Quote of the Week - George Sumner

"In a time of strained relations (to say the least) with the Anglican Global South, what if Episcopalians could recognize that their more conservative colleagues are preserving something for the whole, and for the future? What if they are preserving a fragile bridge on behalf of the entire church? Isn’t this the positive meaning of remnant? Those with power need to see the minority as able to accomplish something that the majority cannot. Such a realization is usually salutary for the powerful." -- George Sumner, Bishop-Elect of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas (From here.)

GAFCON Primates Criticize Archbishop of Canterbury

A statement has been released by the Chair of the GAFCON Primates which expresses criticism of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the direction of the Church of England. Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of Kenya said:

While we give thanks for much that has been achieved, especially in the emergence of the Anglican Church of North America and our Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, we are painfully aware that the Episcopal Church of the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada continue to promote a false gospel and yet both are still received as in good standing by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Furthermore, the Church of England itself, the historic mother church of the Communion, seems to be advancing along the same path. While defending marriage, both the Archbishops of York and Canterbury appeared at the same time to approve of same-sex Civil Partnerships during parliamentary debates on the UK’s ‘gay marriage’ legislation, in contradiction to the historic biblical teaching on human sexuality reaffirmed by the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
 Read the full statement here.

Episcopal "Church" Sticks it to Falls Church

Virginia Episcopal Bishop Shannon Johnston ordained an avowed lesbian, Jo J. Belser, to the priesthood in the former parish of the Rev. John Yates - at the Falls Church, VA -- even as he talked up "reconciliation" with ACNA priest the Rev. Tory Baucam in front of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in Coventry cathedral recently.

The ordination included a number of men and women one of which included Belser. Belser is the lesbian daughter of a fundamentalist preacher who lives in Alexandria, VA, She said that she joined the Episcopal Church because "it's the only one that lets gay people grow spiritually without requiring that they stop being gay."

Here is an excerpt from Fr. Tory Baucam's response:

First was the ordination of a non-celibate lesbian in the former home of the Falls Church Anglican parish this past December. This was a problem of both menu and venue, of what and where it was done. This kind of ordination, which violates scriptural teaching, caused the Anglican schism in the first place. I believe that holding the service at the Falls Church shortly after they lost their building showed a disregard and lack of respect for the good and godly pastor and the people of the Falls Church. This was a failure to treat others in a way that honors the imago dei in each of us. It was extremely painful to learn of this action and my full sympathy is with John Yates+ and his congregation.

Read it all here.

Related reading: Virginia Episcopal Bishop Double Dips into Apostasy; TEC's Hit List; Virginia Bishop Ordained Avowed Lesbian at Falls Church

Anglican Communion Institute: The Presiding Bishop's Wrong Actions

November 27, 2012


To the Bishops of the Episcopal Church:


Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,


This is a painful letter. It is painful because it concerns un-canonical (and perhaps even unlawful) actions on the part of our Presiding Bishop and her associates. These actions, detailed in the attached appendix and summarized in the bullet points below, have already undermined the good order and spiritual health of our church. We write to you our Bishops because of your responsibility for that good order. We write as Presbyters who have in one way or another faithfully served our church for over half a century. We pray that, despite the painful nature of the story we place before you, you will listen to what we have to say with a clear and open mind.

We urge you, therefore, to take careful note of the following points that are more fully spelled out in our appendix. We urge you further to take the necessary steps to restore the good order of our church.

 
Three years ago, the Presiding Bishop began an extraordinary and unconstitutional intervention in the internal affairs of the Diocese of South Carolina. She hired a South Carolina lawyer, Thomas Tisdale, who held himself out as “South Carolina counsel for The Episcopal Church” and appeared to be gathering evidence for a disciplinary case against Bishop Lawrence. That is not our judgment in hindsight; it was Bishop Lawrence’s understanding at the time: “the Presiding Bishop’s Chancellor, if not the Presiding Bishop herself, is seeking to build a case against the Ecclesiastical Authorities of the Diocese.”

 
Mr. Tisdale indicated he intended to scrutinize the internal administration of the Diocese on an ongoing basis for the Presiding Bishop, including reviewing recent ordinations, the actions of the Standing Committee, convention resolutions and especially the property arrangements of the Diocese’s parishes.

