[Magdalen] Bishop, please resign

[Roger Stokes]

On 29/01/2015 18:36, Sally Davies wrote:
> As to the question of permanence, I sincerely hope it isn't true "once a
> Bishop always a Bishop". To be a priest is perhaps something different but
> a Bishop is a functionary within a structure and if not in that structure,
> cannot have a function. At least I hope not because there have been some
> truly awful Bishops in our part of the world, far worse than Cook - Kunonga
> in Zimbabwe comes to mind!!

Ordination, like baptism, effects an ontological change and cannot be 
undone.  That is why a clergyperson under discipline retains the orders 
and the relevant honorifics that have been bestowed on them. This has to 
be separated from the right to exercise the functions relevant to that 
order, a right which can be revoked by due process.  At the moment 
Heather Cook is still a bishop whose episcopal orders are recognized by 
TEC but she cannot exercise them.

Roger