Updated again Tuesday evening
There has been is still no at last a media report so far of the episcopal consecrations which took place yesterday afternoon in Virginia. Four additional suffragan bishops were consecrated for CANA by Archbishop Peter Akinola. This is the first such event to take place in the USA. Correction It has been pointed out that some AMiA consecrations took place in Denver in June 2001.
Update the report is in the Fairfax Times and is headlined CANA split on issue of women priests.
There are a number of documents on the CANA website, and there is blog coverage by BabyBlue.
Bishop Frank Lyons of the Province of the Southern Cone, Bishop John Guernsey, Missionary Bishop for the Province of Uganda, and Bishop Bob Duncan, Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh and Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, Bishop John Ball, Diocese of Chelmsford, Church of England, Bishop Ben Kawshi and many other bishops from the Province of Nigeria, and other bishops all took part in the consecrations this afternoon at Church of the Epiphany, Herndon, VA.
Bishop Martyn Minns delivered this address last Thursday (PDF file).
The order of service for the consecrations is also available as a PDF file.
Biographies of the four are included here.
Two earlier press reports:
New bishops set for Anglican breakaways by Julia Duin Washington Times
Ex-Episcopal splinter group expanding, official says Washington DC Examiner
Ruth Gledhill discusses this event on her blog, at Anglican experiment “is over”. She has some still photos. BabyBlue has lots of video.
More photos are here.
Is this Bishop John Ball of Chelmsford the one listed in Crockford as a retired former bishop in Tanzania who now has a license to officiate as an assistant bishop in Chelmsford diocese? If so, should he not now be deprived of this license?
And, looking at the CANA consecrations order of service, am I the only one to wince at seeing Mrs Minns present bibles to the new bishops’ wives as part of the liturgy of consecration?
A listing of the various splinter groups from 1979 would be appreciated.
Including their purportedly Anglican patrons.
How many congregants do the CANA parishes claim to have? What’s the bishop to parish or bishop to lay ratio now? The former appears to be close to one to one.
Do I understand correctly from the links that Duncan actually laid hands as part of the ceremony?
The program for the ordination does not note the names of presenters nor does it note the names of other bishops who may have laid hands upon the new ordinands. It does note “guest” bishops apparently in the procession. It would be good to know at what level, exactly, +Duncan and +Ball “participated”. +Duncan was, of course very visible and a speaker at San Joaquin’s convention. If +Ball is engaging in such extra-provincial activities uninvited, the problem of incursions has clearly reached England’s fair shore. The program and oaths taken are an interesting read. One wonders if the American congregations… Read more »
Interesting to compare the vows and oaths with the American rite of consecration. The CANA bishops make no vows to ‘guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church’ nor do the vow to be ‘. . . show compassion to the poor and strangers . . .’ Nor do the bishops promise to ‘share with your fellow bishops in teh government of the whole Church . . . .sustain your fellow presbyters and take counsel with them . . .” etc. This is probably because absolute loyalty and obedience is pledged to the Primate of Nigeria. No need to… Read more »
Comments on Baby Blue show an interesting disagreement between AMiA and CANA about these consecrations. Both were on American soil, this one though has serving Episcopal bishops and, of course, an Honorary Bishop from England.
A Mrs. Proudie streak in Mrs. Minns, perhaps?
ps. A poster on T19 informs that the rite of consecration for the new CANA bishops included the exhortation “Take this staff. Be a shepherd and not a wolf to the flock of Christ, feed them and do not devour them”.
Also looking at the order of service I see The Hymnal 1982 seems to be good enough for CANA – can’t help but wonder how many “apostates” were on that hymnal committee. And what about the New International Version of the Bible? Is that generally accepted as a scholarly translation any longer?
From Anglican Scotist blog: …The separated have bigger plans then mere unity among themselves; they want to be in the AC as a province, and to kick TEC out of the AC as a province. They have not given up these plans–separation is merely stage one. Performing the Provincial Two-Step will take years–even decades–of well-funded, high-decibel bitterness at an international level. The funding and the shouting will be there in good supply. It takes two to bicker. Is there a creative way for Loyalists to unilaterally stop bickering? What would that look like on the national, diocesan, and congregational levels?… Read more »
Has anyone done a comparison of the bishop-to-communicant ratio of various provinces and these new splinter groups? Surely the real winners in this whole mess are the crook and miter suppliers.
