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| Bishop Bennison |
PHILADELPHIA, PA: Bishop Charles Bennison Announces Retirement. Was he forced out?
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
October 10, 2012
The disgraced Bishop of Pennsylvania Charles E. Bennison told the diocese this week that he would retire from office at the end of the year. Bennison, 68, could have continued to serve until November 2015, when he turns 72, the church's mandatory retirement age for all clergy.
However, Bennison said in a letter to the diocese that the Rev. Ledlie I. Laughlin, president of the diocesan Standing Committee, told him that the committee wanted to elect a provisional bishop rather than either have Bennison call for the election of a coadjutor or have the diocese elect a diocesan who would be consecrated on the day of his retirement.
Church officials remain tightlipped, but sources have told VOL that he was told to resign or face disciplinary charges, a trial, and then be tossed out, based on a new canon passed at the church's recent General Convention. The 77th General Convention of The Episcopal Church passed an historic resolution in Indianapolis, B021, recognizing that when the relationship between bishops and dioceses is severely strained, sometimes to the breaking point, there is a way out that includes getting rid of the diocesan bishop. Behind the scenes public pressure was put on him to make a public statement.
The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Pennsylvania apparently used the new canon to finally get rid of Bennison without using any of the Title IV disciplinary canons.
"I believe that the interests of the diocese are best served if the process envisioned by the Standing Committee begins sooner rather than later and therefore I have informed the committee that I will retire on December 31, 2012." The Pennsylvania Standing Committee has been at odds with Bennison since the mid-2000s over concerns about how he has managed the diocese's assets and other issues.
Laughlin, who is the rector at St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia, wrote in a second letter to the diocese that the Standing Committee had decided in consultation with Bishop Clayton Matthews, head of the Episcopal Church's Office of Pastoral Development, that "the best interests of our diocese will be served by the prompt election of a provisional bishop." A provisional bishop exercises the full authority of a diocesan bishop, but is elected to serve for a set period of time, generally as an interim between bishops, Laughlin explained in his letter." Laughlin predicts that a special electing convention would be held in early 2013.
Bennison will go down as possibly the worst bishop since Arius. He once said that Jesus was a sinner who forgave himself. He was found guilty of covering up his brother's (a priest) abuse of a minor, but got off on a statute of limitations. He lied and deceived a small group of Anglo-Catholic priests over a flying bishop arrangement they had with a previous Episcopal bishop. He made life miserable for Evangelical priests in the diocese and got embroiled in multiple lawsuits with David Moyer, former priest at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, PA. He managed to retain properties in disputes with those who chose to leave over the Episcopal Church's acceptance of pansexuality, but then admitted it cost $55,000 a year to maintain empty buildings - a cost of nearly half a million dollars a year to the diocese.
He upset the former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold over l'affair Moyer who told Bennison to resolve the issues between them and asked him to meet him on a plain beyond good and evil, citing Rumi the Sufi.
Bennison spent millions on a cathedral that draws less than 30 aging Episcopalians weekly. A building development project may keep the cathedral from closing down. He also spent thousands on a book he hoped would vindicate his time in office.
During Bennison's tenure, the Standing Committee called for his resignation more than once, including on the day he returned to work in August 2010 after the church's Court of Review for the Trial of a Bishop overturned a lower church court's finding that he should be removed from ordained ministry because he had engaged in conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy. The review court agreed with one of the lower court's two findings of misconduct, but it said that Bennison could not be deposed because the charge was barred by the church's statute of limitations.
The review court said that Bennison failed to respond properly in the mid-1970s when he was rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Upland, California, and learned that his brother, John, who worked initially as a lay youth minister in the parish, had been having a sexual relationship with a member of the youth group that began when she was 14. John Bennison later was ordained a priest but deposed in 1977 for an unrelated offense. He was restored to the priesthood in 1980, but he was forced to renounce his orders again in 2006 when accusations of his abuse became public.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori inhibited Charles Bennison in October 2007 from exercising his ordained ministry when the church's Title IV Review Committee formally accused him of the inaction. The inhibition expired with the review court's decision.
In September 2010, the diocesan Standing Committee asked the House of Bishops for its "support and assistance" in securing Bennison's retirement or resignation. The bishops later that month called for Bennison's "immediate and unconditional resignation." The next day, Bennison refused to resign and has remained the diocesan bishop. At one point, the Bishop of Bethlehem Paul Marshall urged Bennison to step down. He refused.
The Pennsylvania diocese will meet on Nov. 10 for its 229th annual convention. Laughlin said in his letter that the standing committee was making plans to honor Bennison's tenure at the convention.
Question: what is there to honor?
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