May 27, 2009 10:45am
Rt. Rev. Jerry Lamb (CVBT file photo)
• Says they quit when they aligned with conservative group
• ‘It is a sad day’
• ‘It is a sad day’
The Episcopal Church has fired, or in its words “deposed,” 61 priests and deacons in the Central Valley who followed former Bishop John David Schofield when he rebuked the national church and aligned with the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, a conservative group based in South America.
“I find the actions I was forced to take last Friday and Tuesday to be heartbreaking,” says the Rt. Rev. Jerry Lamb, Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin in written comments Wednesday. “I have known a few of these clergy personally and others by the stories I have heard about their ministry. But, the fact is, they chose to abandon their relationship with the Episcopal Church.”
Mr. Schofield was deposed in March 2008.
He and the various priests and deacons objected to the Episcopal Church’s ordination of gays to the priesthood among other things, "refusing to recognize the authority of the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church and of the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church," as the church puts it.
The clergy who have been fired had six months to deny their abandonment, recant, or renounce their ministry in the Episcopal Church, according to the diocese.
“They declined to ask for a release from their ordination vows, and I had no option but to bring the charges of ‘Abandonment of the Communion’ to the Standing Committee last year and take these final steps today,” says Mr. Lamb. “It is a sad day.”
Note: Bolds added...........Arsenio.
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