Bishop Elect Lawrence Answers

[angli_fan]

Dear Bishops and Standing Committee Members:

Thank you for affording me this opportunity to respond to your concerns, particularly regarding my suitability as a colleague in the House of Bishops.

...I have loved and served this Church of ours over the last thirty plus years, even when I have found her incorrigibly frustrating. When I have spoken or written critically of her it has not been from a posture of having rejected TEC, but from one of commitment, even investment of my life and my family’s life in the Church’s common call to serve our Lord. We have sacrificed much for this Church, as I’m sure each of you has over many years. I believe it is symptomatic of these times, that I who have adhered for 26 years to my ordination vows am now peppered with requests for me to affirm in advance my commitment “…to the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the Episcopal Church”....None of us can predict where the angle of repose for this period of profound re-formation will settle. You will find here my answers to questions presented by other concerned bishops. Hopefully they will provide you what you need to make an informed decision.

www.sarmiento.plus.com/anglican/marklawrenceanswers.html

[angli_fan]

Fr Jake takes a look at the current status of the consents:

From what I understand, currently South Carolina has heard from 28 dioceses. 10 of them have denied consent. Considering that those dioceses aligned with the Network (7 to 10, depending on your source) were most likely the first to respond to requests for consents, it is still questionable if Fr. Lawrence will receive the required majority of consents.

frjakestopstheworld.blogspot.com/2006/12/should-bishop-elect-of-sc-receive.html

Fr. Tobias Haller attempts to address why many may find the bishop-elect's answers to be unsatisfactory in an essay titled simply "No":


What has bothered me most in what I have seen from Mark Lawrence, not only in the immediate context of his candidacy and election, is inconsistency. He took a strong stand against the confirmation both of Bishop Robinson and Bishop Beisner, not just voting against them but leading the opposition and framing the minority reports. Both of these men were put under intense scrutiny during the General Convention sessions in which their confirmations were acted upon. They were forthcoming. (Perhaps it was easier to "forthcome" when one could stand before a microphone in an overheated committee room while a panel of seated judges peppered one with accusations and calls for further explanation.) Their answers were fulsome and complete, and touched on deeply personal matters.

Mark Lawrence's wholesale responses, on the other hand, appear evasive, vague, fudgy and, to say the worst, duplicitous. (There is only one proper response to the "hypothetical" question, "If your diocesan convention votes to leave the Episcopal Church what would you do?" and that is (for starters) "I will do all in my power to prevent the diocese from making such an unconstitutional attempt, including charging clerical members of the Convention with violation of their Ordination Vows.")

So, on this matter, Mark appears to demand a level of accountability he is unwilling to give.

jintoku.blogspot.com/2006/12/no.html

[anglicansablaze]

Seems to me that the radical wing of The Episcopal Church is intent upon denying the right of a diocese to choose its bishop. It argued that when the Diocese of New Hampshire elected a practicing homosexual that the General Convention should confirm the election because Gene Robinson was the choice of the Diocesan Convention of the Diocese of New Hampshire. By the same logic the Bishops and Standing Committees of The Episcopal Church should confirm South Carolina's choice. It is clear that the Episcopal Church's radical wing would apply one standard when one of its own is the bishop elect and a different standard when the bishop elect is a dissenter from the theological and moral innovations that it espouses. It is clear that that the same radical wing wants to force upon the Diocese of South Carolina a bishop more to its liking, one more sympathetic to these innovations or one not likely to resist them. If the Episcopal Church's radical wing succedes in its efforts to block the confirmation of the bishop-elect of South Carolina, it will be a clear message to biblically-orthodox Anglicans that they have no place in The Episcopal Church.

As Bishop J. C. Ryle reminds us in Knots United, "he is the schismatic who cause schism." The radical wing of The Episcopal Church is intent upon causing more divisions within The Episcopal Church and between the Episcopal Church and the more biblically orthodox provinces of the Anglican Communion. Yet it has the temerity to accuse of schism those who dissent from its innovations and seek to maintain continuity with The Episcopal Church's biblically-orthodox Anglican heritage and the biblically-orthodox Anglican community world-wide. As the radicals have caused most of the dissent, the greater part of the blame for the departures from The Episcopal Church and the calls for alternative episcopal and primatal oversight is theirs.