Father David Moyer to be Bishop of the Traditional Anglican Communion
Media Release
Sunday 19 th December 2004
The long-running persecution of Father David Moyer, Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, will take a dramatic turn on Sunday, when it will be announced that he is to become a bishop of the Traditional Anglican Communion. He will remain as Rector of Good Shepherd, continuing to defy Episcopal bishop Charles Bennison, who has failed in his attempts to reduce Father Moyer to the laity and evict him from the parish.
The Traditional Anglican Communion is the largest of the "Continuing" Anglican Churches that have emerged in the past twenty-five years in response to Anglican doctrinal and moral conflicts. It has member churches in Africa, Europe, India, Japan, Australia, Canada, the United States and Central America. It is also the most advanced in its resolve to become an Anglican Church "in communion with the Holy See".
Father Moyer is President of Forward in Faith North America. With similar groups in the UK and Australia, Forward in Faith seeks a permanent settlement of the crisis in conscience caused by the Anglican decision to ordain women as priests and bishops against the pleading of both Catholic and Orthodox Churches. As one of the foundations of that settlement, Forward in Faith has entered into Communion relationships with the Traditional Anglican Communion.
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In his announcement of Father Moyer's decision, Archbishop Louis Falk, leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion in the United States and until recently its world Primate, stated:
" The Rev. Dr. David L. Moyer Elected Bishop by the Anglican Church in America
Rosemont, PA December 16 th The Rev. Dr. David L. Moyer, rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, has been elected as a Bishop by the Anglican Church in America, which is a member of the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion.
In announcing Father Moyer's election, Archbishop Louis Falk, Primate of the Anglican Church in America, said, "Our House of Bishops unanimously elected Fr. Moyer for many reasons, not the least among them his many years of committed, proven pastoral leadership and his untiring efforts to bring about full Christian unity and communion in proclaiming and living the Gospel of Christ."
Fr. Moyer is a native of Sommerville, N.J. and a priest for more than 28 years. He has been Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont since 1989. Expressing his gratitude to the electing Bishops, he said: "I believe that God is calling the TAC to be an instrument of Unity and reconciliation among those who have maintained the Anglican tradition since St. Augustine came to Canterbury."
The Consecration of Fr. Moyer will take place on Feb 16 at 7:30 p.m. in the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont. The Consecration will be performed by Archbishop Falk, Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion and Bishop Louis Compese, Bishop of the Eastern Diocese of the Anglican Church in America. Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion will come from Africa, Australia, Japan and Canada for the consecration. Anglican Communion diocesan bishops from at least three Provinces will also take part, as will bishops from other jurisdictions. The event will itself be a major display of the emerging unity among Anglican traditionalists.
In addition to his other duties, which will now include administering the sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Orders, Bishop-elect Moyer will have pastoral oversight of the military chaplaincies in the Traditional Anglican Communion throughout the world."
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Commenting on this announcement, the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Archbishop John Hepworth, who is based in Adelaide, South Australia, stated:
"The consecration of Father David Moyer, and the consecration of Father David Chislett, Vice-Chairman of Forward in Faith Australia at about the same time, marks a vital change in the conflict that has devastated Anglicanism for over twenty five years. In the Episcopal church in the United States, church law forbids anyone opposing the ordination of women to hold office. Other churches of Anglicanism behave in the same way. While persecuting those who do no more than hold what has always been believed, bishops who flaunt their lack of belief and their defiance of moral law are treated as heros. Anglicanism has become a battlefield in a perverse conflict.
The Traditional Anglican Communion was founded to recreate an Anglicanism that is both orthodox in its teaching and dynamic in its growth.
These consecrations are a response to the persistant and determined refusal of the Anglican Communion to address the persecution of traditional Anglican believers. The new bishops will be "flying bishops", similar to those provided for the Church of England, with a ministry that spans diocesan and national borders.
The final action, or lack of it, by the Anglican Communion that drove home the need for the timing of these consecrations, was the claim in the recent "Windsor Report" that all of these problems, along with the extensive and brutal persecution to which they have led, simply do not exist. Yet, they do exist; and it is our prayer that, in addition to the primary purpose of providing needed episcopal ministry within the TAC, these consecrations will help to focus the minds of the Anglican Primates on unresolved problems and justice withheld, when the Primates meet late in February.
The Traditional Anglican Communion has been urged to do nothing. It has been urged to delay the consecrations. I have noted that there has been no delay by any other part of the church. Liberal appointments continue unabated. At the evangelical end of the Anglican spectrum, Nigeria and Uganda continue to plant parishes in the United States. Only those whose dreams include unity between Rome and Canterbury are urged to do nothing. And yet unity was the dream of Jesus on the night before the Passion.
I have been informing the Archbishop of Canterbury of the progress of these appointments for the past year, and have been encouraged by his warmth and understanding. He was informed of the impending consecration of Father Moyer by phone last week."
"Anger And Deep Hurt"
19th October 2004.
Here follows a statement on the Windsor Report from Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, the primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a global Continuing Church fellowship of several hundred thousand members.
Over the last year, Archbishop Hepworth has had cordial correspondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican primate of Australia, Most Reverend Peter Carnley, (some of which was shared with the Lambeth Commission), and has moved the TAC closer "to the "boundary of the Anglican Communion," in the hope that the TAC could be of service in ministering to those "who cannot survive within contemporary Anglicanism," particularly orthodox Anglicans in provinces which have decided to ordain women. It had appeared that this endeavor was bearing fruit.
