Episcopalian Split Comes Down To Locked Groton Church

By ELIZABETH HAMILTON

Hartford Courant

May 03, 2008

When the Rev. David Cannon, the priest-in-charge of Bishop Seabury Church in Groton, showed up to start his job two weeks ago, he walked around the outside of the building, trying every door. All locked.

He could hear people moving around inside, so he knocked. No answer.

Eventually, Cannon found his way to the office building, adjacent to the church, where he called out for the Rev. Ronald Gauss, who still heads the parish in defiance of Episcopal officials. The two men have known each other for many years - were on friendly terms, even - and Gauss knew why Cannon was there, but that didn't make this any easier.

Cannon was there to take over Gauss' church - and Gauss was having none of it.

'I wanted access to the church. I wanted the books, the keys, the right to celebrate communion there,' Cannon said. 'I asked not once, not twice, but three times. I was refused all three times.'

Not that Cannon was surprised. Gauss and the 780 members of Bishop Seabury have made it perfectly clear that they feel little allegiance to the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, which appointed Cannon as priest-in-charge on Feb. 29.

The struggle over the Groton church is rooted in a profound theological dispute over the ordination of women and homosexuals that threatens to dissolve a centuries-old relationship between the 2.2 million-member Episcopal Church in the United States and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Bishop Seabury is one of six Connecticut churches with either severed or strained ties to the diocese - a deterioration sparked by Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith's support of the 2003 election of Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire.

Since that time, Bishop Seabury has drawn further and further from the Episcopal Church, voting last January to leave the diocese and join the Convocation of Anglican Churches in North America (CANA), a self-described missionary effort in the U.S. sponsored by the Church of Nigeria.

But they're not ready to give up the keys to the building - putting the congregation on a collision course with Episcopalian authority in Connecticut.

Gauss disagrees with some aspects of Cannon's description of his recent visit to the church - he said the priest never asked for the keys, for example - but both men acknowledge that what started as a disagreement about the interpretation of Scripture has escalated - or sunk - into a battle over property rights.

'The issue is, who owns the building? That's not going to be settled by Ron Gauss or David Cannon,' Gauss said. 'That's going to be settled in a court of law.'

Cannon's appointment - and his presence at Bishop Seabury that April morning - made it clear that Bishop Smith believes the property belongs to the diocese. In January, Smith ordered the congregation to vacate the property by Jan. 20 and dismissed its church leaders.

The congregation responded on Jan. 20 by defying that order, refusing to leave and re-electing the leaders.

In an annual meeting that afternoon, members of the orthodox, evangelical congregation laid hands on Gauss and their re-elected leaders and prayed, affirming their commitment to the path they had chosen.

'It's not scary at all,' said the newly elected junior warden, Stan Price. 'I really believe this was supposed to happen. It's time to either put up or shut up.'

By joining CANA, and re-hiring Gauss after his official retirement on Dec. 1 from the Episcopal Diocese, Bishop Seabury Church sought to do just that.

But the church must also reckon with the actions of the diocese, which is likely to attempt to claim the property in court and has begun the process to remove Gauss from the priesthood.

A diocesan committee recently found that Gauss has 'abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church,'

a finding that could lead to his 'inhibition'

- a term used by the denomination to describe the suspension of a priest while a bishop decides whether to defrock him.

Gauss requested last week that his canonical residence - meaning the authority to which he reports - be transferred from Connecticut to the bishop of Nigeria.

Bishop Suffragan James Curry, who is filling in for Smith while he is on sabbatical, declined to comment on Gauss' request, saying only that he has not responded to it yet. Curry also said that he is still in the process of deciding whether to suspend Gauss from ministry.

This is not the first time the Connecticut diocese has employed such tough tactics against one of its priests. In 2006, Smith defrocked Mark Hansen, the former pastor of St. John's in Bristol, over similar issues.

In fact, there is precedence for much of what is happening at Bishop Seabury these days.

Trinity Episcopal Church in Bristol - one of the 'Connecticut Six' parishes that have been at odds with Smith since his support for Robinson - has also joined CANA and is locked in a court battle with the diocese over the question of who owns the church.

The other four churches

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