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"I have been a faithful bishop of this church. I am a son of this church. My only offense is to have opposed the doctrinal and moral drift of this church and to bear in the House of Bishops all manner of anger and at times even derision."--- Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh
"The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men."--- The Westminster Confession of Faith (1.6)
The Jesus who was born into our world, and who lived and died in first-century Palestine, also rose from the dead, is now alive for ever, and is available and accessible to his people. Jesus Christ is not to be relegated, like other religious leaders, to history and the history books. He is not dead and gone, finished or fossilized. He is alive and active. He calls us to follow him, and he offers himself to us as our indwelling and transforming Saviour. ---From "The Contemporary Christian" John R. W. Stott
Some of us are not leading holy lives for the simple reason that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. No man ever cries aloud for deliverance who has not seen his own wretchedness. In other words, the only way to arrive at faith in the power of the Holy Spirit is along the road of self-despair---From "Men Made New" by John R. W. Stott
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
1/17/2007
It came sooner than we all expected. It was a stealth attack. It failed. US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, her attorney David Booth Beers, and the Rev. Harold Lewis, a revisionist priest in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, conspired to go after Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan in an attempt to oust the evangelical catholic bishop from his see.
The political maneuvers were straight out of Tammany Hall politics. Despite several failed legal tactics over the years to get rid of Duncan, the three "foolish virgins" worked quickly and quietly behind the scenes to dump an inhibition on Duncan faster than you can say Millennium Development Goals in order to get rid of him. But the plan backfired when the inhibition was not supported by senior bishops of The Episcopal Church.
The effort to inhibit the Pittsburgh Bishop bombed. Once again he dodged an ecclesiastical bullet.
The news, along with a copy of the allegations made by the chancellor to the Presiding Bishop against Bishop Duncan, and the Title IV Review Committee's decision to certify that, in their opinion, Bishop Duncan "had abandoned the communion of this church," came in a letter from Mrs. Jefferts Schori late in the day on January 15.
Bishop Duncan offered a brief response to the news, saying, "Few bishops have been more loyal to the doctrine, discipline and worship of The Episcopal Church. I have not abandoned the Communion of this Church. I will continue to serve and minister as the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh."
A group, calling themselves Progressive Episcopalians, tried putting the best spin they could on the attempted inhibition. Joan Gunderson wrote that she sees reason for hope in the statement issued by The Episcopal Church's Title IV Review Committee certifying that, in its view, Bishop of Pittsburgh Robert Duncan has abandoned the communion of The Episcopal Church. PEP believes that the canonical procedures set in motion by this decision will clarify issues of polity that have become confused in this diocese.
The diocesan Standing Committee has not yet discussed the latest situation. Its president, the Rev. David Wilson, rector of St. Paul's, Kittanning, said they will all support Bishop Duncan. "Bishop Duncan ... is in communion with the vast majority of Anglicans in this diocese and the vast majority of Anglicans throughout the world," he said.
You can read my story here: http://tinyurl.com/2zfqbb or in todays digest with all the correspondence and allegations as well.
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In the DIOCESE OF FT. WORTH, Bishop Jack Iker got into a war of words with Mrs. Jefferts Schori over the attempted inhibition of Bishop Duncan, and got yet another threatening letter.
The Bishop of Ft. Worth blasted Mrs. Jefferts Schori over ecclesiastical charges she brought against the Bishop of Pittsburgh.
"I find it tragic and deeply disturbing that the Presiding Bishop would seek to take canonical action against the Bishop of Pittsburgh prior to any final decision by his diocesan convention concerning separation from The Episcopal Church. The fact that Bishop Duncan and the Diocese of Pittsburgh are still a part of The Episcopal Church was clearly affirmed by the refusal of the three senior diocesan bishops to consent to his being inhibited for this alleged offense. The Episcopal Church continually gives lip service to the need for ongoing conversation and dialogue to heal our divisions while at the same time closing off any possibility of continuing conversations by aggressive, punitive actions such as this," he wrote.
