Diocesan Digest
Episcopal News Service. September 22, 2005 [092205-03]
ARKANSAS: Bishop Maze announces retirement
CALIFORNIA: Former General Convention Sergeant-at-Arms dies
CALIFORNIA: Grace Cathedral honors Alan Jones' 20th year as Dean
CENTRAL FLORIDA: Arson fire damages Sebring church
CONNECTICUT: Bishop say clergy cannot officiate civil unions
DALLAS: Services set for long-time Church of the Transfiguration organist
KENTUCKY: Bishop inhibits retired priest
LOS ANGELES: Diocese will fight legal-fees ruling
NEW YORK: Conference explores diocese's diversity
TEXAS: Author set to speak at cathedral
ARKANSAS: Bishop Maze announces retirement
[SOURCE: Diocese of Arkansas] The Rt. Rev. Larry Maze, 12th Bishop of Arkansas, told the Standing Committee on September 16 that he intends to retire in 2006. Maze called on the Standing Committee to set in motion the election of his successor. His expected date for retirement will occur between October 1 and December 31, 2006, depending upon election timing and the arrival of the XIII Bishop of Arkansas. The election will be for a diocesan bishop, not a coadjutor.
Maze will have completed his twelfth year in office by the time of his retirement. He has considered this change for a number of months and he said he believes that the timing is right for him and his family, and for the diocese.
CALIFORNIA: Former General Convention Sergeant-at-Arms dies
[SOURCE: ENS, San Francisco Chronicle] Services were held Monday at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for Hobart M. Banks, Jr. who died on September 10 at the age of 79. Banks was a clinical psychologist who worked for the State of California for 30 years. He worked initially with children and adolescents but spent the majority of his career working with parolees of the California prison system. Before retiring he was the assistant director of the Parole Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic.
Banks served the Episcopal Church at the diocesan, regional and national level. He was a deputy to General Convention in 1994 and 1997 during which he chaired the Sergeant-at-Arms committee. Banks was elected to serve the 2000 General Convention but was unable to serve because of his health. His central place of worship for nearly four decades was Grace Cathedral. He also served on the boards of many organizations.
"Hobart brought knowledge, experience, vision, clarity of thought and purpose, and an unflinching commitment to the ministry of Jesus and to the justice and peace of God, as well as just plain common sense!," the Rev. Earl A. Neil said during his eulogy Monday. "A person of profound integrity and honesty, he passionately spoke truth to power and was consistently a still, small voice of conscience challenging the church not to avoid the struggles and issues of our times, but to meet them head-on, using our reason and imagination to find solutions and mobilizing our energies to put them to good effect."
Banks is survived by his wife of 39 years, Dorothy, and his daughter Anna.
CALIFORNIA: Grace Cathedral honors Alan Jones' 20th year as Dean
[SOURCE: Grace Cathedral] Two services this Sunday will pay tribute to the Cathedral's spiritual leader, The Very Rev. Alan Jones. The 11:00 a.m. Choral Eucharist and a 3:00 p.m. Choral Evensong liturgies will feature special music programming.
The cathedral will welcome selected members of men and boys choirs, representing musical establishments in Connecticut, Kentucky, New York, Tennessee, and Washington DC. The Oakland, California-based Pacific Boychoir will also be represented. The music chosen for Sunday will revolve around the repertoire of the 1953 Coronation in Westminster Abbey, at which the Dean sang as a boy. Favorites such as Parry's "I was glad" and "Old Hundredth" will be heard, along with rarely performed items such as Walton's Coronation Te Deum and Handel's Zadok the Priest. The choir of some 30 boys and as 30 men will be joined by members of the San Francisco Symphony Brass to provide at both services.
CENTRAL FLORIDA: Arson fire damages Sebring church
[SOUCE: The Tampa Tribune] A reward for information about the September 14 fire at St. Agnes Episcopal Church in Sebring, Florida, continues to grow. It is now $10,000. The Beaumont, Texas-based Mold, Flood and Water Management Company already performing restoration work to the facility after damages from last year's hurricanes, matched the state fire marshal's offer of $2,500.
Meanwhile, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is matching that combined $5,000 with a $5,000 match of its own, said Kevin Shireman, a detective with the state Fire Marshal's Office. While Shireman originally estimated the damages at around $10,000, church officials and LaBrie said damages to the church may now exceed $150,000. The roof may need replacing, while sound equipment such as the church's pipe organ, piano and other musical equipment have been destroyed.