Just in, a reply from the Anglican Communion Office, denying the large, loud story that Canterbury approved the Southern Cone’s generous adoption of San Joaquin, from afar.
See: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/archbishop_of_canterbury/abc_did_not_endorse_actions_of.html#more
Also note Lionel Diemel’s post immediately following.
One can only hope that the CofE will depose Bishop Ball for this breach, but, whatever the CofE does, the PB of TEC should immediately act to depose Bishop Duncan for this flagrant violation of his vows. She should declare the see of Pittsburgh vacant, and reconstitute this Diocese of the Episcopal Church, and get on with the mission of the Church in the United States. Let the Global South and codependent poachers do what they will, but in some non-TEC property, whether the church of another denomination or some auditorium. Finally, the ABC should now make it clear that… Read more »
EPFitz: Bishop John Ball is shown in the video on the BabyBlue blog giving a speech during the service, in which he also says that Bishop Wallace Benn, the Bishop of Lewes, a suffragan of Chichester, sends his “150%” support of the consecration. Should not these two men be disciplined by their diocesans? Or is it only liberals who ever get brought to heel?
EPfizh: An aside, I couldn’t find in the program, (maybe it was there and I missed it?) any indication that the music used was used with permission of its authors or copyright holders, but, I guess such trifles wouldn’t pose a problem for this group?
Reprint license appears on page 8.
I think it was a great order of service, and a momentous occasion in what looks to have been a decisive weekend for TEC. How can people that support the consecration of someone living in a sinful relationship, and who reject the apostolic authority of both scripture and the counsel of anglican bishops, justify being picky about how orthodox Christians consecrate their Bishops?
“If +Ball is engaging in such extra-provincial activities uninvited, the problem of incursions has clearly reached England’s fair shore.”
From many, many conversations on schism, it seems to me that – for Irish and British Anglicans – this is the most chilling of all possibilities.
Fr Mark wrote: “Is this Bishop John Ball of Chelmsford the one listed in Crockford as a retired former bishop in Tanzania who now has a license to officiate as an assistant bishop in Chelmsford diocese? If so, should he not now be deprived of this license?”
It is and he should (and given the reputation of +John Chelmsford, I think it quite likely that he will be).
“How can people that support the consecration of someone living in a sinful relationship, and who reject the apostolic authority of both scripture and the counsel of anglican bishops, justify being picky about how orthodox Christians consecrate their Bishops?” First, no-one is debating how Orthodox Christians consecrate their bishops. We are discussing Anglican bishops. Second, how can people who support the consecration of men, not necessarily on this instance, who spread lies about gay people, support the jailing even of those who are nice to gay people, and who revile their opponents oppose the consecration of a man who was… Read more »
David Wh opines “I think it was a great order of service”.
Including the anointing?
Oh, Gee DWH, I don’t know … maybe because these new extraordinary conservative realignment bishops are perceiving the rest of us so harshly as nothing but heretics? And because we do see them looking so ravenously at the rest of us as hungry real wolves eye the sheep who are their prey in the wild? Because they think nothing of rending the fabrics of our communion in order to save believers they perceive as conservatives, at the expense of believers whom they perceive as non-conservatives? Because it is not all that difficult to see just how these new bishops lay… Read more »
The bishop in the Diocese of Chelmsford (my home town) who should be deposed is not John Ball but John Gladwin, the diocesan. For it is Bishop Gladwin who is openly campaigning against the agreed position of the bishops of the Anglican Communion by his patronage of Changing Attitude. Bishop Ball should be congratulated for upholding the historic faith of the Church of England.
Did NP go out and recruit a whole bunch of buddies to replace him here? There are suddenly a lot of people using the same code phrases that we’ve never heard from before.
