Rosemont Confirmation Attracts Opposites in Faith
Episcopal News Service. December 1, 2000 [2000-221]
(ENS) It was no ordinary confirmation service at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, Pennsylvania on November 26. But it wasn't the ecclesiastical showdown many had expected -- and some of the 700 worshipers might have wanted.
The "International Anglican Service of Evensong and Confirmation" was largely drawn from the 1928 Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church. Presiding was Archbishop Maurice Sinclair of the Southern Cone, assisted by Archbishop Patrice Byanka Njojo of the Congo and Auxiliary Bishop Raymond G. Smith of Liverpool, representing the Archbishop of Sydney. Some 70 confirmands were presented from five traditionalist parishes in the diocese.
Other bishops included in the service were Bishop Peter Njenga of Mount Kenya South; Bishop Samuel Ssekkade of Namirembe, representing Uganda; retired bishop Edward H. MacBurney of Quincy, and the Most Rev. Herbert M. Groce, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Anglican Rite Synod in the Americas, a jurisdiction of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church (P.I.C.C.).
The primates came in response to what they termed a "pastoral emergency" affecting U.S. Episcopalians opposed to the ordination of women and non-celibate gays and lesbians and to the blessing of same-gender unions. They were invited by the parish's rector, the Rev. David Moyer, president of Forward in Faith, North America (FIF-NA), the U.S. branch of an English traditionalist organization and the successor to the Episcopal Synod of America (ESA) and the Evangelical and Catholic Mission (ECM).
FIF-NA's national chancellor, David Rawson, is also a member of Good Shepherd's vestry.
Moyer, who refuses to accept Pennsylvania bishop Charles Bennison's episcopal authority and who has called Bennison a "radical revisionist," did not seek the bishop's permission for the visit, as U.S. canons require.
But none of the invited primates openly challenged Bennison, seated in the tenth row of the sanctuary dressed in a purple cassock and pectoral cross.
In a short sermon delivered in French and simultaneously translated into English, Njojo seemed more concerned with addressing the West's greed than its sexual mores. "The word of God is not present in all these who want too much for themselves in luxury," he said. "Some want to buy a new car every year. God would like to teach us how to help other people."
Sinclair called the service an "historic occasion" and thanked Bennison for his "generosity" and welcome, but otherwise made no reference to the unusual circumstances surrounding the primates' presence there.
At the diocesan convention November 4, Bennison invited diocesan leaders 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."