Bishop Duncan: Fall HOB Meeting is Windsor Bishops' 'Last Stand'

Steve Waring
07/30/2007

Shortly before the Anglican Communion Network gathered for its constitutional convention in January 2004, the infamous ‘Chapman Memo,’ an unofficial document recommending wide-scale ecclesiastical disobedience, was leaked to The Washington Post. It cast a pall over the meeting before it began and caused widespread mistrust of claims by Network leadership that it intended to abide by the canons and work for reform from within The Episcopal Church.

Nearly four years later, as delegates gather for the annual council meeting July 30-31 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas, the Network remains officially committed to The Episcopal Church, but few expect that situation to continue much longer.

In his opening address, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh and moderator of the Network, listed the names of 17 Network leaders, including four bishops, who have left The Episcopal Church within the past year. Bishop Duncan’s first term as moderator is also drawing to a conclusion. During a question-and-answer session after his morning address, he said he planned to stand for re-election, but only if delegates endorsed the Common Cause partnership with other Anglican groups currently not in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In an interview with a reporter for The Living Church, Canon Daryl Fenton, chief operating officer for the Network, acknowledged that the distance between The Episcopal Church leadership and the Network has grown to the size of a chasm, but he downplayed the likelihood of a formal departure occurring during this meeting.

“Even in safe dioceses the level of dissatisfaction is growing,” he said. “People are becoming radicalized and less patient. We really are concerned about catholicity, however. We consider ourselves to be under the authority of the primates and we will not do anything which would undercut the careful agreements they have already worked out.”

In their February communiqué, the primates requested a response from the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church by Sept. 30. The deadline falls five days after the conclusion of the fall House of Bishops’ meeting. During his address, Bishop Duncan said the Network bishops had agreed to attend the House of Bishops’ meeting in order not to abandon the wider coalition of ‘Windsor’ bishops in what Bishop Duncan said was “their last stand.”

“We do so, some of us at least, without any implied recognition of or submission to the American primate, without any diminishment of our appeal for alternative primatial oversight, and without any expectation that the Episcopal House of Bishops will turn from the course so unequivocably embraced at their March meeting,” Bishop Duncan said.

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

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