From here:

Like many other Dioceses across the Episcopal Church, we will soon consider the election of Canon Mary Glasspool as Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles. We pledge to do so prayerfully, recognizing, as the Archbishop of Canterbury stated, that our decision “will have very important implications” for the future of the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion.

We regret the recent statement by the Bishop of Los Angeles, The Rt. Rev. John Bruno, that withholding consent because of Canon Glasspool’s sexuality “would be a violation of the canons of this church.” The theme of the most recent General Convention, hosted by the Diocese of Los Angeles, was “Ubuntu.” At that convention the Presiding Bishop invited the Church “into a larger and more expansive way of understanding identity in community.” We thus find the threat of canonical discipline, however veiled or unintended, sadly ironic to the call of living in community despite our differences, even differences on the subject of human sexuality.

For our part, we pledge to respectfully and prayerfully consider Canon Glasspool’s election, not only in light of her qualifications, but also in light of our valued place in the Anglican Communion and the call of the proposed Covenant to act in continuity and consonance with Scripture and the catholic and apostolic faith, order, and tradition, as received by the Churches of the Anglican Communion. We encourage other Standing Committees in the Episcopal Church do the same, pledging our prayers for Canon Glasspool, Bishop Bruno, The Diocese of Los Angeles, and the Episcopal Church.

I am afraid it’s a “no go”, Bishop Bruno. We have exhausted the provisions of the Canons to which you could have been referring. Those diocesan bishops and standing committees who choose to withhold their consent to the election of the Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool cannot be charged with violating any of the Church’s Canons.

And one more thing, while I am at it: each of the passages quoted above forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation, not on sexual practice. I am not aware of any single bishop or standing committee who has declared their opposition to the ordination to the ministry of a gay or lesbian person who was celibate. The Rev. Canon Glasspool, however, does not fall into that category. So not only do you read into the Canons prohibitions which are not there, but you cannot even interpret the language that is there.

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The Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald has questioned Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s assertion that he must renounce his orders as a bishop of the Episcopal Church because of his ministry in Canada.

The former Bishop of Alaska and Assistant Bishop of Navajoland now serves as the Anglican Church of Canada’s National Indigenous Bishop.

Bishop MacDonald told The Living Church he was “shocked and surprised” by the Presiding Bishop’s remarks on his ministry, adding that he has “written to her asking for clarification.”

“I am on loan to the Anglican Church of Canada under the PB’s supervision. I have an unofficial position, with no set authority or jurisdiction,” he said.

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What [Bonnie] Anderson has achieved in this formal letter to South Carolina is a demonstration of what happens when General Convention undertakes to permit actions without bothering formally to amend the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church. A similar demonstration is being made in the Presiding Bishop’s recourse to a Canon involving renunciation of orders so as to deal with a problem it was never designed to address. The consequence of such action is the creation of a view of Holy Orders and a ”˜denominational regularization’ of them without any counterpart elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. The point is this. To use ”˜abandonment of communion of this church’ to refer univocally to TEC makes TEC into its own, private communion. If this be the case, TEC is defining itself and its orders in a way different from that of the Anglican Communion as a whole. For Anglicans, communion is not defined within the circumference of a single province and orders are not conferred within a single province alone.

By arrogating to herself the role of commentary, evaluation, and exhortation, the President of the House of Deputies adopts an authority vis-à-vis the Diocese of SC nowhere granted to her by the Constitution and Canons she claims to be defending. Was the President of the House of Deputies elected with a clear remit to function in this way vis-à-vis the Dioceses of The Episcopal Church? Naturally, the President of the House of Deputies might wish to write a letter to the Diocese of South Carolina and encourage attendance at General Convention. But here the intention is to speak on behalf of the Constitution and Canons as well as on matters of doctrine, church history and theology. Where do the Constitution and Canons grant her authority to address the Dioceses in this way, and is election to this presidential office intended to grant her authority as here presumed?

The questions are serious ones because it appears that the elected leadership of The Episcopal Church is now seeking a clear authority and hierarchy above the Bishops of the Church and also above the Constitution and Canons, without at the same time following the legal procedures necessary for adopting and exercising such hierarchy, constitutionally. If there are those within TEC who desire constitutional reform of TEC polity along the lines of a corporate model or the hierarchical structures of churches such as the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Churches, there are constitutional procedures to follow.

