The Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald has questioned Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s assertion that he must renounce his orders as a bishop of the Episcopal Church because of his ministry in Canada.

The former Bishop of Alaska and Assistant Bishop of Navajoland now serves as the Anglican Church of Canada’s National Indigenous Bishop.

Bishop MacDonald told The Living Church he was “shocked and surprised” by the Presiding Bishop’s remarks on his ministry, adding that he has “written to her asking for clarification.”

“I am on loan to the Anglican Church of Canada under the PB’s supervision. I have an unofficial position, with no set authority or jurisdiction,” he said.
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This PB loves to make up her own canons - Why will no one in the HOB stand up and protest?  At the very least the CP bishops should make some kind of united rebuke.  This is rubbish on the part of the PB, who has NOT the authority so to proclaim, nor seemingly has she grace to understand that this TEC is meant to be part of the Church Catholic.  Besides this - whence canonically cometh this stuff about supplanting or replacing TEC?  +MacDonald is right.  Her proclamations are shocking to our Anglican polity.
Deposition is tantamount to defrocking.  When a bishop moves around in the Anglican Communion it has hitherto been regarded as a good thing.  To declare that it is grounds for defrocking/deposition, especially when there is not a hostile relationship as might be asserted in the case of some provinces, is a repudiation of the concept of communion on a world wide basis.  Is this a unilateral declaration of independence on the part of the PB on behalf of TEC?  At the very least it is an assertion of non-communion.  The lady’s assertions are Humpty Dumpty’ish in the extreme.  Time to reject her assertions and that must be done publicly in the HOB and by other bishops.

I disagree with the PB’s position on Bp MacDonald’s status, although I can understand what might have prompted her to take that position. It seems to me that she may have felt that she had to be consistent in dealing with Bishops who are no longer serving in the Episcopal Church, but I think there is an important difference between Bp MacDonald and someone like Bp Duncan and I think that difference makes her statement about Bp MacDonald a mistake. I should qualify my position by stating that it is based upon the reporting of someone I generally consider to a propagandist - George Conger.

I have frequently in the past year wished that the canonical provisions for Letters Dimissory had been used to transfer TEC clergy to other Churches in the Communion. It would have made it clear that these clergy were no longer part of TEC and that their functioning within the US was a violation of ancient practice.

Dear Father Daniel,

Examples, please, of how Father Conger has functioned as a propagandist, or how TLC allows an editorial perspective to shape its news coverage. I have something of a vested interest in this topic, as I edited George’s report and edit TLC’s news coverage these days.

Just as important, if you believe that either Father Conger or TLC has misrepresented any facts in this story, I want to hear about it.

Douglas LeBlanc - 02 December 2009 03:21 PM

Dear Father Daniel,

Examples, please, of how Father Conger has functioned as a propagandist, or how TLC allows an editorial perspective to shape its news coverage. I have something of a vested interest in this topic, as I edited George’s report and edit TLC’s news coverage these days.

Just as important, if you believe that either Father Conger or TLC has misrepresented any facts in this story, I want to hear about it.

Here is a paragraph from a recent news article by Fr. Conger:

In California’s Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno, briefs were filed last week in the case of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin v the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin. In June a lower court granted summary judgment to the Episcopal diocese in its bid to seize the assets of the Anglican diocese.

(The article can be found Religious Intelligence-News-New lawsuits face Church in USA )

What I find misleading/propaganda/poor journalism is Conger’s phrase “seize the assets of the Anglican diocese.” The question before the courts was which diocese had right to the assets and Conger’s wording betrays his own bias.

Not being a subscriber to TLC, my only experience of what I considered bias was in a headline that I considered to be “editorializing.” I can’t recall the details now and have, therefore, revised my earlier post to remove the reference to TLC.

Thanks for those further thoughts, Father Daniel.

George Conger’s article gets the facts quite correctly, as far as I know—and I know Bishop MacDonald personally.  I agree with Daniel Weir’s notion that Letters Dimissory should have been uesd in other cases.  One problem, however:  none have been requested from e.g. Rwanda or Uganda, and therefore they are not really capable of carrying any meaning at present.

