Schori Excommunicates TEC: The Meaning of Bob Duncan’s Deposition
By Canon Gary L’Hommedieu
www.virtueonline.org
9/15/08
… Katharine Jefferts Schori is emerging as a tragic-comic character, though perhaps a bit more like Darth Vader than Wylie Coyote. Remember the menacing ridicule by Princess Leia: "The more you tighten your grip, Darth, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!"
The lady primate is caught in an unenviable position. The more she tightens her grip on dissenting clerics, parishes and dioceses, the more she loses her grip, not only on the American Province and the Anglican Communion, but even on sanity.
She is hell-bent to depose Robert Duncan on a charge of abandoning the communion of the Episcopal Church.
There is a grain of truth in her charge. Duncan and his Pittsburgh Diocese are poised to depart the Episcopal Church, pending a final vote by Diocesan Convention in a few weeks. Call this "abandonment", if you will, and argue the merits of the Pittsburgh secession whichever way you choose.
Schori does not have such an open and shut case. She is pursuing it in such haste that she is willfully and knowingly violating canons. She is about to convene a kangaroo court where the House of Bishops will depose a standing bishop without a trial, and without all members of the House voting.
So far this is just good old fashioned strong-arm politics. The fact that it is so blatant is a little surprising, and it is a bit unsettling that she can move forward with so flimsy a program without fear of resistance. The House of Bishops is not only utterly corrupt but utterly docile. (emphasis added)
In her haste she is creating a precedent which will stand over time as an act of excommunication, but not Bob Duncan’s or the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s.
In order to topple Duncan she is forcing her own Church, the Episcopal Church, to declare itself out of communion with the majority of the Anglican Communion. This has been pointed out countless times, but the irony has not sunk in.
Read here: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9001
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