So to receive a notice from an elected official which purports to interpret doctrine, discipline and worship in this church, and to defend the Constitution and Canons, without an obvious warrant for doing so from the same Constitution risks exposing the very problem South Carolina and other dioceses have identified as needing address.

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Bishop Ackerman said he has heard from the Diocese of Bolivia regarding the Presiding Bishop’s actions. “Having heard from the Diocese of Bolivia, I understand that I’m a priest in good standing in that diocese,” he said.

Bishop Ackerman said he is troubled by the Episcopal Church’s apparent inability to transfer bishops peaceably to other provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

“It must see itself as highly independent,” he said. “If orders are not universal in the Anglican Communion, they cease to be catholic in the full sense of the word. ”¦ The Episcopal Church does not own the ministry of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”

Neva Rae Fox, the Episcopal Church’s program officer for public affairs, said the Presiding Bishop was unlikely to respond to Bishop Ackerman’s remarks.

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Turning to the TEC constitution, we find that it has no supremacy clause giving General Convention priority over diocesan conventions. There is no language of supremacy or any of its synonyms, such as “highest” or “hierarchical.” The closest the TEC constitution comes to this concept is in the provision making the Bishop and standing committee “the Ecclesiastical Authority” in the diocese. If the bishop is “the” ecclesiastical authority in the diocese, the Presiding Bishop, the General Convention and the Executive Council are not.

So in TEC we have concurrent jurisdiction without supremacy among the General Convention and the various diocesan conventions, and each can theoretically undo what the other has done. But since the diocesan conventions meet three times for every one time the General Convention meets, this gives a distinct legal advantage to the diocese, and as a practical matter, the diocese gets the last word.

Now: what does this mean for the Anglican covenant? I will conclude with three observations.

First, given this concurrent jurisdiction and lack of a supremacy clause, dioceses have the inherent authority to commit themselves to the covenant as soon as it is available. Moreover, given the principles just discussed, if General Convention were someday to adopt the covenant, dioceses that do not want to assume the obligations of mutual responsibility and interdependence entailed by the covenant””and we know there are many such dioceses in TEC””those dioceses would be able to nullify that adoption and those commitments for their dioceses. So TEC’s polity makes it inevitable that dioceses will have to consider the covenant, and they will be able to do so at any time after it is finalized and sent to the member churches of the Anglican Communion early next year.

Second, what does the Anglican covenant, or the Anglican Communion more broadly, have to say about TEC polity? The short and clear answer to this question is: “Absolutely nothing.” The covenant is explicit in saying that nothing in it alters any provision of the constitution or canons of any church. And that has always been understood as a hallmark of the Anglican Communion. Member churches are autonomous. The covenant and the Communion have no say in how we do what we do””unless, I suppose, we abolished bishops altogether. So the frequent complaint directed by some in the House of Deputies to the wider Communion, “you don’t understand our polity,” is irrelevant. The Communion does not need, or perhaps even care, to understand our polity. They have no interest or say in how we do what we do.

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I know from speaking with Bishop Ackerman that he sent the Presiding Bishop a handwritten letter merely asking to have his credentials transferred to the Diocese of Bolivia. He said that he had no intention of renouncing his orders and that, while he intends to assist Bishop Lyons in work in Bolivia, he also wished to remain available to assist bishops in the United States, as requested.

The Presiding Bishop says that “…there is no provision for transferring a bishop to another province.” But that is not true.

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Q: You (and others) have said that the national church is walking apart, that it’s abandoned in part or whole its doctrines, canons and traditional practices and therefore has relinquished its authority over the Diocese of South Carolina, which remains true to the original canons. And you have said you are ready to re-engage with the national church if it repudiates its recent actions and returns to the Anglican fold. Do you think there is any chance the national church will do so? If yes, why have you called for a withdrawal from it?

