The former rector of the Church of the Holy Faith engaged in “gross sexual and financial misbehavior as a clergyman in charge of the parish,” according to a document submitted in response to a breach-of-contract suit filed by the Episcopal priest in August.

The Rev. Dale Coleman is suing the church for violating a severance agreement signed in May 2007 as he was leaving the parish after 11 years.

The Palace Avenue congregation had agreed to pay Coleman $115,000 in a dozen monthly installments beginning in June 2007. The money was to be divided between Coleman and his former wife, with Coleman to receive $50,002 and Susan Coleman, $64,998.

The church halted the payments with four of them remaining, informing Coleman that the severance agreement did not have “any legal effect” because of “serious misrepresentations and omissions.”

Makes the heart sad. Read it all, and, as a personal favor to me, instead of posting a comment say a prayer for healing and redemption for those involved in the mess.

In a momentous move on Tuesday, the Vatican said it would help Anglicans uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops join a new Anglican rite within the Catholic Church.

The invitation also extends to married Anglican clergy. And so some have begun to wonder, even if the 82-year-old Benedict himself would never allow it, would more people in the Roman Catholic Church begin to entertain the possibility of married Catholic priests?

“If you get used to the idea of your priests being married, then that changes the perception of the Catholic priesthood necessarily,” said Austen Ivereigh, a Catholic commentator in London and a former adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster.

“We face the prospect in the future of going to a Catholic church in London and it being normal to find a married Catholic priest celebrating at the altar, with his wife sitting in the third pew and his children running up and down the aisle,” he said.

Read it all.

As a former Episcopal priest who became a Roman Catholic priest in 2002, the Rev. Paul Sullins welcomed the news on Tuesday that the Roman Catholic Church is widening its welcome of Catholic-minded Anglicans.

“It’s a wonderful development,” said Fr. Sullins, an associate professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America. “It provides a structure, and even a place in the hierarchical structure, for Anglicans who come in.”

Read the whole article.

The Rev. John Kimble, a retired Episcopal priest in Toledo, believes the Vatican is being deceptive with the proposal, calling it “a subtle attack on Anglicanism.”

“If they were really interested in Anglicanism and coming together, they need to acknowledge that we have women priests and people who are homosexuals,” he said. “What undergirds this statement is a subtle attempt to reinforce the biased, prejudicial, and sectarian stances” of the Catholic Church….

Father [Charles] Singler said the Vatican’s intent is to meet the spiritual needs of people in crisis, not to steal members from another Christian body. “It shows the church’s desire to provide a place for those who are trying to find a spiritual home. ”¦ It’s a way to provide an option for people trying to find some sense of stability and tradition,” he said.

Read it all.

The Vatican is welcoming Anglicans to return to Catholicism centuries after their ancestors left. The Vatican said it will permit married Anglican priests to become ordained Catholic priests. John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, talks with Steve Inskeep about how this week’s announcement calls into question a long-held Catholic tradition of celibacy in the priesthood.

Listen to it all.

The villages of the ancient parishes of Broughton, Marton and Thornton nestle in a corner of North Yorkshire that is perilously close to the Lancashire border. And even closer to Rome.

For the rector, the Rev Canon Nicholas Turner, editor of the traditionalist magazine New Directions, the Pope’s decree was the fulfilment of a long-held dream. But he must now decide whether to be reordained as a Roman Catholic priest. And if he does, what will happen to the churches and his parishioners?

To visit the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Thornton is to enter a Norman building that gives every appearance of being Catholic already. There is a statue of the Madonna and Child. There are candles and incense. Father Nicholas celebrates Mass, occasionally in Latin, hears confession and grants absolution.

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Hundreds of Anglican clergy who oppose women bishops are meeting this weekend to discuss whether to abandon the Church of England for the Roman Catholic church.

About 500 members of Forward in Faith, the leading traditionalist grouping, will be in London to debate Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an Anglican “ordinariate” or diocese to operate under a new Apostolic Constitution.

Many are waiting for the publication of a Code of Practice by Rome to flesh out the detail of what is on offer before deciding whether to go.

Read it all.

Before I go any further, I had better point out that I am fully aware that it’s a bit rich of me to criticise clergy for recycling sermons when I referred to their obsession with all things ecological in my last column for the Church of England Newspaper. But I can guarantee I won’t do it again, whereas I doubt they could make the same promise.

Anyway, as I was saying, if you look at the website that lists all the press releases put out by Church House during 2009, the words climate (nine times) and environment (eight) crop up more times than God (six), Bible (four) or Jesus (two).

If they’re not ordering you to count your carbon or urging you to pray for the planet, they’re telling you much more than you ever wanted to know about compost toilets.

Read it all.

