Living Church
At least five “mind of the house” resolutions have been submitted for plenary discussion by the House of Bishops before their meeting concludes Sept. 25. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori had previously requested that all resolutions for consideration be submitted no later than Sept. 20, the meeting’s opening day.
Copies of the proposed resolutions, along with other reports and documents, have been made available near the entrance to the New Orleans conference room where the bishops are meeting. Some of the resolutions bear the signed endorsement of more than one bishop; however no formal discussion of resolutions is scheduled before Monday.
The Rt. Rev. Henry N. Parsley, Bishop of Alabama, has submitted draft language of a response to all of the requests the primates made of the House of Bishops in the Feb. 19 communiqué from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In it, Bishop Parsley notes that General Convention has already responded affirmatively to the questions for clarification on same-sex blessings and homosexual bishops in monogamous relationships. He recommends that the matter be referred to the Anglican Consultative Council.
The Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon, Bishop in charge of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe, said the primates’ communiqué raises important questions about the nature of authority in the Anglican Communion which should be studied.
A resolution from the Rt. Rev. Dean E. Wolfe, Bishop of Kansas, expresses disapproval of uninvited border crossing by other Anglican partner churches, and pledges the bishops to work more fervently for deeper unity in the future.
The other two resolutions contain nearly identical language, but have only one signature in common, that of the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, Bishop of Rhode Island. On July 2, the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Jenkins, Bishop of Louisiana, sent a letter to Bishop Jefferts Schori and enclosing a resolution which he described as “a plea for compassion, mercy, and a united way forward.” The resolution, which also contains the endorsement of 11 other bishops, calls on members of the House of Bishops to end permission for same-sex blessings, deny consent to the consecration of partnered gay bishops and provide for groups alienated by recent developments in The Episcopal Church.
The other resolution, sponsored by the Rt. Rev. D. Bruce MacPherson, Bishop of Western Louisiana, and three others, cites different reasoning and General Convention actions in its footnotes to propose the same three actions.
Bishop Jefferts Schori has appointed a small group of bishops to a drafting group. The group is led by the Rt. Rev. Wayne P. Wright, Bishop of Delaware, but it is not known what the Presiding Bishop has asked them to do or when they have been asked to produce a draft.
Just prior to his departure from New Orleans, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams told The Living Church that the primates will be consulted as part of the process of evaluating whether The Episcopal Church has satisfactorily complied with the primates’ requests, but he has not decided whether to call for another primates’ meeting before the Lambeth Conference of Bishops meets next July.
Briefly elaborating on his remark at Friday’s press conference that there was room for maneuverability between the expectations of the communiqué and an acceptable response by the House of Bishops, he said that because he was unaware of any alternate proposal by the House of Bishops to the primates’ pastoral scheme, he could not speak to its adequacy. “There’s simply no way to say,” he said.
Four bishops left the meeting after Archbishop Williams’ departure. Bishops Keith Ackerman of Quincy, Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, Jack Iker of Fort Worth and Donald Parsons, the retired Bishop of Quincy, said they attended the House of Bishops’ meeting out of respect to Archbishop Williams. All three dioceses have requested alternate primatial oversight, and in recent weeks the bishops have said their dioceses will consider proposals to leave The Episcopal Church at their annual meetings later this fall.
Steve Waring