PENNSYLVANIA: BENNISON FACES GROWING OPPOSITION FROM ORTHODOX PRIESTS

David W. Virtue

The revisionist Bishop of Pennsylvania, Charles E. Bennison, is facing increasing pressure from orthodox priests in his diocese who disagree with him over the faith, ECUSA’s liberal positions on sexual morality, and the way he runs the diocese.

“Diversity is disappearing—instead, we have a liberal narrowness. It’s a paradox. Genuine openness is slowly vanishing and becoming deliberately narrow,” said the Rev. Don Sehulster, the evangelical rector of Good Shepherd, Hilltown, PA.

At a recent meeting of the Bucks Deanery Clericus at Grace Church, Hulmeville, several priests raised their voices at the direction the Episcopal Church was going—and specifically at the way Bishop Bennison was running the diocese.

Following a Bible study, Sehulster weighed in on the topic of Episcopal pastoral oversight, offering that the Episcopal Church was sick. “We cannot heal ourselves; we need intervention from the outside. We need a pastoral leader from outside of ECUSA to help us—a Primate.”

At the clergy meeting, Bennison revealed that he had discussed with 14 bishops of Province 3 their strategy for responding if a parish refused a pastoral visit. “Bennison said that two of the bishops would not make a pastoral visit, two more said they didn’t know, and 10 said they would go—and if they were not allowed into the church, they would hold a service outside on the parish grounds” (shades of Bishop Jane Dixon at Accokeek in the Diocese of Washington). Bennison added, “We have learned from the ’60s that we must confront evil wherever we find it.”

The Rev. Larry Snyder, rector of St. Luke’s Newtown, voiced opposition to Bennison’s remark that everyone who disagreed with him theologically was “evil.”“I took offense at that remark,” said Snyder. Fr. Sehulster also opposed the comment. Bennison scrambled for an explanation, saying he meant not people but those “who believed in the heresy of schism.”

Snyder told the bishop he was using the canons to “beat us who don’t agree with him into submission.” An Anglo-Catholic priest, Snyder has repeatedly asked Bennison for another bishop to do confirmations—and only recently was allowed to have Quincy Bishop Keith Ackerman visit for a teaching mission. He was permitted to celebrate but not to confirm. Bennison exacts a heavy price for cooperation.

“I ask three or four times a year, but with little success. I am hoping the new ruling from the House of Bishops for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight will give us some freedom,” Snyder told Virtuosity.

In a March 12 letter, Snyder castigated Bennison for breaking a promise made upon election: to continue the practice (under Bishop Alan Bartlett) of permitting traditionalist bishops from outside the diocese to make Episcopal visitations. Bennison had reportedly said, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it.”Snyder accused the bishop of breaking that promise: “I lack confidence in your word, your revisionist theology, your insensitive approach and your unperceived pastoral concern for the spiritual needs of traditionalists [which] have caused some congregations to attempt to secede from the Episcopal Church, to withhold voluntary mission giving, and to walk away from their buildings to start a new congregation under the A.M.I.A.—and with some rectors declining to agree to visitations you demanded.”

Snyder blasted the bishop for “upping the ante,” adding more demands before an outside bishop would be considered for a supplemental visitation.

“When you phoned me on February 23 to remind this parish that they had not made a pledge to the mission program of the diocese, you asked what you could do to convince us to do so. I suggested that you permit an outside traditionalist bishop to make episcopal visitations.”Such visitation would not replace Bennison or his assisting bishop—only supplement them: one for one.

“Bennison responded that he would only permit such additional Episcopal care after he and other bishops assisting in the diocese had made a visit—plus the parish now had to give a tithe of their income to the diocesan mission program.”“That was never part of the deal,” said Snyder. “Bennison just keeps upping the ante—for one thing: money and power.”

Snyder clarified he was not seeking to leave the Episcopal Church, “nor even deny his position as the diocesan bishop—only to live our faith and to meet the spiritual needs of the congregants.”He added: “Due to your well-publicized positions on faith and morals, your visitations have always caused stress and turmoil within the parish. Parents have told me that they will not have their children confirmed if you are the bishop celebrating the Laying-on-of-Hands, and others have stated they will not be present, or will not receive, if you are the celebrant of the Eucharist.”No debate regarding the Articles of Religion and Anglican polity will change this, he said.

The traditionalist priest said the tithe Bennison was demanding was now 10 percent of the previous year’s diocesan budget.

Snyder said he had handed out a questionnaire after the consecration of V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire—and his parish voted 90 percent for biblical views on human sexuality. “We have gay couples who are welcome here in the parish, who know they are welcome—but we will still accept the biblical teaching on all aspects of sin.”

At the clergy meeting, Bennison said he was “toying with the idea of dropping retired clergy medical benefits,” calling it “a large chunk of change—$40,000.”

Questions have been raised about unnecessary monthly legal fees spent attacking traditionalist parishes.

Sehulster criticized Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold: “If I had done what he had done, I would have been asked to resign. His actions have harmed the church—and knowing the consequences, he went ahead and consecrated Robinson. He is a poor leader. I don’t want the church to break up; I just want to see it get back on track.”

Virtuosity was also told that lay people from Emmanuel, Holmesburg—who presently have no priest but only a supply priest—said Bennison recently stated: “I am a heretic. I am a universalist… I just don’t believe that God would condemn any of his children to the damnation of hell.”