By Matthew Townsend
La Iglesia Episcopal de Cuba will soon be a diocese of the Episcopal Church. The House of Deputies of General Convention has unanimously passed Resolution A238, which calls for the diocese to be admitted to the church as soon as Executive Council acknowledges receipt of routine paperwork by the secretary of General Convention.
The House of Bishops having unanimously approved the resolution the night before, Cuba’s reentry into the church is now a foregone conclusion — so much so that official Cuban visitors were seated and offered voice in the House of Deputies, with a Cuba placard prepared for their table.
It is also safe to assume that the Cuban church’s paperwork is in the mail, as it were.
The path to admission was far more winding than initially thought. Concerns about canon law — or the lack thereof — threw the Episcopal Church in Cuba committee into days of extra work. Because there was no canonical mechanism to readmit an extra-provincial diocese into the Episcopal Church, the committee considered waiting for canonical changes to be completed before proposing reintegration. That would have meant a three-year wait.
However, after lengthy testimony from Cuban visitors, moving comments from committee members that they could not in conscience making Cuba wait, and reassurances from member Canon Paul Ambos that a course could be charted, the committee proceeded with A238.
After the vote, Bishop Griselda Delgado del Carpio was invited to address the House of Deputies.
“Right now, I know that the Holy Spirit is blowing upon this entire Convention and that it is moving here for all of us to work with it in this very difficult world,” Delgado said through a translator. “We meet like this, at convention, to put the family in order.
“I know that we have experienced many things outside of the houses. And the Spirit is moving everywhere, in the testimony and the plans you’ve all been expressing about the future. Right now, it’s so exciting not just for me but for my whole diocese. I want to thank the Lord and the Trinity for this prophetic moment that we’re experiencing. I want to express my love and my gratitude to each one of you, because you have opened the doors.”
Delgado said two churches were becoming one.
Three deputies spoke in favor of the resolution, with none opposing. “This is a mission issue, a moral issue,” said Benjamin Hill of Florida. “Let’s do what our heart is calling us to do and welcome the prodigal child back into the family; not a child that left, however, one that was cast from our family five decades ago. … For years they’ve asked to come home, out of isolation.”
“The Jesus Movement is based on respect, diversity, solidarity, inclusivity, and love,” Pragedes Coromoto Jimenez de Salazar of Venezuela said through a translator. “Most of all, we must put into practice what Matthew 22:36-40 states: to love God with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and love each other like we love ourselves.”
Dianne Audrick Smith also spoke in favor of the resolution. “We do well to follow [the House of Bishops’] example of doing the just and right thing of being inclusive of our brothers and sisters in Cuba, of recognizing that the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement is inclusive, just, and gracious,” she said.
Deputies voted in Spanish — shouting “¡Sí!” — and broke into spontaneous chanting of “¡Cuba Sí!” after Delgado and those from the Cuban church were invited onto the floor.
Matthew Townsend is the former news editor of The Living Church and former editor of the Anglican Journal. He lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
