Fort Worth bishop demands right to respond to ‘abandonment’ charge
From CEN
THE BISHOP of Fort Worth has called upon US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to honour due process and the rule of law, and give him an opportunity to respond to charges he has “abandoned” his priestly orders.
On Dec 31, the Rt Rev Jack Iker —- speaking through his attorney Marshall Searcy —- wrote to Bishop Schori contesting the legality of her attempts to remove him from office and from the ordained ministry. He charged the Presiding Bishop had perverted the rule of law in the church and that her novel interpretations of the canons in aid of expelling out the last Anglo-Catholics from the Episcopal Church were creating further division within the Anglican Communion.
By her actions, Bishop Schori had descended to the level of farce, Mr Searcy said —- for like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland the Episcopal Church’s “constitution and canons mean whatever you and your council say they mean, ‘nothing more, nothing less’.”
The US Presiding Bishop released a statement on Dec 5 saying she had accepted Bishop Iker’s renunciation of orders, saying the bishop’s intent could be divined though a press release.
This renunciation was a “fiction” that permitted the Presiding Bishop to circumvent the canons to achieve a desired political end, he charged. The “only reaction one can have to this farcical and imperious action is [again] one of sadness. It so perverts the canons and constitution of your province as to create doubt as to the legitimacy of any provision of your so-called ‘canonical law’ and leaves the clear impression that lawful authority simply does not exist” in the Episcopal Church, Bishop Iker’s lawyer wrote.
It was the “position of Bishop Iker” that the “true basis” of her complaint was that the Fort Worth did not “adhere to the social agenda advanced under your tutelage.” This progressive agenda was “at odds with not only Bishop Iker’s reverent beliefs” but with those of the “vast majority” of the clergy and lay members of the Diocese of Fort Worth, the lawyer stated.
He urged the Presiding Bishop to allow Bishop Iker to respond to the “ludicrous charges” levelled against him, and permit the matter to be adjudicated under the Church’s disciplinary canons. However, it was Fort Worth’s “gloomy prediction” that Bishop Schori would have “neither the courage, equity nor conviction” to do the right thing.
As of our going to press, no response has been made to Bishop Iker’s request for a trial.
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