But back to Bishop MacDonald and what his case demonstrates:  that the logic of destroying all remnants of association between themselves and bishops (in this case) who have left TEC over the last few years because of their sense that General Convention/Executive Council and the House of Bishops were not allowing them to fulfill their vows made in TEC—this logic has so gripped the motives of people like the PB that it has extinguished not only proportion and common sense, but the fundamental theology of the church that TEC stands upon.  The anger—for that is what it is—and strategic self-regard that are driving this policy have poisoned basic ecclesial understandings.  Yes, “catholicity” is indeed “at stake”, as notions like a mutually recognized episcopate, and so on, have been thrown out the window for the sake of scoring legal victories and furthering an agenda of conformity through a process of canonical violation.  And the fact that Mark Harris of the Executive Council cannow call the episcopate but a glorified “civil” service, having no essential evangelical roots within the Church’s life and bascially dispensible to TEC’s theological governance, is but the sign that this attack upon our church’s catholicity from the side of the Presiding Bishop is only one initial aspect of a movement that is now in the process of consuming itself, much like the French Revolution:  episcopacy, bishops, catholicity, order, all being thrown under the bus that will, at the end of the day, have no driver. 

What we are seeing taking place in the leadership of TEC at present is one of the most astonishing acts of political destruction within any Church in recent memory.  Yes, abetted unwittingly and sometimes quite conscoiusly and maliciously, by many conservative ex-Episcopalians, but still the basic responsiblity of those in charge.

Thank you Ephraim.
YES letters dimissory should have been use.  This is the way TEC licenses someone either from another jurisdiction or another diocese within TEC.  Such is not always the case within the rest of teh Anglican Communion.  I transferred to ECUSA from the C of E and the bishop in England simply wrote a letter that my receiving bishop in the US chose to treat as a letter dimissory.  In England one is simply granted a license to operate in the relevant diocese where one serves.  Those provinces that have a more “English” set of canons are likely to follow this pattern.  In this way it has been easy for other provinces simply to receive clergy from TEC who wished to remove themselves.  On the other hand the letter dimissory that would have been sent from the US would in effect be a testimony as to good standing as well as notice to the Church Pension Fund that that person would have his pension frozen while in that other Anglican Province until such a time as that person would retire of move back.  Letters dimissory are precisely used to emphasize the fact that the Church is a part of the Church Catholic.  Things such as pension, accountability and oversight are properly put in order.

It is a quantum leap to say that a person has “renounced” their holy orders.  Similarly they have not renounced their vows.  Those vows are made to God under the local jurisdiction of a part of the Church Catholic.  A person moving from TEC to another province simply moves jurisdictions.  It has to be seen as akin to being relicensed.  This is why the canons permit transfer through letters dimissory.  As part of the idiocy of the current interpretation it was in Colorado that the current bishop revoked the letters dimissory to Rwanda and Singapore in the case of a number of clergy who had left under a previous bishop of Colorado (with letters dimissory) - he then promptly deposed them!  I now worry that orders in TEC may be simply regarded as being from a strange cult that is no longer part of the AC.

Welcome to Wonderland!

I have had some e-mail contact with Ephraim Radner about his reference to Mark Harris in #6 and I disagree with his reading of Mark’s blog post. I suggest that folks read the post and come to their own conclusions: Moving from corporate governance to incorporated governance.

Daniel disagrees with my understanding of Harris’ views. I agree:  please read it yourself, because I find his comments not only shocking but all the more so because they are quite in tune with what has now turned into a juggurnaut of ecclesial self-destruction, posing as a creative refashioning of “governance”.  As I wrote to Daniel:

“The following paragraphs and their emphasized phrases I do indeed find disturbing and explicitly hostile to the catholic polity TEC and most other Anglican churches have committed themselves to:

‘We are moving from being the corporate board of a corporation - the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society - and the governing body between Conventions of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church - to being the incorporation of a broad based body of elected persons who will define for themselves the limits and actions appropriate to the Council.’

‘However the issue of responding to the the Uganda legislation plays out, the power shifts that result are signaling a move from corporate to incorporate, from carnation to incarnation, from a form of governance based on civil models (and what are bishops except ecclesial alternatives to civil administrators in the Roman Empire) to a form of governance based on a post modern projection of the best of reformation thinking in which the company of believers share the oversight collectively.’