"Today I have received a second threatening letter from the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. Interestingly enough, it arrived on the same day as the meeting convened by Bishop Hulsey." (Hulsey, the retired Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwest Texas, hosted an organizational meeting at his home in Fort Worth for all clergy of this Diocese who are opposed to the decisions made by the Diocesan Convention in November and who are committed to keeping this Diocese in The Episcopal Church, no matter what. I understand that only two or three rectors attended and that the rest were a handful of retired priests and a couple of deacons. Of the 14 clergy who voted against the constitutional changes in November, it is believed that half are retired or non-parochial.)
You can read the full story here or in today's digest: http://tinyurl.com/2xoks9
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In the DIOCESE OF VIRGINIA, the diocese and Episcopal Church were set back on their heels when Virginia's attorney general defended the right of 11 conservative Anglican parishes to use the state's Civil War-era "division statute" to leave the Episcopal Church while retaining millions of dollars in assets and property.
Attorney General Bob McDonnell's motion to intervene is a significant setback to the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia, which have said secular courts have no place in resolving the property dispute - the largest in the church's history.
Mr. McDonnell, a Roman Catholic who is planning a run for governor in 2009, said state law is on the side of the 11 churches, now with the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA).
CANA's case relies heavily on the state's division statute, known as "57-9" because of the section of the state code in which it falls. The statute says that if the majority of a congregation's members decide to leave the parent denomination, that congregation can retain the church's property. In December 2006 and January 2007, the majority of members in all 11 congregations scattered across several counties voted to leave.
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In the DIOCESE OF ROCHESTER, New York, All Saints Anglican Church in Irondequoit, got another chance to argue that it should keep what it believes is its property. New York State's highest appellate court, the Court of Appeals, agreed this week to hear the case between the congregation and the diocese, following the church's request to appeal earlier decisions issued at the state Supreme Court and Appellate Division levels. The Court of Appeals is expected to hear the case sometime this year. The church, formerly known as All Saints Protestant Episcopal Church, has been fighting to hold on to property at 759 Winona Blvd. since the diocese ousted the church more than two years ago. The congregation disagreed with the diocese over the larger body's support of the ordination of a gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2003.
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It was not all good news for the orthodox this past week. COMMON CAUSE PARTNERSHIP got set back a peg when the Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Province of America (APA), Walter Grundorf wrote a letter (destined only for his clergy) saying that he was pulling out of Common Cause because his clergy were polarized at about 50/50. The issue is women's ordination. "At this point, as Presiding Bishop, I must ask myself the question, is it wise and is it the best course of action to force through a decision to join the CCP with the strong possibility that there will be significant fall out among some of our parishes and missions. As a Church, we have developed a solid reputation as a stable jurisdiction that is outgoing and welcoming. We have managed to attract good and faithful men for the ministry in a Classical Anglican Church that has a balanced approach to the faith. When we have concentrated our efforts upon building up our parishes and dioceses, we have been successful," wrote Grundorf.
All well and good, but why didn't he do or say something months ago? This is an embarrassment to CCP moderator Bob Duncan who has worked his tail off building this coalition and now the APA jumps ship! Common Cause does not need this. TEC's revisionists have started ripping CCP to pieces over this. The liberal Blogs are alive with the sound of mocking laughter. Wouldn't it be nice if the orthodox could stay together just once in their lives? This is the moment to unite. For the APA to jump ship now is reprehensible. If he and they believed that women's ordination was a problem, then he should have made his move when CCP got started. To do it now, just as things are coming to a head with the possibility of a new orthodox province, the emergence of GAFCON, and as whole Episcopal dioceses are leaving TEC, the APA's actions only confirm, in the minds of people like the Archbishop of Canterbury, that the orthodox are no more united on the issues than he is.
