Update on New York Meeting

The bishops meeting in New York this week issued a joint statement Wednesday morning, September 13. The statement, as reported by Episcopal News Service, was brief and to the point. The key sentence is the following: “We could not come to consensus on a common plan to move forward to meet the needs of the dioceses that issued the appeal for Alternate Primatial Oversight.” Apparently, bishops loyal to their ordination vows held the line against the Network bishops.

I should note, by the way, that the list of likely attendees that I gave in my previous post was almost the same as the list of actual attendees. Only Bishop of Texas Don A. Wimberly did not attend. He, of course, is hosting his own meeting of “Windsor-compliant” bishops later this month.

A number of the bishops who participated in the meeting have commented on it. Readers can find those comments elsewhere; they offer little insight into what happened.

It is worth mentioning a statement by Network Moderator and Bishop of Pittsburgh Robert W. Duncan, as reported in a follow-up ENS story:

Describing the meeting as “honest,” Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, moderator of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDAP), said it became clear that “the division in the American church is so great that we are incapable of addressing the divide which has two distinctly different groups both claiming to be the Episcopal Church.”

This is a curious statement. Technically, all the participating bishops are, at least for now, part of The Episcopal Church. The Network has sometimes claimed, however, as the Moderator seems to be doing here, that it represents the real Episcopal Church (and, of course, the General Convention, Presiding Bishop, and 90% or so of Episcopalians in the church do not). This is nonsense, and it is unfortunate that the ENS story did quote anyone directly disputing such a disengenuous remark.