Harris asks a question—“and what are bishops except ecclesial alternatives to civil administrators…”?—in the context of claiming that Executive Council not only should but will “define for themselves” their brief and powers.  This is then viewed as an analogous move to what the PB is doing in “find[ing] new ways to work with the canons to provide clarity that particular bishops have indeed abandoned the communion of this Church”.  I find no other way to read this but as an assertion of TEC’s leadership to make up their own form of canonical governance to suit their personal views, bound up with the weirdest gobbledygook nomenclatures concerning “a post modern projection of the best of reformation thinking”.  And to think that this is the party that accused Duncan of attempting a “coup d’eglise”!  The accusation was in fact partly just—and I have no great sympathy with Duncan’s ecclesial maneuverings—  but having Trotsky and Lenin pull down the Russian people on top of themselves because each thinks the other is subversive is bizarre, to say the least.  Were it not for the destruction these folks are mutually creating, I would say they deserve each other.  Alas, it seems all of us deserve one another.

I appreciate Ephraim’s fuller exposition of his disagreement with Mark Harris’s blog post. I took Mark’s comments about bishops to be a reflection of what many of us see as the intrusion of civil or business models into the life of the Church, e.g., the bishop as CEO, and not as a statement of what he thought bishops ought to be.

I see the dangers inherent in the Executive Council’s defining “for themselves the limits and actions appropriate to the Council.” To use a phrase that a colleague uses in relation to our diocesan convention, “the Convention is sovereign.” However, the Executive Council has always had the authority to “initiate and develop such new work as it may deem necessary.” [Canon I.4.3(e)] I take Mark’s statement about defining limits and actions as consistent with this canonical permission. Mark describes the shift as being towards “a form of governance based on a post modern projection of the best of reformation thinking in which the company of believers share the oversight collectively.” I see this very much in line with the Episcopal Church’s commitment to a polity in which the authority of the laity is taken seriously. I find it significant, e.g., that the House of Bishops is asked for consent to an episcopal election only after the House of Deputies consents. There is clearly some tension in this polity, but it is what we have.

Because I sense that Mark’s post does not say enough about bishops, I will - and would urge others - to press him to say more.

I take this to be a reference to the priesthood of all believers.

“a form of governance based on a post modern projection of the best of reformation thinking in which the company of believers share the oversight collectively.” Mark Harris

  As such, I believe that this is eisogesis at its worst since the priesthood of all believers (as a Reformation principle) has little or nothing to do with governance and lay participation in the same.  The statement has more to do with the priest as intermediary between God, Church and the world and a thus at the time of the Reformation the great truth was that an individual did not need a priest in order to connect with God, AND it was the role of all the people of God to represent God in the world so bringing the world to encounter God.

Mr. Harris article is full of words that, I am sure, sound profound to him.  However when stripped of their gobbledygook say little more than that they, the Executive Council, will do as Mrs S. has been doing - they will rewrite the canons thru reinterpretation to mean anything they want them to say.  They will ignore the rules that are meant to regulate what they may or may not do, they will apply their rules selectively so as to fulfill their goals, they will ignore Scripture (sadly a given) and they will ensure an ever shrinking monoblock-esque rule of the Borg in the place of the Church Catholic and Apostolic.

Ephraim was more polite - at my age I tend to be a tad blunter.  Thanks you again Ephraim.

Who will stand up in the HOB and both question and resist this inanity?

I am increasingly confused by some of the terminology on CC.

How do people interpret the contemporary meaning of ‘church order?’
How can a person be a member of TEC if they consistently refuse to accept emerging church order made under legitimate decision-making? i.e., when does dissent mean disloyalty? When does disloyalty demand resignation?

What is a ‘traditional’ Anglican?
What do people really mean when they use the word ‘Catholic’? (big or little c).
What do people understand by ‘apostolic succession?’
What is an ‘evangelical’ in contemporary TEC understanding?

If one is a member of TEC in any capacity, why refer to ‘Mrs. S?’ I have never seen that used in regard to a male bishop or have I missed something?

Ian Welch, Canberra

Ian Montgomery - 03 December 2009 06:56 PM

I take this to be a reference to the priesthood of all believers.

“a form of governance based on a post modern projection of the best of reformation thinking in which the company of believers share the oversight collectively.” Mark Harris

Ian,
You can take this to be such a reference if you want and then demolish it, but what if you are wrong about that? I don’t take it that way and, as I have said in an earlier post, I take it as a reflection of the polity of the Episcopal Church with its emphasis on shared authority.

Daniel

Ian W. asks some questions, which I shall answer briefly (and despite the length of the posting here, the answers really ARE short in comparison with the questions) from my own perspective (and with the presumption that I am trying to provide descriptions of norms, not just personal prejudice:

How do people interpret the contemporary meaning of ‘church order?’

