What Next for Justin?
Last Friday the story broke of a rather egregious press statement that the Archbishop authorised, praising Katherine Jefferts Schori to the hilt on the news she had been awarded an honourary doctorate from Oxford University. As Phil Ashey of the American Anglican Council rightly pointed out, the use of the word “Compassion” was particularly offensive.
On February 17, 2011, The American Anglican Council published a documented report of how Bishop Jefferts Schori and the leadership of TEC had violated the very text of its canons, due process and natural justice to inhibit and depose (at that time) 12 bishops and 404 deacons and priests. Since then, the estimate of total inhibitions and depositions of bishops, priests and deacons has risen to 700. This represents the largest exercise of penal discipline by any Presiding Bishop in the history of the TEC—and perhaps in the history of any Church in the Anglican Communion.
In one notable case, Bishop Jefferts Schori deposed Bishop Henry Scriven of the Church of England! In another notable case, her “compassion” led her to inhibit retired Bishop Edward MacBurney (VII Quincy) on April 2, 2008. On April 4, his son died, leaving the grieving father and bishop unable to conduct his son’s funeral rites.
Through her Chancellor, Bishop Jefferts Schori authorized and continues to authorize litigation against volunteer vestry (parish council) members and other volunteer leaders in church property cases. Although volunteers do not hold title to the property of the departing congregations, we documented at least 48 instances (as of the date of our report) where such volunteer vestry members have been sued by TEC or the diocese—in some cases, seeking the personal assets of these volunteers for monetary punitive damages in excess of the value of the property at issue. Such claims represent a position by Episcopal bishops and attorneys that a volunteer vestry member‘s vote to leave TEC is oppressive and malicious illegal behavior that justifies the forfeiture of a volunteer‘s personal assets. In addition to suffering the intentional infliction of emotional distress at the possibility of losing their personal assets, volunteer vestry members and other leaders have suffered damages by the mere filing of such claims including difficulty in refinancing their homes, difficulty in obtaining security clearances for new jobs, and prejudice to their credit reports.
When “Christian compassion” might have moved Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and the leadership of TEC to accept the Primates call for a moratorium on litigation at their 2007 meeting in Dar es Salaam, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori chose instead to accelerate the litigation. In 2009 when TEC cut staff and program by 30%, it increased the line items in the budget for litigation. We documented at least 56 complaints filed by TEC and its Dioceses against individual churches, clergy and volunteer vestry members. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori led a delegation of bishops to Lambeth 2008 who demonstrated reckless indifference to the truth by telling other Anglican bishops in their “indaba groups” that TEC was being sued by local churches—when precisely the opposite was true. The Episcopal Church has continued to stonewall every request for an accounting of the funds it has expended on such litigation, and conservative estimates based on public records indicate that the cost is already in excess of $30 million.He’s got a point hasn’t he?
Really-Is this “compassion dedicated to the service of Christ?”
Of course, there’s also the issue of where the copy for the press statement came from. As I demonstrated last week, there are strong textual clues to indicate that 815 had a hand in it’s drafting. I have asked a Lambeth Palace representative twice in the past week to deny that the Headquarters of the Episcopal Church had any hand in either drafting part or all of the statement or providing biographical information suitable for such a statement. On both occasions no denial was forthcoming when at the same time they were incredibly quick to tell me that ++Justin had seen and authorised the statement when I suggested he might not have. Make of that what you will.
I tell you what some people are making though, and that is a clear understanding that the Press Statement from Lambeth Palace last week was a political disaster. I’ve spoken to two members of the House of Bishops over the past 24 hours from different camps, and both of them were very clear that the leadership realise the words of that statement were a grievous mistake. The fact that the Americans thrown out of TEC for simply wanting to believe and preach what the rest of the Communion did have united past their differences (womens’ ordination anyone?) to decry this piece of blind sycophancy is deeply worrying, but it’s not half as disturbing as the utter silence from Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and others. The danger comes for the Archbishop not when his fellow Primates respond to his letters with ones of their own, but when they decide that they have finished with appeasing (as they see it) a traitor to the cause and there is no more hope in dialogue.
For the rest, see:
http://www.peter-ould.net/2014/02/13/what-next-for-Justin
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