RG is her usual suspect self. She is as reliable in her own spin as USA’s Ann Coulter is in her way. Then I get to the last few sentences, and I think she is now playing both ends against the Anglican mixed middles, just in case the realignment with which her journalistic sympathies so often seem to lie does not pan out. After all. Talk about unlikely? Who wudda eva thought that RG would leave the doors open and the night lights on, in praise of the most traditional sort of Anglican indifference to life outside the tunnel vision… Read more »
“Bishop Ball should be congratulated.” PK
Oh goody, goody…let’s all now follow the case of the foul Ball!
Bishop John Ball is one route that the fissure/ division can follow into England, especially given the goings on in the Diocese of Chelmsford previously when a minister turned against the authority of his diocesan bishop. I read Martyn Minns’s address, and found it fascinating that he should talk about diversity. Why? Because he obviously feels that the alternative institution is now up and running, and he is both addressing the divisions within this camp (Anglican tolerance!) and, probably, trying to appear to be regularly Anglican to outsiders. He is obviously confident. It is increasingly institutionalised events that will drive… Read more »
Don’t forget Bishop Wallace Benn.His name has been on all these letters. A Good Protestant Irishman and he is perhaps the last Bishop in the Church of England to refuse to wear a mitre. One of the patrons for the proposed third Province…surely he has now sunk any hope of that. By the way Bishop Wallace works in a diocese where Mary is venerated, the eucharistic species worshipped and the Holy Communion service interpolated as the Mass…yet a blind eye is turned to this “idolatry.” It’s a good job he doesn’t wear a mitre, for if he held his head… Read more »
Peter Kirk: Why should John Gladwin not be a patron of Changing Attitude? The Church of England does have more than one view on the subject of gay people, you know. I am not against some churchpeople stating a Neanderthal view about gay people, but they (you?) must realise that that is an extreme and unusual view in contemporary Britain, and not one that you can expect the whole of a broad organisation like the C of E to adhere to. You can’t actually shut us up, you know – we do exist, we are Christians, and we are not… Read more »
Oh, no! – not another one (Peter Kirk) who believes that a 2:1 majority equals agreement.
“… the dis-agreed position of the bishops of the Anglican Communion…”
(some of them)
The bad judgement of putting this on the Agenda being the source of all the fuss. Surely!
Ford Elms wrote: First, no-one is debating how Orthodox Christians consecrate their bishops. I was talking about orthodox (small o) Christians versus Liberals, whose beliefs and behaviours have more to do with the philosophy of this world than with the teachings of Christ and the apostles. If you want to follow Christ you have to learn to obey everything he has commanded you via the apostles (or at least that is what the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus as saying). TEC and many liberal contributors seem to think that isolating verses out of scripture and putting them into their own… Read more »
drdanfee wrote: “Can you preach nothing but our alleged outsider status, clamor for our extinction, and us not notice?”
You are a Christian insider or outsider based on whether you believe in, trust, and seek to obey Jesus Christ. But I mean the real one – who is recorded in Scripture as dying for our sins to save us from ourselves – not some 1960s psychedelic hippy-Jesus proclaiming “make love not war”.
Pat O’Neill wrote “Did NP go out and recruit a whole bunch of buddies to replace him here? There are suddenly a lot of people using the same code phrases that we’ve never heard from before.”
RPNewark wrote: “Oh, no! – not another one (Peter Kirk) who believes that a 2:1 majority equals agreement.”
OOoohh, can we all use ad-hominem attacks, or only liberals?
RPNewark wrote: “Oh, no! – not another one (Peter Kirk) who believes that a 2:1 majority equals agreement.”
I think you will find that Lambeth 98 1.10, that reaffirmed what the Church has always affirmed (the sinfulness of homosexuality) was approved by a ratio of about 10:1.
David Wh
526 in favor and 70 against, with 45 abstentions and about 100 who were just absent.
David Wh: I object to being labelled unorthodox. I am a very orthodox traditional Anglo-Catholic priest who just happens to believe that it is better and more honest for us to be able to articulate our sexuality in a way appropriate in modern European society, rather than collude in an ecclesiastical culture of deceit, dishonesty, hypocrisy and injustice. As far as you are concerned, that seems to give you the right to judge me as being less Christian than you, which is both ridiculous and unpleasant.
