Episcopal bishop converts to Catholicism
Posted March 30, 2007
Retired Albany bishop joins Roman Catholic Church
Herzog to be removed from Episcopal ministry
By Mary Frances Schjonberg, March 29, 2007
[Episcopal News Service] Daniel W. Herzog, the retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, New York, and his wife, Carol, have become Roman Catholics.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told Herzog in a March 28 letter (full text below) that she knows the couple’s decision was "made after careful prayer and consideration and so I wish you and Carol well as you enter another room in Christ's church."
"You were certainly a dynamic member of the House of Bishops and one who had a forceful and strong ministry," she wrote. "Your commitment to evangelism was notable. You will be missed."
"I know that prayers of many go with you and Carol as you journey on toward the final kingdom," the letter concluded.
Jefferts Schori said in a March 29 letter (full text below) to the House of Bishops that she received a letter from Herzog upon her return from the recent House of Bishops meeting telling her of the decision. She wrote that Herzog asked in his letter to be removed from the ordained ministry of the Episcopal Church.
"He has resigned his membership in the House of Bishops or any committees of which he was a member," she told the bishops. "I will now undertake the canonical procedures to remove him from the ordained ministry of this church."
Herzog, 65, became Albany's bishop in June 1998. He was ordained a priest in 1971 after graduating from Nashotah House seminary. He could not be reached for further comment.
Herzog had expressed disagreement with some decisions of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, including its 2003 affirmation of an opening gay bishop elected in the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Herzog also joined a group of Episcopal bishops who met in November in Virginia with members of Global South Steering Committee to discuss the issue of alternative primatial oversight. Albany, however, is not among the seven of the Episcopal Church's 111 dioceses that asked for a such a relationship with a Primate other than the church’s current Presiding Bishop.
Herzog is apparently the third bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church to become a Roman Catholic. Levi S. Ives, bishop of North Carolina, left the denomination in 1853 after spending a number of years as both diocesan bishop and a monastic. Delaware Bishop Frederick Kinsman became a Roman Catholic in 1919. Meanwhile, after his retirement as bishop of Fort Worth at the end of 1994, Clarence C. Pope Jr. and his wife, Martha, attended Roman Catholic services but, after a short time, returned to the Episcopal Church.
Comments
Dear Deacon John,
We also howl at midnight during the full moon--I've got to say that your hyperbole is a little much here ;)
May God bless and guide each of us as we find our way where we need to be from a faith perspective, retired bishop or person in the pew.
Actually, James, I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the so-called Christians I know who endorse partial-birth abortion and Gay "marriage" howling at a full moon at midnight. One reason for the descent into decadence of our country is the false ecumenism that keeps orthodox Christians from honestly saying how evil and destructive (immediately or ultimately) are many of the practices that some who claim to be Christian endorse and even want to make into sacraments or their equivalent.
Such arrogant language - "remove him from ministry" - it means nothing to remove from ministry a man who has renounced his orders. It's like saying, "you can't quit, you're fired!"
Denominations will do you no harm provided you don't inhale. Churchianity and Christianity have become very different realities. God will continue to break through denominational smog to show us the living light, countenance and power of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
As a Catholic I rejoice that Bishop Herzog has "swum the Tiber." Hopefully, he will enrich the Church as did the Anglican priest-later Cardinal-John Newman. The only catch with so many Episcopalians fleeing to Rome, Constantinople (Eastern Orthodoxy) and Evangelical Christianity is that it leaves the American Episcopal Church more in the clutches of those who spurn the Biblical and Christian moral Tradition and promote such abominations as the crushing of newlyborn's heads in partial-birth abortion and Gay "marriage".