 
The Presiding Bishop advised the Executive Council at the outset of Mr. Tisdale’s activities in the Diocese that she had hired him so that those who wish “to stay Episcopalians there have some representation on behalf of the larger church.” She thereby lent her office and legal counsel to the small number of internal dissenters, numbering no more than 10-15%, who opposed Bishop Lawrence and the Diocese. This group subsequently made four or possibly five presentations to various bodies within TEC seeking to have Bishop Lawrence investigated for abandonment and action taken against the Diocese. Their fifth attempt was successful, but only at the cost of the entire Diocese. 

The dissenters seeking to remove Bishop Lawrence communicated several times with church bodies, mostly through a lawyer who is a fellow parishioner of Mr. Tisdale’s and is a legal advisor with him to the interim steering committee he organized at the Presiding Bishop’s request. 

The actions of church bodies over the last three years have been disgraceful and at times farcical. At the dissenters’ request, a standing committee of the Executive Council considered canons passed by the Diocese and opined that they were null and void without ever informing the Diocese they were considering the issue. The Council immediately informed the lawyer for the dissenters of this action, but did not communicate it to the Diocese until asked to do so much later by the lawyer. The Church Center then clumsily added “cc’s” in a different type font and mailed the Diocese a letter that had been sent two and a half months earlier to the lawyer. This suggests the purpose of the Executive Council’s actions was not the orderly administration of the church’s affairs but assisting the dissenters in making their legal case against Bishop Lawrence.

 
Mr. Tisdale was apparently asked by the Presiding Bishop “a few months ago” to form a “transition group” before the Disciplinary Board had even acted and before Bishop Lawrence was even aware that it was once again reviewing abandonment charges against him. This committee had been largely formed and was waiting to be announced when the abandonment certification was made public. The initial announcements of the interim structure were made immediately: “an Interim Bishop will be appointed by the Presiding Bishop”; “a transition team has been put in place by the Presiding Bishop.” There is also evidence that some steps were taken to plan for civil litigation during the period before the Disciplinary Board had even acted.

 
Bishop Lawrence first learned of the most recent abandonment proceeding on October 15, when the Presiding Bishop informed him that he had been certified and would be restricted. Later that day the diocesan chancellor received by email unsigned copies of the certification and restriction. To this day, Bishop Lawrence has never been served with notice as required by TEC’s canons of either document. Accordingly, the 60 day period under the abandonment canon has not yet begun and if the canons were being followed no restriction may ever have been in effect—although on this point the relationship between the abandonment canon and the broader Title IV of which it is a part is one the church does not seem to comprehend.

 
Although TEC takes the position that the Diocese has not withdrawn, its representatives nonetheless claim that there is no ecclesiastical authority in the TEC diocese. But Bishop Lawrence has not been removed as bishop by TEC and the resignation or removal of directors of South Carolina corporations (the Standing Committee’s legal role) requires that specific procedures provided in the state statute or corporate bylaws be followed. None has been. When the TEC faction held a “clergy day” on November 15, the presentation was made by Mr. Tisdale, the Presiding Bishop’s lawyer. He referred questions about remarriage and licensing to Bishop vonRosenberg, but these are matters for the diocesan bishop. Although they are trying to skirt the canons formally, the reality is that the Presiding Bishop, through her lawyer and the committee he organized, is now running a TEC diocese in South Carolina without any canonical authorization.

 
Bishop Lawrence’s pastoral response to a very challenging legal environment in South Carolina kept the Diocese “intact and in TEC.” Only a single parish withdrew from the Diocese until the Disciplinary Board for Bishops certified that Bishop Lawrence’s pastoral actions constituted abandonment of the church. That indefensible decision caused the entire Diocese to withdraw along with the overwhelming majority of the parishes.


What should we make of these facts?


We disagree with those among you who think the Presiding Bishop and her agents have done no wrong.


Read it all here.

S. Carolina Bishop to Diocese: It is Time to Leave TEC

Read the story here.

Welby's Appointment: Banker Bashing as Usual

Sara Hey at Stand Firm takes this view of the New Archbishop of Canterbury:

A new Archbishop but no change at Canterbury: Justin Welby is just another Left-wing establishment
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/29662


Strangely harsh for a woman who remains in The Episcopal "Church" organization.

