Common Cause Partnership and Bishop Duncan's Recent "Letter"

I am not going to link to Common Cause Partnership's site. If you want to read it first hand, use Google.

This was released today:

Bishop Duncan Shares Concerns on Windsor Continuation Group

A letter by Bishop Robert Duncan, moderator of the Common Cause Partnership, to Bishop Gary Lillibridge of the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas has been made public. In that letter, dated August 11, Bishop Duncan put in writing concerns of the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Quincy and other members of the Common Cause Partnership caused by the suggestions of the Windsor Continuation Group for dealing with divisions in the Anglican Communion. Bishop Duncan had initially shared these concerns with those present at the Lambeth Conference of Bishops.

The August 11 letter was forwarded with permission by Bishop Lillibridge to members of the Windsor Continuation Group and subsequently leaked to liberal activists and published online and via email on August 18.

“I am happy to publicly acknowledge this letter and my description of the concerns we in the Common Cause Partnership have about the proposals of the Windsor Continuation Group. Nonetheless, it is disturbing to discover that at least one member of the Windsor Continuation Group, a body that is supposed to be working for reconciliation in the Anglican Communion, so quickly leaked private correspondence in an attempt to gain some passing political advantage,” said Bishop Duncan.

The full text of the letter follows:

Dear Gary,

It was very good to be with you at Lambeth. I especially appreciated the time we spent together looking at the relationship between the Common Cause Partners and the Communion Partners, as well as considering issues that are before the WCG.

I thought that you might appreciate hearing from me about concerns the approach of the WCG has caused for me and for all the Common Cause Partners.

The WCG proposes “cessation of all cross-border interventions and inter-provincial claims of jurisdiction.” There are at least four serious problems with the thinking surrounding the work of the Windsor Continuation Group in this regard.

The first difficulty is the moral equivalence implied between the three moratoria, a notion specifically rejected in the original Windsor Report and at Dromantine.

The second is the notion that, even if the moratoria are held to be equally necessary, there would be some way to “freeze” the situation as it now stands for those of us in the process of separating from The Episcopal Church. The three dioceses of Pittsburgh, Quincy and Fort Worth have taken first constitutional votes on separation with second votes just weeks away. We all anticipate coming under Southern Cone this fall, thus to join San Joaquin. This process cannot be stopped — constitutions require an automatic second vote, and to recommend against passage without guarantees from the other side would be suicidal.

The third reality is that those already separated parishes and missionary jurisdictions under Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Southern Cone (including Recife) will never consent to the “holding tank” whose stated purpose is eventual “reconciliation” with TEC or the Anglican Church of Canada. (It was obvious to all at Lambeth that the majorities in the US and Canada have no intention of reversing direction.)

The fourth matter is that the legal proceedings brought by TEC and ACC against many of us have been nowhere suspended by these aggressor provinces, with no willingness to mediate or negotiate though we have proposed it repeatedly, not least since Dar es Salaam.

For your information, I have written to John Chew and Donald Mtetemela in a similar way. I have also written to the Global South Primates who signed the open letter dated 3 August.

I hope this finds you well. As I pledged when we saw each other, I will do what I can to keep you informed of thinking among the Common Cause Partners, and will do what I can to see that any solutions imagined include both the Communion Partners (on the inside) and the Common Cause Partners (most of whom are on the outside of TEC, or on their way out.)

Blessings to you and yours,

+Bob

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Posted 2008-08-20 09:14:22

My thoughts:

With the close of Lambeth and the Windsor Continuation Group's (WCG) members known, it is clear that the POINT and context of Duncan's Letter to the WCG was to effect change positive to the CCP. There is simply no other way to view the letter in context. Bishop Gary Lillibridge is a member of the WCG.

Obviously, Duncan knows who his friends are and where they are placed and this letter obviously seeks sympathy and action to benefit the CCP.

No one in their right mind could doubt the deliberate bent of the WCG. That the letter was addressed to them, however, was not understood until today.

If, at any time, you had believed that that Archbishop Rowan Williams or anyone else at that level was in any way sympathetic to TEC, it should be perfectly clear he/they is/are not and that his actions have come down clearly on the side of CCP in this nifty arrangement.

Not only that, their arrangment is clearly hostile to TEC.

UPDATE: I will link to other articles as they come up. For now, there are stories up at several sites which shall not be named.

Storm Warning: Bishop Duncan and Philly and Other Stuff On My Mind

Mark Harris has done a super job covering the situation in Pittsburgh which TEC Bishop Duncan has brought about. Well worth the reading, and follow the links which explain a great deal of the history and point to groups/clergy opposing his moves. Mark summarizes a number of things which could happen in the next 2+ months.

When I was reading it, I thought immediately of Bonnie Raitt's gorgeous song, Storm Warning from her powerful Longing in Their Hearts album. Even if you don't feel like reading about Philly, this should touch your heart. Duncan doesn't have it goin' on, but Bonnie sure does.

On other fronts, I have been pondering the coming winter with, admittedly, some trepidation. Last October 21, we had terrible fires here resulting in our evacuation for 14 days during which time many in the community (animals in tow) lived in a local grocery store parking lot.

