Last month a court of bishops stripped the Right Rev. Charles I. Jones III of his office and gave Jones 30 days to appeal. Jones then asked Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold if he could undergo a process of ``voluntary submission to discipline'' after which he could apply to be reinstated. Griswold refused.
As part of the severance package -- which includes $55,000 to settle the mortgage on his house and 15 months of pay -- Jones has agreed not to sue his former diocese or members associated with it.
Still, the anger surrounding the Jones case is likely to continue among the diocese's 48 parishes. In a blistering pastoral letter to his flock, Jones blamed his ouster in part on ``liberal'' parishes in Helena and Missoula who did not agree with his decision not to ordain open homosexuals or bless same-sex unions.
``Although this does not seem to me to be what God is calling me to do, after nine years, (my wife) Ashby and I cannot emotionally continue to stand against the powerful forces seeking my ouster,'' Jones wrote.
Jones' resignation brings to an end an emotional ride for the Montana church, which had voted in 1994 to keep Jones as bishop. It also brings to an end a series of court trials on whether Jones should face punishment for his affair.
Jones conducted the affair with a female parishioner while he was serving as rector of a Kentucky church in the early 1980s. Jones admitted to the affair a decade later and agreed to undergo voluntary counseling at the advice of then-Presiding Bishop Edmund Browning.
