Dear Bishop Bennison,

It is with great sorrow that we learn, at the beginning of this Holy Week, in which Our Lord and Saviour waged reconciliation by the saving power of his cross, that you have found yourself unable to affirm the faith of your baptism, confirmation, ordination and consecration, and so be reconciled with the parish priest and people of the parish of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont.

It is, for the whole Church, a cause of shame that you have not found it in your heart, as their pastor, even to respond to them.

No one can doubt, most especially at this season, that for Christian people it is life and health to affirm that Our Lord and Saviour is the one and only Lord of all things created, that he affirmed and asserted that Lordship by his Resurrection from the tomb, and that he took with him the wounds of his earthly passion into the glory of that same Resurrection to which he welcomes those who trust in him.

Out of love for the eternal bridegroom (who, wedded indissolubly to his Church, bestows upon it in mercy and love the gift of eternal life) it is the privilege and joy of Christian people to image that wedding of heaven and earth in lives of married continence and fidelity. In this, as in all things, they delight to do the will of the Word of God as they find it in his Word written.

It is a cause of penitence and shame to the whole community of which he is a part, if a bishop of Christ's Church, one and universal, cannot in plain words affirm these truths. It is a schismatic act if, unable himself to proclaim the faith of the Church throughout the ages, he persecutes those who do teach and affirm it.

May the Lord who turns the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just fill you with his Holy Spirit in this season of his humiliation and his glory.

For and on behalf of the Council of Forward in Faith UK.

Geoffrey Kirk
National Secretary.

CC. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church
The Archbishop of Canterbury
The Vestry of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont