14th March, A.D. 2008
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop
815 Second Avenue
New York NY 10017
Dear Katharine,
In response to the request set forth in your letter of January 15th (which enclosed the certification of the Title IV Review Committee), I state that I consider myself "fully subject to the doctrine, discipline and worship of this Church."
In particular:
1. I have striven to follow the Lord Jesus with all my heart and mind and soul and strength, all the while relying on God's grace to accomplish what my sinfulness and brokenness otherwise prevent.
2. I have kept my ordination vows – all of them – to the best of my ability, including the vow I made on 28 October 1972 to "banish and drive away all strange and erroneous doctrines contrary to God's Word."
3. I have preached and taught nothing but what faithful Anglicans and mainstream Christians have always preached and taught, with the exception only that I have supported and encouraged the ministry of women in Holy Orders.
4. I have been present to all but two meetings of the House of Bishops (out of twenty-four) during the last 12 years. In those meetings I have clearly and openly opposed the theological and moral drift of the Episcopal Church, often in the face of great hostility and sadly, at times, derision.
5. I have made no submission to any other authority or jurisdiction.
6. I have gathered Anglican fragments together from one hundred and thirty-five years of Episcopal Church division, vastly increasing understanding and cooperation, though preserving the jurisdictional independence of all.
7. I have, with the clergy, people and para-church organizations of my diocese, built missionary relationships all over the world, fielding both missionaries and resources on five continents.
8. I have faithfully served and shepherded the clergy and people of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh through what has, by God's grace, been one of its greatest periods of extension and blessing. My intention is to continue in this call for what remains of my active ministry.
Faithfully in Christ,
The Rt. Rev. Robert Wm. Duncan
Bishop
Well, at least he recognises it as an exception. (Owzat for charitable?)
ReplyDelete'Pears to have openly confessed himself as a revisionist, albeit a "conservative" one. How does it work to be faithful in all things except the one he doesn't want to follow?
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I hope it may mean that he sees, finally, that he has been wrong about this one thing. Or, that he is headed in that direction.
ReplyDeleteBishop Duncan is a man of integrity who recognizes that women priests are an innovation and is open to revisiting this question.
ReplyDeleteThis is a big, especially as Bishop Duncan is about the only TEC bishop who has provided canonical residence to a good number of women priests who have found themselves at odds with their bishops over same sex ceremonies and Robinson's consecration. A friend of mine was admitted into Bishop Duncan's diocese when she was threatened with inhibition by her diocesan, and while she never ministered in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, that kindness provided her time to re-examine her call and to eventually recognize that she needed to renounce orders. She no longer believes in the validity of women priests and has joined the Orthodox Church in America. When she wrote to tell Bishop Duncan that she wanted to set aside orders and was becoming Orthodox, he wrote her a warm note of encouragement. He had only met her once, yet he cared about her situation.
I truly hope and pray that Alice and Fr. Hart are more right than I in evaliating Bishop Suncan. In so many ways he is such a good man, but there is also so much evidence of his having spent decades absorbing many of the revisions that have infected ECUSA, as also many of the well-meant but misguided Protestant Evangelical reactions to the heresies. Let's all pray that Bishop Bob Duncan follow the path he seems to have stepped on to all the way to the fukkness of the faith. We need men like him as much as he needs the truths we've managed to preserve.
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