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Sunday, February 06, 2000
By Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Correction/Clarification: (Published Feb. 7, 2000) National. Bishop John Rodgers said his consecration in Singapore is not a valid comparison to the 1974 illegal ordination of woman in the Episcopal Church in the United States because he believes his consecration was done for very different reasons. His statement, “We considered that very carefully,” in an article in yesterday’s editions referred to a personal request from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Archbishop Moses Tay of Singapore asking Tay not to consecrate Rodgers and another bishop at this time.
When the Anglican archbishop of Southeast Asia consecrated two Americans as missionary bishops to conservative Episcopalians stranded in liberal Episcopal dioceses, it was one more turn of a screw that threatens to split several of America's mainline Protestant denominations.
The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of Southeast Asia are supposed to be sister churches in the Anglican Communion.
"I think this is the beginning of the unraveling of Anglican polity worldwide," said Bishop Larry Maze of Arkansas, who expects missionary Bishops John Rodgers of Ambridge and Charles Murphy of South Carolina to try to enter his diocese on behalf of the Province of Southeast Asia.
"I would think that the primates of the Anglican Communion would have to address the irregularities of these consecrations and declare them null and void," Maze said.
Unfortunately for Maze and many of his fellow bishops, there is no international system of canon law that can cover the clergy of one Anglican province within the territory of another, said the Rev. Robert Prichard, a church historian who teaches Episcopal canon law at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va.
The Anglican primates "can discuss matters of common concern, but their statements are not binding."
The consecrations all but called the 2.4 million-member Episcopal Church heretical. On a local scale, it would be as if the Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh decided that the Catholic bishop of Greensburg was a heretic and sent priests into the Greensburg diocese to start mission parishes for Pittsburgh.
But the Anglican Communion lacks a central power that can discipline one party or the other. Its archbishop of Canterbury is titular head of the communion but has no power outside of England.
It's an Episcopal twist on a common theme.
The Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) are each divided into two warring camps over how to interpret the Bible.
The issue in which this fight is now playing out is the place of gay people within the church. Conservatives view sexual relations between anyone other than husband and wife a sin and accept homosexuals only as penitents seeking God's grace to live a celibate life or to be transformed into heterosexuals.
Liberals tend to view biblical condemnations of homosexuality either as mistranslations or as the prejudices of an ancient culture that are not binding on today's Christians.
In the Anglican Communion, which is heavily African, the 2.4 million-member Episcopal Church is a drop in a 70 million-member bucket. Members in the Third World often are more conservative about biblical interpretation.
The consecration of missionary bishops "adds a whole new dimension to a struggle that has gone on for a few years between the Episcopal Church in America and the wider Anglican Communion," said Robert Wuthnow, professor of sociology at Princeton University and author of "The Restructuring of American Religion."
He has heard Episcopal leaders predict that pressure from both a conservative minority within and a conservative majority overseas will force a division. But Wuthnow doubts it.
"There is a substantial middle group who doesn't want to fight on either the left or the right. They want to maintain the center," he said.
Conservative Episcopalians whose bishops bless what they regard as sin find it difficult to accept the status quo. They claim to be ostracized as second-class parishes. In some dioceses, the bishop may try to prevent them from hiring priests whose theology they find acceptable. Only about a dozen of the nation's 98 dioceses are considered solidly conservative, but there are some conservative parishes in every diocese.
"It is already very, very late. People are already suffering," Rodgers said of his decision to accept consecration rather than wait for the world's Anglican primates to try to work out a solution next month in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Episcopal Church has no explicit policy endorsing or prohibiting gay ordination. Conservatives believe a prohibition is implicit in church doctrine. But many bishops claim the right to ordain and bless homosexuals.
Simmering tension rose to a boil in 1997 when the Episcopal General Convention told four bishops who rejected women's ordination that they had to accept female priests in their dioceses. Conservatives who accept women's ordination concluded that they could eventually be forced to accept actively gay priests.
In 1998, the world's Anglican bishops, at their once-a-decade gathering in Lambeth, England, voted 526-70 to declare same-sex relations "incompatible with Scripture." Conservative Episcopalians were elated. The liberal bishops were furious.
The primate of Scotland antagonized the African bishops by suggesting that conservatives from the United States had bought their support by treating them to chicken suppers.
"We have chicken back home in Africa, you know," was the response of Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Africa, who was also one of the primates who consecrated Rodgers and Murphy Jan. 29.
"Only one thing bought me and still buys me, and that's the cross."
But the same Lambeth conference declared that bishops of one country should not meddle in the affairs of another. Another Rwandan bishop had adopted an American priest into his diocese and sent him back to the United States to oversee a breakaway congregation in Maze's Arkansas diocese.
The liberals argued that the homosexual resolution was not binding; the conservatives said the same about the resolution on diocesan boundaries. The conservatives now say that bishops who approve or practice gay ordination should not cry foul if the archbishop of Southeast Asia sends missionaries into that diocese.
Various conservative Episcopal groups had called for alternative solutions to this problem. Some wanted a competing, conservative Anglican Province for the United States. As precedent they cited a nationwide diocese for American Indians that exists within the Episcopal Church.
Others, with Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh as spokesman, called for a less drastic solution in which parishes that were in theological conflict with their bishop could obtain the oversight of an agreeable Episcopal bishop. As precedent they cited the "flying bishops" of the Church of England, who serve parishes that are unwilling to accept oversight from any bishop who has ordained women.
Rodgers and Murphy still hope for a resolution that will make their ministry unnecessary. They have agreed not to ordain any priests or confirm any parishioners until after the Anglican primates meeting next month.
It's too early to tell how conservative congregations that broke from the Episcopal Church will respond to the bishops from Southeast Asia. Rodgers had worked with seven such parishes for two years. They petitioned the overseas primates last year to consecrate him as their bishop. But other conservative congregations still have many questions about the arrangement.
St. James the Less in Philadelphia left the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania last year because of theological conflict with its bishop. That church believes that bishops who ordain female priests have broken the sacramental bonds of the church. If Rodgers and Murphy ordain women, that would pose a serious problem, said the Rev. David Ousley of St. James the Less.
The Province of Southeast Asia does not ordain women, therefore it is highly unlikely that he would be permitted to do so, Rodgers said.
One objection that their conservative allies have raised to their consecration is that it appears to mirror the action of Philadelphia bishops who ordained female priests in 1974 without permission. The Episcopal General Convention approved women's ordination two years later.
Rodgers does not believe comparison is apt.
"This is much more of a pastoral effort to help people who are trying to be faithful to the classic teaching of Scripture and Anglican norms," he said.
But the illegal ordinations of 1974 set the precedent that bishops will follow when dealing with rectors of Episcopal parishes who invite Rodgers and Murphy to visit, said Prichard, the canon law professor. Church courts ruled that, if a bishop gave a priest prior written warning not to invite the women to celebrate the Eucharist, the priest could be tried in a church court if he disobeyed.
"That makes it more of a problem on the second visit than on the first one," Prichard said.
"We considered that very carefully," Rodgers said. But, in the end, they decided that the need for missionary bishops was too great.