worldwide Anglican
Communion? Are the hopes honestly realistic, or are these hopes at this
point in fact contributing to the pain and suffering and making things worse
rather than better?
The Pastoral Scheme called for all of the out-of-TEC
American Churches with overseas primatial connections to go under the
Windsor bishops as soon as an adequate pastoral plan was in place. This
would have put an end to the boundary crossings that TEC was constantly
complaining about, and it would have provided some degree of spiritual and
actual safety to those recently departed from TEC. The Pastoral Scheme was a
way to protect the overseas-linked congregations, but the one thing that it
might not have helped them with was the lawsuits that TEC has filed against
them, and the new ones initiated since the Tanzania meeting.
Conventional wisdom was that it was in all the key
players' best interests to rapidly move forward on the Pastoral Scheme. Dr.
Williams could have prevented further erosion of the USA situation and
strengthened the middle ground which he believes (erroneously) to be the
stable and large platform for the future. The pastoral primates would have
turned the border crossing over to Windsor bishops who could then cross
boundaries with permission of TEC, and then the criticism over the boundary
crossings would have stopped. Finally it was in Schori and the House of
Bishops’ (HOB) best interests to cooperate because it did pull everything
back under the TEC umbrella, including the Constitutions and Canons.
Although it would have involved a temporary bending of TEC’s sovereignty, it
would have earned TEC goodwill internationally, and when TEC fails terribly
in September to meet the compliance demands, they could have said “we tried
hard and aren’t there yet, but look, we are on board with you on the
Pastoral Scheme,” and it would have bought them more time. Instead they
defied what was in their own best interests and also stuck their finger in
Dr. Williams' and the primates’ eyes. It seems to be a Lenten seasonal
discipline of TEC giving up reason.
So with the acts of immediate defiance (new and increasing
law suits by TEC and the “take a hike” message to the Communion) is there
really any reason to wait until September 30th? In the real world, no. No
business or nation that was intending to go forward would tolerate this
behavior. In the church world, yes, of course we will all wait until
September 30th. For one thing, the communion is not set up for rapid and
decisive action, and it will still need the time to put the decision making
group together and ready to function. An immediate consequence of the HOB
defiance is any scheme that puts overseas-linked congregations back under
TEC is dead in the water. Any concern that those parishes had based on the
literal wording of the Communiqué is significantly lowered. The group of
bishops and dioceses that are now at greater risk are the Anglican Communion
Network bishops and dioceses, and unless the Archbishop acts now in the
interim before September 30th, those dioceses are left very vulnerable to
reprisal. One case in point is the upcoming trial of beloved retired bishop
Cox, aged 86, whose “crime” was to do confirmations and an ordination on
behalf of Archbishop Orombi and Archbishop Venables in Christ Church
Anglican (Ugandan) in Kansas City, Kansas. The service occurred in a
congregation under the Church of Uganda, yet Bishop Cox is to be tried by a
TEC Trial Court For Bishops for his “high crimes.” On the other hand, an
orthodox presentment filed over a year ago in Connecticut against Bishop
Smith for his canonically unlawful actions against churches there has sat on
the Presiding Bishop’s desk, uninvestigated and with no action contemplated.
This is what happens when a corrupt church misuses the canons of the church
to terrorize the faithful orthodox.
Even if the Archbishop of Canterbury were to proceed with
the Pastoral Council and an appointed Primatial Vicar (without the
permission of the US HOB or Presiding Bishop Schori), the spiritual relief
this would provide would be weighed against the immediate legal attack TEC
would bring against those participating dioceses and bishops. If this is not
an ecclesiastical war, I don’t know what one would look like. At the very
least, a declaration by the Anglican Communion that the Episcopal Church is
in a “State Of Division” would help a great deal, and if that were to be
coupled with a Primatial Vicar answering to the Primates, some positive
protection would result. We are indeed in need of the Peace that passes all
understanding, for it is not in the world that we will find it.
Blessings and Peace in Christ Jesus,
The Rev. Canon David C. Anderson
CEO & President of the AAC
AAC Statement on the Episcopal House of Bishops’ March 2007
Meeting
American Anglican Council Press Release
March 21, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The American Anglican Council (AAC) commends The Episcopal
Church (TEC) House of Bishops for clearly responding to the Anglican
primates’ February 2007 Communiqué at its Camp Allen, Texas, meeting this
week. However, the AAC is strongly opposed to the three “Mind of the House”
resolutions adopted yesterday that expressly reject the pastoral scheme
outlined by the primates’ recent Dar es Salaam Communiqué – a plan laid out
to protect those in the church unable to accept the direct ministry of their
Episcopal bishop or the presiding bishop due to theological differences.
