News Brief
Episcopal News Service. October 27, 1983 [83196]
(DPS, Oct. 27) -- The Rev. Canon Vincent K. Pettit was elected suffragan bishop of the Diocese of New Jersey at a special convention in Trinity Cathedral here Oct. 14. He will assist the diocesan bishop, the Rt. Rev. G.P. Mellick Belshaw, in overseeing the work of the diocese which encompasses 14 counties in Central and Southern New Jersey. Pettit is the rector of Christ Church, Tom's River, and has been a parish priest for 25 years. A leader for many years in the field of liturgical renewal, he was recently appointed chairman of the Church's Standing Liturgical Commission and was elected to the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church last year. A New Jersey native, Pettit attended Rutgers University and served in the U.S. Army in World War II before attending Philadelphia Divinity School. He was ordained a priest in 1958 and has served churches in Wenonah, Mantua, Pennsville, Keysport, and Cranford before coming to Tom's River. Consecration of the new bishop is expected to take place in January.
(DPS, Oct. 27) -- A lecture on the history of the formation of the first diocese of the Episcopal Church in America was given Oct. 29, in the old Senate Chamber of the State House here by the Rev. Dr. A. Pierce Middleton. Middleton, who holds degrees from Edinburgh and Harvard, traced the development of the church following the American Revolution when the Episcopal Church ceased being the state church of Maryland and struggled to re-form herself as a part of the new nation. The Senate Chamber was chosen as the site of the lecture for it was there that the first convention of the new church was held in 1783. It later was the site of the election of the first Bishop of Maryland, the Rt. Rev. Thomas John Claggett. Dr. Middleton is a well known historian and the author of several books concerning the history of Maryland.
(DPS, Oct. 27) -- The Rt. Rev. James W. Montgomery, ninth Episcopal Bishop of Chicago, issued a call Oct. 21 for the election of a coadjutor bishop. At the same time, in his episcopal charge to the Diocese of Chicago, he announced that Suffragan Bishop Quintin E. Primo, Jr. would retire at the end of 1984. Although Montgomery has not announced a date for his own retirement, he noted in his charge to the Convention that he was "anxious to provide for an orderly transition in the leadership of the diocese." He also pointed out that the Search and Nominating Committee was "responsible for helping us to find out who we as a diocese are, where we want to go in the next two decades, and what kind of leadership best suits the answers to these questions." The Committee will screen those whose names are submitted to provide this leadership and will submit to the electing Convention at least four names as its recommended nominees.
(DPS, Oct. 27) -- The University of the South awarded honorary degrees to an Episcopal bishop and a lawyer during Founders' Day services October 10. Speaker for the convocation was the Rt. Rev. Furman C. Stough, chancellor of the university and bishop of Alabama. Malcolm Fooshee, retired lawyer from New York City, received a Doctor of Civil Law degree and the Rt. Rev. Cavin O. Schofield, bishop of the Diocese of Southeast Florida, received a Doctor of Divinity degree. Fooshee, a 1918 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the university, received his law degree from Harvard, was a Rhodes scholar and received a B.C.L. from Christ Church College, Oxford University, England. A member of the prestigious law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton and Irvine, he was a member of the American Judicature Society and a barrister and member of the Inner Temple in London. At the University of the South, which he served as trustee, he established the Fooshee Memorial Reading Room and Collection in duPont Library and Fooshee Scholarship. Schofield is a graduate of Hobart College and received his Master of Divinity from Berkeley Divinity School. He holds honorary degrees from both these schools. He was curate at St. Peter's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Fla., and chaplain of Florida Presbyterian College and St. Petersburg Junior College. He served St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Miami for fifteen years before being named bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of Southeast Florida in 1979.
(DPS, Oct. 27) -- The Rt. Rev. Charles Ellsworth Bennison, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan, has announced that he will be retiring at the end of 1984. The announcement was made during his address to the 250 clergy and lay delegates assembled from the 60 congregations in western Michigan for the 109th Annual Convention of the diocese. "Since I became your bishop nearly twenty-four years ago," Bennison noted," many changes have taken place in the world and thus in our lives. But because we are disciples of the ever-living Christ, we have as the Church contemporized our presentation of the Gospel while at the same time been faithful to the tradition we have inherited." The building of the modern Cathedral of Christ the King in Kalamazoo is one of the many achievements of Bennison's episcopate and an example of this blend of the contemporary and the traditional. Instead of adjourning the convention as is usually done, Bennison called for the clergy and lay delegates to re-assemble next June to elect a bishop coadjutor who will succeed Bennison as the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese at the end of 1984.