“If you want to follow Christ you have to learn to obey everything he has commanded you via the apostles (or at least that is what the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus as saying).” I’ve been away for a while. We had a poster here who I gather has been banned, after a full year of attempts by everyone else, to make him post with more respect. You sound uncannily like him. Some might say you are a sock puppet for him. I think maybe you attend the same parish, or at least listen to the same fear mongers. You,… Read more »
Fr Mark : Bishop Wallace Park Benn is a suffragan to the Bishop of Chichester. That man, Bishop John Hind, is equally likely to support these happenings. Wasn’t he one of the signatories of the open letter against Dr. Jeffrey John’s appointment as suffragan bishop of Reading? Both Bishop Hind and Bishop Benn were raised to the episcopate by the fiat of Dr Eric Kemp, the last Bishop of Chichester. There was no consultation or open selection process as happened with Dr. John. Dr Kemp merely wished to promote his own closed view of what constitutes orthodox christianity. He appointed… Read more »
The words of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels can be subject to the techniques of biblical criticism, nor do we have to take the words of Paul or whoever wrote in his name as the last word in relationships. Some of the Churches and their teachings may have simply got it wrong, or been incomplete, as regards the diversity of reciprocal, consenting, positive and worthwhile human relationships.
The new arrivals make me miss NP, who is a genius by comparison.
So let me get this straight. Some people here are bitter about these ordinations by Biblical fundamentalists. But I guess you can only object if you are an ecclesiological fundamentalist. Which set of ‘rules’ rule?
As for ration of Bishops to people, we need to look long and hard much closer to home. Over the past 100 years or less, the number of Bishops has rocketed whilst number of clergy and layity plumit.
Defending 1 Bishop of being a patron of a divisive group while attacking another for going to a service in N America doesn’t strike me as “thinking”.
The critical bit of Lambeth 1.10 – the bit “rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with scripture” – passed by 389 votes to 190, which I think is where the 2:1 proportion comes from.
Commentator: what you say is accurate, and it’s weird, because Eric Kemp was one of the great colluders in the underworld of ecclesiastical closet high-camp culture during his very long reign over one of the gayest dioceses in the C of E.
The lead story in Sunday’s “Observer” was Tracy McVeigh’s “Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt”. In McVeigh’s words, “….. preachers are turning their attentions to children – naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush.” Elsewhere she explains “Although old tribal beliefs in witch doctors are not so deeply buried in people’s memories ……. it is American and Scottish Pentecostal and evangelical missionaries of the past 50 years who have… Read more »
Yet Bishop Benn and his diocesan bishop will pretend that they represent ” Biblically Orthodox Anglicanism “….yet they believe two different Gospels.
One believes he goes to the altar to offer the Holy Sacrifice,…whilst the other believes there is no altar and no sacrifice except Calvary.
One will remember the dead in prayer…the other one believes that there is no need to pray for people …they are either in Heaven or Hell.
Commentator: what you say is accurate, and it’s weird, because Eric Kemp was one of the great colluders in the underworld of ecclesiastical closet high-camp culture during his very long reign over one of the gayest dioceses in the C of E.
Posted by: Fr Mark on Tuesday, 11 December 2007 at 6:57pm GMT
This is true. I was there.
Did anybody look at ALL the Bishops in the order of service? Three pages worth!!!!
Or are all those the child witches that are getting burned at the stake?
Ford Elms wrote: “You, like him, ignore everything I said about the hypocrisy of the Right” The substantive issue is not which ‘side’ is most pure, but whether TEC is legitimately following Christ or just their own ideas – which I think sound more like “make love not war” than “deny self”. Anyway, hypocrisy seems to be in the eye of the beholder. I see TEC rejecting Scripture and the counsel of the Communion and then trying to pretend that people who object and won’t accept it are the one’s causing the problems! TEC should be honest and just resign… Read more »