Perhaps Andrew Carey will find this “Episcopal Café” essay on the Anglican Communion more to his liking:

 

Kurt

Brooklyn, NY

The “Episcopal Café” website has a good response to the ACI’s silliness:

 

Kurt

Brooklyn, NY

Look, I don’t pretend to be a canon lawyer. It’s enough for me that the elected leadership of our Church has clearly said that neither a parish nor a diocese can leave TEC. They are the interpreters of our Constitution and Canon Law. The bulk of American Civil Court decisions have agreed with this position as well. They almost always defer to a denomination’s highest ecclesial authorities. The dissidents have had ample opportunity to argue their cases, and they have proved generally unsuccessful. Most recently, on July 23, 2009, the Superior Court in California ruled that a diocese cannot leave the Episcopal Church and that Episcopal Bishop Lamb is the head of the legitimate Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin. Deposed TEC Bishop Schofield, who now heads an ACNA diocese in the area, has been required to relinquish all money, property and any assumed authority to the legitimate authorities of TEC.

 

My understanding is the Presiding Bishop was originally the title given to the bishop who chaired the House of Bishops meetings. Then, the PB by custom was the senior bishop in order of consecration. Starting in 1926, the office became elective, the PB being chosen at General Convention  of the Episcopal Church. The office now has a nine-year term. The titles of  Most Rev. and Primate having been picked up along the way over the past 200-some years. You challenge our usage?

 

 

 

“Things are extremely serious, and yet at national and general convention there seems to be public denial and a quite desperate application of all funds earmarked for evangelism [including trust funds] into supporting litigation and the puppet dioceses set up by Mrs Schori.”--Pageantmaster

 

“Puppet dioceses”?

The Episcopal dioceses in question are the legitimate article. People as individuals or groups may leave parishes and dioceses (14% have done so as you pointed out), but the parishes and dioceses remain Episcopal. Practically every American court decision thus far has agreed with this.

 

Obviously, the coming period is one of consolidation and re-building. Perhaps we can revisit the numbers game in, say, 10 years?

 

“MRS. Schori”?

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, PhD is Presiding Bishop and Primate of the American Episcopal Church. Please try to show some respect for her position if not for her personally, okay?

 

 

Before you threaten anyone with legal action, Pageantmaster, I suggest that you get your facts straight first. The fact is that South Carolina is NOT “the ONLY growing diocese” in TEC. From 1993 to 2003, more than 80 domestic dioceses of TEC experienced growth in percentage of communicants during that ten year period. This includes my own Diocese of Long Island, which grew a modest 3.8 per cent from 42,612 to 44,249 communicants. The uberliberal Diocese of New York grew 29.4 percent during this period from 37, 523 to 48,558. South Carolina grew from 18, 207 to 24, 299 during this period, with nearly 4,000 FEWER communicants than NY.

“Kurt - an easy jibe to throw out from beautiful Brooklyn - SC is the ONLY growing diocese so perhaps there is something you can learn from.”--Pageantmaster

 

Or, perhaps they are the ONLY diocese fibbing about their stats...?

 

Kurt from Brooklyn

If I were some folks on this site, I wouldn’t get too excited about Bishop Lawrence and South Carolina. If memory serves me (and I was a small boy at the time) South Carolina had some of the most racist Episcopalians in the country in the 1950s and 1960s. They were also the state that began the American Civil War 150 years ago. As one wag famously put it: South Carolina is too small to be its own country, but too big to be an insane asylum.

Good grief! One American priest blogs his private opinions and the next thing you know the nasty Yankees are planning a “civil war” in England!

 

Father Mark Harris has a good analysis: http://anglicanfuture.blogspot.com/2009/08/bp-anderson-paranoia-copy-cat-caper.html

 

 

 

I think it less a matter of my confusing the three groups than the fact that the three groups are somewhat different in America and in the UK.

 

Broad Churchmen/women here are generally theologically modern/liberal despite their liturgical differences.  American Broad Church can be liturgically High or Low in appearance, depending on parish custom.

