LIONEL E. DEIMEL,
PH.D.
828 Rockwood Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15224-1213
Contact:
Lionel Deimel
Telephone: +1 (412) 343-5337 (voice), -6816 (fax), 512-9087 (cell)
E-mail: lionel@deimel.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Deimel on Lawrence’s Failed Bid: “Most Episcopalians Relieved”
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — 7:30 PM EDT, March 15, 2007 — In a consent
process in which The Episcopal Church was lenient to a fault, Presiding Bishop
Katharine Jefferts Schori has declared that the bid of the Very Rev. Mark
Lawrence to become the next bishop for the Diocese of South Carolina has
failed. Although the required number of bishops consented to Lawrence’s
consecration, and a majority of diocesan standing committees appeared to give
their consent, insufficient consents from the standing committees were in the
proper form. Additional details are expected to be forthcoming from The
Episcopal Church. South Carolina will now have to hold a new episcopal
election.
Because Lawrence had aligned himself with the self-styled
“orthodox,” “traditionalists,” or “reasserters” in The Episcopal Church who
object to what they see as the church’s increasingly liberal trajectory, his
election, won easily over two even more conservative candidates, was
controversial. Lawrence is now a priest in the Diocese of San Joaquin, which
has sought to distance itself from the church’s first female Presiding Bishop,
Katharine Jefferts Schori, and has taken preliminary steps to remove itself
from The Episcopal Church. Despite last-minute assurances that he “intended” to
remain in The Episcopal Church, Lawrence’s written statements suggested that he
would follow the path being blazed by San Joaquin when he became leader of the equally
conservative South Carolina diocese.
“I’m sure that most Episcopalians that have been following
the quest for consent to consecrate Fr. Lawrence are relieved to know that he
will not now become a bishop,” suggested Lionel Deimel. Deimel, a parishioner
in the conservative Diocese of Pittsburgh, wrote the essay “No Consents: A Crucial
Test for The Episcopal Church” that first laid out the case against consenting
to Lawrence’s consecration. Via Media USA sent Deimel’s essay, along with a
cover letter, to all bishops with jurisdiction and to all diocesan standing
committees. Episcopal Forum of South Carolina subsequently raised concerns
about Lawrence in its own separate mailing.
During the four-month consent process, Deimel posted
additional commentaries on his Web site and blog, responding to Lawrence’s “clarifications” of his positions and on the details of the process. Other
Episcopalians, both supporters and detractors of Lawrence, joined in the
Internet debate. “All along, the strongest case against Fr. Lawrence involved
his attitude toward The Episcopal Church; he has not been excluded from the
House of Bishops for his personal theology,” Deimel explained. “He wrote that
the church was ‘a comatose patient on life support,’ and he recommended that
the church’s autonomy be surrendered to the primates of the Anglican Communion,
a group containing of a large fraction of appointed, archconservative
archbishops.”
Not since 1875, when the Rev. James De Koven was rejected as
Bishop of Illinois, have diocesan standing committees prevented the
consecration of a bishop in The Episcopal Church. The last bishop-elect to be
rejected by the church’s ruling body, the General Convention, was John Torok,
in 1934. Episcopal elections taking place just prior to the triennial General
Convention are voted on at the General Convention. Elections taking place at
other times are validated by the voting process to which Lawrence’s election
was subject.
In the face of strong lobbying by forces supporting Lawrence, several standing committees that had voted against consent actually changed their
votes. More controversial, however, was the last-minute announcement that the
church would allow 123 days for voting, not the 120 days called for in church
canons. Because the Web site “Stand Firm” (representing “Traditional
Anglicanism in America,” according to its banner) was waging a lobbying
campaign just before and after the canonical deadline of March 9, the extra
days could easily have changed the outcome of the election. Apparently, they
would have changed the outcome had all the “testimonials” (i.e., consents) from
standing committees been properly executed. Testimonials could have been
defective in any number of respects, including not having been signed by a majority
of a standing committee’s members.
“There will be more criticism of our church by Anglicans who
view the rejection of Fr. Lawrence as unfair,” predicted Deimel. “Moreover, the
rejection of testimonials for technical reasons will be criticized by many in
our own church, even though improper ballots are regularly discarded in
American civil elections. It is unfortunate that the misplaced generosity of
allowing an extra three days for achieving consents likely meant that Lawrence’s bid to become a bishop could not be rejected simply for having drawn
insufficient consents.
“The greatest burden will be borne by Fr. Lawrence and his
family, and I am sorry that this has to be. He is, by all accounts, a person of
integrity and a fine parish priest.”
Contacts:
Lionel Deimel
Telephone: +1 (412) 343-5337 (voice), -6816 (fax), 512-9087 (cell)
E-mail: lionel@deimel.org
On the Web:
This document
Lionel Deimel’s Farrago
Lionel Deimel’s Web
Log
“No Consents: A
Crucial Test for The Episcopal Church”
Episcopal Forum of South Carolina
Stand Firm
Via Media USA
The Episcopal Church
Episcopal Diocese of
South Carolina
Lionel Deimel is a former computer science professor who is now an independent
computer consultant and an Episcopal Church activist. He is a board member and
past president of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh. He attends St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh.
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