A 90-minute meeting called April 21 by the Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith, Bishop of Connecticut, to discuss the case of the “Connecticut Six” failed to achieve consensus among diocesan clergy. The diocese remains divided over the propriety of threatening to depose six rectors for “abandoning the communion of the church” for refusing to acknowledge the bishop’s authority [TLC, May 8].

Bishop Smith invited Connecticut’s 450 clergy to Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford “to meet collegially to discuss the issues and circumstances before us. I would like to share with you, and to hear from you.” The six rectors were among the 184 clergy who attended the closed-door meeting.

No resolutions or statements arose from the meeting. The fate of the six has yet to be determined and the diocese’s director for communication, Karin Hamilton, told The Living Church Bishop Smith “will not act in haste.”

One of the six, the Rev. Ronald Gauss, rector of Bishop Seabury Church, Groton, told TLC the meeting did not give Bishop Smith a mandate to continue against the six. A diocesan spokesman told TLC, however, Bishop Smith had not sought such a mandate, but had called the meeting to “listen to the views of the clergy.”

In addition to Fr. Gauss, the rectors accused are: the Rev. Allyn B. Benedict, Christ Church, Watertown; the Rev. Mark H. Hansen, St. John’s, Bristol; the Rev. Donald L. Helmandollar, Trinity, Bristol; the Rev. Christopher P. Leighton, St. Paul’s, Darien; and the Rev. Gilbert V. Wilkes, Christ and the Epiphany, East Haven;

The town hall-style meeting opened with Bishop Smith presenting a history of the conflict followed by a series of questions and answers and short statements. While partisan statements critical of the other side’s motives were made, clergy attending the meeting told TLC the great majority of questions and comments were temperate.

“As a rule, the remarks by the clergy gathered expressed a deep desire for both the bishop and the six to try harder to reach some mutual accommodation,” said the Rev. Leander Harding, rector of St John’s, Stamford.

At a press conference following the meeting, the Rt. Rev. James Curry, Bishop Suffragan of Connecticut, said that a resolution could yet be reached as long as the six did not “require the bishop to abdicate any of his duties and responsibilities to the diocese.”

In a statement released by the six priests that same day through the American Anglican Council, Fr. Leighton said, "If we could miraculously turn the clock back, we would need to return to July 2003, before the Episcopal Church abandoned scripture and the faith and order of Anglicanism. Unless [the Episcopal Church] repents and returns to the apostolic faith, we cannot go back."

Fr. Gauss was not optimistic that a ready solution could be found. “We listed what we would like to see happen in relations with a DEPO bishop. It was turned down as demands,” he said. “We started at one end in a dialogue—which never happened—hoping that somewhere we could come to some accommodation, but it is the bishop's way `or the highway’.”