A: Actually, the term “walking apart” was used by the Archbishop of Canterbury and many others around the world. What I have said is the authority of national entities in The Episcopal Church has a limited and defined role within a diocese. But ”¦ relinquished its authority? No, I never said that. What I have said is that the Constitution and Canons are what gives the General Convention its authority. When it passes resolutions contrary to those canons or without changing them, it has entered into a theatre of the absurd. Into an irrational way of legislating — that is what General Convention did when it gave bishops permission to allow same-sex marriages without changing the canons that define marriage as between a man and a woman. Along with being unscriptural and confusing to the laity, it is a dysfunctional way to run a church.

Whether The Episcopal Church will repudiate its recent actions is doubtful at best — but this is not about reading tea leaves. God has called me as a bishop of the church to proclaim the gospel in season and out of season, regardless of what others will or will not do. This includes protecting the faithful from false teachings.

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The letter refers to Canon III.9.8 but does not cite it by title: “Renunciation of the Ordained Ministry.” That language has proven a stumbling point, in recent years, as other priests have received occasional offers for release without deposition.

The canon applies to any priest who wants to resign from the Episcopal Church’s holy orders, “acting voluntarily and for causes, assigned or known, which do not affect the priest’s moral character.” The canon’s wording sometimes has left priests uncertain of whether they are being asked to renounce only their ministry within the Episcopal Church or their future ministry as priests.

Read it all. While I appreciate that the desire to be generous is motivating those taking this decision, the problem is the canon which is being used. This is not what the canon is for. The more time I have had to ponder this, the more troubled I have become. There were other ways to undertake this which do not involve misuse of the canons–KSH.

The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh will not take action against the clergy who left the Episcopal Church.

This is the diocese that remained in the Episcopal Church after the 2008 diocesan convention voted to secede from the denomination with Archbishop Robert Duncan.

The decision was announced today, a day after the one-year anniversary of the split. Instead of removing their clergy credentials, the Episcopal diocese will “release” them to become licensed in any church they choose.

Both bodies still call themselves the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. The diocese that remained in the Episcopal Church has 28 parishes, while the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) has 57 parishes and is affiliated with both the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in South America and the new Anglican Church in North America.

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From here:

ACI believes that, on the basis of the Constitution and Canons of TEC and their historical substance and meaning, dioceses have the power to withdraw from General Convention. We do not deny that there are probably legal complications involved in exercising that power, most of which are untested. But granting this””and defending the constitutional structure that might permit a San Joaquin or Pittsburgh or Fort Worth to withdraw as well as opposing as uncanonical the means by which bishops of these dioceses were disciplined””is not the same thing as approving of specific decisions here and there.

And there is a fundamental difference between what is at stake in CP dioceses adopting the Covenant and the actions of the dioceses mentioned above: in the former case, the dioceses in question would (and should) adopt the Covenant on the basis of their powers as laid out by the Constitution and Canons of TEC itself for its own dioceses. There is no question here of “leaving” TEC, but of TEC dioceses doing what they are meant to do.
Brian seems to think that doing this would cause a free-for-all among anglican churches in the world. But what is at issue is precisely that TEC’s polity is DIFFERENT from the polity of most other anglican churches. And its “provincial” personality exists only according to this unusual, even unique, polity. That personality operates according to individual diocesan decision-making, which either coheres or does not with the collective that is designated by the General Convention. The former shapes the latter, not the the other way around in terms of “hierarchical” powers.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this interpretation of our Constitution. But our argument is that is it not up to the Instruments of Unity to interpret our Constitution and Canons on behalf of American dioceses. Over and over, the Instruments have prescinded from such a task, and on principle. Unless the constituional question is resolved amongst the members of TEC themselves, it will finally be resolved in the civil courts of the United States. That, in fact, seems to be path now being taken.

Until such time, we have two vying interpretation as to who has the “authority” to adopt the Covenant within TEC: we argue that only dioceses can do this, in any final way; others have argued that only the General Convention can do this. No other Anglican Church has in fact exhibited such a disagreement, and none is anticipated given the shape of other churches’ constitutions. Those provinces who do end up adopting the Covenant will finally have to make the decision themselves as to who they will recognize as Covenant partners amongst those American Anglicans who formally express their desire to be party to this Covenant. But nothing now prevents, from a legal point of view, TEC dioceses from such formal expressions apart from General Convention. Nothing. It is not illegal, it is not rebellious, it is not unAnglican, it is not a declaration of war, it is not impertinent: it is rather the exercise of diocesan responsibilities, with its bishop, to remain faithful (as we see it) to the Anglican commitments of its formation and vocation.

