The Strange Saga of San Joaquin

Your editor has been a bit overwhelmed this weekend with Real Life while life in the blogosphere has continued. I will not attempt here to recap all the news related to the strange situation of former Episcopal bishop Schofield. We posted the inhibition story here. Now it appears that Schofield cannot seem to figure out whether he parks his mitre in California or South America. Rather than trying to recap events, I refer you to these sites and postings that will let you catch up.

Father Jake covered the inhibition here. As he reported, the morning after the inhibition, San Joaquin issued a response, declaring that Schofield is a member of both the Episcopal Church and the Province of the Southern Cone. Shortly thereafter, Presiding Bishop Venables (of the Southern Cone) and Fort Worth bishop Iker responded in a rather contrary way, declaring that TEC has no power over Schofield, since he's no longer a bishop in the Episcopal Church. Soon thereafter, Schofield's canon issued a "correction." Father Jake covers it all, including a detailed fisking of San Joaquin's initial response, along with reports of the San Joaquin "correction" and the observation that all the conservatives deleted their initial postings. Father Jake puts it in context here. Since all the original sources of San Joaquin's initial response have deleted it, Father Jake has posted it here for review.

Thinking Anglicans seems to have been the first to reveal that the initial San Joaquin statement, quickly deleted from conservative blogsites, was written by this public relations firm, which specializes in "crisis management."

As usual, Mark Harris provided a thoughtful analysis of San Joaquin's response.

Also as usual, Episcopal Café does a fine job of coverage. At "Is He or Isn't He," they provide a good summary and ask pointed questions. At the conclusion of that story, they provide a timeline of the permutating responses from San Joaquin.

After the inhibition, EpiScope provided a round-up of news reports, as did Thinking Anglicans provided Thinking Anglicans.