PITTSBURGH: Convention will go forward, Standing Committee says
Episcopal News Service. September 26, 2008 [092608-03]
During its meeting on September 23, the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh said that the diocese's previously scheduled October 4 convention would go forward.
Referring in a news release to what it called "the purported deposition" of Bishop Robert Duncan September 18by the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops, the members of the Standing Committee said the convention would be held in "an orderly and grace-filled manner." The Standing Committee is now the diocese’s Ecclesiastical Authority.
The full text of the Standing Committee resolution is available here.
Delegates to the convention will be asked to approve three resolutions (see resolutions one, two and three here) re-aligning the diocese with the Anglican Province of the Southern Coneof southern South America.
The parish of at least one member of the Standing Committee has announced that it will not support those resolutions. A majority of the vestry at St. Michael's of the Valley in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, said September 23 that if the Southern Cone resolutions pass "we will continue to consider ourselves to be a part of the Episcopal Church of America in accordance with our by-laws." The Rev. Jim Simons, St. Michael's rector, serves on the Standing Committee.
A September 18 news releaseposted on the diocese's website said that "Bishop Duncan's own continuing status as a bishop in The Anglican Communion has been secured by the Province of the Southern Cone" and quoted Southern Cone Primate Gregory Venables as saying that "effectively immediately" Duncan was a member of that House of Bishops.
"Neither the Presiding Bishop nor the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church has any further jurisdiction over his ministry," Venables claimed.
In another September 18 statement issued after the House of Bishops vote, the Pittsburgh Standing Committee said that Duncan would "continue to support the work of our diocese under the terms of his administrative employment agreement and within the bounds of his deposition, providing many of the services that he previously performed for the diocese."