The Wall Street Journal Notes Episcopal Carnival

What Ails the Episcopalians - Wall Street Journal


Its numbers and coffers shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the traditional faithful.


By JAY AKASIE
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303919504577520950409252574.html

July 12, 2010

Episcopalians from around the country gathered here this week for their church's 77th triennial General Convention, which ended Thursday. Although other Protestant denominations have national governing councils, the Episcopal Church's triennial gathering stands apart. For starters, it's one of the world's largest such legislative entities, with more than 1,000 members.
General Convention is also notable for its sheer ostentation and carnival atmosphere. For seven straight nights, lavish cocktail parties spilled into pricey steakhouses, where bishops could use their diocesan funds to order bottles of the finest wines.

During the day, legislators in the lower chamber, the House of Deputies, and the upper chamber, the House of Bishops, discussed such weighty topics as whether to develop funeral rites for dogs and cats, and whether to ratify resolutions condemning genetically modified foods. Both were approved by a vote, along with a resolution to "dismantle the effects of the doctrine of discovery," in effect an apology to Native Americans for exposing them to Christianity.

But the party may be over for the Episcopal Church, and so, probably, its experiment with democratic governance. Among the pieces of legislation that came before their convention was a resolution calling for a task force to study transforming the event into a unicameral-that is, a one-house-body. On Wednesday, a resolution to "re-imagine" the church's governing body passed unanimously.

Formally changing the structure of General Convention will most likely formalize the reality that many Episcopalians already know: a church in the grip of executive committees under the direct supervision of the church's secretive and authoritarian presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. They now set the agenda and decide well in advance what kind of legislation comes before the two houses.

Bishop Schori is known for brazenly carrying a metropolitan cross during church processions. With its double horizontal bars, the metropolitan cross is a liturgical accouterment that's typically reserved for Old World bishops. And her reign as presiding bishop has been characterized by actions more akin to a potentate than a clergywoman watching over a flock.

In recent years she's sued breakaway, traditionalist dioceses which find the mother church increasingly radical. Church legislators have asked publicly how much the legal crusades have cost, to no avail. In the week before this summer's convention, Bishop Schori sent shock waves through the church by putting forth her own national budget without consulting the convention's budget committee-consisting partly of laymen-which until now has traditionally drafted the document.

Whatever its cost, the litigation against breakaway dioceses-generally, demanding that they return church buildings and other assets-has added to the national church's financial problems. Many dioceses are no longer willing or able to cough up money to support the national organization, and its bank accounts are running dry. On Monday, for example, the church announced that its headquarters at 815 2nd Avenue in midtown Manhattan-which includes a presiding bishop's full-floor penthouse with wraparound terrace-is up for sale.

In the past, General Convention, for all its excesses, at least gave ordinary laymen a sense that they had a democratic voice in governing the church. But many Episcopal leaders have chosen to focus more on secular politics than on religion over the years. Donald Hook, author of "The Plight of the Church Traditionalist: A Last Apology," estimates that church membership has declined to fewer than one million today from three million in 1970. This is another reason, along with financial woes, to save money with a slimmed-down legislature.

And yet there are important issues at stake if laymen are further squeezed out of what was once a transparent legislative process. A long-standing quest by laymen to celebrate the Eucharist-even taking on functions of ordained ministers to consecrate bread and wine for Holy Communion, which is a favorite cause of the church's left wing-would likely be snuffed out in a unicameral convention in which senior clergy held sway.

Also in jeopardy would be the ability of ordinary laymen to stop the rewriting, in blunt modern language and with politically correct intent, of the church's historic Book of Common Prayer. The revisionist bishops who would hold sway over a unicameral convention in the future haven't hid their desire to do away with all connections to Thomas Cranmer, who was appointed archbishop of Canterbury by Henry VIII. He was a classic figure in the English Reformation. But today the man and his prayer book are deemed too traditional by some church bishops.

For some, the writing on the wall is already clear. On Wednesday, the entire delegation from the diocese of South Carolina-among the very last of the traditionalist holdouts-stormed out of the convention.



