DioFort Worth Report on the Southern Cone
At its November 2007 Synod, the Province adopted a resolution to extend the offer of membership to traditional dioceses electing to leave revisionist provinces. In December, the Province received the Diocese of San Joaquin in California. Archbishop Venables has also received several retired TEC and Canadian bishops into the Province. It was in that context that he recently declared: “Christianity is specific, definable and unchanging. We are not at liberty to deconstruct or rewrite it. If Jesus was the Son of God yesterday then so He is today and will be forever.”
We have now had opportunity to review the Constitution and Canons of the Province of the Southern Cone; an English-language edition of those documents is being edited and will be released shortly. Based on our review, we have concluded that the structure and polity of the Province of the Southern Cone would afford our diocese greater self-determination than we currently have under the General Convention of The Episcopal Church. This autonomy would be evident most specifically in the areas of property ownership, liturgy, holy orders, and missionary focus.
While nothing will change in the day-to-day operations of the churches in the Diocese of Fort Worth, we expect a significant change in attitude and focus of the clergy and people of the diocese. Becoming a member Diocese of the Province of the Southern Cone would allow the Diocese of Fort Worth the opportunity and freedom to continue to practice the “Faith once delivered to all the saints” without being constantly distracted by the controversies and divisions caused by innovations hostile to traditional Christian norms. Instead, it would allow the Diocese to concentrate on the call of Jesus Christ to preach the Gospel and make new disciples, while at the same time assuring our continued place in the mainstream of Anglicanism, an assurance The Episcopal Church is unable to give.
Presented by
The Bishop and Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth
January 9, 2008
posted by Texanglican (R.W. Foster+) | 4:19 PM
5 Comments:
Hi, Father Randall! Hope you are well.
All I can say is, once again, "Goof for our Bishop and Standing Committee."
Amen,Sioux!
Yes, goof for them! Sad business, indeed.
Clever, anon. That typo is unfortunately, but not nearly as funny as the one I had last year when I wrote that the HOB meeting has failed to stop "pubic" rites of SSB's! ;-)
And while I certainly agree with you that there is sadness in this situation, it is in the fact that TEC's actions have driven us to seek shelter elsewhere. It is, however, a joyful thing to be WELCOMED somewhere after decades of being pariahs in TEC.
I live as a retied person in Buenos Aires, and all I wanted to mention here was that if any of you had any idea what a shambles and near-farce the "Province of the Southern Cone" is you would think twice about having anything to do with it. No one has really done due diligence about this sadly malformed and Evangelical part of the Anglican world. If someone were to do so, I think it would be helpful no matter which side of the issues in the American Church you were on.
Peter Winterble
peter@winterble.com
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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