Contained to the baptismal area, the fire took less than five minutes to extinguish. Shireman said the fire was created by someone using matches, a lighter or a torch. The baptistry's floors will probably be resurfaced because of the heat of the fire, he said.
CONNECTICUT: Bishop say clergy cannot officiate civil unions
[SOURCE: Diocese of Connecticut] In light of a civil law due to go into effect October 1 allowing civil unions in the state of Connecticut, the Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith will not allow clergy operating in the diocese to participate in any rituals involving them.
Smith wrote to the clergy on Monday, saying that he is extending the diocese's "long-standing" ban on same-gender blessings to include civil unions. Smith has said the ban applies priests and bishops serving in the diocese, whether canonically resident or by the privilege of a license.
The new state law defines civil unions as legally recognized relationships between two men or two women, both of whom must be at least eighteen years old (unless an emancipated minor). Neither can be immediately related to the other. The legal requirements and rights for a civil union are much like those for a marriage. The law defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Smith wrote that the law allows any person who is licensed to perform a marriage also to officiate at a civil union. The law specifically names clergy. He acknowledged that clergy from other denominations will, no doubt, officiate at civil-union ceremonies "and that our church will differ from legislated civil standards."
"And I am deeply aware of the inequality and anguish this policy brings to the lives and consciences of many faithful members of this diocese, lay and clergy, gay and straight," he wrote. "At the same time, the Episcopal Church has not spoken by resolution through its General Convention on the questions of same-sex blessings or civil unions. We ourselves are not of one mind as a diocese, and we haven't engaged the issues in a way that brings light rather than division."
Smith is involved in an on-going controversy with six priest who refuse to accept his authority. Nine bishops affiliated with the conservative Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDP) threatened in late July to intervene in dispute.
Smith voted at the last House of Bishops meeting to support a covenant concerning the Windsor Report that included a pledge that none of the bishops would authorize public rites for same-sex relationships at least until General Convention next June.
"I must ask your compliance with this policy. It is not a 'don't ask, don't tell' situation. We -- bishops and priests -- serve in this diocese as members of the Episcopal Church in the Anglican Communion. And we are bound together by our ordination vows and covenants we have made," he wrote.
Smith urged all members of the diocese to join in regional discussions planned for this winter on the "theological, personal and evangelical questions before us."
DALLAS: Services set for long-time Church of the Transfiguration organist
[SOURCE: ENS, Dallas Morning News] Howard Eddins Ross, 68, who served the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in Dallas, Texas, as its organist and director of music for 39 years will be remembered today at solemn requiem at the church.
Ross, who was born into a pioneer East Texas family in Longview, Texas, July 29, 1937, began his organ study during his high school years. He earned a bachelor's degree in music education and a master's in organ performance from Southern Methodist University. He received the Associate certificate of the American Guild of Organists in 1976. He also studied abroad in France. Following military service, he returned to Dallas to teach both music and French from 1960 to 1980 in the Highland Park Junior High School.
"Everybody everywhere knew him," said Scott Cantrell, classical music critic of The Dallas Morning News. "He was a fine musician and the most caring church musician you could have. He was like a pastor to the people he worked with."
Ross built a major music program at the Church of the Transfiguration. He started part time in September 1964, not long after the church had grown into a parish from a mission. During his years at Transfiguration, he organized three youth and children's choirs, a men's schola cantorum, and a handbell choir, in addition to the adult choir. He worked closely with the late Ed Beran, architect for the church building, and with Robert Sipe, builder of the church's organ.
Ross also served as organist and director of music at St. Alban's Church in Arlington, Texas, and as assistant organist-choirmaster at St. Michael and All Angels in Dallas. He served the American Guild of Organists from 1957 to his death in offices at the local, regional and national levels, and on the board and several committees of the Association of Anglican Musicians.
Following his retirement from Transfiguration, he was a consultant to the National Network of Lay Professionals in the Episcopal Church, an organization he also served previously as president. He was co-chairman of the Diocesan Commission on Liturgy and Music for the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas for many years, and represented his parish at diocesan convention for more than 20 years.
Ross, a charter member of the Colloquium of Episcopal Professional and Vocational Associations, was a local and national advocate for equal benefits for lay members of church staffs.
