FORT WORTH: Southern Cone leader to meet with diocesan convention delegates
Episcopal News Service. March 4, 2008 [030408-05]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Anglican Province of the Southern Cone Archbishop Gregory Venables will make what the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth is calling "a pastoral visit" to the Texas-based diocese during the first weekend of May.
According to a statement on the diocesan website, Venables will meet with all the clergy of the diocese at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Fort Worth on May 2. He will also address a specially called convocation of the 2008 convention delegates May 3 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.
"The purpose of the convocation is to provide information: Archbishop Venables will answer questions from the delegates, but no legislation will be considered," the statement said.
Venables will preach the morning of May 4 at the cathedral, and on that evening at St. Andrew’s Church in downtown Fort Worth. Question-and-answer forums will follow the services at both churches, according to the statement.
"The Diocese of Fort Worth is considering aligning with the Province of the Southern Cone, and this visit will help clarify the practicalities, benefits, and possible drawbacks of such a move," the release said.
The Anglican Province of the Southern Cone has about 22,000 members and encompasses Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. Its provincial synod, meeting in Valpariso, Chile, November 5-7, 2007, agreed to welcome into the province "on an emergency and pastoral basis" Episcopal Church dioceses "taking appropriate action to separate from The Episcopal Church."
Fort Worth's November 17 convention passed a resolution which thanked the Argentina-based province for its invitation and asked for a report within 60 days on "the constitutional and canonical implications and means of accepting this invitation."
Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker and the Standing Committee have released two reports on those implications. The first report concluded that "the structure and polity of the Province of the Southern Cone would afford our diocese greater self-determination than we currently have under the General Convention of The Episcopal Church."
The second report notes that the third article of the Southern Cone's Constitution and Canons says “the Dioceses are at liberty to provide necessary selection and training of clergy, liturgical use, finances and possessions, and other affairs related to the local situation, provided they are not in conflict with other Anglican norms and this Constitution.” The report goes on to note with favor differences between the operations of the Southern Cone versus the Episcopal Church in those areas.
The 2007 Fort Worth convention gave the first of two approvals needed to amend its constitution and remove accession to the Constitution and Canons of General Convention, as well as several canonical amendments that eliminate mention of the Episcopal Church.
Since the convention, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has sent Iker two letters warning him of the implications of such actions.
In an October 20, 2007 address to the Forward in Faith International Assembly in London, a recording of which is available on the group's website, Iker stated that the three Forward in Faith dioceses -- Fort Worth, San Joaquin, and Quincy -- intend to leave the Episcopal Church by 2009.
Episcopalians who do not agree with the direction in which Iker and the rest of the diocesan leadership is headed have been gathering and exchanging information through the Fort Worth Via Media organization. The group is a member of Via Media USA, an alliance of Episcopal laity and clergy formed in 2004 to offer a counterpoint to efforts to "realign" the Episcopal Church along more conservative lines.
Meanwhile, Forth Worth has issued guidelines for parishes that wish to separate from the diocese under diocesan Canon 32. "Separation comes as a last resort when such efforts have failed, and if it must come, it must be agreed upon in a respectful and non-litigious manner," the introduction says, noting that the guidelines are not "hard-and-fast rules."