The Communion Partner bishops defended their most recent undertaking yesterday in a story released by Episcopal Life Online. Their comments brought this video to mind.
Claiming dioceses are independent in order to secure the right to sign the covenant is like claiming you own my house to secure the right to park on my street. Securing such a modest goal does not require such an ambitious claim.
Ruth Gledhill says to the Anglican Communion Institute and the 15 bishops “Sorry bishops, but a diocese is not a church.”
In an email Seitz said a Colorado priest “will request of [Mark Lawrence, Bishop of South Carolina] as a Communion Partner bishop, a ‘visitation’, the purpose of which is to prevent his parishioners from concluding that the only route for them is joining ACNA (which will be happening in Colorado soon) because their Diocesan is not foregrounding his covenant commitments…
Is the proposed Anglican Covenant a means of achieving a modified version of the Dar es Salaam settlement proposed by the Primates of the Anglican Communion in 2007? The communiqué released after that meeting proposed a “pastoral scheme”, which created a church within a church led by almost exactly the same bishops who signed the document on diocesan autonomy released yesterday.
“For reasons I will never know (perhaps providential — most likely it is that my initials are the similar as his and thus someone typed in an incorrect email) this morning I received in my email box communication from Bishop D.Bruce MacPherson and a group of his supporters about new documents that are in their final phase of planning that they plan to release soon.”
The paper makes the curious argument that because the dioceses that formed the original Episcopal Church were independent prior to entering into union with each other, they somehow maintain that independence. … One might just as well say that because a couple were single before marriage that they retain their independence afterward.
The Communion Partner / Anglican Communion Institute statement covered here throughout the day has been now been released by ACI: Bishops’ Statement on the Polity
email: On the second purpose of the Bishops’ Statement—to serve as a resource for the litigation and the expert testimony—the general principle is the more support the better, although on this front, it is the bishops’ signatures that matter the most. The only thing that would hurt is a format that implies more signatures should have been attached, e.g., if your statement were open to all rectors but only a handful actually signed on.
Mark Harris: a paper signed by a number of bishops connected to the “Communion Partners” and prepared by the Anglican Communion Institute will challenge the notion that dioceses of TEC are part of TEC in any other way except by voluntary association, and that therefore they are free to independently subscribe to the Anglican Covenant and maintain pastoral visitation and oversight independent of any agreement with TEC or its leadership.