CTSix: Bishop Smth's Convention Address:

Excerpt:

"...First I will address our relationship with five congregations and their rectors who petitioned for what they name alternative episcopal oversight in May 2004. I have refrained from speaking publicly because I have wanted to keep the matter of our relationships and the possibility for reconciliation “in house,” and I have wanted to avoid giving occasion for the immediate public attacks that inevitably have followed any statement which does not support their cause. However, today I must take some time to speak.

The basic issues – diocesan episcopal oversight of these parishes, and the obedience of the rectors to their ordination vows -- have not changed to this day. In their letter to meof May 2004, the clergy and lay leaders of these parishes named “alternative” or “adequate” episcopal oversight as their expectation, and outlined in detail what alternative episcopal oversight would mean to them. It is clear, as I have said over and over, that their demands lie outside any possibility for the Episcopal Church. To put it another way, were a bishop to accede to their conditions, he or she would have failed to uphold the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church."

the rest at Connecticut Six