Offending priest handled “by the book” by Episcopal Church leader
The Episcopal Church’s diocese of Nevada sought to calm an uproar over a former Benedictine monk who admitted sexual indiscretions with a parishioner before he was ordained an Episcopal priest by Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is now leader of the 2.3 million member U.S. church.
“It looks to me like she handled the situation by the book,” Bishop Dan Edwards said of Jefferts Schori’s actions regarding Fr. Bede Parry, a church organist and former Episcopal priest.
Jefferts Schori became the 450-year-old church’s first female leader when she was appointed presiding bishop in 2006.
Parry, 69, is a defendant in a Missouri lawsuit filed last month over his admitted sexual relationship with a male parishioner at a summer camp run by a Roman Catholic monastery. He has since resigned from the priesthood and from All Saints Episcopal Church in Las Vegas, Edwards said.
Jefferts Schori ordained Parry in 2004, aware that he had offended while a Benedictine monk at Conception Abbey, which runs a large monastery in Northwest Missouri.
Jefferts Schori and a committee of clergy and lay people were also aware that Parry went for treatment, but that a subsequent psychological examination in 2000 found he was a sexual abuser who had a proclivity to reoffend with minors.
Jefferts Schori forbade Parry from having contact with minors, under the church’s decade-old policy, “Safeguarding God’s Children,” that requires windows on all doors and does not allow children to go somewhere with a single adult.
Latest Anglican bid to mediate gay dispute meets with skepticism
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s latest proposal to mediate a gay rights dispute splitting the worldwide Anglican Communion seems to be falling on deaf ears in the opposing camps he is trying to discipline. Archbishop Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the world’s 80 million Anglicans, suggested last week that member churches approving gay bishops and same-sex unions and those actively opposing them be sidelined from official doctrinal committees.
The initiative was sparked by the consecration of an openly lesbian bishop in California last month. Williams also said conservative churches — mostly in Africa — that appoint bishops to serve in other countries would also be sidelined.
The proposal, if accepted in the Communion, would be the first time such sanctions would be imposed on dissident national churches. Unlike Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism is a federation of churches whose head has no direct power over all members.
A group campaigning for homosexual rights in the Communion said the threatened discipline caused it little worry because the committees the dissenters could not work on were “trivial.”
“These are delaying tactics, sops to the conservatives, which in reality gives them nothing,” Colin Coward, director of Changing Attitude, UK, told Reuters.
UPDATE: Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has issued a pastoral letter that refers to Williams’s proposal with a call for continued dialogue with those who disagree “for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding.” See Episcopal Life Online.
Church of England at loggerheads over women bishops
The Church of England said on Monday it would go ahead with installing women as bishops, but a delay in draft legislation has left liberals and traditionalists alike uncertain about how the plan will work in practice.
Together with homosexual bishops and same-sex marriages, the ordination of women is among the most divisive issues facing the Anglican Communion, which has 77 million members worldwide.
Church leaders at the General Synod, or parliament, were due to discuss women bishops at a week-long meeting in London this week, but the Revision Committee, assigned to draft legislation, failed to meet the deadline.
The committee, which is struggling to accommodate liberals who demand equality and traditionalists who want to keep an all-male senior clergy, will present draft proposals in time for the next Synod in July, in York, northern England.
Read the whole post here.
GUESTVIEW: No king, no bishop? American Anglicans revolt
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Elizabeth E. Evans is a U.S. freelance journalist living in Glenmoore, PA who writes about religion.
By Elizabeth E. Evans
After King George III lowered the boom on Boston in the wake of the 1773 Tea Party rebellion, Virginian Theodore Bland wrote: “The question is, whether the rights and liberties of America shall be contended for, or given up to arbitrary powers.” It didn’t take long at all for J. Jon Bruno, Episcopal bishop of the diocese of Los Angeles, to launch another, quintessentially American challenge towards Canterbury and other Anglican points anxious or angry about the election of the denomination’s first openly lesbian bishop on December 5.
