Posted by Kendall Harmon at TitusOneNine:
I had high hopes for Katharine Jefferts Schori when she was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the USA. Although she appeared to be on the extreme ‘left’ of the Anglican spectrum in many of her actions and statements, it was clear that here was a person of great depth, and a hinterland beyond church politics. There was a possibility at one stage that she might even attempt to lead the Episcopal Church into a process of reconciliation internally and with the Anglican Communion, at least temporarily stalling the lemming-like dash of her Church into heterodox oblivion.
It seems I was mistaken. So far she has shown the same adaptability of her predecessor. Like Bishop Frank Griswold she’s signed statements at Primates’ Meetings and then gone on to reject them in every particular. It always struck me as the height of absurdity that Bishop Griswold could sign the Primates’ Communiqué from the October 2003 meeting of the Primates, warning his own Church that to consecrate Gene Robinson would result in the ‘tearing of the fabric’ of the Communion and then to preside at the consecration of Robinson himself only a month or two later. His adaptability owed itself to his oft-expressed belief in ‘pluriform truths’. Consequently, he could enter into the opposing truths of the Primates, and the Episcopal Church, simultaneously. Most people would call this duplicity, his defenders would probably call it ‘postmodernism’.
Interestingly enough, while ditching the nauseating term ‘pluriform’, Katharine Jefferts Schori has taken a similar trajectory. At the Primates’ Tanzania meeting she assented to a communiqué calling on the Episcopal Church to put in place moratoria on same-sex blessings and consecrations, to cease lawsuits, and to provide a system of ‘alternative primatial oversight’ which reported to an international Anglican panel, of which she herself would be a member. Months later, it turns out, that she didn’t mean this at all. Sure, the American House of Bishops have promised some restraint over elections of practicing homosexual bishops, but they’ve said nothing meaningful about either samesex blessings or instituted any real changes to their system of ‘extended’ Episcopal visitation which is rejected by the very people it is intended to serve. But the area in which she has most betrayed the very same statement which she once signed up to, is on the matter of lawsuits. It feels impossible to keep count of the number of priests deposed by dioceses, or the number of disputes over property throughout the Episcopal Church. The biggest, of course, will be over dioceses extricating themselves from the Episcopal Church and linking to other Anglican provinces. It seems clear that Southern Cone is preparing to take dioceses under their wing, but there may also be African provinces prepared to offer similar ‘oversight’ to so-called ‘network’ dioceses. These dioceses argue that to be part of the Episcopal Church is a voluntary agreement, and testify that the diocese is the fundamental unit of the Church and the Bishop’s link to the Anglicanism through the recognition of the Archbishop of Canterbury is unrelated to the Provincial structures. So far three dioceses: San Joaquin, Fort Worth and Pittsburgh have taken steps to remove clauses relating to unqualified accession to the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church from their own diocesan constitutions. These steps require votes at two diocesan conventions. It is by no means certain that these moves at the second convention will gain the required votes, but Presiding Bishop Schori is out to get them.
In recent open letters to the dioceses she has threatened the bishops with deposition, under the almost summary procedure of a canon on the abandonment of communion. The canon is a housekeeping exercise, a way of deposing priests, and bishops separately who have already departed the Episcopal Church to another church completely. There is no trial, no ecclesiastical court, just a determination of abandonment of communion by a communion, a period of two months to recant, a hearing at the House of Bishops and a vote by the bishops. Ordinarily this canon shouldn’t be used until a bishop has actually departed communion, but the Presiding Bishop intends to use this measure, rather than presentment and a trial of a bishop, in order to hasten matters along. She will then declare the dioceses vacant, gather the parishes which remain loyal and have them elect a new bishop. Furthermore, it is the intention of the Episcopal Church to make sure that no churches, or dioceses, align themselves to any other part of the Anglican Communion and take their property with them. So the path she has chosen is not to seek reconciliation and peace with priests and bishops opposed to the direction of the Episcopal Church but to threaten them - thereby alienating them further. There is no doubt that this will be read widely as a further abandonment of the Anglican Communion by the Episcopal Church. But it may also be a sign that at last their true colours are being revealed and the dominant liberal faction in the Episcopal Church is resigned to accepting the logic of their position and going it alone.
--This article appears in the Church of England Newspaper, November 16, 2007 edition, page 12
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