Bishop John-David Schofield of San Joaquin has commended the offer extended by the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in a pastoral letter that he directed to be read in all parishes during a Sunday service prior to a decisive vote by diocesan convention next month.
 
“We welcome the invitation extended by the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone,” Bishop Schofield said in a prepared release accompanying the letter. “This is a sensible way forward and is by no means irrevocable. During the 1860s, the Dioceses of the Southern States left the Episcopal Church and then returned after the Civil War. As the Southern Cone invitation makes clear, the Diocese may return to full communion with the Episcopal Church when circumstances change and the Episcopal Church repents and adheres to the theological, moral and pastoral norms of the Anglican Communion, and when effective and acceptable alternative primatial oversight becomes available.”
 
The Diocese of San Joaquin was founded as a missionary diocese in 1911 and became an autonomous diocese in 1961. It encompasses churches in the counties of San Joaquin, Alpine, Stanislaus, Calaveras, Mono, Merced, Mariposa, Tuolumne, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare, Kern and Inyo. Among the proposed changes to the diocesan constitution is one which would enable it to welcome parishes outside these geographic boundaries that wish to affiliate with it.
 
The Diocese of Pittsburgh approved the first reading of similar changes to its constitution Nov. 2. Fort Worth is scheduled to consider the first reading of similar changes during the business session of its convention Nov. 17. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has written letters to the bishops of Pittsburgh and Fort Worth, warning them that they would likely face disciplinary action if they continued to permit these initiatives to go forward.
 
Bishop Schofield avoided a declaration of having “abandoned the communion of this church” in 2006. Under the procedure for declaring abandonment the Presiding Bishop must obtain the unanimous consent of the three most senior bishops with jurisdiction and it is believed that at least one bishop declined to permit the deposition to go forward at that time.
 
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