“I would remind the Episcopal Church and the House of Bishops they need to be conscientious about respecting the canons of the church and the baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being,” Bruno said. “To not consent in this country out of fear of the reaction elsewhere in the Anglican Communion is to capitulate to titular heads.”
Within a day, Archbishop Rowan Williams responded to the election of Mary Glasspool as suffragan (assistant) bishop, warning that it raised “very serious questions” not just about the role the Episcopal Church would play in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.
Maybe he doesn’t realize that, in the eyes of some Americans, he is virtually irrelevant.
Within the next five months or so, it will be clear whether or not the American church heeds that caution when bishops, clergy and lay leaders in the denomination’s 109 dioceses consider whether or not to approve Glasspool’s consecration as bishop. I asked Jim Naughton, editor of the online Episcopal Café and a “go-to” spokesperson for denominational liberals, if he saw anything characterologically American about the denomination’s moves to open all orders of ministry to gays and lesbians in the teeth of internal and external opposition.
Vatican-Anglican: where in the details will the devil be hiding?
If “the devil is in the details” when two groups seek a merger, where will he be hiding when the Vatican talks with disaffected Anglicans who want to join the Roman church? Neither the agenda nor the schedule for these talks are clear, but some issues are starting to emerge as possible hurdles to a smooth switchover for Anglicans who want to “swim the Tiber.”
There is little clarity yet on either side. The Vatican has not spelled out the conditions of the “Apostolic Constitution” to accept Anglicans who want to join Catholicism while maintaining some of their own traditions. Additionally, there are varied faces of Anglicanism, which in its dogmas and practices stands somewhere between Roman Catholicism and Protestant traditions such as the Lutheran or Reformed churches. This will clearly take a while to work out.
The spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, played down any problems when the offer was announced. But several reactions from Anglicans to Tuesday’s announcement, including from some inclined to make the switch, have begun to trace the outlines of the looming doctrinal debates among Anglicans worldwide and between the Vatican and Anglicans knocking at its door.
Bishop Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), posted a succinct summary of sticky issues on his group’s website. This group of about 3,500 regular churchgoers is a diocese of the breakaway conservative Anglican Church in North America, which claims over 100,000 members across the continent. Harvey asked:
1. “Will the Roman Catholic Church require Anglican priests who choose this option to be re-ordained?
(NB: The Vatican has traditionally said that Anglican ordinations are not valid.)
2. “Will people who accept this invitation have to subscribe to Roman Catholic dogmas to which the Anglican Formularies are diametrically opposed – such as “Papal Infallibility”, the “Immaculate Conception” and Transubstantiation?
(NB: Papal infallibility says the pope cannot err when he rules on matters of faith and morals. The Catholic belief that the Virgin Mary was born without Original Sin is not a dogma in Anglicanism, although some Anglo-Catholics believe it. The Catholic dogma of transubstantiation says bread and wine actually become the flesh and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, while Anglicans believe this transformation is only symbolic.)
3. “Will Anglican priests – especially married ones – choosing to accept the Roman Catholic Church’s invitation have equal status with existing Roman Catholic clergy and will their ministry be interchangeable and welcomed in Roman Catholic parishes?”
In his statement, Harvey brought up another issue that could lead to disagreement — the meaning of the word “catholic.” Anglicans say they are a part of an undivided catholic (i.e. universal) Church, while Rome says it represents the true Church and churches that split off at the Reformation are not churches in the true sense. Pope Benedict has been quite clear on this point, most notably in his 2000 doctrinal document Dominus Iesus. Harvey quoted an ANiC priest as saying: “As for me and my house, we will remain ever faithful to the authority and primacy of the Holy Scriptures and the Faith and Order of the undivided Catholic Church. I need not become a Roman Catholic to be a Catholic Christian. As an Anglican, I am a Catholic Christian.”
Bishop Jack Iker, head of the Episcopal (U.S. Anglican) diocese of Forth Worth, Texas, touched on the same issue in his reaction: “Not all Anglo-Catholics can accept certain teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do they believe that they must first convert to Rome in order to be truly catholic Christians.”