We must go further, however. Theologically, the provincial system is itself flawed, or at least many believe it is, and I have argued along these lines recently in my paper “The Organizational Basis of the Anglican Communion”. These flaws are ones that have increasingly been noted within the Communion itself, despite our generally (but not uniformly!) provincial organization. The Christian Church ought properly to be ordered, I have argued, according to what I call “pastoral synodality”, which is episocopally centered and structurally ordered along what amount therefore to diocesan lines. Cultural, regional, and political considerations ought not to define the character of these structures, but rather the persuasive pastoral witness of self-expenditure that discples of Christ provide. There are good historical and theological reasons for seeing matters this way, and the Anglican Communion itself, I would argue, has long been evolving in this direction, and away from the national-provincial structures that were pragmatically and often unthinkingly and problematically adopted in the wake of colonial expansion and then ecclesial and national independencies. I would prefer to see the present turmoil less as a simple matter of a clash of theological commitments, than as the transformational pains of a more faithful adaptation to the Church’s intrinsic order.

It so happens that TEC’s Constitution is shaped more in accord with the character of pastoral synodality than some other Anglican churches! But it is not surprising, therefore, that this very Constitution and its implications is now being subverted by those whose theological commitments demand the justification of nationalistic and/or cultural priority over the authority of particular sanctified witness that pastoral synodality represents. That is, TEC’s leadership is promoting a new understanding of the Episcopal Church, and one that contradicts our Constitution, that demands subservience to a purported cultural revelation that General Convention has arrogated to itself and the PB the power to impose. The subversion is one of political convenience.

Any attempt to defrock bishops or priests who seek to uphold our Episcopal Constitution in opposition to these subversions would be meaningless in substance, and practically so unless and until any court ruled in favor of the defrockers. CP dioceses and bishops should adopt the Covenant when its text becomes recognized, and assuming its acceptability. If other covenanting churches do not wish to receive these dioceses and bishops as full covenanting partners, that will be to their shame.

[Mark Harris] asks why those that want TEC to sign the Covenant do not wait for the next General Convention and there cast 51% of the votes for ratification. If this time were taken before a final judgment, there might, he says, be some possibility of a provincial decision by “the so called ”˜local’ Church.”

It is of course the case that if no provision is made before that time for dioceses to ratify the Covenant, then dioceses would not have to hold off casting their votes. They would have no vote to cast. The question would be moot. However, if provision is made for diocesan ratification dioceses that want to ratify the Covenant would simply be foolish not to do so. First The Episcopal Church has already taken steps that both effectively repudiate the approved portion of the Covenant and make ratification of a Covenant that limits its autonomy impossible to imagine. Second, a provincial decision that is the result of consensus building among those who support the decisions of the General Convention and those who do not now sadly lies beyond reach and has, in any case, been contradicted by a majoritarian system of decision-making. Pronouncements of victory have been heard resounding from the halls of our deliberations. “It’s time to move on” is the mantra that focused the attention of the vast majority of all three orders and both houses. How then can there be consensus building that includes those who have a problem with the majority if they have no way to contribute to building such a consensus. According to the reports we have received, a declaration of consensus by majority vote has already been made.

In such a context “minority influence” must be exercised in new ways. Thus, in taking the step of direct ratification the minority would, as previously noted, be saying no to a Christian identity defined first all by boundaries of a nation state and the confines of a denomination that locates itself first of all within those boundaries. Again, as previously noted, the primary objection we lodged against Fr. Harris’ first two articles on these subjects is that they locate the identity of The Episcopal Church first within the boundaries of a nation state. His further explication of his views makes doubly clear that this is indeed his position. And having stated it in this way, it becomes increasingly clear that Fr. Harris not only believes this innovative understanding of our polity is true, but also that it must be enforced as true by making all dioceses and members suffer whatever fate is in store for a province that does not intend to sign any covenant restricting a course of action undertaken, for example, like that of the last General Convention. All must go where the church of the nation goes, whether they want to or not, even if to do so calls into question their belonging to the Anglican Communion.

