[Pontiac]

Bishop Lee and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori have both said bishops with overlapping jurisdictions are antithetical to ancient church precedent. How very curious!

I wonder how he reconciles this statement with the history of the Anglican Church.

When Henry the Eighth broke with the Roman Catholic Church he put England in the position of being a country in which every priest was in a state of overlapping jurisdiction.

On one hand the priest was bound by his vow before God to be obedient to his Pope and Bishop. On the other hand he had a King that was asserting that he was now the church primate.

[Huber]

I suspect that she will not find this overly troublesome. After all, the Pope was not as enlightened as she is.

[bobjam]

Overlapping episcopates did not come to England until, I believe, the Acts of Toleration which allowed the Pope to send priests and bishops of his own to care for the Roman Catholics in the country (although the priests had been there in an underground fashion for quite awhile). The Act of Supremacy and the Elizabethan Settlements simply disconnected the existing episcopacy (which had been in place for many centuries) from the Papacy.

In Quebec, the Catholic Church operates and English diocese and a French diocese- overlapped.