3 Bishops, ACI Call for Email Investigation

Allegations of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy will be lodged by three bishops against a member of the national Executive Council and the president of Integrity in response to the misappropriation and publication of private correspondence.

Bishops John Howe of Central Florida, Mark Lawrence of South Carolina, and D. Bruce MacPherson of Western Louisiana, along with other leaders of the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI), are concerned about a possible “dirty tricks” campaign waged against the ACI by the Rev. Canon Mark Harris, the Rev. Susan Russell, and an unidentified member on the staff at the Diocese of Washington.

Priests “publishing the private emails of bishops is a matter of grave pastoral disorder,” said the Very Rev. Philip Turner, former dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and a member of the ACI. The publication of the correspondence also may violate laws concerning attorney-client privilege, Bishop MacPherson said.

The dispute involves the misappropriation of emails and a draft of an ACI paper titled “Bishops’ Statement on the Polity of The Episcopal Church.” Most of the private correspondence contained a standard legal disclaimer noting that the information was privileged and intended solely for those to whom it was addressed.

On April 21 Canon Harris published snippets from the bishops’ statement and 13 email messages exchanged among the ACI leaders and their lawyer. The following day, Ms. Russell published the bishops’ statement along with extracts from the emails and the Washington Blade, a secular gay-interest newspaper, published an expurgated version of the email exchange.

“Since when do we have priests publishing the private correspondence of bishops to each other?” Bishop Howe asked.

Writing on an internet blog maintained by Integrity Ms. Russell applauded the “outing” of the ACI because she said it was advocating an “unprecedented power grab by anti-gay bishops.”

A spokesman for the ACI said the organization did not contemplate pursuing civil or criminal remedies for the misappropriation of the private documents. One of the bishops said that formal ecclesiastical charges have not been preferred against either Ms. Russell or Canon Harris, but the matter has been brought to the attention of Bishop J. Jon Bruno of Los Angeles, which is where Ms. Russell is canonically resident, and the Bishop Wayne Wright, where Canon Harris resides.

Bishop MacPherson said it was a sad commentary of the current state of the church that such correspondence would be published, but he was more distressed by the damage the leaked information had done to the point the 14 bishops who signed the statement were trying to make.

“My prayer is that we will be able to find our way back as a church to following the constitution and canons that have been handed down to us,” he said. “The current leadership is moving away in another direction.”

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2009/5/27/3-bishops-aci-call-for-email-investigation

another piece here-

http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?NewsID=4505

Heads Up: Lawyer McCall and “Communion Partner” bishops play the diocese card.

Today's furor is ignited by Mark Harris - The ACI response is below as is the Polity Paper.

In the next few days a position paper signed by a number of bishops connected to the "Communion Partners" bishops group will be published, in all likelihood by the Anglican Communion Institute. It will challenge the notion that dioceses of TEC are part of TEC in any other way except by voluntary association, and that therefore they are free to independently subscribe to the Anglican Covenant and maintain pastoral visitation and oversight independent of any agreement with TEC or its leadership. At least that is the conclusion to be reached from a thread of emails send to Preludium today (April 21).

The document is sure to be a best seller in the Anglican blogsphere. It remains to be seen if it has any depth. The potential signatories to this letter include the majority of the "Communion Partner" bishops. There may be as many as ten signers.

The Communion Partners bishops are those who wish to disavow TEC leadership but will stay in TEC and have determined that individual dioceses in the Episcopal Church might sign on to the Anglican Covenant (in its apparently final draft) and thereby establish their purity of relationship with the Anglican Communion in spite of what they see as the drift of The Episcopal Church and its leadership away from "orthodox" belief.

The Communion Partners take as their beginning point of reference the comment made some time ago by the Archbishop of Canterbury that dioceses might well be able to sign the Covenant even if the Province to which they belonged did not. There is some thought that the Archbishop of Canterbury regrets ever having said that. But there it is, and the Communion Partners have grabbed on to it.

More, much more-

http://anglicanfuture.blogspot.com/2009/04/heads-up-lawyer-mccall-and-communion.html

Statement from the Anglican Communion Institute

The ACI repsonds to Mark Harris-

The Rev’d Mr Harris has released via his blog confidential emails not addressed to him. We assume him to be a man of civility and honor, in view of his role as a member of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. The Anglican Communion Institute has long been on record as supportive of the Anglican Communion, the Covenant process, and the flourishing of the Episcopal Church and the defense of its Constitution. We have welcomed the Pastoral Visitors idea as emerging from the Communion’s common life, and have been engaged, through Communion Partners, with a plan that would honor the polity of this Church and find a way to maintain the unity of the Church and of the Anglican Communion. Communion Partners has from its inception been on record as wishing to prevent churches from leaving because, given the season we are in, they were unclear about the place of their own mission within the larger Anglican Communion. Our understanding of the proper role to be exercised by the Presiding Bishop, consistent with the Constitution of The Episcopal Church, is the subject of a public document to be found on our web-site (see the 12 March 2009 essay below) and so no secret.

More-

http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/?p=394

Episcopal email conspiracy unwrapped

From the London Times-

Mark Harris, a US episcopal priest in Delaware, has obtained details of an apparent plot by conservatives to subvert the authority of the US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the only woman Primate among the 39 at the top table.

The idea seems to be that diocesan bishops can take unilateral action to sign up to the new covenant currently going through the long process of approval by the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury's recent remarks on the shift that is needed in the Anglican understanding of communion and autonomy appear to have given grounds for these hopes.

The covenant, by virtue of a quasi disciplinary process, is likely create a multi-layered communion, with the 'conservative' provinces in the inner circle, with full voting rights at all the communion bodies, and the pro-gay liberals on the outer circle and presumably some rights removed, if they insist on consecrating more gay bishops or sanctioning gay marriage and refuse to sign up to the convenant in all its biblical orthodoxy.

It's long been a matter of speculation as to what would happen in the North American provinces of Canada and TEC. Will they be able to bring themselves to sign up? Read some of the comments on Kendall Harmon's TitusOneNine blog to see some of the difficulties.

From this email exchange that Mark has obtained, it looks as though the conservatives are working out a way of keeping themselves in the inner circle while consigning the liberals to the outer one. And if this sounds Dante-esque, that's because it is.

Read it all-

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/04/episcopal-email-conspiracy-unwrapped.html