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Fr. [Mark] Harris with the rest of the communion opposes an international hierarchy with jurisdiction in the various local churches that make up the communion. He does, however, favor another form of hierarchy””one that finds no place in TEC’s constitution but nonetheless is now being argued in the courts of California, Pennsylvania, and Texas. For lack of a better term, I will call this the view of ecclesial hierarchy to be established in secular courts. The Office of the Presiding Bishop in the cases of the Dioceses of San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, and Forth Worth is arguing before a secular court that TEC is a hierarchical church with supreme authority located in the General Convention, the Executive Council, and the Office of the Presiding Bishop. In this scheme, the various dioceses are sub-units in a subordinate relation to these governing entities. The courts may be receptive to this argument because the law tends to operate with a very simple distinction between hierarchical and non-hierarchical churches. In this typology, TEC will appear at first glance as hierarchical in a way that say Pentecostal Churches do not.

It is a matter of general agreement that this position is being argued in order to prevent the three dioceses mentioned above, upon their departure from TEC, from taking the property of the diocese with them. To Fr. Harris’ credit, he has another, and to my mind nobler, reason for defending this position. He does not want the dioceses of TEC to be able to act independently of the General Convention, the Executive Council, and the Office of the Presiding Bishop. Thus, Fr [Mark] Harris has a position that is, as it were, a knife that cuts in two directions. Internationally, he seeks to establish the unfettered autonomy of the several provinces of the communion and so preclude any form of “global governance,” and domestically he wishes to establish a form of hierarchy, like that of the Methodists and Presbyterians, that locates final authority in a national form of governance that has supreme authority over its constituent units.

Fr. Harris’ position, like that of the Presiding Bishop and the majority of TEC’s present leadership, when all is said and done, serves to identify TEC as a denomination within the spectrum of American Protestant denominations. That is, Fr Harris wants TEC first of all to understand itself as an expression of Christianity defined by the borders of a nation state rather than as an expression of Catholic Christianity that happens to be located within the boundaries of a nation state.

The conversion of TEC, with little catholic remainder, into yet another American denomination is reason enough to be concerned about Fr. Harris’ views.

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Yesterday, 220 years after its constitutional documents were adopted, The Episcopal Church (TEC) at its triennial assembly (the General Convention) in Anaheim arguably brought to an end its ambiguous double-life as both Anglican and Episcopalian. To put it another way, it finally conceded the logic of American denominational identity, which most of its mainline Protestant neighbors have long accepted, that it is a national church, bound by historical bonds of affection to other churches in the Anglican tradition but in no way obligated to look beyond the concerns of its members in discerning the future direction of its mission and ministry.

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An Email from overnight:

Here’s how I would analyze inconsistency with B033 under general principles of law.

A legislative body can repeal an old resolution (or, for that matter, an old law) BY IMPLICATION, without naming and explicitly repealing the old resolution

If GC 2009 adopts a resolution inconsistent with B033, the rule of thumb would be that the new resolution implicitly repeals B033 TO THE EXTENT of the inconsistency.

The effect of the new resolution on the old one is ultimately a question of legislative intent.

They are proposing to drop just the three little words “Communion of this . . .”, and to replace them with just one word: “Episcopal”. To paraphrase Neil Armstrong, “That’s one small step for a church, but one giant leap away from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”

With that single change, buried in the midst of thousands and thousands of words revising Title IV, the leadership of ECUSA will accomplish the goal toward which it has been striving ever since 1976: a complete and final divorce of its polity and orders from the rest of the Anglican Communion, and in consequence from the Church Catholic as well.

No longer will it be possible, after these changes are voted (and they will be, without any doubt: how could they go back on the strategy at this point?), for Episcopal clergy to avoid a charge of “abandonment” when they seek to transfer to another church within the Anglican Communion. No longer will anyone refer to these Canons as the “Abandonment of Communion” Canons; they become the “Abandonment of ECUSA” Canons. The Communion, as such, is through, as far as ECUSA is concerned. Finito. Not “Ite – missa est”, but Ite – finis est.

