From the Living Church-
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has written to bishops of the Episcopal Church about her response to the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman, Bishop of Quincy, resigned.
The Presiding Bishop referred again to Bishop Ackerman’s two letters to her as a renunciation of his orders “based on his written submission to me describing his intention to function as a bishop in the Diocese of Bolivia, in the Province of the Southern Cone and requesting that he be ‘transferred’ to that church and thus out of the Episcopal Church.”
“It is also based on his public participation in, and signature on a document affirming, the election of Robert Duncan as ‘archbishop’ of [the Anglican Church in North America],” she wrote.
“We have been and will be consistent regarding our canons, which clearly state that the Episcopal Church can accept the ministry of a bishop of the Episcopal Church functioning temporarily in another province of the Anglican Communion, when it is clear that that province does not seek to undermine or replace the ministry of this church,” she wrote.
The Presiding Bishop did not cite any specific canons that she applied to Bishop Ackerman’s request.
She contrasted Bishop Ackerman’s request with the transfer of the Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald, Bishop of Alaska, resigned, and a former assisting bishop of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland, who is now the Anglican Church of Canada’s first National Indigenous Bishop.
As Bishop MacDonald’s work in Canada becomes permanent, she wrote, “his loyalty will have to be to the Anglican Church of Canada, rather than the Episcopal Church, and a recognition of his renunciation of orders in this church will be necessary.”
http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2009/10/22/pb-explains-bishop-ackermans-renunciation
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