{"id":13966,"date":"2018-07-16T06:04:03","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T11:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/?p=13966"},"modified":"2018-07-23T06:08:55","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T11:08:55","slug":"diocese-of-cuba-to-rejoin-the-us-based-episcopal-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/diocese-of-cuba-to-rejoin-the-us-based-episcopal-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Diocese of Cuba to rejoin the US-based Episcopal Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

…after historic votes<\/h1>\n
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The Bishop of Western North Carolina, Jos\u00e9 McLoughlin, escorts Bishop Griselda Delgado del Carpio of the Diocese of Cuba to the front of the House of Bishops after the vote to readmit the Diocese of Cuba to the US-based Episcopal Church.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
Photo Credit: David Paulsen \/ Episcopal News Service<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Diocese of Cuba, which has been an independent diocese in full membership of the Anglican Communion since 1966, is to rejoin the US-based Episcopal Church (TEC). The decision was taken in two separate votes this week at TEC\u2019s bicameral General Convention. The first vote was taken by the House of Bishops, which voted unanimously on Tuesday (10 July) to re-admit Cuba. The \u201cdebate\u201d then moved to the House of Deputies \u2013 clergy and lay members representing the dioceses. Nobody had registered to speak against the proposal and, following a period of silence, the deputies voted unanimously to re-admit the diocese yesterday (Wednesday).<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now I feel that the Holy Spirit is blowing on this entire convention and that it is moving: It\u2019s moving here for all of us to really work with it in this very difficult world to make sure that we fulfill the needs of this world,\u201d the Bishop of Cuba, Griselda Delgado del Carpio, told the Deputies after the vote. \u201cWe meet like this in convention to put the family in order; that\u2019s what\u2019s behind it. And this is done so that we can welcome everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Diocese of Cuba will join TEC\u2019s Province II, which includes New York, New Jersey, Haiti and the Virgin Islands, once the agreed administrative and canonical requirements have been met.<\/p>\n

The Episcopal Church of Cuba traces its origins back to an Anglican presence beginning in 1901. Today, there are some 46 congregations and missions serving 10,000 members and the wider communities. During the 1960s, Castro\u2019s government began cracking down on religion, jailing religious leaders and believers, and it wasn\u2019t until Pope John Paul II\u2019s 1998 visit to Cuba, the first ever visit by a Roman Catholic pope to the island, that the government began a move back toward tolerance of religion.<\/p>\n

TEC\u2019s House of Bishops removed Cuba from membership in 1966 in response to the effects of the Cuban Revolution and the United States\u2019 response. It was a moved that caused considerable pain that is still felt today.<\/p>\n

The Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, began in 1953 and lasted until President Fulgencio Batista was forced from power in 1959. Batista\u2019s anti-communist, authoritarian government was replaced with a socialist state, which in 1965 aligned itself with the communist party.<\/p>\n

In 1961, Episcopal schools in Cuba had been closed and appropriated, and many clergy and their families were displaced. Some remained in Cuba; some either returned or immigrated to the US. Some clergy who remained in Cuba were imprisoned, executed or disappeared.<\/p>\n

Church buildings were closed and left to deteriorate. The church was polarised politically, and its clergy and lay leaders suffered. But the church continued in the living rooms of the grandmothers, who held prayer services and Bible studies in their homes. Through them is transmitted a story of pain, and of faith.<\/p>\n

Throughout this, the diocese continued its ministry as an independent diocese of the Anglican Communion. Metropolitical authority was exercised by a three-person Metropolitan Council comprised of the Primates of the US-based Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Church in the Province of the West Indies.<\/p>\n

It will formally re-join TEC on a date decided by the Church\u2019s Executive Council on receipt of a number of documents, including a revised constitution and a certified copy of \u201cthe Canons of the Diocese that conform in essential part to the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church\u201d. But in the transition period, the resolution passed by the General Convention<\/a> admits the Bishop of Cuba to its House of Bishops with immediate effect and includes the dioceses clergy in TEC\u2019s pension provision.<\/p>\n

Most Anglican dioceses are part of 39 fully autonomous interdependent Churches, or Provinces. A small number are in extra-provincial churches: the Church of Ceylon, Bermuda, the Lusitanian Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church of Spain, and the Falkland Islands are extra-provincial under the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.<\/p>\n

First Published on ACNS<\/em>
\nJuly 12, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…after historic votes   The Bishop of Western North Carolina, Jos\u00e9 McLoughlin, escorts Bishop Griselda Delgado del Carpio of the Diocese of Cuba to the front of the House of Bishops after the vote to readmit the Diocese of Cuba to the US-based Episcopal Church. Photo Credit: David Paulsen \/ Episcopal News Service The Diocese…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":13967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","ctfw-has-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13968,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13966\/revisions\/13968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}