Over the weekend came the heartening news the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin (Central California), lead by the estimable +John-David Schofield, voted overwhelmingly at its annual convention, for the second and final time, to disassociate itself from the Episcopal Church, making it the first diocese to hightail it from that woebegone institution. As of Saturday, December 8th, the Diocese of San Joaquin is no longer part of the Episcopal Church but is aligned with the colorfully named Province of the Southern Cone, which consists of Anglican parishes found in the southern half of South America (the pointy part). The archbishop of that province, the Most Reverend Gregory Venables (now there's a fine Anglican name), only a couple of months ago extended an invitation to disaffected Episcopal Dioceses in the United States to come unto his fold. We may expect to see within the next year or so three more dioceses, Quincy (Illinois) and Fort Worth, both Anglo-Catholic, and Pittsburgh, evangelical, to follow the San Joaquians to South America. That may seem a good solution for those few Episcopal dioceses remaining which profess Christianity but there is, unfortunately, a fatal flaw and that is the possible inclusion of the Diocese of Pittsburgh; less because it is evangelical than that it permits the ordination of women, unlike the other three dioceses. Indeed, its ordinary, +Robert Duncan (who is a good and decent man), has stated he has no problem with it.
But it is still a problem. Back in the 'seventies, women's ordination was the camel's nose under the tent, the means by which the innovators were able to establish residency in the Episcopal Church. Once inside the host, which was a healthy and thriving institution, they set about the work of its destruction. The Province of the Southern Cone does not permit the ordination of women but by inviting the Diocese of Pittsburgh to join it, it imports the same virus that is leading to the demise of the Episcopal Church. Pittsburgh may claim it is "orthodox" in its beliefs but permitting the ordination of women betrays it as latitudinarian, willing to jettison those parts of orthodoxy that offend contemporary mores. His Grace Venables ought to remember the whole mess began in 1976, in Minneapolis, when the General Convention of the Episcopal Church voted to make legal the illegal ordination of women that had taken place a few years earlier. It was the beginning of the end.
The three Anglo-Catholic dioceses that have left or will leave the Episcopal Church no doubt concur with the Holy Father John Paul II when he wrote :
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.
How do you compromise with that? You can't and sharing digs with those who think they can dooms the arrangement from the onset as it does, in time, the entire Anglican Communion. Bishop Schofield and his diocese, as well other Anglo-Catholic bishops and flocks who flee, should keep that in mind and, as I have written before, come to regard the Southern Cone as a most welcome but temporary refuge; where they may regroup and be restored before heading off, one more time, to the only safe and logical destination left these days for Anglo-Catholic conservatives.
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