Archives posted Thursday, February 21, 2008
Our Position on the Canon to the Ordinary
Sep 14 | 2006
The Standing Committee believes that the Canon to the Ordinary should not be funded through the Episcopate Budget at this time in the life of our Diocese. We are deeply concerned about the instability of our Diocesan life especially in the areas of finances and parish viability.
We believe our current situation is due to the following:
1. No Capital Campaign being launched.
2. Spending of endowment funds on the four “C’s” that were to be funded through a Capital Campaign, especially Wapiti.
3. Enlarging the Diocesan staff.
We think it is important to keep the Episcopate Budget as lean as possible so that parishes
will not be overburdened with a high assessment.
Therefore, at our August 29, 2006 meeting, after discussion and prayerful consideration, we decided to remove the line item of Canon to the Ordinary from the proposed Episcopate Budget and recommend it be added to the Program Budget.
By doing this the Diocese, through the Diocesan Convention, can decide if this is a direction in which they wish to go (begin to expand the Church House staff again) and agree to fund this position.
What’s a Canon to the Ordinary?
The word Canon has a Latin root, canonicus, meaning one who lives under a rule of life.
In Anglican usage a Canon is a person who may be lay or ordained and who traditionally
serves on a Bishop’s staff or a cathedral. And Ordinary also comes from Latin,
ordinarius, meaning an overseer who keeps order. So the Ordinary is the diocesan
bishop, and the Canon to the Ordinary is a person whose ministry is directly answerable
to the bishop and who usually functions as a kind of chief of staff.
Source: The Diocese of Easton
