Pennsylvania Bishop Opens Doors for Traditionalist Primates
Episcopal News Service. November 17, 2000 [2000-206]
(ENS) Pennsylvania diocesan bishop Charles E. Bennison has issued an official invitation to Archbishop Maurice Sinclair of the Province of the Southern Cone (South America) to come to the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania on November 26.
Sinclair and other unnamed Anglican primates were invited by and accepted the invitation from the parish's rector, the Rev. David Moyer, without consulting with Bennison, as U.S. canons require. The bishops are visiting in response to what they have termed a "pastoral emergency" affecting U.S. Episcopalians opposed to women's ordination.
Moyer is president of Forward in Faith, North America (FIF-NA), the U.S. branch of a traditionalist organization based in England, and the organization's national chancellor, David Rawson, is a member of Good Shepherd's vestry. FIF-NA was formerly called the Episcopal Synod of America (ESA); prior to 1989, it was known as the Evangelical and Catholic Mission (ECM).
Sinclair and the other primates are scheduled to confirm more than 70 people, most of them members of parishes aligned with FIF-NA.
"I have chosen to extend an invitation to the Archbishop to confirm candidates at a service in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, with the expectation that all the clergy presenting candidates or participating in the service will receive me hospitably at my next scheduled full Episcopal visitation to their parishes," Bennison said in his address to the diocesan convention on November 4. "I am, furthermore, designating the service a diocesan-wide confirmation service to which all clergy are invited to bring candidates.
"I have also invited Archbishop Sinclair to come to Pennsylvania a day early in order to share in a conversation during the day on Saturday, November 25, on the issues before us in the Anglican Communion, and then to be my guest for dinner that evening," his statement continued. "I have invited Archbishop Sinclair, moreover, to stay and be my guest at our annual clergy conference at the Hershey Hotel on Monday-Wednesday, November 27-29. I have assured him that his presence would enrich our conference and that I hope he will seriously consider being with us."
Bennison invited representatives from the standing committee, diocesan council, deans, diocesan staff and delegates to diocesan convention to be present "so that as clergy and laity from across our diocese we can express our communion with our brothers and sisters whose views might differ from ours, our deep respect for the dignity of all human beings, our hope that they remain part of one church, and our desire for unity and reconciliation."
In the past three years, the number of Pennsylvania congregations whose clergy refuse Bennison the right to make required visitations has dropped from eight to five. One of them, St. James-the-Less in East Falls, has tried to leave the diocese, but the parish's wardens and vestry have agreed to enter an alternative dispute resolution process to avoid expensive litigation. On Sundays during his vacations, Bennison said, he worshipped in the pews of the five dissident congregations. "I expect that the clergy of the five congregations will welcome me for my visitations scheduled before [next May 15]," he said.
Bennison added that he is not opposed to "episcopal visitors" in principle. "My policy is that I will entertain requests for visitations by bishops other than those of our diocese as long as with more frequency I am hospitably welcomed for full Episcopal visitations by the clergy and people of the congregation making the request, and that other bishops of our diocese are welcomed in the same congregation with as much frequency as am I," he told the convention. "The 'pastoral emergency' will disappear if next spring the rectors and vestries of the affected parishes open their doors for my visitation in accordance with this policy and the church's canons."
Some conservative primates maintain that the General Convention's refusal to embrace the 1998 Lambeth Conference statement on human sexuality opens the door to their own violations of a Lambeth resolution about maintaining the integrity of diocesan and provincial boundaries.