Eleven months after being barred from performing episcopal acts, an ecclesiastical court has determined that Diocese of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles E. Bennison should be deposed from the ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.
The Court for the Trial of a Bishop, which spent four days in June hearing the case against Bennison, ruled September 30 that deposition was appropriate “in recognition of the nature of the offense and because [Bennison] has failed to demonstrate that he comprehends and takes responsibility for the harm that he has caused.”
Bennison was determined by the court in June of having engaged in conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.
“We are extremely disappointed with the Court’s decision today,” Bennison’s Philadelphia attorneys James A. A. Pabarue and Carolyn Bates Kelly said in a statement emailed to ENS. The statement said that the court’s determination in June “was completely wrong” and that a sentence of deposition would be “utterly immoral in light of the Bishop’s four decades of faithful service to the Episcopal Church.”
Hey! how come Bennison gets a trial but +Duncan doesn’t?
Curious Jim E. <><
Does anyone know how the court got around the ‘statute of limitations’ in Canon IV.14.4? It is a difficult canon to interpret, especially a.4–what does that mean–that there is no limit if something happened before the canon was enacted??
Is this another case of dispensing with the canons?