PB Presses Efforts to Remove More Bishops

Posted on: April 9, 2008

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori continued preparations for a vote to depose Bishop Robert Duncan at a special House of Bishops’ meeting before the Lambeth Conference this July. E-mail messages were sent April 8 to all members of the House of Bishops entitled to vote.

A disciplinary “Review Committee” of bishops found sufficient evidence to conclude that Bishop Duncan had abandoned communion , a charge he has formally denied. Bishop Duncan has never been inhibited, a canonical objection raised by John Lewis, a lawyer retained by Bishop Duncan.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, David Booth Beers, chancellor to the Presiding Bishop, recently sent an e-mail to about two dozen Pittsburgh Episcopalians explaining that Bishop Jefferts Schori was not “seeking approval to proceed; rather, she seeks the mind of the House as to when to proceed” with a vote to remove Bishop Duncan. Shortly after the March 12 conclusion of the House of Bishops’ spring retreat, Bishop Jefferts Schori called a Sept. 17-19 meeting in Salt Lake City.

Bishop Jefferts Schori also inhibited pending trial the Rt. Rev. Edward H. MacBurney, retired Bishop of Quincy, on April 2. Bishop MacBurney, 80, has been charged with performing confirmations last June at an Anglican parish within the geographic territory of the Diocese of San Diego that had previously affiliated with the Province of the Southern Cone.

The timing of the disciplinary notice deeply saddened the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman, Bishop of Quincy, who said he had pleaded with Bishop Jefferts Schori to delay the action for a short while out of pastoral consideration for the MacBurney family. Bishop MacBurney’s son, Page, has been in hospice care and died April 4.

“I am beside myself with grief over this unnecessary action taken against my predecessor especially at a time when he is mourning the death of his son this past Friday,” Bishop Ackerman said in a statement on the Forward in Faith website. Bishop Ackerman serves as the organization’s president.

“In the midst of this difficult time for Bishop MacBurney and his family, I am really much more concerned about the implications of St. Matthew 18:15-17 as it relates to how reconciliation is pursued than I am with Title IV, Canon 1, Section 6 as it relates to disciplining my dear brother,” Bishop Ackerman wrote.

This article comes from The Living Church Foundation
http://www.livingchurch.org/

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