The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago will take a “sabbath time” in 2010 from receiving new people who feel called to holy orders. The Rt. Rev Jeffrey D. Lee, Bishop of Chicago since February 2008, said he noticed early in his work that the diocese’s Commission on Ministry was exceptionally busy.

“We have 40-plus people at various stages of the process. That’s a lot of folks,” Bishop Lee told The Living Church.

The sabbath time will not interrupt the progress of anyone already accepted into the diocese’s discernment program.

The bishop has asked the Rev. Sam Portaro, former chaplain at the University of Chicago, to serve as a coach to the Commission on Ministry during the sabbath year. The program was last revised in the mid-1990s, the bishop said.

Read it all.

“From age 15 to about age 30, I was involved in charismatic churches,” Zimmerman says. “So I did that for a while, but then that kind of played out for me, and I wanted to see how to keep going deeper, and I remembered the Episcopal church and its rhythm of prayer.”

That aspect connected to the same side of his personality that had found an academic interest in ancient history.

“In ancient history, we studied … all this ritual about life, and I was involved in churches that had no ritual. They actively avoided rituals. And then I stopped and realized that we had dating rituals, we have mourning rituals, we have eating rituals, we have all these rituals, why in the world wouldn’t we have religious rituals, because they help keep you grounded and centered,” Zimmerman says. “I remembered the Episcopal church was full of ritual, so I came back to the Episcopal church.”

The church he came back to was Lawrence’s Trinity Episcopal, which was the only one in town at the time. It took nearly a decade for Zimmerman to go from returning to the Episcopal denomination to wanting to be a part of it as a priest.

“It was always kind of on my mind, even as a teenager. I never could see how that would happen. I always say, ”˜God wouldn’t subject the church to me in my 20s.’ I just don’t know if I would have been a very good asset,” he says, laughing. “I took the Jonah route ”” I fled the call and took the scenic route to ordination rather than straight through. Which I’m glad about ”” I wouldn’t have wanted to have tried (this) in my late 20s. It wouldn’t have worked for me.”

Read it all.

It is happy for us, my Brethren that we have, in our Book of Common Prayer, a standard of faith and worship, conformable to scripture, and agreeable to the practice of the Church in the earliest and purest ages of Christianity. It will be the object of the present discourse to recommend to you a strict adherence to this standard; shunning, on the one hand, those corruptions and superstitions of the Church of Rome, which it was so carefully framed to avoid, and equally rejecting, on the other hand, the errors connected with ultra-Protestantism, and all the extravagances which have recently sprung from it.

The Holy Scriptures, as they were interpreted by the Church during the first two centuries after the ascension of the Saviour, not as they may chance to be interpreted by the wayward fancies of individuals, constitute the only sure basis for us to rest upon.

Guess the speaker and the date before you look (my emphasis).

A wise friend said somewhere – if the pastor of a church isn’t an evangelist then the church will only grow through transfer church.

Spurgeon’s advice in The Soul Winner is timely:

Just be men among men, keeping yourself clear of all their faults and vices, but mingling with them in perfect love and sympathy, and feeling that you would do anything in your power to bring them to Christ, so that you might even say with the Apostle Paul, ”˜Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more’

Don’t misunderstand me – evangelism is not just about inviting people to events. But sometimes being able to invite a friend to an event is a gauge of where the friendship is up to. The friends I’m inviting are the ones I’m already praying for – asking for opportunities to speak about Jesus. If I’m not out mixing with real people and praying for them then I shouldn’t be leading the people here in God’s mission.

Read it all.

Doug is currently Associate rector os Saint Paul’s, Summerville in the Diocese of South Carolina.

The Communications Director for the Episcopal Diocese of ..[Southern] Ohio, Richelle Thompson, said Omosebi is a visiting clergy with limited privileges in the church. She said he would only fill in for ministers when they were sick or on vacation, but could not say when the last time he officiated was.

Thompson said Omosebi will not officiate in the church while his case goes through the legal system. “We take any allegation like this very seriously,” she said.

Read it all and say a prayer for all involved.

May the Lord bless him.

When asked why they chose their current denomination, the majority of respondents spoke of the strong similarity between their present church and the Catholic Church in terms of liturgy, ministry and theology. This was especially true for the Episcopalians and seems to explain why so many of the survey respondents gravitated to the Anglican Communion. Most of those who joined the Episcopal Church said that with only minor adjustments they “felt at home” from the beginning and that they found comfort in the fact that they could hold onto their core beliefs in the Resurrection and the Eucharist. Over time they modified their views on other subjects, such as papal infallibility and women’s ordination, but many of them had already begun to question the validity of those doctrines.

