Bishop Lawrence: How to Do It Right

from Anglican Curmudgeon by A. S. Haley

Bishop Mark Lawrence of the Diocese of South Carolina shows every other bishop in the Episcopal Church -- including especially the Presiding Bishop -- how one canonically removes clergy under one's jurisdiction who have departed ECUSA for another province of the Anglican Communion.

One does it by a simple, two-sentence declaration of removal: "Notice is hereby given that on October 21, 2010, acting with the advice and consent of the clerical members of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of South Carolina, I removed N. N. and N. N. from the ordained ministry of the Episcopal Church. This action was taken for causes which do not affect the moral character of the persons removed from the ordained ministry of the Episcopal Church."

There is no phony or illegal resort to the Abandonment Canon (IV.10); there is no phony pretense of treating some communication from the departing clergy as a "voluntary renunciation of the ordained ministry" which the bishop uses to claim that "N. N. is released from the obligations of all Ministerial offices, and is deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority as a Minister of God's Word and Sacraments conferred in Ordinations."

The integrity of the Communion, and of the role which the Episcopal Church (USA) plays in it, is honored. The Recorder of Ordinations is notified, and the clergy are no longer on the rolls of ordained ministers in the Episcopal Church -- but they are still fully ordained, and qualified to be licensed as ministers in another province of the Anglican Communion.

See how simple it is to follow the canons when one is of a mind to honor the Church's membership in the Anglican Communion? Bishop Lawrence once again puts his colleagues to shame.

That does not stop the usual back-biters from sniping at him. They and their ilk believe that despite the binding precedent of South Carolina's highest court ruling that the Dennis Canon had no legal effect in the State, he should have wasted diocesan resources, and frayed tempers still more, by a vain pursuit of St. Andrew's parish property in the state courts. (You can find the link to The Lead's post to this effect in the column to the right.) It is attitudes such as theirs, which the Presiding Bishop exemplifies, which are wrecking the Church and the Communion.

Thank you for setting the proper canonical example, Bishop Lawrence!