Posted on 01/28/2009 10:55:21 PM PST by sc70
US Presiding Bishop deposes Church of England Bishop Wednesday, 28th January 2009. 12:01pm
By: George Conger.
The Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church has announced that she has deposed a bishop of the Church of England from the ordained ministry.
On Jan 23, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori announced that she had accepted the voluntary renunciation of ministry given to her by the Rt Rev Henry Scriven, Mission Director for South America of the newly merged South American Mission Society (SAMS) – Church Mission Society (CMS) and removed him from the ranks of the ordained ministry.
Under the terms of American Canon law Bishop Scriven is now “released from the obligations of all ministerial offices, and is deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority as a minister of God’s word and sacraments conferred in ordination.”
However in a statement given to The Church of England Newspaper, Bishop Scriven denied that he had ever renounced his orders, and stated that he was at a loss to understand the presiding bishop’s actions.
On Oct 16, Bishop Scriven wrote to Bishop Schori to inform her that he was returning to the Britain to take up the post of director of South American ministry for SAMS-CMS. Ordained in the Church of England, Bishop Scriven was consecrated in 1995 as Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe by Archbishop George Carey. In 2002, Bishop Scriven became the Assistant Bishop of Pittsburgh in the Episcopal Church. Following Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan’s deposition from office as Bishop of Pittsburgh on Sept 19, Bishop Scriven’s position in the US church was terminated.
In his letter, Bishop Scriven informed Bishop Schori he was returning to the UK to take up the SAMS-CMS post and had been appointed an Honorary Assistant Bishop and would be under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Oxford.
In her response of Nov 12, Bishop Schori acknowledged that Bishop Scriven was now a Bishop of the Church of England, and said she would “release you from your orders in this Church” for reasons “not effecting moral character.” Bishop Schori added that she believed “that subtlety was lost on some of our Communion partners” over her understanding of canon law, as her action would not undo the “indelible” mark of ordination, but was a housekeeping action that would end his licence to serve in the US Church.
However, before Bishop Schori’s tenure as Presiding Bishop, bishops who left the US church to serve in other provinces were not released from their orders, but transferred to other churches.
The decision to deprive Bishop Scriven of his right to celebrate the gifts of ordination was an egregious violation of canon law, the Anglican Communion Institute said. “Her canonical over-reaching has now extended into the heart of the Church of England, placing in serious question the extent to which the Presiding Bishop continues to perceive herself as in communion with that church and its primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
From a canonical point of view, Bishop Scriven was not under the authority of the Episcopal Church when she released him from his orders, the ACI observed. And the ordinations “of which she purports to deprive him were conferred on Bishop Scriven not by TEC but by the Church of England, including by the Archbishop of Canterbury personally. The Presiding Bishop has no authority to deprive him of the ministry conferred on him by his ordination in the Church of England,” the group of Anglican scholars and canon lawyers argued.
Bishop Schori’s “action has profound consequences” for the Episcopal Church’s “status as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion and its communion with the Church of England,” the ACI said, and was a “sloppy and inappropriate” abuse of canon law to achieve a political end.
“The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, in seeking to deal with what is regarded as a problem within her own province, has so misused the canons that it is no longer clear if The Episcopal Church understands what ordination and interchangeability of ministry in a Communion entails. Has The Episcopal Church de facto ceased to view itself and its Constitution and Canons as meaningfully related to the life of catholic Anglicanism at the most basic level and instead sees them as laws governing (it might be hoped) a national denomination and really nothing more?,” the ACI asked.
Bishop Scriven told ReligiousIntelligence.com that he left “it to others to decide whether what I wrote” bears any relation to what was decided by Bishop Schori. “My only question, as someone who in over 33 years of ordained Anglican ministry has moved Provinces seven times and dioceses nine times, is ‘would I have received the same treatment had I moved, say, from the Diocese of South Carolina back to work in the Church of England?’”
However, Bishop Scriven stated that he was nonetheless “delighted that my ordained ministry is still recognised in other parts of the Communion and I rejoice in the opportunity to serve the mission of the church through SAMS and CMS.”
So she’s claiming its a normal step?
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