But the oath of conformity was not the chief oath made in the ordination process, as I also explained in that post. Ever since 1550, every Anglican/Episcopal ordinand on both sides of the Atlantic has vowed “to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of CHRIST, as the LORD hath commanded, and as this Church … hath received the same, according to the commandments of GOD”, or words to the same effect. (The current version has it this way: “Will you be loyal to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them?”)
Now, then, let us return to Canon Harris’ question. As he himself appears to recognize, Mark Lawrence eventually was forced, by the course of events leading toward same-sex marriage in ECUSA, to choose between “the doctrine, discipline, and worship of this Church” and “the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received it” (my bold emphasis).
I posted this as a comment on Mark Harris’s blog — which he did allow.
This is essentially an unanswerable question, something along the lines of “Have you stopped beating your wife?” I withdrew from the ordination process in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut in 2003, in part because the ordination vows had become incoherent. As I wrote to Bishop Andrew Smith on Sept 7, 2003:
“[A] new dilemma arises when the candidate is asked to swear obedience to the bishop. A bishop represents not simply his or her own authority in a geographical diocese, but the entire catholic Church in continuity with the faith delivered once and for all, and maintained through historical succession from the apostles. But now that the official teaching of the Episcopal Church is no longer in agreement with the catholic doctrine of the Church about sexuality, or with the affirmed teaching of the Anglican Communion, the question arises as to whom or what the candidate is now swearing obedience. Is the candidate swearing obedience to the bishop merely as an individual? What then becomes of the affirmation that the bishop is representative of the tradition and authority of the entire catholic Church as a member of the universal episcopate? Is the candidate swearing obedience to the bishop as a representative of the Episcopal church as a denomination, and to its new teaching on sexuality, to the exclusion of the consensus of the rest of the Anglican Communion and worldwide Christendom? Then the candidate would be swearing obedience to the bishop as representative of a national Protestant sect, and not as part of the catholic Body of Christ, and would in effect be renouncing membership in the Anglican Communion. Is the candidate swearing obedience to the bishop as a representative of the Body of Christ as manifested in the worldwide Anglican Communion? But the vast majority of the bishops of the Anglican Communion are at odds with the Episcopal Church’s new teaching on sexuality, and the candidate would have to decide between loyalty to the bishops of the Anglican Communion, and loyalty to the local bishop.”
Did Mark Lawrence understand the ordination vows? No doubt he did not understand them as vows of obedience to a “national Protestant sect.”