Mr. Akasie, a journalist and Episcopalian, lives in New York City.


Related Reading:  What Ails Bishop Stacy Sauls Ails Episcopalians

Bishop Lawrence Says Enough!

Bishop Lawrence of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, in a private session of the House of Bishops on July 11, requested and received a point of personal privilege. During this time he expressed things for which he was grateful during this convention, the “intentional engagement in honesty and collegiality with fellow bishops.” He also expressed his “grievous concern” with changes to the canons through resolutions D002 and D019, which have to do with transgender identity and expression, as well as with resolution A049, which authorized a provisional rite for the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions. “These resolutions in my opinion,” said Lawrence, “are disconcerting changes to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church--to which every bishop, priest and deacon is asked to conform. More importantly they mark a departure from the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them, therein making it necessary for me to strongly differentiate myself from such actions.“ At the conclusion of this private session Lawrence told the House of Bishops that he would not be continuing in the remainder of the Convention. “I concur with the assessment of our canon theologian, the Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon, when he described the actions of this General Convention as ‘unbiblical, unchristian, unanglican and unseemly,’” said Lawrence. Bishop Lawrence will be sending a statement to diocesan clergy, which is to be read in parishes on Sunday, July 15, 2012.

“Our deputation and I appreciate the prayers of so many in the Diocese of South Carolina,” said Lawrence. “I know that some did not think we should attend the 77th General Convention, but I believe our presence and witness was important and even respected by many on both sides of the theological divide. As St. Paul states regarding his ministry, ‘…we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.’“ (2 Corinthians 4:2)

Read it all here.

Episcopal Bishops Adopt Prayers for Animals

The doctrine that all dogs go to heaven has been placed in limbo by the 77th General Convention. On 11 July 2012 the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church adopted a revised version of Resolution A054 “Authorize Rites and Prayers for the Care of Beloved Animals.”

The question of prayers for the souls of animals was brought to the convention by the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Church Music which submitted the text, “Various Rites and Prayers for Animals” for approval. However, the Convention’s Committee on Prayer Book, Liturgy and Church Music rejected “Various Rites” as a whole, and offered selected prayers for approval by the church.

The Bishop of Missouri, the Rt. Rev. George Wayne Smith said the prayers provided by the Prayer Book committee “no longer express the desire for our animals to be part of the resurrection.”

The committee removed language from the proposed “Burial Office for a Beloved Animal”, that has the officiant say: “Give us faith to commit this beloved creature to your care, and hear our hope that we all may one day be reunited with our animals in the heavenly places, where you live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.”

The new language for the office states: “Give us faith to commit this beloved creature of your own making to your care, for you live and reign for ever and ever. Amen”

After Bishop Smith presented the resolution for debate, the retired Bishop of Alabama, Henry Parsley stated “I welcome the liturgy, but I have a question: Where do they go?”

“To heaven, where else,” the Presiding Bishop said.

Bishop Parsley responded, “Not the animals, but the liturgy. I will leave the animals to God, but where does it go in our liturgical book?”

Read it all here.

TEC's Pansexuality Reaches New Heights!

It welcomes partners of homosexual clergy and wife swapping among the bishops (or someone needs a grammar lesson).

2012 General Convention of the Episcopal Church
Indianapolis, IN

Anglicans and Invalid Sacraments

When I lost my home/farm/career as a priest/teaching job/friends/angered some of my children who didn't understand why I left ECUSA/began receiving hate mail from gay activists and threats from my Bishop, Fr. Newman offered me a safe refuge at the convent of St. Mary's in South Carolina.  He contacted me and told me to come and stay as long as I needed to regroup and heal. Fr. Newman was a complete stranger. Formerly Anglican, he is evangelical in the true sense. 


Fr Jay Scott Newman

When Catholics speak of Anglicans and sacramental invalidity, most people would assume that we're speaking of Holy Orders. But there is another kind of sacramental invalidity which will make it impossible for many Anglicans, both lay and ordained, to be received into the Catholic Church through Anglicanorum coetibus or any other means, and that invalidity is in the Sacrament of Marriage.

