[Fr. Tony Clavier] ANOTHER DIOCESE SPEAKS

[Fr. Tony Clavier]

Yesterday the Diocese of Northern Indiana's Standing Committee issued a statement about the recent actions of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops in deposing two recalcitrant bishops. I commend this statement for its contents and tone and above all for its grounding in the faith of the church.

We live in a legalistic society and in a society which tolerates a high degree of freedom to indulge in character assassination. To politicians and media pundits the sort of nastiness abhorred by young people at school has become a way of life exalted in the name of free speech and constitutional rights. People may as easily be destroyed by oft-repeated slander and legal fees as easily as they may be by medical costs and lack of competent health-care attention. Sometimes one is as impotent in confronting slander as one is in getting adequate attention for cancer. We seem less and less able to address issues objectively and without personal affront. We seem more and more willing to circumvent due process if we convince ourselves that someone is guilty or even wrong-headed.

It was once said of us, "See how these Christians love one another." The history of ecclesiastical censure and the trials of bishops in our church has been rarely edifying. For instance it is said to this day that the trial and deposition of the Rt Rev. Benjamin T. Onderdonk, Bishop of New York, in the 19th. century was deeply flawed. "Whether the trial was an appropriate act to punish a Bishop for improper behavior or a conspiracy to silence a proponent of the Oxford Movement may be ultimately unknowable." Whatever the truth of the matter the struggle between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the mid Victorian period on both sides of the Atlantic and the clumsy and flawed legal and canonical attempts to settle the matter, far from protecting the church, produced defections to Rome, a schism which weakened and unbalanced the Episcopal Church for a century, or perhaps to this day and the unsavory drama of Christians in mortal combat. There were no winners.

One would think that such precedents would give pause for us to consider the grave dangers which attend our "unhappy divisions." Yet I suspect few have recently read the accounts of the bitter exchanges between "Catholic" and "Evangelical" bishops and other clergy, the story of the trials and imprisonment of clergy, fumbled attempts at "Ritualist" Canons, the repeated refusal of bishops and standing committees to consent to the consecration of James de Koven and the tragedy of the Reformed Episcopal schism. If history doesn't repeat itself it does a remarkable imitation.

It is in the context of this preface that I would commend to you all the Statement of Northern Indiana's Standing Committee one may access at http://www.ednin.org/ednin/. I would particularly commend to study, reflection and prayer the concluding paragraphs of the Statement:


We believe that when we let the same mind be in us that was in Jesus, other ways of responding to division come into view. Those Bishops (or other clergy) who, for sake of conscience, can no longer minister as part of The Episcopal Church can be transferred at their request, or permitted to renounce their vows and join with other Anglican Provinces without vindictiveness or punitive measures. Confrontation in the Church is an opportunity to show the world how Christians conduct themselves in the midst of serious disagreements. It is an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel. >

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Posted By Fr. Tony Clavier to Fr. Tony Clavier at 5/28/2008 10:15:00 AM

[Thomas Rightmyer]

        Our disciplinary system and our ecumenical ecclesiology are out of sync.  I suspect that relates to the little interest in ecumenism in general and in church unity in particular on the part of most of the decision-makers in all the churches.

 

        I had some hope that after the work of Bishop Weinhauer and others on the Lutheran Episcopal Dialogue and with the encouragment of Lambeth we might begin to heal the division between the Episcopal Church governed by the General Convention and our fellow Christians organized into the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province in America.  We made a good effort, meeting twice before the General Convention of 2003 and once afterwards. A highlight was the celebration at the altar of the Virginia Seminary Chapel of the revised REC communion service by the bishops of the REC and APA present.

 

        The Episcopal Church inherited from the state church of England - and that church from Rome and the early church - an understanding of itself as the only expression of Christianity in the land.  We lack adequate institutional forms to express the theological truth of our definition of the church as the body of which Jesus Christ is head and all baptized people are members. 

 

        There are a few provisions in our national canons to allow, e.g., clergy of the ELCA or clergy of other provinces of the Anglican communion or other dioceses of the Episcopal Church to minister in Episcopal congregations, and when a minister of another church seeks to be ordained in this church there is provision for that former ministry to be recognized in the ordination certificate.  We can transfer in, but like the Hotel California, we have no honorable way for people to leave the ministry of the Episcopal Church but continue in recognized Christian ministry.

 

       We share this problem with Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy. They being larger can continue the myth that "there's no one else here." We're so small our pretensions are silly.

 

        I think the House of Bishops would have done better to decide to issue letters of transfer to other Anglican provinces rather than to misuse the abandonment canon. Such an action would have left open a door open to reunion which the Episcopal Church has slammed shut.

 

        How do the continuing churches handle this question?

 

        Tom Rightmyer  trig...@juno.com  Asheville, NC