The bishops did not address the key issues on which the
primates have requested a response—namely, whether TEC will abide by the
Communion’s standard of teaching on human sexuality (as expressed in Lambeth
Resolution 1.10) by giving its assurance that it will not permit rites for
same-sex blessings or consent to bishops living in same-sex unions.
“Without even addressing the deeper issues of belief and
practice, the House of Bishops has answered the primates with a resounding
‘no’ to the question of whether or not the church is willing to abide by the
mind of the Anglican Communion,” said the Rev. Canon David C. Anderson, AAC
president and CEO. “If they cannot accommodate on the structural points of
the primates’ requests – which left TEC with considerable power – I do not
see how they will ever turn back on the theological points. The church’s
desire for complete power and autonomy goes hand in hand with its rebellion
against Scriptural authority.”
The primates’ pastoral scheme, the bishops declared, would
be “injurious to The Episcopal Church” and a violation of the church’s laws.
However, at the same time, the bishops expressed their “passionate desire to
remain in full constituent membership in both the Anglican Communion and the
Episcopal Church” and urged for a face-to-face meeting with the Archbishop
of Canterbury and the Primates’ Standing Committee, a committee to which
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori herself was recently elected.
“The church’s arrogance is at its height; they still think
they can dictate the relationship on their own terms, but the primates and
Archbishop of Canterbury have clearly said that that is impossible,”
Anderson said.
The primates’ recent communiqué said that TEC must accept
and implement the primates’ recommendations as an expression of their desire
to remain in the Communion; otherwise, their rejection of the document’s
requests will be received as a decision to walk apart from the Anglican
Communion.
“TEC wants to reject the requests but maintain the
relationship, so it is a clear instance of denial of the consequences of
one’s decisions,” Anderson said. “It would be more honorable for them to
admit and accept the consequences of their actions than to try to continue
this fraudulent relationship.”
Earlier this week, the bishop of the Diocese of Florida
also thumbed his nose at Communion authority, rejecting the Archbishop of
Canterbury’s Panel of Reference Florida report recommendations. Other
statements by TEC bishops, including declarations by some that they will
defy the primates’ communiqué and continue lawsuits against local parishes
and individual clergy and vestry members, also point toward the church’s
total disregard for the Anglican primates’ authority and for Communion
relationships. Furthermore, last week’s rejection of South Carolina
Bishop-elect Mark Lawrence based on procedural technicalities points toward
TEC’s absolute submission to its own canons at whatever cost.
“The bishops’ rejection of the primates' pastoral scheme
is in fact further proof that such a plan is now needed more than ever to
intervene on behalf of the orthodox in America,” Anderson concluded. “A
default on the part of the TEC House of Bishops and her presiding bishop
should not delay the implementation of the relief effort. The AAC urges the
Archbishop of Canterbury to proceed along with the primates in setting up
the pastoral council, filling any defaulted positions. If they do not move
forward with the plan, the situation in the U.S. church will remain
intolerable for those Episcopalians who desire to remain faithful to the
biblical Anglican faith.”
Contact:
Jenny Abel
770-414-1515
Episcopal Bishops Reject Anglican Ultimatum on Gays
*Note: You may read the bishops' three 'Mind of House'
resolutions on the AAC
Web site
Source: USA Today
By Cathy Lynn Grossman
March 22, 2007
The Episcopal House of Bishops has rebuffed an ultimatum
from the worldwide Anglican Communion to establish a
church-within-the-church to minister to parishes and dioceses that dissent
from the U.S. church's stances on homosexuality and the Bible.
They branded the Communion's demands "spiritually unsound"
and called for an urgent meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan
Williams and Communion leadership.
"We cannot accept what would be injurious to this Church
and could well lead to its permanent division," the bishops said in a
statement issued at the end of their six-day meeting in Navasota, Texas.
Last month, the 38 primates, national and regional leaders
of the 77-million-member Communion, demanded the U.S. church reverse course
by Sept. 30 and clearly establish moratoriums on approving any new openly
gay bishops or authorizing blessings for same-sex unions.
The primates also called for creation of a "primatial
vicar" to provide pastoral care for seven of the 111 U.S. dioceses that
refuse to deal with anyone, including U.S. Presiding Bishop Katharine
Jefferts Schori, who approved the election of an openly gay bishop in 2003.
