Unease in South Dakota over Buddhist Bishop-Elect

Greg, this reply meant so much to all who signed the open letter.  The SC member who replied is not a traditionalist - he is what Sarah calls “a beloved moderate.” 
Eyes can be opened.  I really, really hope that folks in TEC will make the effort to contact their Bishops and Standing Committees on this.

Mrs Irish’s baptism was invalid, being Mormon and polytheistic. Therefore, the sacraments she purportedly received were invalid, and all the sacraments she purportedly administered were equally invalid, except, perhaps (perhaps!), possibly, Baptism.

Can an unbaptized person Baptize? Certainly an unbaptized person can’t receive the sacraments which succeed it, and therefore can’t bestow them, either.

Is it South Dakota or North? Actually, I didn’t see anything in the letter saying where it was from, other than “via e-mail”

Yours in Christ,
jacob

Yes, (at least according to the RCC) baptism can be done by anyone, baptized or not, as long as water is used, it is done in the name of the Trinity (“I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”), and the intent to baptize is present. (For instance, in war if a soldier is dying and desires to be baptized before death, an atheist could baptize him as long as the atheist intended to carry out the sacrament as a baptism knowing it was the dying soldier’s wish, even though the atheist himself did not believe.)

Jacobsladder,

South. My mistake - fixed now.

“In our case, the worse the better.”
V.I. Lenin

It is consoling that someone on the Standing Committee in SD has recognized the fraud known as “Mutual Ministry”. It has nothing to do with ministry and even less to do with evangelization. Northern Michigan was one of its first casualties, Nevada, Wyoming and other dioceses are beginning to reap its harvest. The intent is to keep church doors open, improve the cash flow of money in the diocesan office by dramatically increasing the assessment on MM churches (since MM churches have no “seminary trained professionals”, they are supposed to have more “disposable income”), and consolidate power in the hands of the few “seminary trained professionals” at the top of the pyramid. I haven’t seen any systematic studies on MM coming out of the propaganda office of 815 - though one can count on all sorts of enthusiastic statements from certain bishops. The late Bishop Kelsey of Northern Michigan was a great enthusiast. Check the statistics on the Diocese for the past 20 years to see what jolt of life MM brought to it.

A self professed practicing Zen Buddhist…

Mr. Forrestor is more than self-professed.  He actually got ordained which means others have validated him as a Zen Buddhist.

Dan,

Assuming “Mutual Ministry” and “Canon Nine Ministry” are broadly similar, I feel it only fair to point out that the Diocese of Pittsburgh experimented with the concept at Donora and Aliquippa in 1997 (see pp.318-19 of the diocesan history for the details). The rationale employed by its proponents doesn’t seem that different from that presently employed in the Diocese of Northern Michigan. Naturally it makes a difference who is running things, but perhaps we should be careful before assuming the bankruptcy of the concept. After all, today’s financial circumstances are likely to necessitate a decreased reliance on full-time clergy for the foreseeable future and it’s something to which the Global South has long been accustomed.

Catholic and Reformed

I think there is a distinction to be made between use of mutual ministry in a diocese where most of the parishes are healthy, or at least viable, and most have a conventional rector or vicar.  Here in N. Michigan, only 2 or 3 of the parishes are really viable- and even Forrester’s own parish had to dip into its endowments last year.  So, rather than the conventional model of a diocese with 30-40 parishes that can at least subsist on their own, and a few that cannot, here we have the exact opposite.
  Now, most of us in small parishes have an idea of what mutual ministry is supposed to be.  You have a priest in charge who is often a retired clergyman, or a Title IX cleric.  There are a number of lay appointments as eucharistic ministers (ie-chalice bearer, so as not to confuse it with lay presidency), eucharistic visitors, lectors and sometimes preachers.  Often the laity also take on much of the administration that would commonly be done by the rector.
  Under the system here- large numbers of laity are ordained into the priesthood and diaconate.  In this parish, ASA 35, there are 4 priests and 3 deacons (ie- 20% of the ASA is ordained).  The overseeing “ministry developers” have all been hired based on “being with the program”- that is, there actually is NO theological diversity among the seminary trained clergy, because they are hired by the diocese, rather than by the local congregations, therefore they are theologically reflective of +Tom Ray and the late +Jim Kelsey- and not of the parishes and people they serve.  The training provided to the Title IX clergy is provided by the diocese, indeed, the “Life Cycles” written by Mr Forrester provide a central part of it.  The only reason there is any semblance of the Episcopal Church in this diocese is because some of those volunteer clergy ignore the training and try to follow the BCP or get advice from clergy who are outside the diocese.
  In essence, what is going on here is ecclesiastic inbreeding.  The “ministry developers” set the criteria for, and lead the “discernment teams” who choose clergy.  Therefore, they increasingly tighten control over who gets ordained.  If you not part of the theological inner circle, you get discerned out.  There is none of the theological diversity you anticipate in a TEC diocese.
  Beyond all that, there just is NO canonical support for the institution of a “mutual bishop.”  In essence, the Standing Committee was displaced some years ago by the “Core Team” made up of the ministry developers and a select few others (not elected, mind you).  This has now morphed into the “Episcopal Ministry Support Team- the “bishop/ministry developer” and 11 other people.  That is to say, the job of bishop will be done by 12 people- a politburo.  Why do you need something this complicated when a large diocese can make do with a bishop and Standing Committee (the Standing Committee will continue to exist, but your guess is as good as mine as to what it does other than rubber stamp whatever the Core Team/Episcopal Ministry Team puts in front of it.)

Thanks for the clarifications #10. As you say, a rather different pattern of ecclesiastical development.

Senior Priest #2 wonders:

Can an unbaptized person Baptize? Certainly an unbaptized person can’t receive the sacraments which succeed it, and therefore can’t bestow them, either.

I knew a Hindu lady who had spent many years as a nurse in India, where infant mortality was much higher than in the West.  It was routine practice for Hindu and Buddhist nurses to baptize seriously ill newborns whose parents were Christian.  They were careful to use the formula from the 1662 BCP, interestingly, even though some of them had to learn it phonetically.  (In many varieties of Hinduism, precise pronunciation of the Sanskrit prayers is important; one of the earliest scientific works on phonetics extant is Panini’s Sanskrit grammar of the 4th century BC.)

Even though these compassionate ladies were unbelievers, I would hesitate to ascribe to them any ‘defect of intention’.

I hasten to add to my post #12 that to the best of my knowledge, none of these nurses ever presented themselves as candidates for an episcopacy ...

“…Of all today’s Eastern religious currents, ” he wrote, “Zen is probably the most sophisticated intellectually, and the most sober spiritually. With its teaching of compassion and a loving ‘Cosmic Buddha,’ it is perhaps as high a religious ideal as the human mind can attain — without Christ. Its tragedy is precisely that it has no Christ in it, and thus no salvation, and its very sophistication and sobriety effectively prevent its followers from seeking salvation in Christ. In its quiet, compassionate way it is perhaps the saddest of all the reminders of the ‘post-Christian’ times in which we live. Non-Christian ’spirituality’ is no longer a foreign importation in the West; it has become a native American religion putting down deep roots into the consciousness of the West. Let us be warned of this: the religion of the future will not be a mere cult or sect, but a powerful and profound religious orientation which will be absolutely convincing to the mind and heart of modern man.”

This quote is from Father Seraphim Rose: His life and Works by Hieromonk Damascene