News Brief
Episcopal News Service. November 30, 1976 [76368]
Episcopal Church candidates for the diaconate will join some 25 Roman Catholic laymen in a two-and-a-half year training program for the permanent diaconate starting next spring. The plan for interreligious training of deacons is believed to be the first anywhere, said Father John Tavares, director of the diaconate program for the Providence Catholic diocese. He noted that the plan has the approval of both Bishop Louis Gelineau of Providence and Episcopal Bishop Frederick Belden of Rhode Island. The Episcopal Church applicants, who upon completion of the course will serve as deacons in Episcopal churches of the diocese, will undergo the same screening and Catholic candidates will be trained with them. Although the Episcopal Church may ordain women as deacons and priests, no women will be allowed to take part in the course. The priest explained that the National Directors of the Permanent Diaconate in the U.S. Catholic Church have gone on record as favoring the ordination of women as deacons, but the Vatican Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship has refused to allow such action.
Archbishop Donald Coggan of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, will visit Rome in April 1977 to meet with Pope Paul VI, in an effort, according to a statement, "to intensify dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church."
The Rev. Lloyd Stuart Casson was installed as a canon of Washington Cathedral, Sunday, Nov. 21 at Evensong. Bishop Coadjutor John T. Walker was the preacher. The appointment of Casson as Cathedral Canon was made in February, 1976, after his nomination by Bishop William F. Creighton Jr. Prior to his appointment to the cathedral, Casson had been the rector's deputy for parochial ministry at Trinity Parish in New York, where he was responsible for coordination and supervision of work in Trinity's congregations. At Washington Cathedral he will be involved in ministry to the greater community of Washington, D.C.
The Rev. Dr. Cyril Charles Richardson, an internationally known scholar of early church history, died recently of a heart attack. The 67-year-old Episcopal priest had served on the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York City for 42 years. An author of five books and collaborator on nine others, he was a regular contributor to religion journals. He was an early and strong advocate of ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate, basing his advocacy on his scholarly studies that earned him a reputation alongside his fellow Union teachers, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. The London, England native studied in Canada and the U. S., taking graduate degrees at Union before joining the faculty there in 1934.
The wardens and vestry of Trinity Church plan to publish a memorial volume of 52 sermons of the Rev. Theodore Parker Ferris. Dr. Ferris, rector of the Back Bay Episcopal Church for 31 years, was noted throughout the country as a preacher. In their forward to the volume, the Rev. John Bell and Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill write: "It was not that he thought of himself as an artist, but that he used his artistic talents to reveal truths about God and the human heart." The book became available Dec. 1.
The four Episcopal dioceses of the Virginias have collaborated in a bicentennial project to produce a history of the Episcopal Church in that region. The 125-page book was written by scholars from the three dioceses in the state of Virginia and the Diocese of West Virginia under the auspices of the Interdiocesan Bicentennial Committee of the Virginias. It deals with the effect of the revolution on the established church, the post-war decline and the period of vitality under Bishops Richard C. Moore and William Meade and is available from the diocesan offices of the four dioceses.
A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury has affirmed that -- at least for the time being -- women ordained priests elsewhere in the Anglican Communion will not be allowed to celebrate in the Provinces of England. Despite that affirmation, the Rev. Alison Palmer, one of 15 women irregularly ordained in the Episcopal Church, celebrated a eucharist in a London Unitarian church. In midNovember, the question of the rights of women soon to be made priests in Canada and the United States was raised at the Church's General Synod. Synod secretary general Derek Pattison, answering for the Archbishop, said that there would be no change in the decision to deny women priests access to English altars until a full consideration -- now under way -- is completed by the Synod bishops. On Nov. 26, the Rev. Ms. Palmer, an employee of the U. S. State Department, celebrated the Holy Communion in the packed meeting hall to draw attention -- she said -- to the priestly ordinations which were expected to take place in Canada Nov. 30.