Episcopal Press and News

Board of Inquiry to Investigate Charges

Diocesan Press Service. October 9, 1974 [74273]

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- The appointment of a Board of Inquiry to investigate charges against four bishops of the Episcopal Church has been announced by the Rt. Rev. Christoph Keller, Jr., Bishop of Arkansas.

A committee, chaired by Bishop Keller, was appointed by the Rt. Rev. John M. Allin, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, to select such a board unless the committee found that "the charges, if proved, would constitute no canonical offense."

Other members of the committee were suffragan bishops Hal R. Gross of Oregon and John T. Walker of Washington.

Filing the charges were Bishops Stanley Atkins of Eau Claire, William H. Brady of Fond du Lac, Charles T. Gaskell of Milwaukee, and Albert W. Hillestad of Springfield.

The charges were filed against four bishops who participated in a service in which eleven women deacons were intended to be ordained to the priesthood in Philadelphia on July 29.

The House of Bishops, meeting in Chicago in a special session August 14-15, declared "that the necessary conditions for valid ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church were not fulfilled " at the Philadelphia service.

The charges were filed against Bishop Daniel Corrigan, retired former Suffragan Bishop of Colorado; Bishop Robert L. DeWitt, resigned Bishop of Pennsylvania; Bishop Edward R. Welles II, retired Bishop of West Missouri; and Bishop Jose Antonio Ramos, current Bishop of Costa Rica.

The responsibility of the board, which is similar to a Grand Jury, is to investigate the charges and to determine if "there is sufficient ground to put the accused" bishops on trial.

The members of the Board of Inquiry and their dioceses are: The Rev. Charles Newberry, convener, Long Island; the Very Rev. W. Roland Foster, New York; the Rev. Edwin A. Norris, Jr., Chicago; the Rev. Edward W. Rodman, Massachusetts; the Very Rev. John D. Spear, San Joaquin; Mrs. John S. Jackson, Jr., Oregon; Mr. Clifford Morehouse, Southwest Florida; Mrs. Theodore Wedel, Virginia; Mrs. J. Wilmette Wilson, Georgia; and the Hon. Sherwood W. Wise, Mississippi.