However, Archbishop Hepworth, speaking to The Christian Challenge (Washington DC) by phone today, believes that the Windsor Report not only inadequately addresses the Communion's current crisis, but in the process "entrenches women's ordination," (which the 1998 Lambeth Conference declared was still in a long testing ("reception") process); moreover, the report takes the position that there was no serious division over moves to break from catholic, apostolic order, and that Anglicans hurt, persecuted or forced out of the Communion over this issue "don't exist," he said.
A Statement by the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion on the "Windsor Report
I react with anger and deep hurt.
My representations at every level of the Anglican Communion from the Archbishop of Canterbury to local Deaneries have attempted to convince the Communion that there are already hundreds of thousands of Anglicans feeling deep alienation from their Church. That alienation has now been immeasurably deepened.
The Report achieves a number of notable results:
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* It ends the "Period of Reception" of women as deacons, priests and bishops by claiming that this innovation has been achieved "without division." * It suggests that this process is a model for the discernment of a church policy on homosexuality. * It trivialises the destruction of Unity with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, while upholding Unity as the most significant attribute of the Anglican Communion. * It upholds a form of alternative episcopal oversight already condemned by every group that has sought oversight as a matter of conscience. * In doing so, it trivialises individual conscience for the sake of crude conformity masquerading as unity. * It creates a new Anglican understanding of the Church, in which there is no longer any point of reference to the existence of a Church beyond Anglicanism. |
This Report is a triumph for the agenda of Affirming Catholicism (one of whose founders was the present Archbishop of Canterbury) which sought to remove the issues of womens' ordination, homosexuality and unity with Rome from the Anglican agenda.
In creating an Anglican gulag, an invisible and nameless group who cannot in conscience accept Anglicanism's abandonment of Catholic order and sacramental practise over the past thirty years, the Report owes more to Stalin than to Christ. Those who are already under persecution-- the priests being expelled from their parishes (or already expelled) and the people driven from their parishes--find absolutely nothing in this Report - not even an awareness that they exist. It is an invitation to further marginalisation for those still within the Anglican Communion, and a fierce rejection for the Continuing Churches who exist beyond its borders.
We in the Traditional Anglican Communion have drawn closer to those borders in recent years. We have always claimed to be in communion with those Anglicans whose faith is traditional and orthodox. We have offered ourselves as servants to those who hurt, so that a healing, sacramental life could be sustained during the process of "doctrinal discernment.".
Instead, as we became visible we have been shelled and bombed. Offers of pastoral service have been rejected, leaving the wounded to their own devises.
Earlier in the year, I assured the Archbishop of Canterbury that this Communion would not consecrate any new bishops to exercise alternative oversight until the contents of this Report were known. I have kept that promise. So complete is the rejection of our pastoral ministry, so complete is the denial of our existence, that that offer is now terminated. Next Sunday, bishops from Japan, Africa and Australia will join in consecrating bishops for indigenous people who have been ridiculed for their adherence to the faith they received with joy only decades ago. Other consecrations, for churches in the United States and Australia, will follow.
Twelve years ago, when the last great Anglican crisis of conscience occurred, Anglican Catholics looked to Rome for the unity and authenticity that had been snatched from them. Many made that journey, often alone. The twin goals of achieving Christian unity and continuing the Anglican tradition are now more clearly understood on both sides. Once again, retreat from Canterbury turns one towards the Alps. Next week, we will submit to the Holy See our Communion's response to "The Gift of Authority'.
Any healing must begin with a diagnosis of the disease. Sin can only be forgiven by confessing it and seeking forgiveness. This Report is produced by a Communion in denial, seeking neither diagnosis nor forgiveness. The language of apology is not the language of contrition. The language of diplomacy is not the language of God.
I cry for an Anglicanism once again driven to the wilderness.
+John Hepworth
A future of shepherding at All Saints
IN what many described as a momentous powerful occasion, the 135th
Dedication Festival of All Saints' Anglican Church, Wickham Terrace,
Brisbane on the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary was celebrated in
magnificent style with two bishops present, a Solemn High Mass, and a
united congregation comprising All Saints' people, Forward in
Faith-Australia and several congregations of the Traditional Anglican
Communion who carried colourful parish banners in a demonstration of
their pilgrimage together as faithful orthodox Anglicans.
In his welcoming address to the congregation of near 300, Rector of All
Saints, Fr. David Chislett said that "the service was a demonstration of
'continuing Anglicans', All Saints' and FIF-Australia moving forward
together and what cannot perhaps be achieved separately we are a force
to be reckoned with together, and our joy filled morning worship and
your part in that was a very powerful witness to that fact."
Fr. David Chislett SSC has been elected a bishop to provide Episcopal
ministry in the Traditional Anglican Communion and for parishes and
clergy affiliated with Forward in Faith-Australia. His consecration by
both Anglican Communion and TAC bishops is expected to be in the new
year. He will remain Rector of All Saints.
. . . . Read this and more stories about the event in our next issue
expected October 2004.
Bishops for Church of Torres Strait
The Primate, The Most Reverend John Hepworth, assisted by Bishop Raphael Kajiwarra and a bishop of the Umzi Wasi Tiyopia (South Africa) will consecrate to the Episcopate two priests of the Church of Torres Strait, the Reverend Tolowa Eric Tupoa Nona SSC, as Diocesan Bishop in succession to Bishop Hankin, and the Reverend Sania Guy Townson, as Assistant Bishop. The consecrations will take place on Saibai Island on Sunday 24th October 2004.
