More from Bishop Duncan's Press Conference

Anglican Mainstream is transcribing the press conference and posting it in small pieces. This is another segment from them. ed.

Question: What advice would you give to traditionalists in the United Kingdom?

The most important thing that traditionalists can do is do the mission and preach preach the gospel because we actually know that the gates of hell won’t prevail against the church. And when the church is the church it has the Lord’s blessing on it. The first thing, whether in the States or here, is to be the church.

The secondary piece I bring is this matter of warning. Pay attention. Do not assume that others will be able to deal with this. Clergy and parishes will need to understand what it is that we are facing. It is an onslaught of materialist, secularist, post-modern, post-biblical. Pay attention to whether it has been done before.

British-led and British dominated Anglicanism, that is no more. The best study of what is happening, and it is not only happening in Anglicanism, but it is happening in the whole Christian world, is Philip Jenkins “The Next Christendom”. The centre of Christian energy and Christian life has shifted to the Global South.

Is it not interesting how the Episcopal Church simply has its own view on everything and it believes its view is correct and it is able to leave behind not only Bob Duncan but Catholic faith and Catholic order? It is able to leave behind what has been agreed is the meaning of scripture, the person of Jesus, of Christian morality. It does not surprise me that those in the Episcopal Church would say that we have dealt with him now and we can move on. It is interesting that the presiding bishop has been engaged in trying to establish some new diocese in Pittsburgh. It is amazing that they have moved on but they find they have to contend with me perhaps much more than they thought they would.


Church Times: True Catholicity is the local church is the Catholic church. I fear that what is happened is that you actually are denying the catholicity of the Anglican Communion. You are refusing to accept the godly discipline exercised by your fathers in the faith. Indeed your actions are divisive and pushing the Anglican Communion towards a greater Protestantism and rejecting the balance between the two traditions which has been maintained over the years. How would you reply to the charge that this is just refusing to take your punishment and is sour grapes?

Answer: If there were no traction for the position that I uphold and what I represent throughout the world, there would not have been a province of the communion willing to take me in despite the discipline and say that they could not recognize the discipline. Indeed senior bishops in the Church of England said that they could not recognize the discipline. I think that perhaps the best way to think about what I have done is in the view that the Archbishop of Jerusalem and Middle East, Mouneer Anis Bishop of Egypt, North Africa and the Horn of Africa wrote publicly at the time of my deposition when he said “What you have done is what my predecessor Athanasius has done. He was three times exiled from his see by the Arians.” This is so significant and the breach of historic faith and order by the Episcopal Church so significant that major provinces within the Communion are unprepared to recognize the Episcopal Church’s discipline and to say that this Bishop represents what we stand for and who we stand with. I wish it were not so. I wish we had not come to this. But I am prepared to stand through this season whatever the cost. That is because Christians have been prepared to stand whatever the cost. I would not have chosen me for this role. But it is the role that has fallen to me.


Question:Do you see yourself as a martyr figure?

Answer: I am not a martyr figure. I am chiefly a parish priest who happened to be elected a bishop, who prefers being a parish priest but who is willing to do on behalf of his parish priests and the people throughout the world what it is that is required for their protection.

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century entered elements into Catholic church order which we continue to wrestle with. The church recognising there was a prior division between East and West in the eleventh century. The way the Lutherans define catholicity and apostolic order was are we at one with the apostle’s teaching? I think that is a very helpful definition. So the Catholic church is all of those who are at one with the apostle’s teaching. The Episcopal Church is not at one with the apostle’s teaching.


Question: Do you agree with the estimates that 19 or 20 congregations have chosen not to go with you?

Answer. When all is done there will be something like 20 congregations that choose to stay with the Episcopal Church.

Question. Will that have an effect on your budget?

Answer. Surely. Our budget is derived from the budgets of the parishes. We have a very low assessment rate that runs for the smallest parishes at 5% of their income to the largest parishes at 11%. You might contrast that with the average in the Episcopal Church of 22%. I think that some of those 20 congregations when they realize what they will be paying to the Episcopal Church will realize what a deal they had before. We will suffer from that but we are prepared to do that. Others in other parts of the world suffer far more than we do.

