Connecticut Bishop to Panel of Reference: Drop Dead!
7/21/2005

Plans for an international Panel of Reference to investigate divisions between traditionalists and liberals will not affect a key American diocese. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference has been warned that it will play no role in the battle for alternate Episcopal oversight (AEO) in the diocese of Connecticut, a spokesman for Bishop Andrew Smith told The Church of England Newspaper.

Bishop Smith’s rejection of a mediating roll for the Panel in one of the flashpoints of division within the Communion, demonstrates its irrelevance, critics charge. Liberal American and Canadian bishops who have expressed willingness to work with the Panel have largely granted AEO to dissident parishes, while bishops who so far have refused AEO, will ignore the Panel with impunity, they claim. Bishop Smith Bishop inhibited the Rev Mark Hansen, rector of St John’s, Bristol, Connecticut, for failing to abide by the diocese’s sabbatical guidelines – and by doing so, the diocese claims, pastorally neglecting his congregation. On the morning of July 13, Bishop Smith, accompanied by lawyers and locksmiths, served notice on the parish secretary that Dr Hansen – a staunch opponent of Bishop Smith over his support for Gene Robinson – had been inhibited and would be deposed in six months unless he recanted. The bishop ordered the locks changed and a security guard maintains a 24-hour vigil at the parish.

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