The Catholic Church believes that only Catholics are bound to marry in the Catholic Church (according to canonical form) and, therefore, that any two baptized Christians who consent to marry each other are by their exchange of consent creating between themselves the bond of sacramental marriage. (N.B. And this is despite the fact that Protestants generally do not count marriage as a sacrament, but there it is.) So, for example, if two Anglicans get married by any means (a judge, an Anglican minister, an Elvis chaplain at a Vegas wedding chapel), then they are bound to each other by the lifelong sacrament of matrimony. If that marriage ends in divorce, however, and one or both them marry again, then in the second relationship they are married only in civil law and do not have the sacrament of marriage because the existing prior bond is presumed by the law of the Church to continue to exist in the sacrament, even after the civil divorce.

The only way to determine with moral certitude whether or not the first marriage was or was not a true sacrament of Christ and the Church is to allow an ecclesiastical court, or tribunal, to do a thorough investigation of the former marriage, which enjoys in law the presumption of validity. If sufficient evidence can be adduced to prove to moral certitude that the presumed sacrament never came into being, then the tribunal can declare that the former marriage was a civil contract only and not a sacrament, leaving the former partners free to marry in the Church as though for the first time.

Significant numbers of Anglicans are now in their second or third marriage (or more), and until and unless each of their prior marriages is investigated by a tribunal of the Catholic Church, it is not possible to receive them into the Catholic Church. Because this matter is so little understood, it often comes as a great surprise to people who want to become Catholics but find the way is closed to them by living in an invalid marriage, and given how sensitive this matter is, the persons involved will often give many reasons other than the real reason for their decision not to become Catholics. Look for this to happen with great frequency in the coming days as the personal Ordinariate comes closer and closer in the United States. The reasons given for remaining Anglicans may very well not be the real reasons.


From here.

TEC's Trust Fund Book

A.J. Haley has been doing his homework and here's something that grabbed my interest:

It turns out that, as a consequence of all the brouhaha over the embezzlement of millions by a former treasurer of the Church, ECUSA was required by the Attorney General of New York to do an audit of its funds held in trust. As part of the audit, it agreed "to prepare an annual trust fund book and promptly provide copies of it to members of the church who request it." Now, this was news to me; I had not seen any such "annual trust fund book". I went looking for it on ECUSA's official Website, and what do you know -- I found it. (Caution -- the link is to a 308-page .pdf download of the last such book published, for calendar year 2007).

This "Annual Trust Funds Book" provides a wealth of information about the wealth of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America -- which is the official name of the incorporated arm of ECUSA, organized under New York law in 1846 (but existing in earlier form ever since 1820). The DFMS was modeled on two similar predecessors established under the Church of England: the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. In accordance with those models, the main purpose of the DFMS was to facilitate the work of missionaries and the spread of Church missions both domestically and in foreign countries, and it was through its efforts that ECUSA became a national church that affiliated over the years with a number of foreign dioceses.

Over those same years, a great deal of money was given to further the missionary work of the DFMS. The 2007 Trust Funds Book reports the total value of all funds it currently holds in trust at $363,218,308 as of the end of that year. All of the individual bequests are pooled into a common investment fund, which is allocated 72% to equities, 20% to bonds (mostly of the United States), and 8% to other types of investment, chiefly hedge funds (see the tabular breakout on page 6).

Read it all here.

OCA Ends Relations with Episcopal Church

His Beatitude, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) announced recently that his church has ended its ecumenical relations with The Episcopal Church, and will establish instead formal ecumenical relations with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA made the announcement June 24 at a plenary session of the ACNA’s founding convocation at St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas.

An autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, the OCA was established by eight Russian monks in 1794 on Kodiak Island, Alaska. Known as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America, it was granted autocephaly, or autonomy, by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1970. The OCA has 700 congregations, monasteries and communities spread across the United States and Canada.

Metropolitan Jonah, 49, was reared in The Episcopal Church, but joined the OCA while a student at the University of California, San Diego, in 1978.

Read it all here.

Episcopalian or Anglican: Two Different Faiths?

I'm going to guess that Jordan Hylden, who wrote this piece, attends Asbury Seminary in central Kentucky. It is no wonder then that he finds that the two are very different. That is the reality in Kentucky where both Episcopal dioceses are ruled by bishops who garner favor with the church's leadership by imposing the Episcopal Church agenda on their dioceses. Jordan's description of the reality on the ground is accurate.

