Episcopal diocese allows graceful exit of former clergy

Via TitusOneNine:

Monday, October 05, 2009

By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh will not take action against the clergy who left the Episcopal Church.

This is the diocese that remained in the Episcopal Church after the 2008 diocesan convention voted to secede from the denomination with Archbishop Robert Duncan.

The decision was announced today, a day after the one-year anniversary of the split. Instead of removing their clergy credentials, the Episcopal diocese will "release" them to become licensed in any church they choose.

Both bodies still call themselves the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. The diocese that remained in the Episcopal Church has 28 parishes, while the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) has 57 parishes and is affiliated with both the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in South America and the new Anglican Church in North America.

The decision affects about 100 priests and deacons. Archbishop Duncan was deposed -- stripped of his clergy credentials -- by the Episcopal House of Bishops in September 2008, so this doesn't apply to him.

On the day of the secession vote all clergy who wanted to leave the Episcopal Church received credentials from the Province of the Southern Cone, which, along with the Episcopal Church, is part of the 80 million-member global Anglican Communion.

The split occurred because those in the Anglican diocese believed that the Episcopal Church had failed to uphold biblical teaching on matters ranging from the divinity of Christ to sexual ethics. The two dioceses share a cathedral, but the Episcopal diocese is suing the Anglican diocese to obtain control of diocesan property.

Pittsburgh was the second of four dioceses whose conventions have voted to leave the Episcopal Church. In the other three, the bishops of the continuing Episcopal dioceses have either deposed or begun the process to depose the clergy who chose to serve in the Anglican diocese.

The Rev. James Simons, president of the Standing Committee that governs Pittsburgh's Episcopal diocese, said he had no desire to take punitive action against clergy who left the Episcopal Church.

"We're doing this for pastoral reasons," he said. "We do not want to see our brothers and sisters deposed."
More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09278/1003245-455.stm#ixzz0T9OrsOH3