KENTUCKY: Bishop inhibits retired priest
[SOURCE: Diocese of Kentucky, American Anglican Council] The Rt. Rev. Ted Gulick, bishop of Kentucky, has inhibited the Rev. Kent Litchfield, who along with about 100 members of Christ Church in Elizabethtown, founded a new congregation that claimed affiliation with the Anglican Bishop of Bolivia.
Litchfield retired in June after 17 years as rector of Christ Church and announced his intention to form the new congregation with a group of Christ Church parishioners. Bishop Gulick said in a letter to the diocese that he had told Litchfield not to organize the congregation, warning him that the action "was clearly against the Canon Law of the Episcopal Church USA, and of our own Diocese."
The inhibition, which was recommended by the diocese's standing committee because it said that Litchfield had abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church, is in place for six months or until Litchfield reconciles with the diocese. If he does not, the bishop said he will decide whether to continue the inhibition or "take a more severe form of discipline," namely a trial in ecclesiastical court to remove him from the priesthood.
Gulick said, in a story on the diocese's website, that Litchfield must end his effort to form the new congregation, renounce his loyalty to a "foreign bishop," acknowledge that he had violated canon law, and state that he will not function in the ways he has said he would.
Gulick said that he will ask the Bolivian bishop not to come to Elizabethtown. However, in a statement posted on the titusonenine website, the Rt. Rev. Francis R. Lyons of Bolivia wrote that he has received Litchfield and the Holy Apostles' Church "to pastorally assist those who wish to remain faithful members within the Anglican Communion." He wrote that he is saddened to have to take this action "for a time to provide a home for those marginalized" by the election and consecration in 2003 of V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.
The American Anglican Council issued an email response to news of the inhibition saying, in part, that Gulick had joined a number of Episcopal Church bishops who were "misapplying and abusing canon law in order to take punitive action against clergy who oppose the Episcopal Church's actions at General Convention 2003." The statement calls for the Episcopal Church, not Litchfield, to repent.
LOS ANGELES: Diocese will fight legal-fees ruling
[SOURCE: Diocese of Los Angeles] The Diocese of Los Angeles will appeal a ruling September 15 that $81,000 in legal fees be awarded to a Newport Beach parish that aligned with a Ugandan diocese in 2004.
The diocese disputes Orange County Superior Court David Velasquez's action in August when he ruled that an effort by the diocese and the Episcopal Church in the United States to preserve property claimed by the seceding congregation of St. James' Church, Newport Beach, was an attempt to impede the congregation's freedom of speech. The judge cited a unique statute not available in many states.
Velasquez subsequently ruled last Thursday that the parish is owed the money it spent defending itself in the case. The judge's latest ruling will be appealed, as has his August ruling, said John R. Shiner, chancellor of the diocese and its lead attorney in the property matter.
"We feel confident that the appellate court will make the appropriate corrections" in both rulings, he said this week.
NEW YORK: Conference explores diocese's diversity
[SOURCE: Diocese of New York] Member of the New York diocese will have the chance Saturday to experience the "multi-racial, multi-cultural reality" of the diocese at "Many Tongues, One Language in the Spirit Conference, Our Story Continues."
At last year's conferences, many ethnic groups formed convocations and discussed their concerns and spirituality. Saturday's conference, at St. Peter's in Port Chester, New York, the convocations will present their social-actions ministries. Members of the convocations will meet in workshops about the ministries they share, including anti-racism, prison ministry, immigration, education, hunger and nutrition, and stewardship and money management.
Cost is $12, including food, and child care is available. Online registration is available at www.dioceseny.org or by calling Bea Price at 212-316-7408.
TEXAS: Author set to speak at cathedral
[SOURCE: Diocese of Texas] Karen Armstrong, known for her writing about the common threads in diverse religions, is scheduled to speak Thursday, September 29 at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston. A book signing will follow in the parish hall.
In her new book, The Battle for God, Armstrong questions why, in our so-called secular age governed by reason and technology, fundamentalism has emerged as an overwhelming force in every major world religion.
She illuminates the spread of militant piety as a phenomenon peculiar to our moment in history, and discusses its impact in the context of recent geo-political events. "Fundamentalism," says Armstrong "is not a throwback to some ancient form of religion but rather a response to the spiritual crisis of our modern world."