I cannot say how “people” interpret it:  but in gernal, “church order” refers to the way that a church teaches authoritatively, makes decisions, deals with disgreemnts, and defines and enacts ministerial roles, all in the context of a ruling understanding of the Christian Gospel (that is, “church order” isn’t purely descriptive of a social fact, but understands these facts as expressive of and accountable to the Christian understanding of God).

How can a person be a member of TEC if they consistently refuse to accept emerging church order made under legitimate decision-making? 

The question here is leading:  what in the world is an “emerging church order”?  If it is “emerging” rather than established, that probably means it is in dispute because of proposed or enforced changes;  and the dispute is probably over whether or not such changes are “legitimate”.  In the context of the present thread, I would say quite bluntly:  the changes being made by the PB and accepted by the EC;  or proposed or claimed by the GC or some of its members—these changes, as they have touched upon discipline, worship/sacramental form and meaning, and the ordering of ministerial recognition are quite illegitimate.  Clearly, not everyone agrees with me or others who understand these matters like me.  But I would argue strongly that, e.g. the acts of the PB and HoB in disciplining some of their members according to the canons they have used is illegitimate; that the logical and theological implications of this abuse of the canons are illegitimate;  I would argue, furthermore, that the defection of dioceses from the TEC, if done in a certain way and with a certain purpose and spirit, is indeed legitimate in terms of the Constitution, but that there is indeed a lack of clarity as to whether this has been the case in certain ways; that the actions being taken by bishops in permitting same-sex blessings in their dioceses is quite illegitimage, according to canons, and wider elements of church order.

i.e., when does dissent mean disloyalty? When does disloyalty demand resignation?

Loyalty refers to the keeping of promises.  It is disloyalty when people refuse to engage in the legitimate means of ecclesial discernment and decision-making, and make decisions regarding communion and Christian recognition in personal ways that go counter to the promises they have made.  On this score, I would say that probably about 80% of the TEC’s House of Bishops and General Convention delegates should resign, because they have either broken their promises without repentance or refused to acknowledge their promises as binding. Within these 80% the lines between “liberal” and “conservative” might well be crossed significantly, although at this point most of the conservatives in the HoB and GC are in fact proving a “loyalty” that goes way beyond most expected human capacity.

What is a ‘traditional’ Anglican?

Tradition generally refers—to use Gilbert Highet’s phrase (speaking of Bach)—to “learning and teaching”.  It is not simply the fact that one teaches exactly what one has learned, but that teaching arises out of and is engaged with learning, and that learning is bound fundamentally with what one has been taught and continues to be taught.  In Christian terms, then, tradition does indeed evolve, just as it does generally.  However, in Christian terms, tradition is “normed” explicity, rather than just by temporal constraint, and it is so for most Christians by the Scriptures essentially, as well as by the church order that itself forms part of that tradition.

A traditional Anglican, I would summarize, is one who accepts, teaches, and learns in a way substantively congruent with the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (that is, not one or the other, but the two taken togeter, not only in the enumerated principles, but in the contextual commitments (e.g. in the Chicago version)).  These include the Scriptures as the “rule and ultimate standard of faith”, and the character of the episcopacy, and of ecumenical unity and its witness in the early Church, etc., understood as a “deposit” to guarded and passed along.

(This definition raises questions most especially about Women’s Ordination, although I believe that this question has in fact been addressed by most Anglicans, in a way that is congruent with this understanding of “tradition”, although I know that not all agree about this!)
 

What do people really mean when they use the word ‘Catholic’? (big or little c).

I can’t say what people “really” mean.  Anglicans have indeed generally accepted the Chicago version of the Quadrilateral as a good “catholic” understanding, largely because of its explicit understanding of the “undivided church” and the its ordering etc., as being normative.  In this case, “catholic” refers to an early consensual ecclesial life, although it tends now to have been extended to mean a commitment to contemporary ecumencial consensuality as far as possible, based on the forms of the earlier one.

What do people understand by ‘apostolic succession?’

Anglicans, taken as a whole historically, have insisted on both the doctrinal and institutional character of apostolicity and its continuity here (although some have leaned more exclusively on one side or the other).  The remarks above indicate my sense of what is involved in this more inclusive perspective.  Furthermore, Anglicanism has, over the past two centuries especially, uncovered the missional character of apostolicity in a renewed way (not, to be sure, new with respect to the larger history of either the early church or the oikumene, but new with respect to post-Norman English Christianity).  The missional character of apostolicity and its continuous (“successive”) historical assertion is one of the great positive/faithful and traditional corrections, in my mind, within Anglicanism.