What kind of idiot would reject a church because it ordains women in order to join one that brutalizes and buggers children?
Episcopal Church moves to elect more gay bishops
Episcopal Church leaders in Los Angeles on Sunday nominated an openly gay priest and an openly lesbian priest as bishops in a move sure to ratchet up tensions in the global Anglican Communion.
The move follows an announcement on Saturday by the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota of three candidates identified to become the Bishop of Minnesota, including a partnered lesbian priest in Chicago.
The nominations come just weeks after the 2 million-member Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism, lifted a de facto ban on the consecration of gay bishops that was seen as a “ceasefire” between liberal and conservative factions in the American church and the wider communion. You can see our story here.
Church unity has been strained since 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop in Anglican history known to be in an openly gay relationship. None have been elected since then but the subsequent truce now seems to be over.
This whole saga has provoked huge divisions and break-aways within the Episcopal Church and the 80-million member global Anglican Communion, where provinces or churches in the developing world, especially Africa, take a dim view of same-sex relations.
It is also unfolding against the backdrop of the wider American cultural debate about gay rights and related issues.
Our church was asked to participate in a school graduation,there was an episcopalian church on the same block, so we asked the vicar if he would like to attend.He accepted and we asked if he would like to give a short address to the children,and he agreed.The beginning of his talk began by advise the children,”BEWARE CHILDREN DON,T BELIEVE EVERY THING YOU READ IN THE BIBLE” To me this typifies the direction this denomination took years ago to try to fill declining congregations.the move away from the truth has “grieved”the spirit of god in my estimation,and now in his place what spirit now has inherited this all roads lead to god group of people?
First ACNA archbishop strikes evangelical tone
Robert Duncan, installed on Wednesday night as the first archbishop of the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), struck a decidedly evangelical tone in the sermon he delivered at his installation service. (You can see our coverage of the ACNA’s initial assembly here and here.)
The ACNA is mostly composed of conservative dissidents who have left the Episcopal Church — the main U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion — over thorny issues like gay clergy. It says it has 100,000 followers in 700 churches in Canada and the United States.
Like other mainline Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church — which is estimated to have more than 2 million members — has been shrinking while evangelical Protestant churches often have seen explosive growth (though some like the Southern Baptist Convention are also facing decline. We blogged on that issue earlier today). The ACNA seems to be in some ways emulating the evangelical movement by sticking to conservative principles (it would argue this means scriptural authority) and by stressing a renewed drive of evangelism.
Duncan at times certainly came across as something of a Southern evangelical (which some reserved Episcopal or Anglican audiences might find a bit jarring) but one wrapped in colorful Anglican robes. He called on his flock to “plant a thousand new churches in five years,” which will mark the end of his term in office. He talked about reaching the unchurched, relating the story of a recovering alcoholic whom he met on a plane and tried to introduce to Jesus. He also talked about the need to memorize scripture to live it.
His take on Islam echoed the more strident tone of conservative U.S. evangelicals and not those who have called for “inter-faith dialogue” with Muslims.
“We’ve got to be about the business of engaging Islam … secularism, and materialism, but especially Islam. Because there is only one way to the Father, it’s the only way. It’s a matter of life and death,” he said to warm applause.
I look forward to an ACNA forming in my city. It’s either the endless praise hymns and drums of the evangelicals or the liberal mush of the other churches.
from Tales from the Trail:
Obamas attend first Sunday church service in Washington
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama attended his first Sunday church service as president on Easter Sunday, greeted by hundreds of onlookers at an Episcopal church a block from the White House.
Obama, wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha sat about halfway down the first row in the packed but intimate St. John's, across Lafayette Park from the White House.
Throngs of onlookers packed the streets around the church and behind police barricades, even though, according to a White House official, the location was not disclosed until Sunday.
There was intense competition among area churches to lure the Obamas, according to reports.
Known to many as the "Church of the Presidents," every president since James Madison has attended the church, either on a regular or occasional basis, according to St. John's.