Jordan Hylden

“Are you Anglican, or Episcopalian?” As an Episcopalian interloper studying at a Methodist seminary, I get the question a lot from my puzzled friends. Each time I’m asked, part of me wants to launch into a mini-primer on Anglican ecclesiology - to wit, that Episcopalians are Anglicans, since the Episcopal church is just the American province of the global Anglican communion. Which means that, technically, the question shouldn’t even make sense - it’s sort of like asking, “Are you American, or Texan?” But, of course, I know just what the question means - it does make sense, because it reflects the sad divisions that have roiled the church over the past five years. Quite simply and sensibly, my Methodist friends want to know whether I’m a member of the liberal Episcopal church, or one of the conservative Anglican groups that broke off. And as saddening as it is to admit, I’ve come to think that their common-sense perception is more accurate than my attempts at ecclesiological theory. Their question can only be asked, and answered, because of the reality on the ground in the United States: Episcopalians are one thing, and Anglicans are another.

Read it all here.

Bishop Swing called "mean-spirited"

John W. Bennison's sexual abuse of a teenage parishioner in the 1970s was reported to Edmond Browning, then Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. This letter was written after a failed attempt at intervention during which California Bishop William Swing defended Bennison and attacked the victim, Martha Alexis.


The text of the victim's letter is here.

Anglican Schism over Gay Marriage and Women Bishops

By Ruth Gledhill, TimesonLine

The Church of England has been plunged into fresh turmoil by the "marriage" of two gay clergymen and threats of an exodus of priests opposed to the consecration of women bishops.
The Times has learnt that up to 500 Anglo-Catholic priests are ready to resign after failing to secure the concessions that they had sought over women bishops.

Church of England bishops have rejected plans for legal safeguards for those who had hoped for the introduction of extra-geographical dioceses as havens for traditionalists. Instead, plans to consecrate women bishops will be put to a vote at the General Synod in York next month, with the safeguards for opponents enshrined in a voluntary code.

A further blow will be dealt to the unity of the Anglican Communion this week when 200 traditionalist bishops attend a meeting as an alternative to the ten-yearly Lambeth Conference, which they plan to boycott. They will gather for the Global Anglican Future Conference, in Jordan, organised by evangelicals, in protest at what they see as the liberal direction of the communion.

Yesterday the Church of England was investigating the "wedding" of the two gay priests in defiance of church rules on such ceremonies.

Bishops have turned a blind eye to discreet services of blessing for gay couples but the wedding-style blessing service for the Rev Peter Cowell, a London hospital chaplain and priest at Westminster Abbey, and David Lord, a priest from New Zealand, could force the Church to act.
As the row escalated, Dr Lord surrendered his licence to minister as a priest in Waikato. It brings to the established Church a dispute that began in the United States, where the first consecration of an openly gay bishop took place in 2003, and Canada, where a diocese issued the first authorised gay blessing service.

The Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, has asked his archdeacon to investigate but Mr Cowell was unrepentant yesterday. "Some people have to be courageous," he said. "It was a conscious decision. We did it for each other and for family and friends."
The Times understands that liberals are considering a legal challenge to guidelines that rule against blessings for civil partnerships but sanction a pastoral, prayerful response when gay couples enter a civil partnership.

The service was described as very grand, with an orchestral Mass, but appeared to be an act of provocation by deliberately using as much wording from the Prayer Book order of marriage as possible. Many senior clergy were among the 300 guests.
The Rev Martin Dudley, who presided at the ceremony, said that he had not consulted the church guidelines and strongly disagreed with them.

Wolves Among the Flock

John W. Bennison, the younger brother of Episcopal Bishop Charles Bennison, claims to be an ethicist. The irony of this has become evident as his older brother’s trial unfolded this week in Philadelphia.

An ecclesiastical Court to determine whether Charles Bennison will remain bishop in the five-county region concluded on July 12. The Court received a “Presentment” against the Bishop of Pennsylvania containing 2 counts against Bennison of “conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.” Church prosecutors allege that he (1) failed to protect Martha Alexis as a minor from sexual predation by his brother John in the 1970s and (2) kept the matter a secret from the girl's parents.

