BY ADAM PARKER
The Post and Courier
The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina announced Thursday that the ordination and confirmation of bishop-elect Mark Lawrence has been postponed.
Lawrence was elected Sept. 16 in a landslide vote and will become the diocese's 14th bishop, to succeed Edward Salmon, should he receive a majority of consents. The 120-day consent period expires March 9.
"This deferment is necessary because of unanticipated delays in the mailing of the consent requests to diocesan bishops and standing committees, which did not occur until the second week of November 2006," wrote the Rev. J. Haden McCormick, president of the diocese standing committee, in the announcement.
Before the election results can be ratified by the Episcopal Church, Lawrence must receive a majority of bishop and standing committee votes. Only once a majority of consents are received should the diocese set an ordination date, McCormick said. But, together with the presiding bishop's office, the diocese jumped the gun and set the original date for Feb. 24.
"A date was set before the letters went to the bishops and standing committees," McCormick said.
The diocese mailed its consent request letters just before Thanksgiving. And then came Christmas and New Year's. Standing committee members across the country typically meet once per quarter and rely on phone conferences and other methods of communication between meetings, he said.
The canons of the Episcopal Church limit the role of the national office to soliciting consents from bishops. The diocese is responsible for election, notification, requesting consents from standing committees, and facilitating a medical and psychological examination of the candidate. The presiding bishop typically consecrates new diocesan bishops.
Not long after Lawrence's election, various bishops and standing committees sent him a set of questions meant to gauge his intentions concerning the diocese's recent request for an "alternative primatial relationship" - oversight by someone other than Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.
To the question, "In what ways will you work to keep the Diocese of South Carolina in the Episcopal Church?" Lawrence answered Friday: "I might as well have been asked while I was engaged to my wife, 'In what ways will you work to keep your wife from leaving her commitments?' " And he informed his interrogators that Jefferts Schori would not be welcome at his consecration.
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