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PHILADELPHIA
The attorney for the Rev Dr David L. Moyer says he is studying carefully a letter from the Church Pension Fund ending Fr Moyer’s pension benefits. John H Lewis, Jr, said he would withhold comment on the matter until he has better determined the pension fund’s grounds for action.
Fr Moyer — who was earlier inhibited by Pennsylvania Bishop Charles E Bennison III as rector of Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont — was told in a letter from the fund that as of March 4 he was "no longer under the ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop of Pennsylvania" and, further, that "Church of the Good Shepherd is no longer part of the Diocese of Pennsylvania".
Removal of pension benefits, under Canon 10 of the Episcopal canons and constitution, normally follows upon a priest’s formal departure from the Episcopal Church. Fr Moyer has declared that he considers himself and the parish still a part of the church despite the inhibition Bennison imposed a month ago.
The parish, which opposes the bishop’s non-orthodox theology, has declined to receive Bennison for a formal episcopal visit, at which he would preach and celebrate the Eucharist.
The pension fund decision, if sustained, would amount to one more salvo in Bennison’s cannonade, aimed at breaking down the parish’s, and Fr Moyer’s, resistance to him as ecclesiastical authority. The parish has repeatedly asked Bennison to approve appointment of an outside episcopal visitor of orthodox theological convictions. Bennison has repeatedly told the parish it must first agree to submit to this authority.
Meanwhile Fr Moyer announced to Good Shepherd’s congregation on Easter Sunday that he is to leave Saturday night for London and two days of meetings with orthodox primates gathering for the following week’s annual primates’ meeting, to be held in Canterbury.
He said he would seek the primates’ counsel as to his own and the parish’s strategy in their struggle with Bennison for theological integrity. Fr Moyer had planned to keep the meetings — which the Rev Bill Atwood of the Ekklesia Society helped to coordinate — secret in advance; however, he decided on Easter to let the congregation know by way of encouragement. Fr Moyer has not functioned liturgically at Good Shepherd since the inhibition order was issued; he regularly addresses the congregation during the annoucements.
"I’m not going [to London} like Nicodemus by night," he told FOUNDATIONS. "I’m going to witness and to seek godly counsel."
Fr Moyer’s meetings will take place next Monday and Tuesday. He returns to Philadelphia on Wednesday.
Return to Moyer/Bennison archive
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