Posted on 12/12/2012 10:18:02 PM PST by Cronos
Divisions in the Episcopal Church on the subject of gay marriage have led yet another diocese to break from the national US Episcopal Church.
Reuters reports Bishop Mark Lawrence of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina received a letter Oct. 15 from Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori saying he had “abandoned the church” and barring him from exercising his office. The local diocese however had previous stated that it would disassociate with the national church if it took exercised any hierarchical authority. It did, and the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina became the fifth US diocese to break from its mother Church
Dioceses in San Joaquin, California; Quincy, Illinois; Fort Worth, Texas; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania have also left the US Episcopal Church since the 2003 ordination of the faith’s first openly gay bishop and trends in support of same sex marriage.
The South Carolina dispute has gone on for years and last Saturday a majority of parishes in the diocese voted at a convention for the break. The diocese presented a new constitution and claimed Lawrence as its bishop, removing all references to the national church.
The Item reports that the US Episcopal Church however does not accept the diocese secession.
“While some leaders have expressed a desire to leave the Episcopal Church, the diocese has not left,” Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote in a letter Thursday. “It cannot, by its own action. The alteration, dissolution, or departure of a diocese of The Episcopal Church requires the consent of the General Convention, which has not been consulted.”
The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina actually predates the US Episcopal Church by four years, forming in 1785. The US Episcopal Church formed in 1879.
It is sad to see the disintegration of a once successful denomination. I was raised in and confirmed as an Episcopalian, member for 50+ years, now attending RCIA, anticipate to swim the Tiber at Easter.
Do you know what an Ecopalian is? A pissed off Episcopalian. There are lots of them.
I also was raised Episcopalian. Check out the Anglican Catholic Church. It’s basically the church I attended as a girl.
That's a simple lie, and W.W.W.* Schori knows it. As the article points out in its last sentence the Diocese of SC is OLDER than the Episcopal Church. Also the Diocese of SC is a separate registered SC non-profit corporation, and The Episcopal Church out of New York city is not, in SC. South Carolina courts too have already ruled that the infamous "Dennis Canon," a 1979 Episcopal rule which claims an implied trust exists on property owned by Episcopal Church congregations--does not apply in South Carolina.
All Schori and company is doing is attempting to cause strife and trouble to churches in South Carolina who have simply left the Episcopal denomination peacefully. Bishop Lawrence has with much grace made clear that any congregation that wants to go back to the Episcopal denomination is free to do so...with no penalty or lawsuit.
Schori is in this case and actually dozens of other cases, all over the USA, done just the opposite--suing using the deep pockets of the Episcopal denomination, and actually stealing millions of dollars worth of Church properties from the congregations who paid for every penny of their church properties.
*W.W.W. stands for "Wicked Witch of the West" because by her actions, Schori has shown that's exactly what she is.
That is where we are in clas, at the Ordinariate Seat, Our Lady of Walsingham. It is 90% out of the prayer book I was raised using, and still have. Similar liturgy, completely different authority and teaching. Life, marriage, freedom: appeals to me!
Hey Katharine, the door has already been slammed in your face
There is no doubt of Schori’s wickedness and heresies: can only be attributed to demonic influences. She is wrecking the place and demolishing the Anglican communion in the process. I guess her PhD in Squids gives her the qualifications to do that. She is a creepy heretic, does not believe the Lord Jesus Christ is the path to salvation, denies the immaculate conception, promotes pluriform truth, never mind the whole gay bishops and marriages thing. She is totally whacked. The church is dissolving and people are leaving in droves.
I'm sure it was horrible for you, like a Greek tragedy watching your home being infected by Schori and co. Welcome and thank you -- we Catholics need more folks like you to bring up the conservatives among us. We should have a trade-off with the ECUSA -- we give them our libs...
Schori is a scourge on all Christians. When Moslems attack Christians in Nigeria claiming Christians allow gay bishops, they don’t care that Schori is ECUSA or that the Christians they attack are evangelical or Catholic or other and conservative.
Welcome home, sir. I left the Anglican church myself. :)
>> we Catholics need more folks like you to bring up the conservatives among us.
Yeah, you guys have been great to us. Just keep your damn leftys at a distance - ugh! ;o)
>> we Catholics need more folks like you to bring up the conservatives among us.
