Authority to Be Issue for English Bishops
Episcopal News Service. October 16, 1986 [86227]
LONDON (DPS, Oct. 16) -- Two challenges to Church authority promise to make a late October meeting of the Church of England's House of Bishops a lively affair.
One, a woman priest's unauthorized celebration of the Eucharist in a meeting room at the Church of England's headquarters, may prove to be a setback for supporters of women priests, Archbishop of Canterbury Robert A. K. Runcie said at a press conference in New Haven, Conn., according to Religious News Service.
Runcie said that another recent challenge to church authority -- the adoption of a dispossessed Episcopal parish in Oklahoma by Bishop Graham Leonard of London -- already has been put on the agenda for an Oct. 21 meeting of the House of Bishops.
Runcie, who was in the United States to lecture the week of Oct. 6 at Harvard and Yale Universities, declined to discuss either controversy at length, saying he had earlier proposed not to make statements about the two crises until he returned to London and received full reports. "If I answer that question, my press secretary will have a heart attack," he said in response to one query.
But he said he was "dismayed by the first reports" of the Eucharist celebrated by the Rev. Joyce Bennett, a priest duly ordained by the Anglican Diocese of Hong Kong in 1971.
The celebration "seemed to be without any proper authority," said the Archbishop. Last summer, the Church of England's General Synod voted down a proposal to allow Anglican women priests from overseas to celebrate the sacraments in English parishes.
"I feel that a course which I spoke in favor of -- the ability, under certain conditions, for women lawfully ordained abroad (to function as priests) -- may be put back. It may make people think that the cause is impatient, lawless, irresponsible." He said he would be "sorry if that is the impression given."
Speaking about the Bishop of London's assumption of authority over the schismatic Oklahoma parish, Runcie noted that the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church had "sent to is a strongly worded statement about these operations as they see them. Since the appeal is made to me and the (Church of England's) House of Bishops, I have put it on the agenda" for the bishops' meeting, "with the agreement of the Bishop of London."
He added, "There will be a reaction and there will be a statement" by the English bishops from the Oct. 21 session.
Leonard, a high-church traditionalist who has been the standard-bearer for opponents to women's ordination in the Church of England, has announced that he intends to visit Tulsa in late October to perform confirmations at St. Michael's parish, whose rector, John Pasco, was removed from the ministry last spring by the Oklahoma Diocese following an ecclesiastical trial that took place after an investigation into alleged financial irregularities by a corporation set up by the parish. The decisions of that trial court and its findings of fact on the irregularities were confirmed by an appellate review.
Bishop Hugh Montefiore of Birmingham, England, said he would introduce a motion at the Oct. 21 meeting concerning "jurisdiction" -- though it is understood not to mention the Bishop of London by name. It is believed that the motion repeats points made in the recent statement of the U.S. bishops.
The other recent challenge to authority within Anglicanism -- the Eucharist at Church House, Westminster, celebrated by a woman priest -- was sponsored by the Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) during its annual general meeting.
Among those who took Communion at the service were Bishop Peter Selby of Kingston and the Rev. Alan Webster, dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
The service took place not in the building's chapel, but in an assembly room. Bennett, the celebrant, said she was not breaking the rules of her own jurisdiction, Hong Kong, since the service was a private one and not held in a church.
Bennet is employed in a Chinese ministry at St. Martin's in the Fields, London, as a pastoral assistant without priestly functions.
Selby, asked whether he had broken the rules of the Church of England by receiving Communion from Bennett, said, "Not at all. The Church has not said from whom I may receive Communion but who may minister as a priest in this country."
Selby said the service took place at "a private meeting. People who were not members of MOW were asked to leave in order to prove it was a private meeting." He added, "Had I walked out at that point, my action would have betrayed my conviction that Joyce is truly a priest of the Church."
"It has to be allowed," he said, "that our vows of baptism as Christians must, at certain times, take precedence over technical, man-made rules. Today's event will make it clear that this particular rule is simply unsustainable."
The site of the Communion service is in Westminster, near the British parliament. Although within London, it is not a part of the London diocese over which Leonard has jurisdiction. A spokesperson for Leonard said about the woman priest's celebration of Communion, "We are very surprised. It is a challenge to the authority of the Church of England."
Earlier the London bishop had said of the related issue the Episcopal Church authorities have ruled Pasco "is no longer a priest" and "he has come to me for pastoral help. As a bishop I have to offer that help."
Casting doubt on whether the financial reasons given for Pasco's removal were valid, he said that in a 1984 letter Bishop Gerald McAllister of Oklahoma had written, "It is a matter of worship and doctrine and discipline." Leonard commented, "These words come from the bishop's own mouth. Saying it is only a financial thing came subsequently. The real issue for me is worship, doctrine and discipline."
Asked for reaction to the complaint by bishops of the Episcopal Church that his interference is "deplorable, destructive and irresponsible," Leonard replied, "I have said in my own diocesan newsletter we have frankly suffered for too long from people who want to change everything, people with very liberal views. We must do what they want and everybody else must fall in line, they say."
"They keep saying to us we must respect their views. Again and again over the years there are cases where they tried to force the hand of other people. Somebody had to say, "I'm sorry, this can't go on."
The Episcopal bishops' document, adopted unanimously, declared that bishops in the Episcopal Church "are required to respect the integrity of diocesan boundaries and are not allowed to perform episcopal functions" in another's diocese without invitation from the host bishop.