A dangerous move by the Americans

From Anglican Mainstream via TitusOneNine:

January 30th, 2009 Posted in TEC |

By Andrew Carey, CEN

The overreach of the Presiding Bishop of the USA in the current round of barring conservative clergy has now crossed the Atlantic. Bishop Henry Scriven, an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Oxford, has been removed from the ordained ministry and “deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority as a Minister of God’s Word and Sacraments conferred on him in Ordinations.”

Hell hath no fury like a Church scorned, it would seem. The story is that Bishop Scriven became Assistant Bishop of The Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in 2002. After the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003 this diocese became increasingly estranged from the direction and policy of the Episcopal Church. This resulted in the deposition of the diocesan bishop, Robert Duncan, under the charge of ‘abandoning communion’ last year, even though at the time he was continuing to actively serve as a diocesan bishop. The majority of churches in the diocese under the continuing leadership of Bishop Duncan are now under the auspices of the Province of the Southern Cone — thus retaining their link to the Anglican Communion, in a highly unsatisfactory way for all concerned. The planning for the future is to form an alternative province of North America under the initial leadership of Bishop Duncan.

After Bishop Duncan’s deposition, Bishop Scriven ceased to be assistant bishop of Pittsburgh and soon announced his return to England to work for a missionary society and serve as assistant bishop in Oxford. So from September until his move to back to England he was no longer officially a bishop of TEC, but a bishop from another province of the Anglican Communion who happened to be living in the United States.

The Anglican Communion Institute points out that under the rules of the House of Bishops no further action against him was required. He had ceased to be a member of the House of Bishops. “Therefore, no action was required to remove him from the House of Bishops, certainly not the inappropriate action of purporting to remove him from the ordained ministry.” (www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com).

Bishop Scriven of course had written to the Presiding Bishop to inform her of his move back to England, which she had then cavalierly and tendentiously interpreted as a ‘renunciation’ of his ministry. According to the Anglican Communion Institute: “Those ‘Ordinations’ of which she purports to deprive him were conferred on Bishop Scriven not by TEC but by the Church of England, including by the Archbishop of Canterbury personally. The Presiding Bishop has no authority to deprive him of the ministry conferred on him by his ordination in the Church of England.

Defenders of the Presiding Bishop claim that by her actions she has merely deprived him of a licence in the Episcopal Church. But surely the whole point is that after the deposition of Bob Duncan last September, Bishop Scriven’s ‘licence’ was revoked. No, in fact it looks like Presiding Bishop Schori is attempting something much more sweeping here.

The Anglican Communion Institute again comments: “The Presiding Bishop’s action has profound consequences for TEC’s status as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion and its communion with the Church of England.” Her Declaration of Removal touches upon the ‘ordinations’ conferred on him by the Church of England, not by The Episcopal Church, and therefore she is going down a very dangerous road by pretending to have the authority to pronounce on them. Furthermore, by prohibiting a bishop in good standing within the Church of England from ministering in The Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Schori is opening up the way for a diplomatic row.

Bishop Scriven, no doubt, will be laughing about this bizarre overstep by the Presiding Bishop, but the ramifications of this move should be examined further by English canon lawyers. It seems that The Episcopal Church is claiming to have an authority that it does not. And that, after all, is the root of the problem in the Anglican Communion.