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To the Members of the Covenant Design Group and the Windsor Continuation Group: I write to you as a concerned member of the Covenant Design Group, as a committed member of the Episcopal Church (USA), and as one whose professional and spiritual life has been and continues to be devoted to the strengthening of our common witness as Anglican Christians. This is a simple plea for us to do our work better in the midst of continuing ecclesial disintegration. What motivates this plea at this time? On the one hand, no more than the general evidence of ongoing divisions within North America and the...
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To the Members of the Covenant Design Group and the Windsor Continuation Group: I write to you as a concerned member of the Covenant Design Group, as a committed member of the Episcopal Church (USA), and as one whose professional and spiritual life has been and continues to be devoted to the strengthening of our common witness as Anglican Christians. This is a simple plea for us to do our work better in the midst of continuing ecclesial disintegration. What motivates this plea at this time? On the one hand, no more than the general evidence of ongoing divisions within North America and the...
TITLE IV REVISIONS Dear Bishops Bill, Bruce, Jim, John, and Mark, We write as long term friends and advisors to place before you a matter we believe to be of grave concern. In our view, recent changes in our canons that soon come into effect are unconstitutional. What is more, they give the Presiding Bishop disciplinary powers over Diocesan Bishops that convert the office into that of a Metropolitan and give that office powers that without question will be abused. In this note we will state our concerns about the revised Title IV in greater detail and urge that you take certain steps to...
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Is this any longer a Church one wants to join? A Plea to the Leaders of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church (TEC) is experiencing a precipitous decline in Sunday morning attendance. Without addressing some of its institutional pathologies, TEC will render itself evermore irrelevant. Yet the current proposals to restructure the church ignore its basic problems. 1 The present practices, or likely outcomes in the very near future, of TEC raise a number of questions. Here is a sample: A proposed modification of the Book of Common Prayer Marriage Rite wherein the rubrics are malleable and...
Is this any longer a Church one wants to join? A Plea to the Leaders of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church (TEC) is experiencing a precipitous decline in Sunday morning attendance. Without addressing some of its institutional pathologies, TEC will render itself evermore irrelevant. Yet the current proposals to restructure the church ignore its basic problems. 1 The present practices, or likely outcomes in the very near future, of TEC raise a number of questions. Here is a sample: A proposed modification of the Book of Common Prayer Marriage Rite wherein the rubrics are malleable and...
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Dear Archbishop John Thank you for your communication. Our ACI Board Bishop +Michael Scott-Joynt has also been in helpful contact over the Communion Partners initiative, as he and +NT Wright, +Donald Mtetemela, +Drexel Gomez, and others attended earlier meetings – even meetings including the several bishops (4 out of the 21 in attendance) now moving toward a ‘new province’ idea. We are beginning to see the initiatives in individual dioceses of TEC to move forward with the same sex agenda (Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina, most recently). This includes various forms of approval: of blessings...
Dear Bishop Doyle, We thank you for your thoughtful letter and for your obvious concern that under the canons the Bishops of our church be enabled to discharge their pastoral responsibilities. We share your concern for an adequate pastoral response to the behavior of clergy. We nonetheless believe that the three basic points you make in your letter actually indicate points in the new Title IV that serve to weaken rather than strengthen the pastoral care a bishop is called upon to offer his or her clergy. The three points you make are these: 1. The new Title IV is “more pastoral” and “the...
MEMORANDUM TO: Working Group April 21, 2008 FROM: [Redacted] RE: Canonical Violations This memorandum evaluates whether the Presiding Bishop has violated the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church and what procedures would be applicable for charging her with a presentable offense. This memorandum identifies at least eleven violations of TEC's constitution and canons by the Presiding Bishop in her dealings with Bishops Cox, Schofield and Duncan and the Diocese of San Joaquin. Taken together, these actions demonstrate willful violation of the canons, an intention to repeat the...
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A defense now proffered by the Presiding Bishop and her supporters is that the same procedures were followed in the recent cases of Bishops Davies and Moreno. Past violations of the canon's clear provisions are said to justify current ones. In considering this defense, it is necessary to distinguish three senses of "precedent" in legal usage. One is the well-known sense of precedent as a formal ruling on a legal issue by a competent juridical body. This is clearly not the case here as no one has suggested that the prior cases were determined to be canonical by any body reviewing the canonical...
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Several important meetings, mostly of American bishops, are soon to be held (e.g. in New York , in Texas, and, we are told, elsewhere). It is important to think through, in advance, what can and cannot, or what should and should not, be pursued at these gatherings. It is no longer possible, we believe, to “patch up our disagreements” within the Episcopal Church; it is no longer possible to “broker deals” with the Communion or, for that matter, with this or that part of the Communion (the Global South, Africa, South America, etc..). The Episcopal Church is falling apart. The extent of her...
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