The Sound of Silence

By Robin G. Jordan

The silence of the Anglican Church in North America’s College of Bishops is deafening. It is reminiscent of the silence of the Lambeth Palace after the election of Mary Glasspool. It reminds one of the silence of the Episcopal Church Executive Council after a group of retired bishops asked the Executive Council to release a breakdown of how much money the Council was spending to pursue its policy of litigation against departing dioceses and parishes.

The College of Bishops could easily put to rest the controversy surrounding its reception of CEEC Bishop Derek Jones as a Bishop of the ACNA this past June by issuing a public statement explaining why it recognized Bishop Jones’ consecration and the basis of its decision. However, like a turtle, which retreats into its shell upon the approach of a real or perceived danger, the College of Bishops has retreated into silence. One is left with the distinct impression that the College of Bishops is waiting for the controversy to subside without it making any kind of public statement. However, the College of Bishops owes not only the members of the ACNA but the larger Anglican community both in and outside of North America an explanation of its decision.

The College of Bishops may fear that if it makes a public statement, it will stir up even more controversy. However, the lack of openness and transparency that the ACNA leadership, first as the Common Cause Partnership Leadership Council and Executive Committee and now as the ACNA Provincial Council, Executive Committee, and College of Bishops have shown in the past suggest a different explanation. It comes down to a basic unwillingness to explain their actions or to accept any accountability for them. The ACNA constitution and canons contain very few accountability mechanisms; the ACNA leadership has shown little regard for these documents since their adoption. It treats them as a mandate to do whatever it pleases.

In the meantime, Bishop Jones’ supporters have sought to discredit those who call attention to the question of the validity and regularity of his consecration and to impugn their character. Jones’ fellow CEEC bishops, when a query was directed to them about his consecration, declined to give a straightforward answer. They claimed that Jones’ consecration had the recognition of the Church of England as well as the ACNA and referred the inquirer to Jones himself. However, they did not provide any details in regards to who in the Church of England had recognized Jones’ consecration and under what circumstances. Nor did they volunteer where documentation of this recognition of the consecration is to be found.

What the CEEC bishops are describing as Church of England recognition may be a reference to what happened early in the last century when a group of Anglo-Catholic priests in the Church of England concerned about the validity of their Anglican orders sought re-ordination at the hands of an episcopi vagantes bishop whom they believed to have valid independent Catholic orders. The CEEC bishops may trace their own line of succession to that particular bishop. However, a group of Church of England clergy seeking re-ordination at the hands of such a bishop is not the same as Church of England recognition. It does not even come near to such recognition.

As I noted in my first article on Bishop Jones’ recognition, the Western Church has generally recognized episcopi vagantes as validly but irregularly consecrated. This statement, however, must be qualified. Episcopi vagantes bishops have been recognized as validly consecrated when the bishop or bishops consecrating a particular bishop belonged to recognized independent Catholic lines of succession. Such consecrations have not been regarded as valid when the consecrating bishop or bishops belonged to sham lines of succession and were themselves not true bishops in the Catholic sense. In some cases recognized independent Catholic lines of succession and sham lines of succession have become mixed together. Where such lines of succession have become intermixed, the validity of the consecration of episcopi vagantes bishop is questionable. The bishops of the Anglican Communion meeting in the Lambeth Conference in the 1958 adopted a resolution (Resolution 54) in which they took the position that they could not “recognize the Churches of such episcopi vagantes as properly constituted Churches or recognize the orders of their ministers.” In this resolution the bishops of the Anglican Communion stated what was then the mind of the Communion and, to my knowledge, still is the mind of the Communion.

The Anglican Church in North America, while it enjoys the recognition of a number of Anglican provinces and dioceses, is not a member of the Anglican Communion. It is an extramural Anglican church body. Its College of Bishops is free to recognize Bishop Jones’ consecration. This, however, does not explain or justify its reticence on the subject of its recognition of Bishop Jones. If the College of Bishops has adopted a policy of recognizing particular episcopi vagantes bishops, it should come out and say so, and make known in detail its rationale for doing so. Having set an important precedent, it needs to issue a clear policy statement on the matter.

Lambeth Resolutions are not binding on the members of the Anglican Communion. They have the nature of recommendations or statements of agreed position. A Communion member may ignore them but in doing so it parts company with the other members of the Communion as The Episcopal Church did in rejecting the 1998 Lambeth Conference’s resolution on human sexuality. Since CANA maintains ties with the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) and CANA Bishop Martyn Mimms is himself a bishop of that church, the Nigerian House of Bishops must approve the appointment of Bishop Jones as Bishop Mimms’ suffragan. In approving Bishop Jones for the post of suffragan, the Nigerian House of Bishops is put in the position of repudiating Lambeth Resolution 54 and the mind of the Communion on the matter of episcopi vagantes churches and the orders of their ministers. Did the College of Bishops recognize Bishop Jones with this intent?

With the liberals in the ascendancy in the Church of England and in the new “Standing Committee” of the Anglican Communion, the likelihood of the ACNA gaining the official recognition of the Anglican Communion is very slim, if not non-existent. In certain quarters of the ACNA such recognition is no longer seen as desirable. In its place the formation of a separate global South Anglican Communion in which the ACNA is a leading member is now the desired outcome of present developments. This prompts this writer to wonder aloud whether the College of Bishops was seeking to hasten that day.

The silence of the College of Bishops says a number of things. As in the case of Rowan Williams after the Glasspool election, the College of Bishops does not know what it is going to say. It is still mulling over its options. As in the case of the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council, the College of Bishops does not want to say anything. It does not want to reveal why it recognized Bishop Jones and the basis of its decision. However, the College of Bishops should not be making decisions about which it is reluctant to make full public disclosure or which will not bear public scrutiny. As the leaders of the ACNA the bishops of the ACNA have an obligation to do everything above board and out in the open, not under the table and behind closed doors.

“The elders who are among you I exhort, I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed: Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.” (1 Peter 5:1-4 NKJV)

What kind of example is the College of Bishops setting for God’s flock? This is a question that members of the ACNA and the larger Anglican community should be asking but also the bishops themselves.

Let us hope that the College of Bishops has not reached the stage where it not only sees fit to disregard the ACNA’s own instruments of governance but also the Word of God. The ACNA has been in existence for barely a year. Hopefully the ACNA bishops will come to their senses and end their silence, offer an acceptable explanation through their spokesman, Archbishop Robert Duncan, and restore trust and confidence in the College of Bishops. The longer they are silent, the greater the impression that they give that they are hiding something, and the greater the damage that they do to the public image of the ACNA episcopal bench.