Litchfield, who retired in June after 17 years as rector of Christ Church n Elizabethtown, opposed the 2003 General Convention's approval of the election and consecration of a homosexual bishop. A week after his retirement in June, he announced in a press conference that he was leaving the Episcopal Church and starting a new congregation with a group of Christ Church parishioners in Elizabethtown.

In an Aug. 19 interview, Gulick said he is saddened that Litchfield has taken actions and made public statements that led to his inhibition. "When an Episcopal priest who has taken an oath to obey his bishop suddenly says that he has another bishop outside of this diocese, that in itself is clear evidence that he has abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church," Gulick said.

The Standing Committee, he said, "graciously" recommended inhibition rather than a more severe form of discipline, a trial in Ecclesiastical Court to depose him from the "ranks of the ordained."

Gulick said that he wants to stress that inhibition is "the easiest form of church discipline to undo," he said. According to the bishop, all that is needed to lift the inhibition is for Fr. Litchfield to retract his actions of forming a new congregation and declaring loyalty to a foreign bishop; acknowledge that this was a breach of our canons; and state that he will not function in the way that he has declared. "In other words," Gulick added, "if he said that 'we felt we were doing this for good conscience reasons, but we now realize that this is against the order of the Anglican Communion and Episcopal Church and we regret our actions,' then the inhibition will be immediately lifted."

Expressing his hope that Litchfield will be reconciled with the Episcopal Church, in the interview Gulick offered several reasons why his actions to separate from the Episcopal Church are "tremendously unfortunate," especially, he said, now when "there is a tremendously positive feeling in the Anglican Communion" and the Communion seems to be moving toward reconciliation.

This summer, he said, the Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the instruments of unity of the provinces composing the Anglican Communion, refuted in his synod address statements made by members of the conservative American Anglican network that the U.S. and Canadian churches had been kicked out of the Communion by the triennial Anglican Consultative Council meeting this summer.

The Archbishop, he said, clearly stated that the "voluntary withdrawal" of U.S. and Canadian representatives to the meeting "in no way means that the churches have been excluded from the Communion.... I think the Communion is in a much stronger position than it was a year and a half ago, so [the] movement toward separation in Elizabethtown is going in the opposite direction ... the timing makes less sense today than it would have."

Regarding the bishop of the Diocese of Bolivia's sponsorship of the new church in Elizabethtown, Gulick said that he is "out of bounds." That action, he said, violates church tradition and law dating back to the Council of Nicea and the Chalcedon statement as well as the recommendations published in the recent Windsor Report, which asked bishops from other Anglican provinces specifically not to interfere in the U.S. and Canada diocesan affairs unless invited by the Episcopal bishop for the local diocese.

Gulick said he will write to the Bolivian bishop and ask him not to come here. He also will inform the Archbishop of Canterbury about this situation.

Although there are about 150 churches in the U.S. "that call themselves Anglican," Gulick said the Episcopal Church U.S.A. is the only Anglican Church in the United States that is recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

http://www.episcopalky.org/20050829enewsonlineart1.htm

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