Five Episcopal priests in the Diocese of Los Angeles and one in the Diocese of Colorado have recently been deposed as a culmination of their actions in opposition to the approval of the ordination of women to the priesthood by the 1976 General Convention of the Episcopal Church.The release continues, covering the short-lived Diocese of the Holy Trinity:The priests had been inhibited by their bishops from priestly functions for the past six months. According to the Canons of the Church, the depositions were automatic following the six-month period during which the priests had not retracted their acts or declarations.
The priests -- supported by their congregations -- had renounced the authority of their bishops.
In June, Bishop William C. Frey of Colorado deposed the Rev. James Mote of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Denver, the first of a number of parishes and missions to vote to sever relations with its Episcopal diocese in opposition to the ordination of women.
In August, Bishop Robert C. Rusack of Los Angeles deposed the Rev. John Barker and the Rev. Elwood Trigg of St. Mary of the Angels Church, Hollywood; the Rev. William T. St. John Brown of St. Matthias, Sun Valley; the Rev. Forrest Miller of Our Savior's, Los Angeles; and the Rev. George H. Clendenin of the Church of the Holy Apostles, Glendale.
Meanwhile, litigation of a property dispute involving the Los Angeles area breakaway parishes and the diocese is still pending in Los Angeles Superior Court.
According to a recent announcement by the Rev. Canon Albert J. duBois, the executive vice president of Anglicans United, and a leader, together with Bishop Chambers, in the separatist movement, the Los Angeles based Diocese of the Holy Trinity now includes more than 40 parishes and missions.These predictions, of course, were only the earliest of the grandiose overpromising characteristic of the "continuing" movement. DuBois himself had been inhibited in April 1977:Canon duBois -- himself currently under suspension by the Bishop of Long Island -- said that he has assisted in the creation of new deaneries in the Midwest, the East, and the South, which, he said, adds "over seventy other congregations seeking attachment to the Diocese of the Holy Trinity pending their own formation in five other new American Dioceses."
Canon duBois reports that there are at present "over one hundred separatist congregations" in the U.S., and he predicts there will be "over two hundred and fifty such congregations by the end of 1977, with many more in 1978."
Canon duBois said that members of the separatist movement "envision a new 'Anglican-Episcopal Province of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church' based in the U. S. A. by the end of 1977."
One of the charges upon which the bishop and standing committee took the action is that Canon duBois has formed a new church, a charge which he denies [Huh??], contending that the action of the General Convention has placed the Episcopal Church outside the traditional doctrine, discipline, and worship of Anglicanism.However, the Diocese of the Holy Trinity didn't outlast the year. According to Fr Barker,Canon duBois has become international president of Anglicans United, a group which has broken with the American Church Union and he asserts that the "threatened deposition was simply an effort to single him out.. in order to crush any organized opposition to the Minneapolis actions."
The Diocese of the Holy Trinity joined the FCC and attended its September 1977 meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. This meeting in St. Louis produced a loose amalgamation of several groups into the Anglican Catholic Church in North America (ACNA), and this was destined to become a new "Anglican" church in the United States and Canada Some of the members of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity identified with the aims of the FCC as it moved toward founding the ACNA. Canon DuBois and the Anglicans United (successor to Episcopalians United) did not. Those in the Diocese of the Holy Trinity who agreed with the aims of ACNA kept the name Diocese of the Holv Trinityand remained with them Those who desired reunion with Rome then formed the Pro-Diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury (PDSAC) to act as the "corpus" for transitional jurisdiction to full unity with the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic life requires a bishop as the center of unity for a diocese. As indicative of the tension between the two factions of the clergy regarding the role of a bishop, a question was put to the bishop-elect regarding whether he be willing to pursue reunion with Rome. It was the strong negative response to this question which resulted in the splitting of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity.The short version of this is that the Anglican program within the Catholic Church was a direct outgrowth of the "continuing" movement, which has been marked by splits and division from the early months of its inception. A successor to the Douglas Bess history of the movement (assuming one should be written) really ought to include the Catholic side descended from DuBois, Barker, Law, and Stetson, as well as the Protestant side descended from Chambers, Mote and Falk.
Fr Barker's history continues with the trip he and Brown made to Rome in the fall of 1977. The most concrete outcome of the trip was to firm up the split in the "continuing" movement:
Before leaving Rome, confidential letters from the delegation were mailed to Bishop Albert Chambers, the retired Episcopal bishop of Springfield, Illinois, and Fr. James Mote, bishop-elect for the Diocese of the Holy Trinity. Bishop Chambers was scheduled to be the chief consecrator at the ordination to the episcopate of four Episcopalian priests, including Father Mote, which would inaugurate the new Anglican Catholic Church in America as planned by the FCC. In those letters both were advised of the results of the Rome meetings and that Rome would see those planned ordinations as a serious obstacle to reunion.Here's what continues to puzzle me. The small groups of congregants in the PDSAC parishes would wait until 1983 -- six years -- to receive valid sacraments of any sort. But as far as I can see, the PDSAC never had a bishop, so that none of the sacraments that require a bishop, such as confirmation and holy orders, could be celebrated at all. The PDSAC was nothing but a creature of fevered imaginations.Two weeks after returning from Rome, the delegates spoke at a joint synod of the priests of the Anglican Dioceses11 of the Holy Trinity and Christ the King, on December 15, 1977. Bishop Chambers presided at this meeting and allowed less than ten minutes for the report on the meetings held in England and Rome. It seemed apparent to all present that the bishop was not interested. For example he said: "Your people don’t want to be Roman Catholics." This sentiment was echoed by bishops-elect Mote (of Denver) and Morse (of Oakland). Bishop Chambers continued to plan for the consecrations to take place in January 1978.
Yet, for all their fervor of somehow becoming Catholic, any of these people could have gone to a nearby Catholic church, gone through RCIA, and been received within a year. These folks wanted to be special from the start.