Martha Alexis testified that John Bennison repeated had sexual intercourse with her while she was a teenager. John served as youth group leader in St. Mark's Church in Upland, California. The elder Bennison, then rector of the church, hired his brother for the job while he was in seminary. According to Alexis, Charles twice encountered John and Martha in flagrante delicto, but did nothing to stop the abuse, fearing for his career.

The then 14-year-old victim described to the court how she was repeatedly sexually abused by the Rev. John Bennison, describing his acts as “persistent, intense and frequent” as many as “three or four times a week, for four years.”

“He groomed me over time to be his sexual toy. He was very exacting and specific in technique which grew more progressive over time, eventually growing to include everything you can possibly imagine.” Alexis, now 50, and the mother of three, said that what occurred between her and Bennison was “unspeakable perversion and too horrific to name.”

When Bishop Bennison learned of the sexual relations between his brother and Martha, he failed to alert the next parish to which John was called. When asked by attorney Jacobs why he didn't, Bennison said, “John told me he would never do it again.”

Jacobs also referred to a remark Bennison made to parishioner Ann Pottorff, who heard from her son in 1975 of the possibility that Martha and the younger Bennison had a sexual relationship. The future bishop thanked Ann for not telling Martha’s parents about the rumor because it could hurt Charles Bennison's career.

If the panel of nine priests and bishops finds that Charles Bennison failed in his priestly duties, he could lose his standing as bishop and face further sentencing. The court will issue its ruling by the end of July.

For more, go here and here.

Episcopal Bishop Sues, Again.

The Episcopal Diocese of Central New York filed a lawsuit today against Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, New York seeking the seizure of the church building, the parish hall, and the rectory. This is the third church which Episcopal Bishop Gladstone Adams of Syracuse has moved to seize since 2006, and the second church he has actually sued.

The priest at Good Shepherd is Fr. Matt Kennedy who is a commentator on the internationally known Stand Firm website. The Church of the Good Shepherd was a small struggling congregation when Bishop Adams took over the diocese as its new bishop. One of the first priests he ordained was Fr. Kennedy, who then went to Good Shepherd and raised it to be a vibrant congregation doubling its Sunday morning attendance. Since taking the church in Binghamton, Fr. Kennedy has acquired a reputation as one of the most widely read and respected commentators of church news in the Anglican Communion. Today, however, that same bishop who ordained him has sued his church, and refuses to even to acknowledge that Fr. Kennedy is a priest, referring to him as "Mr. Kennedy" in correspondence. In a cover letter to the summons, the lawyer for Bishop Adams likewise followed suit, and addressed the priest as "Matt Kennedy" and "Mr. Kennedy."

The lawsuit was filed in the Broome County clerk’s office today. The legal papers ask the court to declare that the Episcopal diocese, which is headquartered in Syracuse, owns all of the property of the Binghamton church based on a so-called Dennis Canon trust theory. In 1979 the Episcopal Church, in an effort to stop congregations from leaving the denomination, enacted a church law which claims a "trust" on any congregation which seeks to leave the denomination. This trust claim is the basis of the lawsuit against the local Binghamton congregation.

One of the other churches which surrendered its property to the bishop rather than face a lawsuit was St. Andrew's Church in nearby Vestal, New York. That church building was taken over by the Episcopal diocese shortly before Christmas of 2007 and is now vacant and for sale, while the congregation is worshipping elsewhere and thriving.

The diocese sued Good Shepherd because the Binghamton church opposes the bishop's stand on homosexual bishops, same-sex ceremonies, and the authority of Scripture. This scenario has been repeated around the USA since the consecration of the divorced gay priest Gene Robinson in New Hampshire in November 2004. The crisis has engulfed the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Good Shepherd adheres to the traditional teaching that sex outside of marriage is prohibited by the Bible, while the Bishop and his staff, and the leaders of the Episcopal Church are outspoken gay activists. The crisis reached a climax recently when Good Shepherd switched its affiliation to an American bishop under the Anglican jurisdiction of Kenya. The Episcopal Diocese then broke off negotiations for a peaceable resolution of the dispute and filed this lawsuit.