Although Jefferts Schori said Wednesday that the Episcopal
bishops did not specifically address the moratoriums, the resolutions they
passed include a pledge that "all God's children, including gay and lesbian
persons, are full and equal participants" in the church.
Through a spokesman Wednesday, Williams called the
bishops' resolutions "discouraging" and added, "No one is underestimating
the challenges."
Williams had urged the House of Bishops to take action
promptly without waiting to consult the second half of the U.S. church's
legislature, the House of Deputies. The two houses don't meet again until
the 2009 General Convention. U.S. bishops said they would not act without
the convention.
At Wednesday's news conference, Jefferts Schori called for
the bishops to spend the summer in a churchwide discussion "about our
identity as a church and as a member of the Anglican Communion."
But to conservatives and liberals alike, the resolutions
seemed clear.
Telling the Archbishop and the primate "to go take a walk
is just astounding. It's the clearest message I've seen that the Episcopal
Church really does intend to walk apart from the Communion," said the Rev.
David Anderson of the American Anglican Council, which works with churches
that dissent from the Episcopal Church.
But the Rev. Susan Russell of All Saints in Pasadena,
Calif., president of the gay and lesbian group Integrity, saw the
resolutions as "good news … for the whole church."
Bishop Howard Rejects Panel of Reference Plan in Florida
*Note: The plan recommended by the Panel of Reference may
be read on the AAC Web site here
Source: The Living Church
March 19, 2007
The Rt. Rev. Samuel Johnson Howard, Bishop of Florida, has
rejected a “good neighbor” episcopal ministry plan proposed by the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference. The report, which required
almost two years of “hard and painstaking work,” was in response to an
appeal made by the rector and vestry of Church of the Redeemer in
Jacksonville.
The report, which was released to the public on March 16,
called for Church of the Redeemer to return to the oversight of Bishop
Howard and to active participation in the fiscal and corporate life of the
diocese. In return, Bishop Howard was asked to lift canonical sanctions
against the clergy, end litigation, and permit alternate episcopal oversight
for the parish from a neighboring Episcopal bishop acceptable to both the
parish and the diocese.
As a sign of good faith in the panel recommendations, a
scheduled court appearance before a judge could be cancelled, said the Most
Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. He proposed the idea in a
letter to both Bishop Howard and the Rev. Neil Lebhar, rector of Redeemer.
“If, after study of the panel report and after mutual
consultation, you made the decision for both of your parties to suspend
litigation, then you would bring hope for the future, not only locally, but
for the Communion as a whole,” Archbishop Williams stated.
Bishop Howard rejected the panel recommendations and the
proposal to cancel the court appearance.
“In order to accept the authority of the diocesan bishop,
one must necessarily be in communion with the bishops and the other 30,000
members of the diocese,” Bishop Howard said in a letter to Archbishop of
Canterbury Rowan Williams March 1. “Until Fr. Lebhar and his parishioners
are willing to be in communion with the Diocese of Florida and The Episcopal
Church, they remain by their own choice outside the Church and we see no
point at this time in discussing further implementation of the panel’s
recommendation.”
On Aug. 13, 2005, six Florida congregations -- Redeemer,
Jacksonville; Grace Church, Orange Park; Calvary, Jacksonville; All Souls’,
Jacksonville; St Luke’s Community of Life, Tallahassee; and St Michael’s,
Gainesville -- petitioned Archbishop Williams for relief, saying they were
in “serious theological dispute” with Bishop Howard, and found it
“impossible in all conscience to accept his direct ministry.”
Grace Church withdrew from The Episcopal Church on Jan. 1,
and was received by the Primate of Rwanda, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini.
Bishop Howard responded on Jan. 9 by filing a cross claim with Canterbury,
charging Rwanda had violated Florida’s diocesan boundaries.
Bishop Howard subsequently inhibited the clergy from all
six congregations for “abandonment of communion” after the six variously
affiliated with the churches of Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. In March 2006, the
diocese initiated litigation against Redeemer after it declined to vacate
its building.
Ten months after the petition was forwarded to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, it was passed to the Panel of Reference for
review. However, all but Redeemer had withdrawn their petitions by September
2006 when retired Archbishop Maurice Sinclair of the Southern Cone and
attorney Robert Tong of Sydney visited Florida to meet with the two sides.
Archbishop Sinclair and Mr. Tong submitted their report to
the panel’s chairman, retired Archbishop Peter Carnley of Australia, by year
end, and copies of the final report were given to the diocese and Redeemer
on Feb. 28.