Before I began the interviews, I hypothesized that diocesan priests would be overrepresented in my sample because they seem to be at greater risk for loneliness than religious order priests. (Most religious live in community, while diocesan priests often live alone in rectories because of the shortage of priests.) The survey results support this hypothesis. Based on the historical ratio of American diocesan clergy to religious, one would expect to find 61.5 percent diocesan priests in this sample; in fact, 72.3 percent of the respondents had served in diocesan ministry. (Recall that Cutié was a diocesan priest.)

Where [Alberto] Cutié differs from most of the men I surveyed is in the historical timing of his decision. The majority of respondents began their journey to a new church in the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. It seems unlikely that Cutié’s example will spark another wave of priestly resignations. According to research conducted by Dean R. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger in Evolving Visions of Priesthood: Changes from Vatican II to the Turn of the New Century (2003), young priests today are more theologically conservative than their immediate predecessors and are more likely therefore to embrace the church’s traditional teaching on celibacy. Questions remain, however, about how many young Catholic men have chosen lay or Protestant ministry over the Catholic priesthood because of the demands of celibacy””a fitting area of inquiry, perhaps, for another curious sociologist.

Read it all.

The Rev. Jerry Kramer, a hyper-energetic Episcopal priest who transformed a small neighborhood church into a powerhouse that helped drive the post-Katrina recovery of the entire Broadmoor neighborhood, stunned his parishioners last week with news that, sick and exhausted, he has resigned.

In an accompanying e-mail message, Kramer said that if he recovers after several months on a temporary medical disability, he hopes next year to return to missionary work in Tanzania with his wife and two children.

“But I have to get well to do that, ” he said last week. “I need some rest. I absolutely need some rest.

“I haven’t been able to put in a full day (of work) in over a year.”

In the four years since Katrina, Kramer developed a reputation as a innovative priest who, from the moment he paddled up to his flooded church on South Claiborne Avenue, merged its recovery with the recovery of the surrounding neighborhood.

One of God’s special people. May the Lord bless him and his family. Read it all–KSH

There was pomp and pageantry, enough clergy to move a mountain (or at least, to guarantee nice weather), a heavenly choir, and one of the finest bands in the land.

Somewhere amidst all this, Janet Broderick was given the ceremonial keys to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, as its 17th rector. The Morristown celebration included actor Matthew Broderick, Janet’s brother; former Newark Bishop Jon Shelby Spong and present Bishop Mark Beckwith, and the Blaire Reinhard Band.

“It feels wonderful,” Janet Broderick said afterward. “I felt all the love. It’s incredible. I wanted to do one of these for everybody there.”

Read it all and make sure to chec k out the pictures.

“Do we appreciate the priesthood and love our priests?” the bishop asked in a posting on the Web site of his dioceses.

To answer this question, the bishop composed — “with a bit of humor” — the following test titled “Priestly Appreciation.” The test is complete with instructions to evaluate your answers and your level of appreciation for the priesthood.

Check it out.

When the Rev. Ruth Strang gives her last sermon next Sunday, she’ll do so knowing she finally answered God’s calling.

Strang, who started as a pastor with St. John’s Episcopal Church in Howell in 1994, will step down officially Oct. 1 after 15 years of what she called a “fantastic spiritual journey.”

More than any single memory or feeling at the church, Strang said she’d remember the journey ”” of her and her congregation ”” the most.

“I think it’s been a journey in which there were so many moments we’ve developed as a caring family,” Strang said. “God called me to do this, and I took a long time to answer. Now, it’s time for me to do something else.”

Read it all.

Education for more effective leadership remains a challenge in the church. This article…emerged from a request for a review of contemporary leadership literature. It quickly evolved into a thematic exploration of competencies for leadership, based on four premises. First, leadership is in no small part learned. It might better be defined in terms of skills and competencies to develop, rather than abstracted ideals and ultimate aims to attain. Second, leaders across human enterprises have committed themselves to learning better strategies and skills for effective leadership; the church proceeds at its own peril of foolishness if it ignores this body of learning. Third, leadership is indeed a relational reality, but is most effective with a primary focus on creating an environment of continuous development rather than control or warmth. And fourth, the work of continuous development in leadership has some of the qualities of spiritual practice-a habitus of mindfulness, a continuous “study” of one’s context, a commitment to development, and a learned discipline of change.

Read the whole thing carefully.

Two members of the Communion Partners rectors advisory committee say the group is striving to be an irenic voice as the Episcopal Church discusses the Anglican Communion’s proposed covenant.

“We aim to be constructive in relationships between orthodox clergy and their bishops whose theology may not be the same,” said the Rev. Leigh Spruill, rector of St. George’s Church, Nashville.

