ACI's Ephraim Radner to TEC Bishops: End process to "discipline" the Bishop of Pittsburgh now

THUR. UPDATE: "Fr. Jake" is reporting from his meeting yesterday with the PB that "The inhibition, requiring the consent of the senior bishops, is not connected to the depostion. Bp. Duncan will face the charges of abandonment after his 60 days to recant have passed. The lack of inhibition does not nullify the charges certified by the Review Committee."

There are some - myself included I am afraid - that often feel like Ephraim is tilting at windmills. That doesn't mean, however, he isn't right. The futility of our efforts does not seem to be something God often takes into consideration. A voice crying in the wilderness does. Ephraim pleas are worth listening to - even when we may take different actions. He's listening to the same Lord as the rest of us who are trying to find our way through the thicket. Here, his pleas must be heard by whatever goodness is still left in the Episcopal House of Bishops.

Ephraim Radner of Anglican Communion Institute writes:

I would urge the bishops of TEC, when the matter of Bp. Duncan's status and discipline is raised before them, as now it must be, to vote to table it indefinitely. That is within their power; and it is demanded, I believe, by the evangelical needs of this church and her people. The bishops might then use the disciplinary energies and resources of our church, instead, to pursue and submit in patience to the task and outcome of our larger Church's resolution of our dispute. Having fulfilled her canonical duties in forwarding the Review Committee's decision, however ill-formed, to the House of Bishops, the Presiding Bishop herself should now use her persuasive and parliamentary powers to accomplish just such a vote to table the matter.

TEC is embroiled in a territory of adjudication precisely to the degree that her official leadership has pressed forward to "do a new thing" for which there is no disciplinary direction apart from what, in the past and within current Anglican Communion teaching and direction, has clearly forbidden this very thing they have done. As the Anglican Communion Institute has consistently argued, TEC's leadership cannot do this and then say they are in a position to judge anything, except by an intrinsically novel, and therefore communally questionable, standard.

Read the whole thing here.