Yeah, you guys have been great to us. Just keep your damn leftys at a distance - ugh! ;o)
TEC (no longer referred to as ECUSA) has 100 diosceses in the U.S. Only 5 have voted to seperate from TEC since 2003. Not likely to be any more. What few orthodox bishops who remain (and bishops are the ones who led the 5 dioceses out of the TEC) are under continuous oppression by P-B Schori. Most orthodox members have fled the church by now. Only the elderly orthodox who just can't bring themselves to leave, remain. P-B Schori and the House of Bishops have 10 of the 11 U.S. Epsicopagan seminaries with boots on their necks. Bishops will not consider any orthodox-oriented candidates who are seeking placement in a parish position. Orthodox-oriented rectors, all elderly, cannot rock the boat for fear of losing their pensions.
I know a 27 year-old man who is studying for the priesthood in TEC. I knew him as a youth in Boy Scouting. He earned his Eagle award. Got his college degree while involved in ROTC. He served 6 months in Afhanistan and was wounded. Now he is back home in AL which is where we got re-acquainted. I presented him a 300 page research document on Christianity/Episcopagan church history/homosexual movement hoping it might dissuade him from his new career path. It didn't. I am really worried that the under-40s have been completely brainwashed.
I am happy you’re becoming Catholic. We need each other.
I assume they’re leaving because it isn’t “liberal” enough?
I wonder what will happen when the poor elderly die out. Will Schori grab their money and run?
Nashoda house, of Wisconsin, and Trinity of Ambridge, PA, were both affiliated with the Episcopal Church, and are no longer—as both are faithful orthodox seminaries.
The Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) kind of an unbrella group for churches that have left—or been established separately—since 1999 under foreign Anglican bishops-—claims to have about 100,000 members. Through the (Rwandan, Nigerian, Southern Cone, etc.) bishops most ACNA clergy have oversight and communion with Canterbury—hence are “authentic” Anglicans. ACNA was set up to eventually be the orthodox replacement of TEC...
http://www.anglicanchurch.net/
TEC claims 2+ million, but in reality has less than 700,000. I believe the AVERAGE age of TEC members is over 60....(and keeps going up, even as membership shrinks...). Both in money and membership—TEC is crashing. Even while the “new” Anglicans, ACNA churchs, are growing, alive and young...
Their pursuit of lawsuits ironically—may actually make TEC’s collapse faster, in that they are burning through money for lawyers—and then when/if they win, what do you do with empty church buildings—esp. during a real estate recession? The litigiousness also makes for very poor PR, even amoung liberals who would agree with them on homosexuality and other issues.
The reaping what you sow analogy is correct here. Some day—in the not too distant future—TEC as currently constituted will be no more.
Thank you for this clarification. I wasn't aware that Trinity had seperated from TEC (~2007). I knew Nashoda House had because I see its logo on David Virtue's web-site. So, TEC is down to 9 seminaries.
TEC claims 2+ million, but in reality has less than 700,000. I believe the AVERAGE age of TEC members is over 60....(and keeps going up, even as membership shrinks...). Both in money and membership—TEC is crashing. ...
Agreed.
... Even while the “new” Anglicans, ACNA churchs, are growing, alive and young...
I pray you are right, but I am unsure at this point. It is still early in the Anglican Realignment. I suppose the proper way to view this is that God's hand is still guiding this remnant of Anglicans who choose to "hold onto the faith once delivered."
Their pursuit of lawsuits ironically—may actually make TEC’s collapse faster, in that they are burning through money for lawyers—and then when/if they win, what do you do with empty church buildings—esp. during a real estate recession? The litigiousness also makes for very poor PR, even amoung liberals who would agree with them on homosexuality and other issues.
It is interesting to keep up with these matters on David Virtue's web-site, http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/index.php
It does sound like some within TEC are beginning to realize P-B Schori's crusade against the rebel orthodox will result in a pyrhhic victory.
The reaping what you sow analogy is correct here. Some day—in the not too distant future—TEC as currently constituted will be no more.
Agreed. I have thought for some time that at some point down the pike, all of these small, revisionist, Protestant denominations, i.e., the 4 "mainline" Protestant denominations in the U.S. - UCC, TEC, ELCA, PCUSA, and others (perhaps an element from within the UMC), will choose to merge around the theme of "social justice", i.e., full acceptance/inclusion of homosexuality within the church. After all, schisms and mergers are a constant theme within the U.S.
With POTUS BHO pushing his anti-Christian agenda, and making headway on it, it does make me wonder if we are going to see massive re-emergence of underground/home churches like we hear about in Red China. Should BHO be successful in stripping the tax exempt status from churches, it may come to that. Well, history shows us that Christianity thrived in secret during the darkest days of persecution under the Roman Empire. Mark Twain supposedly said that, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
Placemark
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