I believe it was the Church Times here that looked at the membership rolls and reported that the second, third and fourth largest congregations in my diocese were not part of the realignment. That’s rather like looking at the membership rolls of the Church of England and comparing the 26 million on the books with the 800,000 that attend on Sunday. If you actually look at the attendance figures, the three most substantial churches in the diocese are with us and would in fact have left the diocese if we had not realigned. Interestingly, the largest of the non-realigning parishes is Calvary Church which has had me in court for the last five years. A congregation that has not grown in the last five years and in fact when I came to the diocese in 1992 was the second largest in Sunday attendance; it is now the fourth largest in Sunday attendance. The gospel it preaches has not sold well.


Question. When the Diocese of San Joaquin left the Episcopal Church it starting calling itself the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin. Pittsburgh has not gone in for a name-change. As a practical matter is this not going to become very confusing for the poor old journalists in Pittsburgh?

Answer. Yes it is difficult for the journalists in Pittsburgh but actually it does not confuse the court at all. We have always been the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, we continue to be the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and all of the properties titled in the name of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. It does not confuse the court but it has made it harder on the journalists. I am sorry brothers and sisters for that.

We do not think they have a lock up on the name “Episcopal”. There are two basic ways our tradition is named: one is by the form of church governance which means it is Episcopal, like the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East and the other is Anglican which describes the place from which we all came – England. We are the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and will continue to do business as the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. In fact we believe that we are consistent with what Episcopalians have always believed, and it is not us who have changed by the Episcopal Church. We are not going to cede the name over to them for a whole variety of reasons. Our folks are both Anglican and Episcopal.


Question: Jim Rosenthal: Back to the Catholicity issue. Taking just three churches in Pimlico, you would have no clue that they were of the same denomination or the same Catholic tradition. Some would have no liturgical service, the minister will be dressed very informally and lay people will be doing what it is not normally expected for lay people to do. That Anglican identity seems to be waning in this country and though there was controversy around the 1979 prayer book, it was a unifying factor. I do not have a question as such but would value your perspective.

Answer: The great question for Anglicanism, not just Anglicanism in England, is “How can this tradition be coherent?” Many of you will know the work of Aidan Nicholls, the English Dominican, whose work, published in 1993 “The Panther and the Hind” looked at the Church of England post 1662 Book of Common Prayer. His argument, which I am convinced by, is that what kept the Church of England in its three streams of expression always true was the Book of Common Prayer. It was not that the Catholics broke themselves against the evangelicals, it was that the Catholics broke themselves against the boundaries of the Prayer Book. It was not that the Evangelicals were kept in order by the Catholics, it was the evangelicals were kept in the Catholic tradition by the Prayer Book and the same way with what I now call the Pentecostal stream.

The question is for Anglicanism, will it cohere in the 21st century? The Prayer Book was the magisterium. It was that piece which kept us under the word and gave us our theological understandings. One of the challenges I put before the common cause partners in the States was how are we going to have a common language. The Great Book Psalter was the common language. We have no common language any more nor do we have a secured theology. Covenants and even the Jerusalem statement won’t do for the people in the pews what the Prayer Book did. The great challenge for 21st century Anglicanism is “Can it cohere? Will it endure?”


Question from Church of England Newspaper: What would you say to clergy who are in same-sex relationships?

Answer: I would say “Brothers, this is not helpful and this is not actually the way the church has ordered itself. The church, particularly Anglicanism, has been an extraordinarily pastoral tradition and has met people wherever they were, whatever it is that they struggle with. But to be in holy order meant to be in holy order, that is a different requirement was asked of you, of both your clarity about believing and your holiness in living. I do not think being in holy orders [for such folk] is an appropriate way to go.”

Question from Church of England Newspaper: What would you say to people of a great variety of beliefs who exercise restraint over their own interpretations of scripture and tradition in order to try and preserve the Anglican Communion at this very challenging time when you yourself have not exercised restraint?

The question is “Is it I who have gone against the communion and the order of the Catholic church or is it the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada who have gone against the received order of the Anglican Communion and the mainstream Christian church?” I believe it is the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada that have broken ranks and have created the crisis in which we find ourselves.