Forward in Faith UK deplores the recent actions against the retired Bishop of Quincy, the Right Revd Ed MacBurney, by the House of Bishops of TEC as both pastorally and politically inept: pastorally on account of Bishop MacBurney’s age and tragic family circumstances; politically because of the certainty that it will alienate others across the Communion who have not yet grasped the extent of the graceless and totalitarian mindset which now dominates the Episcopal Church.
We are at a loss to understand why it is an offence for a bishop in good standing in one province of the Communion to offer episcopal ministry (at the request of its bishop) to a parish in another.
Amen!
Perhaps maybe because their province is trespassing in another province? Did I really need to suggest that? Given all the hoopla over the past umpteen months, I thought it was fairly obvious.
#2 Smuggs-
to really believe the view that you present, then you must also assume that the Church of England is “trespassing” on TECUSA’s provincial property all throughout Europe. To be consistent, TEC ought to put all of those CofE Bishops on trial, too.
You see all of the people who have been sucked into this whole “diocesan boundary crossing=the greatest of mortal sins” point of view have forgotten that for many years the Church of England and TECUSA have occupied the same geographic territories all throughout the world. But now for some reason two provinces of what is supposed to be the same “communion” occupying the same territory is just unfathomable.
That point of view is simply ignorant, if we’re being charitable, or malicious, if we’re not.
#3:
But aren’t cases like the European overlapping done with the consent and cooperation of all the provinces involved? That is emphatically not the case here.
I did not pay much attention to this originally, but it seems clear to me now that TEC has made a very substantial faux pas. It appears that +MacBurney is in a position where he cannot be hurt, and it also appears as if this man is as well liked as he was respected. To attack the inoffensive as it he were the patent offender can only look like malice, a blind hunger for revenge. Larry