Communion Partners has begun filling the void left by congregations and dioceses affiliated with the Anglican Communion Network, but it is cautious about becoming another political force within the Episcopal Church.

“We’re trying to find a better way than the political structures that have arisen in response to volatile issues,” said the Rt. Rev. Anthony Burton, former bishop of Saskatchewan and rector of Church of the Incarnation, Dallas.

Read it all.

After decades of no growth in the ranks of female senior pastors serving in Protestant churches, a new Barna study that has tracked the ratio of male-to-female pastors indicates that women have made substantial gains in the past ten years.

From the early 1990s through 1999 just 5% of the Senior Pastors of Protestant churches were female. Since that time the proportion has slowly but steadily risen, doubling to 10% in 2009.

Not surprisingly, a large share of the woman in the pastorate ”“ 58% ”“ are affiliated with a “mainline” church ”“ i.e., a congregation that is aligned with denominations such as American Baptist Churches (ABCUSA), United Church of Christ, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), United Methodist or Presbyterian Church in the USA (PCUSA). Among male pastors, less than half that percentage (23%) is affiliated with a mainline ministry.

Read it all.

One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, a survey released Wednesday says.

The study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations, religious traditions and leaders.

“It certainly is prevalent, and clearly the problem is more than simply a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers,” said Diana Garland, dean of Baylor’s School of Social Work, who co-authored the study.

It found that more than two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.

Read it all.

Most people are lucky to find one career in their lifetime that they can truly enjoy.

Yuman Bill Krieger has been fortunate enough to have two.

Krieger used to help design offshore oil rigs.

These days, every Wednesday and Sunday, the congregation at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church know him as Father Bill.

“I feel like this is a second life,” Krieger said about his current career.

Read it all.

The Dallas Episcopal Diocese’s stockbroker-priest scandal is getting uglier.

A second clergyman is leaving his pulpit, at least temporarily ”“ and he fired a parting shot Thursday at parishioners who have accused him of misconduct related to their investments.

“I’m going to respond aggressively to these charges,” said the Rev. Raymond Jennison, adding that he is contemplating legal action. “I feel I’ve been defamed.”

Jennison said he asked Bishop James Stanton for a 90-day leave of absence from his part-time post at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Garland. The bishop, he said, granted the request without showing emotion.

Read it all.

The Rev. Daniel Kilmer Sullivan, 81, of Bear Creek, Pa., retired rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan in Paoli, died Sept. 3 of a staph infection at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London, Conn., where he had been visiting relatives.

For 23 years, Father Sullivan served Good Samaritan parishioners, who affectionately called him “Father Dan.”

When he announced his retirement in 1995, colleagues described Father Sullivan to a reporter as a charismatic minister who transformed a struggling church into a vibrant parish.

One of the great heroes of this very difficult time in the Episcopal Church. Read it all–KSH.

From a letter to the editor in today’s local paper:

On behalf of the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy, we would like to congratulate Mayor Keith Summey and North Charleston on the city’s beautiful new building. It is a fitting home for a growing, prosperous city.

We are delighted to be moving into space provided by the city in this wonderful facility. Our new home will not only allow us to use our resources to better serve the community, it will also allow us to be in a prime location near I-26 and I-526 and, therefore, to provide even faster response to citizens and emergency personnel when unexpected tragedies occur.

For 19 years our landlords have been Sandra Lempesis and the Detreville Law Firm, and we will miss seeing them every day.

The public will have no problem reaching us during our transition from one address to the other. Michael Leibowitz and Call Experts will answer emergency calls to 843-724-1212 and ensure that they are delivered promptly to a chaplain, as they have done since 1990.

The Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy is eager to continue providing counseling and support to people during crisis situations. Many thanks to the city of North Charleston for providing us with our new home.

Rev. Rob Dewey

Senior Chaplain

Emily Burrous

Board President

Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy

North Charleston

Stockbroker/clergyman William Warnky has resigned from the Episcopal priesthood, church representatives say.

Meanwhile, Dallas Episcopal leaders are cautioning clergy not to talk to me about discipline scandals — whether Warnky and fellow broker/priest Raymond Jennison’s financial dealings with parishioners or another priest’s three-year suspension for harassment.

Episcopal bosses also have hired one of the Dallas area’s top crisis-management consultants, the LeMaster Group.

Read it all.

The Very Rev. George L. W. Werner of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh will lead the United States House of Representatives in prayer when it convenes Thursday morning, September 10, at 10:00 a.m.

“Strengthen our vision and courage to do right,” his prayer says, in part.

No stranger to the national spotlight, Werner served two terms as President of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church and is currently a trustee of the Church Pension Board. He is also Dean Emeritus of Trinity Cathedral in Pittsburgh. But Thursday’s honor is a first for him.

Read it all.