Rochester parish may face extinction
A congregation of about 50 people in the Diocese of Rochester may be “declared extinct” if it cannot reach a compromise with Bishop Jack McKelvey.
The Rev. David Harnish and leaders of All Saints Episcopal Church in Rochester are scheduled to meet with the bishop on the afternoon of September 20 to discuss their conflicts. At the heart of those conflicts is the parish’s sense that it cannot in good conscience pay its diocesan assessment.
“It would be a grievous breach of good conscience and Christian faith for the Vestry to ‘support the work of the Diocese and the General Church’ and would offer a sense of complicity or agreement which it cannot do under the present circumstances,” the All Saints vestry said in a resolution on June 14. In that resolution, the vestry asked that the Anglican Communion’s Panel of Reference offer its guidance for resolving the conflict.
Bishop McKelvey has expressed sadness that the vestry appealed to the Panel of Reference without first proceeding through each step of the Episcopal Church’s procedures for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight.
“In addressing the conflict of conscience expressed in our many communications, the canons of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A., of which All Saints Episcopal Church, Rochester has been a part since it was founded in the early 1900s, provide guidance out of the impasse that we have seemed to reach. As a parish of the Episcopal Church, you and your parish are bound, as is the Diocese, to respect and abide by its requirements,” McKelvey wrote to Harnish on July 25.
“This means that we should exhaust the remedies of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. before considering any recourse to authorities outside of the church, like the Panel of Reference.”
If the bishop and congregation are unable to reach a compromise, the bishop may ask the diocesan convention to declare the parish extinct and to reorganize it as a mission.
Harnish said the congregation’s membership has decreased as its members have been distressed by liberal theology within the diocese and by turmoil over his leadership of the parish. All Saints had 310 members on its rolls in 1999.
Harnish said he wants to remain an Episcopal priest, and he wants All Saints to remain within the Episcopal Church. “I believe I was ordained in the Episcopal Church for the true gospel,” he said. “I want to stay within it as long as I’m allowed.”