The Presiding Bishop has written to the bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin asking him to confirm that it is his understanding that he has left the Episcopal Church.
Bishop John David Schofield of the Diocese of San Joaquin has apparenlty been consulting the same lawyers as the Bush-Cheney administration and has received the same advice: the constitution allows you to claim whatever powers you desire. How else to explain the curious argument he presented to delegates at his convention today in urging them to vote to secede from the Episcopal Church?
Even at the very beginning of the 20th Century sermons were often reported in newspapers like “The Times” in extraordinary detail. Soon however the gatekeepers who controlled the new popular press decided that the mass market did not want to be treated to dense reasoning, copious quotations and a Niagara of dependent clauses and qualifications. In consequence, we have all had to learn to some extent or another to be ecclesiastical Ernest Hemingways.
…the House of Bishops has “ignored my views for nearly twenty years” and blamed the wider Episcopal Church for any decision by the diocese to sever its ties and attempt affiliation with another province of the Anglican Communion.
Lipscomb (Southwest Florida) said he has written to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, asking “to be released from my ordination vows and the obligations and responsibilities of a member of the House of Bishops. I have taken this step in order to be received into the Catholic Church.”
Susan Russell has the story of how Bishop Dabney Smith of the Diocese of Southwest Florida withdrew permission he had previously granted for Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire to speak at a Sarasota church. Bishop Smith appears to have taken a lesson from the Jeffrey John chapter of the Rowan Williams playbook entitled, “How to Alienate your Supporters without Placating your Adversaries.”
Bishop Cox served as Bishop Suffragan of Maryland and assisting Bishop of Oklahoma. He previously admitted ordaining two priests and a deacon at Christ Church in Overland Park, Kan., in 2005. A month later, he returned to Christ Church and led a service of confirmation. Disciplinary investigations of the Rt. Rev. Andrew Fairfield, retired Bishop of North Dakota, and the Rt. Rev. David Bena, former Bishop Suffragan of Albany, are in process.
I’m speaking from sad experience when I say that the children may never be able to free themselves from the terrible sense that somehow they must have made a choice, that somehow they had to have invited it, that somehow they should have been able to prevent it or stop it, until we are willing to call it what is — child sexual abuse.
A note from Bishop Barbara Harris, who was the subject of a long stream of erroneously-directed abuse yesterday on the Web site Stand Firm in
Bishop Barbara Harris, whom we’ve been in touch with this evening, has not visited San Francisco in several years. Pay a visit here to find out why that is relevant. There’s being wrong, and then there’s being recklessly and maliciously wrong. This is the latter. An apology will no doubt ensue. The question is whether reputable conservative thinkers will continue to associate themselves with this Web site.