The Episcopal Church's polity challenged
Matthew Davies, writing at Episcopal Life Online reports on the Communion Partners statement:
A statement released April 22 and signed by Episcopal bishops and clergy challenges the polity of the Episcopal Church by suggesting that dioceses are autonomous entities and independent of General Convention, the church's main legislative body.The statement, which drew swift criticism for being an attack on the church's governance, was signed by 15 active and retired Episcopal Church bishops and endorsed by three Episcopal clergy who are members of the conservative Anglican Communion Institute. It was leaked online April 22 and officially released later the same day. It suggests that Episcopal Church dioceses are "not subject to any metropolitical power or hierarchical control" but rather "the ecclesiastical authorities in our dioceses are the Bishops and Standing Committees; no one else may act in or speak on behalf of the dioceses or of the Episcopal Church within the dioceses."
....
While the church's public affairs office declined to comment, the group's recent statement has been challenged by those who believe its suggestions on Episcopal Church polity are flawed.
Read the challenges and more here.
Wounded Bird writes:
The Bishops' Statement quotes the Archbishop of Canterbury:
The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such.... I should feel a great deal happier, I must say, if those who are most eloquent for a traditionalist view in the United States showed a fuller understanding of the need to regard the Bishop and the Diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the "national church".
Are we to assume that the Archbishop of Canterbury regards the Church of England as an "abstract reality" and that the dioceses of the Church of England are free to go their own way and sign covenants and maintain constituent membership in the Anglican Communion separately from the Church of England? Or do the words apply only to the Episcopal Church?
posted with permission for June Butler
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April 23, 2009 7:21 PM