The panel stated its goal was to seek a “pastoral accord”
between the diocese and congregation without compromising the litigants’
“Christian conscience.”
The panel suggested a “good neighbor Episcopal ministry”
program whereby Bishop Howard would delegate his authority to a nearby
bishop of The Episcopal Church who was “acceptable to both the diocese and
the parish.” This “neighbor” bishop’s oversight would “include effective and
necessary sharing of decisions with regard to clergy appointments for the
parish and ordination process.”
Licensing of Redeemer’s clergy and the “ordination
process” for candidates proposed by Redeemer would “require the signature of
the neighbor bishop together with that of the diocesan bishop.”
In return, Redeemer would “unambiguously come under the
jurisdiction of the Diocese of Florida” and would commit to “full, generous
and sustained support” of its ministries.
In a Feb. 28 e-mail to Chris Smith, the archbishop’s chief
of staff, the Rev. Canon Kurt Dunkle, canon to the ordinary for the Diocese
of Florida, inquired whether full communion between the bishop and parish
was part of the panel recommendations.
“This matter of communion is central to the bishop’s
analysis of the panel’s recommendation,” Canon Dunkle said.
“The issue of communion was at the heart of the reason we
asked for another bishop in the first place, and is still a major question
for the larger Communion,” Fr. Lebhar said in a response to Mr. Smith.
Noting that the panel report did not directly address the issue of
communion, Fr. Lebhar added, “I assume that its not being addressed meant
that it would remain part of a reconciliation process, not a prerequisite
for it.”
Upcoming Events
Bishop David Bena to Speak in Virginia This
Weekend
Gainesville, VA
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Bishop Bena, who serves as the suffragan bishop of the Convocation of
Anglicans in North America (CANA) as well as as a member of the AAC Board of
Trustees, will preach at Church of the Word in Gainesville, VA, this
weekend.
Details
Rwandan Bishop to Speak in North Georgia This Weekend
Woodstock, GA
Sunday, March 25, 2007
The Rt. Rev. John Rucyahana, Bishop of Shyira, Rwanda, will be witnessing
at two consecutive times the morning of March 25 at Resurrection Anglican
Church in Woodstock, GA.
Details
AAC/Southeastern Wisconsin Chapter General Meeting
Oconomowoc, WI
Saturday, March 31, 2007
The guest speaker will be David Kalvelage, Executive Editor of The Living
Church; he will speak on "Tanzania and Beyond."
Details
Christian Men's Weekend 2007
Forest Falls, CA
Friday-Sunday, May 18-20, 2007
A retreat for Christian men and friends sponsored by St. James Men's
Commission, St. James Anglican Church (Newport Beach, CA). The keynote
speaker is the Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, 7th Archbishop of the Anglican
Church in Uganda; Bishop John-David Schofield (San Joaquin) will also
minister at the retreat.
Details
Christ Church Jerusalem Sends Note to Rectors and Wardens
A note to Rectors and Wardens:
The Good Friday offering of many Episcopal churches has traditionally gone
to the Middle East, generally to the Bishop of the Middle East, at Saint
George's Cathedral in Jerusalem. This ministry, primarily directed to Arab
Christians, is promoted widely by the National Episcopal Church and receives
a great deal of support for that reason. If that is where you are happy
sending your money then please know there is little reason to read further.
There is an orthodox Anglican ministry in Jerusalem that
is quite effective and would be deeply appreciative of your support, if you
would be open to an idea.
Christ Church, Jerusalem, located at Jaffa Gate in the Old
City, was the first Protestant church to be established in the Middle East.
This Anglican church is thoroughly orthodox and teaches its many Christian
visitors about the Jewish roots of the Christian Faith, encouraging them to
combat anti-Semitism and to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem." It ministers
to Jewish and Arab Christians alike and also hosts several Messianic Jewish
congregations.
If you decide to join a growing number of parishes who are
directing their Good Friday offering to Christ Church, you may make your
check payable to: The Friends of Alexander College with the following on the
memo line of the check: "Good Friday offering for Christ Church,
Jerusalem." Send it to P. O. Box 334, Sewickley, PA 15143. You will
receive an acknowledgement. (The Friends of Alexander College is the fund
raising arm in the United States for Christ Church, Jerusalem.)
Should you wish to learn more about the ministry of Christ
Church, telephone Theresa Newell at (412) 741-7498, email
tnewell@tesm.edu
or go to
www.itac-israel.org.
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