Obama had not attended church in Washington as president since Inauguration Day, when he attended a service at the National Cathedral, according to an aide.
The service focused on allowing the skeptical come to their faith in time.
GUESTVIEW: Amazing Grace — a rabbi’s view of the inaugural prayer service
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The author, Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, is a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and author of the novel A Delightful Compendium of Consolation.
On Wednesday, I went to church. It seemed right that on the morning after President Barack Obama’s historic inauguration as the 44th President of the United States I should pray for his and our success in the years ahead. We are a nation in crisis, depleted in so many ways by the last eight years. On the Tuesday of the inauguration, I stood with a million other Americans on the Mall in Washington, watching and cheering the transfer of power. The air was frigid, but filled with hope. We stood just behind the Capitol reflecting pool – far from the rostrum, but embedded in the great, diverse mass of people who make up America. Next to us were folks from Augusta, Georgia, who drawled their discomfort when George Bush was booed. On our other side were Washingtonians – African-Americans who proudly declared that on this day we were not black or white, but all of us were silver (the color of our tickets to the event).
Truth be told, the inaugural was better viewed in front of a television. But for the experience of being an American on this auspicious day, the Mall was the best place in the whole world. There is something extraordinary about standing among a million others, staring up at the jumbotron, striving to catch the words our new president was speaking. Sharing our food, our stories, ducking down so someone behind us could snap a photo, making sure that kids were in the sight-lines of their parents, breathing free; we huddled, massed against the cold, embodying the passions that Emma Lazarus’ poem emblazons on the base of the Statue of Liberty.
On Wednesday morning, waking before the dawn, again in bitter cold, we headed to church to pray for our republic. We were invited to the magnificent Washington National Cathedral for the interfaith National Prayer Service, a long tradition, since the days of President George Washington. There among the crowd I spotted many familiar Jewish faces (not a long tradition). There were Muslims and Hindus, and, of course, an abundance of Christian clergy.
I had the privilege of shaking hands with Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. (the National Cathedral is Episcopal). I greeted Rev. Joseph Lowery, who had delivered the stirring closing benediction at the inaugural. The 3,000 proud Americans in the congregation included the incoming cabinet, as well as senators and members of Congress among the pews. From my seat I watched former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton work the room. I saw Vice-President and Dr. Biden enter the cathedral, mere feet from where I was seated. They were immediately followed by President and Mrs. Obama. Tall, even regal, they embodied the very grace that we all prayed God may grant them.
The program included music on the carillon, the organ, the brass ensemble of the Marine Band, and a children’s gospel choir. The kids sang “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” and encouraged us to sing along for the final verse. Dr. Wintley Phipps sang “Amazing Grace” in his deep bass voice, profoundly moving the congregation. And Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, President of the Disciples of Christ Church, preached an excellent sermon, charging President Obama to continue his moral leadership. We all heartily assented, “Amen.”
Forgive my British ignorance, but how did the USA come to have a “National” Cathedral (Episcopalian), if there is supposed to be separation between State and Church?In England, the Queen claims to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England (Anglican),but how and when did the National Cathedral in Washington become National?By whose authority? Congress ?Is this a case of creeping erastianism ?
A new twist on the “Is Obama a Christian?” debate
The “Is Obama a Christian?” discussion is starting up again, this time not by people who suspect he’s a Muslim but those who think he’s a phony follower of Jesus Christ. The occasion for this is the posting on Beliefnet of an interview he gave to the Chicago Sun Times in 2004, while he was still an Illinois state senator. Conservative Christians have taken his religious views as proof he’s not a real Christian, but there’s support from a more liberal corner for his views.
That there is disagreement isn’t really a surprise. Theologians have been debating who is a Christian almost since the dawn of the faith and still dispute where the dividing lines lie. What is more interesting is that critics are picking apart his views — or purported views — on theological issues that have no obvious importance for his job as president.