 

Low Church Anglicanism in the United States is generally quite different than the Evangelical-Low Church worship traditions found in either the Church of England or Church of Ireland, which resemble (to us Americans, anyway) Methodist or even Baptist services. Calvinism here is very rare; in fact, I have never met an American Episcopalian who described himself or herself as a Calvinist. I have met a very few Evangelicals who come from the Wesleyian tradition.

 

Low Churches here often  use elements which would be considered  High Church in, say,  Ireland, e.g., candles and crosses on altars, use of processional crosses, statues and images of saints in churches, etc. Even the only self-proclamed Evangelical seminary here (Trinity School for Ministry) occasionally has services with clergy in Eucharistic vestments and the use of incense.

 

High Church-Anglo Catholic parishes also differ from many in England in that they are almost entirely and adamently non-Roman. Anglo-papalism has not been much in vogue here since Father Paul Wattson led the Franciscian Society of the Atonement to Rome in 1909. The absence of anglo-papalism may also be due, in part anyway, to the fact that the Catholic Revival in the American Church began here around 1783, rather than 1833 as in England.

“The impression I get from reading the missives and utterances of the TEC leadership is that TEC is gradually moving from Anglicanism to Unitarianism.”--Iconoclast

 

That’s interesting. Some evangelicals have been saying that about TEC since the Rev. James Freeman took King’s Chapel Boston in the Unitarian direction around 1785 or 1787.

 

“Such moves as there are in England were in General Synod where signatures of 1/4 of Synod and 8 bishops were obtained to a request for a debate on recognising ACNA.   This is a pretty much unprecedented level of support for such a request as far as I am aware, and it is likely that the matter will be debated at the next Synod in February.”-- Pageantmaster

 

Certainly, it is unprecedented for your General Synod; but as I said, I doubt that such a position will receive much more than that percentage next February. As you know, there are plenty of people, regardless of their feelings about Bishop Robinson, etc. who believe that extending recognition to ACNA would be very unwise, for a whole number of reasons.  In fact, I would think that our affirmation of support for the Anglican Communion, as well as the clarification of the mind of the General Convention, would make recognition of ACNA less likely than six months ago. It should put to rest the anxieties of some who fear we will simply shake our sandals free and walk away from the mess. And, of course, until an additional partnered gay person is consecrated a bishop of TEC, even the formalities of the now-dead “Windsor process” are being observed (at least by our side).

 

“I know that it is not your personal responsibility Kurt, but many of us wonder why TEC wants to be in Communion with us, when it pays no attention to anything we say?    We are left wondering: what do we have in common, and is the trouble which results from TEC worth all the effort others go to?     I personally have never wanted to see TEC expelled.     However that does not mean that anything goes and that includes losing the majority of the Communion who think that TEC is taking the mickey.... as we say over here.”-- Pageantmaster 

 

Well, that’s an interesting question. I guess it matters what you mean by “us”. If by that, you mean English con evos on the one hand, and the anglo-papalists on the other, then most Episcopalians I know of would rather not have much to do with you. Certainly in the con evo department, there are plenty of such people in the multitude of Protestant sects in this country, so we need not go abroad to find them. Anglo-papalists, though, are almost as rare as hen’s teeth here. As long as such people are not pushing their agendas on us, or trying to expel us from the Communion that we were instrumental in creating in the first place (along with the Canadians), then we can live with them if not in the same apartment at least in the same building.

 

If, on the other hand, what you mean by “us” is liberal Catholics, Broad and Low Churchmen/women, then most of us feel right at home. But I guess, at least for now, one cannot be in communion with the latter without at least offering to be in communion with the former--some of whom have already refused to continue in communion.

 

"TEC will exist long after the AC dissolves"--tjmcmahon (selectively quoting me)

 

Or whatever. Some folks here on the Fulcrum site are so certain, eager in fact, to be rid of TEC‘s presence in the Anglican Communion. Certainly, our elected leadership, both clerical and lay, have made it very clear that we will not quit, walk away from, voluntarily depart, etc. If TEC (and the AC of C) are pushed out, well then, interesting things may begin to happen on a world scale that many con evos and anglo-papalists are not prepared for. Certainly, it’s very foolish to assume that 35 provinces will be left with Canterbury after such expulsions, and the ecclesial shock waves they are bound to cause. Beware of unintended consequences.