What is an ‘evangelical’ in contemporary TEC understanding?

Of all the questions raised above, this is perhaps today both the most easily answered in particular, but also the squishiest in its implications.  It is easy to say what “contermporary TEC understandings” of “evangelical” are:  bad, bigoted, homophobic, fundamentalist, mean-spirited, Republican, anti-intellectual, and so on.  Certainly, this is what TEC’s leadership believes about evangelicals of any stripe, and the PB has said as much on various occasions (throwing in Roman Catholics and Mormons at the same time).  However, it is precisely because ‘evangelicals” in the US or even the world are NOT any of these things in any consistent or identifiable ways that a proper definition of “evangelical” is becoming increasingly difficult to pin down.  Within Anglicanism, as opposed other Protestant traditions, an ‘evangelical” did have some specific definition:  along with what evangelicals in general share in terms of defining norms—Scripture as the revealed divine word,  Christ and his Cross as the unsubstitable sacrifice for sin, conversion and converting mission as central to Christian existence personally and collectively, salvation by/through faith alone (the list somewhat varies—Anglican evangelicals have tended to accept and respect the “church order” of Anglicanism, including the episcopacy and the sacramental norms, although their understanding of these has varied often significantly from their more catholic Anglican colleagues.  And, of course, all the negatives listed above as TEC’s prejudices are over and over again belied by the realities of many if not most Anglican evangelicals (e.g. in terms of intellectual acuity and scholarly accomplishment, political commitments, doctrinal rigidities of a Reformed scholastic kind, engagement with the larger world, engagement with cultural and geographic diversity, and so on). 

If one is a member of TEC in any capacity, why refer to ‘Mrs. S?’ I have never seen that used in regard to a male bishop or have I missed something?

There are those who refer to the PB in this fashion as a way of demosntrasting their lack of recognition of her episcopal character—either as a woman or in terms of her Christian integrity.  There are those who do so in accord with what used to be standard usage for Anglican clergy in general, where clerical titles were never a form of address, but rather “Mr.” was common.  Obviously, customs on the latter front are now completely confused.

Dr Radner’s response was, I assume, written in some haste and perhaps late at night after a busy day.. How else could we read that he gives his personal perspective while hopefully outlining norms, not personal prejudice. Such an opening places the reader in a presuppositional minefield that becomes steadily deeper.

His dismissal of ‘emerging church order’ reads strangely against his later remark that ‘In Christian terms, then, tradition does indeed evolve, just as it does generally’. His later argument about the role of Anglican bishops in the last two centuries is surely a prime case for an ‘emerging’ church order along with a reference to divergent views on the ‘doctrinal and institutional character of apostolicity.’ 

Dr Radner avoids, and perhaps understandably, discussing objectively whether, in terms of the Constitution of the TEC, the decisions made by the HoB and General Convention are lawful or not—although it is clear they are not within his ‘Christian understanding of God.’ He admits that the vast majority of the bishops disagree with him or rather, he with them. Yet a paragraph later he supports the Quadrilateral view of apostolic succession. It seems unavoidable to conclude that he believes the bishops of the TEC are not in lawful apostolic succession and that would seem to affirm an ‘emerging church order’ with which he is not in agreement. So the question of loyalty remains open.

Dr. Radner defines ‘tradition’ as the supremacy of Scripture, a device that dodges the question especially when tied, through the Quadrilateral reference, to the teaching of the early church and hence to the contemporary TEC episcopate. Scripture is hardly a fixed point of reference in regard, for example, to the office of bishop in the New Testament or perhaps, our understanding of the sacraments.

Dr Radner’s comments on evangelicals add nothing to one’s understanding of the meaning of the term in today’s TEC. It is clear that Dr. Radner has a ‘high’ view of the intellectual worth of modern evangelicals but not in a TEC referenced way.

In relation to ‘Mrs S.’ His personal disapproval of the behaviour of the PB is clear but so is the evasion implicit in his comments about ‘Mr.’ in relation to male clergy. I repeat that I have never seen a male bishop referred to as Mr. It seems a straightout put-down to refer to the Presiding Bishop as Mrs. S. I take it that the Presiding Bishop was elected lawfully or am I to assume that a woman is unlawfully in possession of the office, an issue which is glossed over in Dr Radner’s observations perhaps because that, too, is a matter where Scriptural supremacy is an issue

Ian Welch, Canberra