News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/18/2008
VirtueOnline was one of a small group of media invited to hear Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori speak to the National Press Club in Washington DC this week. What she had to say about Religion in the Public Square left much to be desired, but what she had to say about the current state of The Episcopal Church was filled with flat out lies and half truths.
Following her speech, National Press Club President Sylvia Smith asked, "A number of questioners have asked something like this - why has the Episcopal Church failed to follow the path of negotiation in light of the biblical injunction to avoid litigation?"
JEFFERTS SCHORI: Well, we tried for a very long time to negotiate and came to a place where there was no willingness for negotiation. So at that point, you ask the courts to enforce the law of the land.
This is a flat out lie.
In the Diocese of Virginia, negotiations were well underway in late 2006. A Protocol was established between Bishop Peter Lee and the leaders of some 20 parishes led by CANA Bishop Martyn Minns in order to find an amicable way forward with respect to the properties. Suddenly in January 2007, Lee said he would not renew the 30-day standstill agreement with the clergy and members of congregations who had voted to leave the Episcopal Church to associate with the Anglican Church of Nigeria. By doing so, Lee opened the door to massive litigation in the courts to seize properties from these orthodox priests.
Enter Jefferts Schori's attorney David Booth Beers. With a stroke of the pen, Lee negated all the amicable agreements that had been signed and agreed upon. A vestry parishioner from Falls Church told VOL at that time, "While we had hoped that it would not come to this, it appears that after talking to David Booth Beers, the diocese (bishop, standing committee, et al.) decided to pursue litigation."
Their argument was that they wanted to mind "the pastoral responsibilities to those faithful Episcopalians in the congregations who chose to remain loyal to the Diocese and The Episcopal Church."
The truth is the Diocese of Virginia simply called off negotiations aimed at reaching amicable property settlements because of pressure from the National Church. David Booth Beers, her chancellor indicated to the congregations that he intended to intervene in the Virginia matter. This new move constituted a change of position by the present Presiding Bishop from her predecessor, who had indicated that resolution of property issues should be left to individual dioceses. Ironically, it was Lee who frequently called this protocol a "useful way forward" as a means of staying out of court. Now it was over. Bishop Lee succumbed to the demands of Jefferts Schori and Beers.
This was not the first time Jefferts Schori did this. She demonstrated her desire for "shalom" by intervening in an ongoing lawsuit between the Diocese of Central New York and a local parish that had fled that diocesan jurisdiction.
The Presiding Bishop's response to the question at the National Press Club was flat out untrue.
Then she was asked this:
SMITH: And how destructive to your organization as a church, as a singular entity, do you think this litigation will be ultimately?
JEFFERTS SCHORI: I actually think we're past the worst of it. We've had positive results in a number of cases. The ones, the large ones hanging fire at the moment are the ones in California (and a decision from the Supreme Court is expected within a couple of weeks) and the one in Virginia. And that will undoubtedly be appealed to the Supreme Court in Virginia. It's interesting that it's based on a statute that was passed during the Civil War to permit bodies to divide on the basis of attitudes towards slavery. So we think when we get past a couple of these big ones, that there will be relatively little left to deal with.
VIRTUEONLINE: How can she say that there will be no more big cases when she is already at war with Bishops John-David Schofield (San Joaquin) and Jack Iker (Ft. Worth) and Bishop Duncan (Pittsburgh) are next?
Furthermore the Rev. John Yates underscored why these congregations own their property. First and foremost, the deeds generally grant the property to local congregations, not the Diocese. Second, Virginia courts have said more than once that so-called denomination "trusts" in congregational property are not valid in the state.
Third, congregations' properties have been purchased, built, improved and maintained with donations from the members of each congregation, not from the Diocese.
Fourth, the flow of financial support has run from the congregations to the Diocese, not the other way around. It has nothing to do with slavery.
The requirements of the Virginia Division Statute, Virginia Code § 57-9, recognize the right of a congregation to keep its property when a majority votes to separate from a divided denomination. In most of these churches, 90% or more of the members voted to leave the denomination due to the clear division within The Episcopal Church, which the Fairfax County Circuit Court affirmed.
Furthermore, the use of the 1979 Dennis Canon has only been successful in places where "neutral principles" on property are not recognized, but even there challenges are now going forward to state Supreme Courts that do not guarantee the national church will automatically win. Lawyers for conservative parishes have stiffened their response to revisionist Episcopal bishops who claim title to the properties. Many are prepared to go all the way for their clients in order to retain properties. The latest is that of an orthodox Episcopal parish in Central New York, which is appealing to the State Supreme Court for what they say is their rightful ownership of the property they inhabit.
The Presiding Bishop told her audience that the world is hungry for hope. She challenged the media to take the less traveled road of feeding the public with more stories of encouragement rather than of scandal and controversy.
VIRTUEONLINE: We would love to, but the Episcopal Church is fraught with scandal and stories of encouragement are few and far between. The church is in numerical decline with no sign of a turnaround. Parishes and dioceses are fleeing the revisionist clutches of bishops who no longer (if they ever did) hold to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. The church has publicly ordained a non-celibate activist homosexual bishop whose very actions and presence is tearing the church apart. In fact, it is tearing the whole Anglican Communion into pieces pitting province against province, even affecting how Islam views Christianity in some parts of Africa. What word of encouragement would you have us reveal pray tell?
JEFFERTS SCHORI: "On two occasions in the last few days, leaders in my own church have said to me that the church only makes the front page if it's about schism or sex - and in the current era, preferably both."