You can read his letter here or in todays digest: http://tinyurl.com/246cj8
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WILLIAMS ANNOUNCES LAMBETH PLANS. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams has scheduled a press conference Jan. 21 to announce the official launch of this summer's Lambeth Conference. He will be joined by the Most Rev. Gerald (Ian) Ernest, Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, and the Most Rev. Ellison Pogo, Archbishop of Melanesia. Archbishops Ernest and Pogo are members of the Lambeth Design Team that has been planning the program. Jane Williams, wife of Archbishop Williams, and Margaret Sentamu, wife of Archbishop of York John Sentamu, will present details about the parallel Lambeth Spouses' Conference. During a BBC radio interview shortly before Christmas, Archbishop Williams revealed that more than two-thirds of the approximately 900 bishops invited had already indicated their intention to attend. The conference will be held on the campus of the University of Kent in Canterbury, from July 16 to Aug. 4. The Lambeth Conference, a gathering of bishops of the Anglican Communion, is held every ten years at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
According to lesbian priest Susan Russell, the nugget of news tucked in this announcement is that the Most Rev. Ian Ernest, Primate of the Indian Ocean, will be on hand. Ernest recently succeeded Archbishop Peter Akinola as the chairman of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA.) It would appear that the efforts of Akinola and his American allies to organize an all-African boycott of the conference have failed. Not necessarily. If Akinola can galvanize 90 percent or more of the CAPA bishops to go to GAFCON and bag Lambeth, his bishops, along with the Sydney, the Southern Cone, Southeast Asian and a number of American Episcopal dioceses, will represent the vast majority of Anglicans in the world today. The number of bishops attending is secondary to the number of Anglicans they represent. Africa alone is bigger than the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand put together.
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In the DIOCESE OF OXFORD, a row has erupted over a proposal to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer through a megaphone across part of Oxford. It is upsetting the local community. Residents are opposed to plans to sound the two-minute long call three times a day in the minaret of the Central Mosque. Elders from the Central Mosque, where up to 700 people gather to worship every Friday, have pledged to plow ahead with the proposal despite opposition. Dozens of people packed into a council meeting to signal their outrage, claiming they feared the prayer call would be an "un-neighbourly intrusion" that could turn the area into a "Muslim ghetto". But the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt. Rev. John Pritchard said those opposed to the plan should "relax" and "enjoy community diversity".
One wonders if the bishop would deliver the same message to the leaders of Saudi Arabia asking them to allow a Christian Church to be built with a public cross and public calls to worship.
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If you want to know what REVISIONIST CLERICS are preaching from the pulpit, consider this from the blog of lesbian priest Susan Russell of All Saints, Pasadena California. In an excerpt from a sermon marking Epiphany, she wrote this, "I began this morning with a gospel according to Oscar Wilde and so I'll end with a gospel from this side of the pond ... a gospel according to Ed Bacon (her parish priest)." And you wonder why TEC has no future.
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THE ARCHBISHOP OF RWANDA, Emmanuel Kolini was re-elected to another three-year term as Primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda during that church's General Synod, late last year at St. Etienne's Cathedral in Biryogo.
Delegates to the General Synod also voted to broaden and increase the curriculum of the church's theological college in Kabunga. The changes are intended to transform the theological college into an academic university offering new degrees in a variety of secular subjects. Synod also voted to change the legal name of the church from the Episcopal Church of Rwanda to the Anglican Church of Rwanda. He also called for reform of Rwanda's educational system
In other news, the Anglican Bishops of Rwanda have started leaving for the US in a bid to consecrate more bishops of the Anglican Mission in the Americas. Kolini will consecrate three bishops of the AMIA at the conclusion of the Dallas Winter Conference.
"You see God requests us to carry out His mission and spread the message throughout the world", Kolini told Africa correspondent Mugabe Grace for VirtueOnline. He noted that the Anglican church of Rwanda will continue preaching the gospel to save the mankind the world. It is significant that the African spiritual revival, known as the East African Revival, started in Rwanda during 1930 and spread to the rest of Africa.
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The Diocese of NORTHWEST TEXAS is searching for a new bishop. This is a slowly sinking ship. Wallis Ohl is leaving at a time when he has lost all his cardinal evangelical parishes and money is drying up to the diocesan coffers. The next bishop will have to raise a lot of money from old line liberals or unite, in time, with another diocese, just to keep what he has left functioning.
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IN NEWS that will hardly have Episcopal homosexuals jumping up and down for joy, LifeSiteNews.com reports that a drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex.. They said methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles. Sexually active gay men in San Francisco are 13 times more likely to be infected than their heterosexual neighbors, the researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study. "That's why we're trying to spread the message of prevention." One report called it "a highly-infectious flesh-eating bacterium transmitted through anal intercourse." Perhaps "safe sex" might actually come to mean no sex.