Bloggers Joe Carter and Rod Dreher read in Obama’s interview a denial of the Nicene Creed since he called Jesus “a bridge between God and man” rather than clearly saying he is the Son of God (hat tip to Steve Waldman). “Unless Obama was being incredibly and uncharacteristically inarticulate, this is heterodox. You cannot be a Christian in any meaningful sense and deny the divinity of Jesus Christ. You just can’t,” Dreher writes. Has Obama denied the divinity of Jesus Christ here? That’s not clear here. Another point that Carter notes is that he doesn’t believe that people who have not embraced Jesus as their personal saviour will automatically go to hell. “I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup,” he said.
Elsewhere on its site, Beliefnet quotes a prominent Catholic theologian saying the same thing: “…Everything we believe about God, and everything we know about man, prevents us from accepting that beyond the limits of the Church there is no more salvation … We are no longer ready and able to think that our neighbor, who is a decent and respectable man and in many ways better than we are, should be eternally damned simply because he is not a Catholic. We are no longer ready, no longer willing, to think that eternal corruption should be inflicted on people in Asia, in Africa, or wherever it may be, merely on account of their not having “Catholic” marked in their passport.” This came from none other than a certain Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI. The quote is from 1964, from the young Ratzinger, and is not what he would say today. But even he said it back then and many theologians would agree with Obama’s view today.
As Waldman points out, it’s a view that George Bush would also agree with. And apparently with him many Christians as well:“millions and millions of people call themselves Christian, worship at Christian churches and believe that acceptance of Christ is not required for entry into heaven. In a recent Pew poll, 70% said ‘many religions can lead to eternal life.’ 66% of Protestants and 79% of Catholics said they agreed with that idea.”
Over at the Episcopal Café blog The Lead, blogger JB Chilton reprints reprints Obama’s answer about his suspicion of dogma and cautious turn towards faith and says: “Sounds like a good Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church welcomes you.”
Do you think it’s important to know exactly which Christian teachings the president-elect embraces and which ones he doesn’t, even if they have no relevance to his performance in the White House?
To Maria Taylor: One cannot fully know God’s mind, its true– He IS infinite — but He did give us His word which IS certainly about telling us His mind on many, many things. Gods mind on sin (10 commandments, plus other teachings throughout the word on this topic) on love, on mercy, on justice–and how he practices these things–and so many other things–its there in the word. And Jesus came and gave us the living breathing embodienment of God’s mind as God in the flesh thorugh his teachings and actions which perfectly applied them all. Chrsitians are called into a relationship with God He talks, we listen, we talk, he listens, ( aka prayer) we study, He speaks/reveals through the word to us–and we learn. Even creation speaks–so says the Bible. So the idea that we cannot know God’s mind is silly–that is what He calls us to do as first priority and foundation of all our works of service. Jerimaih quotes God as saying He will tell us ‘great and unsearchable things’–if we seek.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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I am a member of the Episcopal Church. This article has missed a lot of details (for example, the lawsuit is a civil, not criminal, lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Abbey where the man was a priest, no Episcopal church or other body is named as a defendent, nor even is the priest himself, and he has had no incidences of abuse reported since 1987. He was received as an Episcopal priest in 2002).
The article also has at least one major thing incorrect. In the article as written:
“Jefferts Schori and a committee of clergy and lay people were also aware that Parry went for treatment, but that a subsequent psychological examination in 2000 found he was a sexual abuser who had a proclivity to reoffend with minors.”
However, from the report (where some of the article’s quotes are taken from): http://www.episcopalnevada.org/index.php ?option=com_k2&view=item&id=156:stateme nt-regarding-resignation-of-fr-bede-parr y&lang=en
“It has been reported that there was a psychological examination showing that he was likely to repeat his offense. No such report was sent to the Diocese of Nevada and, to this day, we have no knowledge of its existence other than an assertion by the plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer in a John Doe lawsuit against the monastery. [...] The Diocese of Nevada, however, did have our own independent psychological evaluation done by a psychologist and it did not indicate any pathology or risk.”
From the people who have the archives relating to his reception, this report doesn’t exist. A cynic might say that this is “covering up,” but the reporting done here in this blog doesn’t address that question; rather, it either assumes it or has bad information.