VIRTUEONLINE: Well if the shoe fits...She might have mentioned that John Shelby Spong's12 Theses, which repudiate almost every Christian doctrine, have gone unchallenged by the House of Bishops. Few news outlets thought it made much of a story. This reporter thinks it does. Or that the first person Spong laid hands on to become a priest subsequently died of AIDS. Or that the Roman Catholic Church is weeding out every light in the loafer, twinkle-toed priest from Holy Orders because of the enormous damage they have done that church, while TEC goes in exactly the opposite direction.
It was the leadership of TEC that brought on the schism (not the orthodox who only want the church to stand up and say that it will uphold the church's teaching). And most reporters could care less about sex if TEC weren't promoting LGBT sexualities like so much acceptable pornography. Since 2003, the Episcopal Church has been grabbing the headlines over homogenital sex, even promoting a transgendered priest from the Diocese of Massachusetts at Lambeth 2008, for God's sake. And the Presiding Bishop thinks these are not going to make the headlines? She thinks the deep rifts within the Anglican Communion are just fun-n-games that are, in actuality, forcing entire congregations to break from TEC, and causing priests to lose paychecks and pensions for the sake of their consciences and the gospel while some 22 provinces say they are in "impaired communion" with TEC. Where's the good news, pray tell?
Calling it an "oxymoron" with respect to the competing new North American Anglican body on her turf, Jefferts Schori said this, "We've said for hundreds of years that bishops are responsible for certain areas of geography and that the people in that area together with the bishop are evidence of the church. If there are some people in the same area that claim they're of the same tradition (Anglicanism) but aren't willing to be in relationship, that's an oxymoron to us."
VIRTUEONLINE: It is also "oxymoronic" to have bishops like Charles Bennison covering up a family sex scandal, publicly denying fundamental doctrines of the faith and expecting to see out their Episcopal patronages with fat pensions.
JEFFERTS SCHORI: "When there are two bodies in the same place that say they are not in communion with each other, then functionally what you've got is two different religious traditions. It's an ecumenical relationship rather than a communion relationship."
VIRTUEONLINE: Nonsense. What you have are two religions, not two religious traditions. The reason you have a new province is because one religion looks more like the Unitarian Church with a liturgy and a fifth of Scotch, while the other upholds what 20 centuries of the church has always upheld. No brainer.
Jefferts Schori said the church is still pondering questions about gays and lesbians.
VIRTUEONLINE: Not true. TEC has fully decided what it believes about "gays and lesbians". "Listening" and waiting are over. This summer General Convention will put the final skylights (same-sex rites and affirmation of homogenital bishops) on the TEC roof so that everyone can see all the sexual arrangements in the bedrooms below. The "new thing" much touted by Gene Robinson is the old immorality writ large in a different time and space.
The Presiding Bishop also evaded a direct answer as to whether the biblical institution of marriage applies to same-sex couples. "Which biblical institutions for marriage? Solomon's many, many, many wives? The concubines? The slaves who bore children for their male masters? There are some very odd images of family life in the Bible."
VIRTUEONLINE: The Bible has a New Testament. Jesus and the Holy Ghost do not approve of any of these arrangements. In fact, Jesus ratified only one form of sexual behavior as recorded in the gospels, marriage between a man and a woman, which was "from the beginning".
JEFFERTS SCHORI: "When I look at the challenges that the gay and lesbian community and their supporters have brought to the church over the past several decades, I have heard a prophetic voice crying that has gathered a community of support and has asked that community of the whole church to look at its own tradition, to critique its present reality on the basis of that tradition. Do we consider some members of the body more equal than others? Do we consider that some rights of the church are available to some and not to others? We're at least asking hard questions, the church as a whole hasn't reached a conclusion about this but we're asking very challenging questions."
VIRTUEONLINE: And what exactly have "gays and lesbians" brought to the table? Pansexual priests have not made churches grow in fact they have been systematically emptying them. The Diocese of New Hampshire (Gene Robinson's diocese) has been emptying out with each passing year. Furthermore sex is not a "right" it is a gift, and God never gave the "gift" of buggery to the Early Church or even to the later one. There have been no new revelations on sexuality in 2000 years, only self-serving sexual idolatry.
JEFFERTS SCHORI: While schism and sex in the church may be difficult for the media to pass up or for the public to look past, it is only a "rare few who are consumed by conflict" and those conflicts do not tend to last for they are "not life-giving."
VIRTUEONLINE: What is "not life-giving" is sodomy. It is wreaking havoc throughout the whole Anglican Communion. It has consumed one primatial gathering after another. It has consumed once-in-a-decade Lambeth conferences. It has consumed millions of dollars in travel and hotels while Anglican Archbishops argued over its acceptability. And it has brought nothing to life. Nothing.
Meanwhile, Western pan-Anglicanism churches continue to wither and die while Global South Anglicanism thrives with millions of born again Anglicans populating the African, Asian and Latin American continents.
Finally, the Presiding Bishop commented, "I'd also like to challenge you to consider the possibility of a prophetic role for the media. You know what investigative journalism can achieve. Watergate comes to mind. So also does the picture of a child alight with burning napalm that so galvanized this nation during the Vietnam War. Your ability to offer, not just scandal, but real critique of unjust systems and policies can help to change the world. You're pretty good at digging out corruption scandals..."
And with respect to The Episcopal Church and Jefferts Schori, Virtueonline is more than happy to oblige.
END
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