Perhaps the HOB can reflect on that at their meeting in March in Texas. Gene Robinson can spin this into his phallacious "commitment" mantra we hear so much about. The full text of the story is available at: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2008/jan/08011514.html
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Just when you thought that more craziness couldn't be possible in the DIOCESE OF PENNSYLVANIA, comes the Cathedral Mandala Project. It's been called a collaboration between two major faith traditions at the Episcopal cathedral in Philadelphia which is home for two weeks to Losang Samten, a Buddhist monk from Tibet. Losang is constructing a work of prayer known as a Mandala, a circular 8-foot-diameter sand painting. This is an art form, dating from the 12th century, in which millions of grain of sand in different bright colors are minutely sculpted into an intricate diagram representing the cosmos and many aspects of life. The mandala will be created over a two-week period (Sunday January 13 - 27) and will then remain in a completed state for a third week before it is dismantled and the sand swept up by the hands of the congregation and returned to the sea. See for yourself: http://www.philadelphiacathedral.org/content/view/187/86/
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TRINITY INSTITUTE'S National Theological Conference on religion and Violence features one Tariq Ramadan as a speaker/lecturer who will address this august body by video. The conference, Religion & Violence: Untangling the Roots of Conflict, will be held at Trinity Church in New York City. Mr. Ramadan is not unknown to the civil authorities. The US has denied entry to him under a section of the Patriot Act, which bars entry to foreigners who have used a "position of prominence . . . to endorse or espouse terrorist activity."
Wrote one VOL reader; "Is this another example of the national church having a death wish? Why wasn't a more moderate Muslim chosen? The national media seems not have to have picked up on this story. Tariq Ramadan is professor of Islamic studies and philosophy at Fribourg University in Switzerland. He is the author of "To Be a European Muslim" and "Western Muslims and the Future of Islam." He has been described by Time magazine as one of the 100 most likely innovators of the 21st century.
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COLORADO DEAN nominated to be bishop. The Dean of St. John's Cathedral in Denver, The Rev. Peter Eaton, 49, is among four nominees to be the next Bishop of Maryland, one of the oldest and most historic sees in the Episcopal Church. Election is scheduled for the end of March.
He's an Englishman. A contemporary of his at a theological college in Cambridge told VOL that he was "desperately ambitious and I always thought he was after a hat."
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NIGERIA: Anglican and Methodist leaders are reiterating calls for a resolute anti-corruption war in Africa's most populous country. Many charges have been made that billions of dollars have been pillaged from the country's coffers in recent years by political office holders. Corruption, the church leaders said, has so bedeviled Nigeria that a minority group in the country, consisting of those who have occupied public office in the past, is living in affluence while the majority are living in abject poverty amid the nation's oil wealth.
Nigeria Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola admonished political leaders for failing to spurn corruption and be transparent in serving the country. "Without conversion from the sin of corruption, the sin of stealing, the sin of secret cults, the sin of adultery, our society cannot be better, and the leaders themselves have nothing good to pass on to the people," Akinola said.
The Rev. Sunday Makinde, the top cleric of Nigeria's Methodist Church, said there is an urgent need for political leaders to renounce corruption, which many people say has held back the country's development. "The ongoing anti-corruption crusade should be all-encompassing," Makinde said. "Let us make it a collective responsibility and duty to rid the country of corruption that has eaten deep into the fabric of the society and is gradually destroying our beloved country."
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AN INVITATION TO ALL VOL'S SOUTH CAROLINA READERS
VirtueOnline extends a most cordial Invitation to all its Friends, Supporters, and Readers. During the early evening of Friday, February 1, 2008. I will be in Charleston, South Carolina attending The Mere Anglican Conference and would very much like to personally meet you. Please call 610-668-0732 to register and receive further details. Reservations can be made up till 5 pm on Thursday, January 31, 2008. If you are in the area, I would love to meet with you. Personal invitations are being sent to those who have been in touch with VOL and have made a contribution to this ministry who live in the area. If you are in the area please make a point of coming.
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Please go to the website www.virtueonline.org for more up to the minute news and commentaries. Stories are posted seven days a week to the website: News, Commentary, Viewpoints, Culture Wars and the latest news of the Persecuted Church around the world keeps you informed for your prayers.
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