Editorial: Amen, Pittsburgh

From the Living Church- (The third paragraph from the end has an editorial strike through that you'll have to go to the site to see)

The Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Pittsburgh achieved something extraordinary on Oct. 5: It showed grace to more than 100 clergy who have followed their bishop, the Rt. Rev. Robert W. Duncan, out of the Episcopal Church and into what is now the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

The diocese’s eight-member standing committee has offered these priests and deacons the option of renouncing their ministry rather than being deposed. Further, the standing committee clarified that these renunciations applied only to ministry within the Episcopal Church. In the most important sentence of a two-page letter to their former brothers and sisters in ministry, members of the standing committee wrote this: “This does not affect your ordination, which you may register with whatever entity you choose.”

In writing this, the standing committee addressed the primary concern of clergy who must consider the terms of Canon III.9.8: A lack of clarity about whether they are renouncing the entirety of their holy orders or merely acknowledging that they no longer wish to be clergy of the Episcopal Church.

No wonder the Rt. Rev. Kenneth Price, who awaits the diocesan convention’s affirmation as provisional bishop, found this decision moving. “As the standing committee worked through this necessary action,” he said, “I was painfully aware that they were not just talking about a list of clergy, but friends of long standing.”

Reflection on a theology of holy orders should prompt many Episcopalians to greet Pittsburgh’s decision with Amen or Alleluia. The Episcopal Church ordains clergy on the understanding that they join the great stream of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Episcopal clergy are neither mere franchise owners nor institutional drones. They are individuals with free will whom God has called to serve in one corner of the vineyard that is the Church.

Over time, some clergy conclude they are driven by God, by conscience or by a changing theology to serve in other corners of the vineyard. Those corners may be our mother churches of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, our sister churches of Lutheranism or Methodism — or, in the case of ACNA, a sometimes brash younger sibling with grand, global ambitions. Greeting such choices with anger and threats suggests a failure to understand God’s comprehensive work in this world, even amid human sins that further fracture the Church.

The actions of Pittsburgh’s standing committee speak to a weakness in Canon III.9.8. The canon has a lingering odor of punishing the wayward. Consider these words, and two suggestions on how they might be made more pastoral:

The Bishop … may pronounce that such renunciation is accepted, and that the Priest is released from the obligations of the Ministerial office, and is deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority as a Minister of God’s Word and Sacraments conferred in Ordination of this Church.

We will leave our editorial tinkering at that. Pittsburgh’s standing committee found a godly path through this thicket. The same path is now open to other bishops and standing committees with hearts of flesh.

Regardless of how many priests and deacons accept this offer, there is an inherent beauty in it. May all Episcopalians who are serious about including the Other and spreading reconciliation attend to the wisdom shown in Pittsburgh.

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2009/10/9/editorial-amen-pittsburgh