It was a very emotional momentous time.

Filled with emotion, I finally broke down and sobbed when I saw on the news that friends D & J, and S & B had lost their homes, the footage showing J standing amid the ashes with tiny trinkets of their life otherwise carried away by the wind. The first photo shows D & J embracing, just to the left of the plume, amidst the ashes of their home. The second photo is S & B's home--only the bronze horse statue remaining.

These homes, in fact all of the lost homes, are still not rebuilt, while many in San Diego, thankfully, have already moved back in to their rebuilt homes. Here it is different because of the striking--and difficult--terrain. J & D finally received their building permit--the first issued--on July 15.

My hillside home of 26 years, standing under a canopy of oak trees--one tree at least a thousand years of age according to my degreed arborist friend--was thankfully spared. It was a very emotional time and the fact that I now have tears rolling down my cheeks says that I am not over it. For those of you who have gone through fires, floods, hurricanes and other things like this, you understand. For those of you that haven't, trust me it's life changing.

Returning, I sobbed all the way home. To see some of the blackened landscape and the skeletal remains of once dense oak forests was absolutely devastating for me. My mind couldn't even address the horrible loss of wildlife which had no place to go in the face of the wind-whipped flames that traveled miles in just hours. These are lands I cherish and know well, in some cases lands I worked for years to see preserved versus developed.

They have never caught the arsonist.

Winter, my favorite season here, now bring a whole new problem--debris flows. There is literally nothing but luck holding hillsides, some near vertical, together. Last year, the luck ran out for several people whose homes were so damaged they were red tagged, and like those who lost their homes to fires, they are still gone as well.

But what brought this all back to me was the early loss of acorns from the California live oaks this year. Normally, acorns start falling in numbers in mid-late September. This year, they began falling in early August. The last time this happened (I remember it well... I lost a bet based on it in 1997!), we had a hugely large rainfall. It was an "El Nino" year. So I am hoping that the relationship is, in fact, nada. If we get rains like '97 this winter, hundreds of people will lose their homes and many whose homes will remain standing will not be able to get in or out.

It also means, for me, loading, boarding, reloading and boarding the rescue animals--no easy task with the number here should I be evacuated again. I doubt, though, I would ever leave again. I would send the animals out to safety, but I would stay behind. I do keep over a thousand pounds of food here for them at all times, and several hundred gallons of water. But in 1969, people had to be helicoptered out of here as ALL the roads were impassable for months on end, and many homes were eight feet deep in mud. That was a 3-hour 50-year storm amid months of unending rain, the ground was saturated.

Now the conditions are so different and experts say these conditions will be persistent for at least 5 years, depending on the summer fire/winter precipitation cycles each year. It's scary and depressing. I think I need to go and have a good cry followed by a scotch and water. Who would have thought that acorns could have produced such a flow of emotion.

I checked the long term forecasts (which are usually wrong) and let's hope they are right this time. The oaks are telling me something, though. I just don't know what it is.

Photos: Orange County Register

Sending Out An SOS: What's Wrong With This Picture?

Episcopalians across the United States have voiced wonder at just how far a Diocean Bishop of the church can go when deciding to abandon the church. For a Bishop to just move on without the church assets seems to be a concept of the past as Bishop David Shofield (former Bishop of the San Joaquin Diocese in California) clearly shows.

Shofield departed (on paper only). After front-loading the politics for a couple decades, his final act was to stuff church property and financial assets--the whole shebang--into his lunch box and scamper off to the Province of the Argentina-based Southern Cone where he is free to discriminate against women and gays. With the new requirements of GAFCON's FOCA doctrine (which the So. Cone adopted), the requirement for use of the 1662 prayer book is a little post note but given the fracas over the 1979 Prayer Book (U.S.), it exemplifies just how far back this problem goes.

To say this did not go over well with faithful Episcopalians in the Diocese of San Joaquin is an understatement. But what seemed to perplex so many, there and elsewhere, is why nothing was done to prevent the act from occurring in the first place. It was hardly like the train light could not be seen from the other end of the tunnel.

Members of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, however, have reacted with vigor in protecting their church's assets from "quitter" Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan who is facing charges of abandonment this fall by the U.S. House of Bishops. Calvary has been pro-actively protecting their church for several years in various ways including through the court. Duncan's words and actions have made his intentions to exit TEC with the church assets quite clear.

There is a certain love, respect and brotherhood among the Bishops of TEC, no question. One can only wonder, though, if that love and brotherhood has rendered many a diocese helpless while the church and the Title IV Review Committee send coded messages that lay members can hardly understand. The Committee agreed that Duncan had formally abandoned the church, but did not give Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori their 3-vote nod to inhibit. To inhibit Duncan would have prevented more collateral damage.

Given his plan of action to depart which is hardly a secret, and the finding he had abandoned the church by the Title IV Committee, many of us have to wonder WHY the Bishop is allowed to continue in his role (inhibition would have stopped this) until that finding of abandonment is voted upon by the House of Bishops. Are the lay people in the pews so unimportant that they deserve to be caught in the middle like this? This from a church which alleges to value their lay members and their participation in Episcopal process? One can only wonder.

Read more here.