Read it very carefully and follow all the links also.

But what does it mean to argue that the polity of TEC is unique? If the emphasis is on significant discontinuity with the character of that polity otherwise seen to be representative of Anglicanism, is the danger not in cutting TEC off from the Communion at large? Surely the continuity of the Anglican Communion””whatever the special features of this or that polity””is to be grasped in the Episcopal Office. No specialness can alter that feature without at the same time creating a truly national denomination. If this is what the President of the House of Deputies is calling for, let her indicate that she realizes that and wishes it to be so and means to make it so.

At the founding of the Episcopal Church in this country efforts were made to create a polity that constrained the office of Bishop, and held it accountable to a second House. Does the President of the House of Deputies mean that uniqueness lies in this sort of understanding? If so, it bears recalling that at precisely this point the new church had to defer to the spirit of recommendations of the Church of England, and the pleadings of Seabury, if she was to remain a branch of the catholic expression of Anglicanism. So the General Convention that then emerged did not in the least preempt or constrain the special responsibility of Bishops, and it is exactly that reality that serves to give proportion to any idea of special features.

It is important as well to keep comments like this in perspective given other recent trends. In the legal submissions made by the national church, we have seen a different argument for the ”˜special polity’ of this church. The fact that there are similarities but also differences suggests that these arguments serve the purpose chiefly of aiding in a cause, and less in the accuracy of their historical claims, or the consistency of their logic and presentation.

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From here:

The Standing Committee on Constitution and Canons reviews proposed amendments to the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church and places them in proper form before passing them on to the General Convention for action. In addition they carry out a continual review of current Canons of the Church. At its first meeting of the Convention the Legislative Committee discussed at length the revision to Title IV, which is a major review of the Disciplinary Canons of the Church. The Disciplinary Canons as they now stand were originally set down in 1994. The prevailing attitude to clergy misconduct in those days was to consider it in the same terms as criminal law, in a punitive way. The current revision to go before the house approaches the Disciplinary Canons in a more pastoral and theological manner, moving them towards a reconciliation model for all appropriate circumstances. Later in the day the Committee discussed amendments to the Constitution and Canons that refer to the keeping of archival materials of the church, specifically how these are now garnered from dioceses and provinces of the church in an increasingly electronic age. They also considered amendments to the Canons which refer to the manner in which Diocesan Standing Committees transmit consents for Episcopal Elections.

For the moment I will leave aside the many problems that attach to TEC’s press for a polycentric communion. It is enough to say that their argument will work only if communion excludes common belief and practice but focuses instead on cooperation in good works and mutual aid. (Though even here, because of conflicting theological commitments, “good works” can be construed quite differently) Of more immediate importance is the logic of inclusive justice. The logic of inclusion employed by progressive Episcopalians excludes meaningful opposition from the start.

This exclusion is of such importance that it must not go unchallenged. It is a matter that concerns all Episcopalians. Exclusion of meaningful opposition in respect to the matters now before The Episcopal Church in the end will produce a niche church rather than a catholic church. Progressive claims to inclusivity are in fact false. The logic of their position drives relentlessly toward an increasingly constricted identity. The question progressive Episcopalians must answer is why members of the Episcopal Church that do not share their views ought to think otherwise. To put the issue more directly, progressive Episcopalians need to show the membership of their church and the rest of the Anglican Communion why their position does not end in an exclusive form of church life rather than a diverse one. This observation leads to a direct question. The question is what reason can be given from the point of view of progressive Episcopalians to a traditional Anglican for being a member of The Episcopal Church. I certainly have my own reasons and have stated them on many occasions. But progressive Episcopalians have claimed something that both their words and actions belie, and it seems only right for them to confront and explain this inconsistency to the rest of us.

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US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has deposed two more retired American bishops, announcing on June 12 that she had accepted the voluntary renunciation of ministry of the retired Bishop of Quincy the Rt Rev Edward MacBurney and the retired Bishop of Southern Virginia the Rt Rev David Bane.

However, the two bishops have stated they have not renounced their orders, but were being accepted into the House of Bishops of the Province of the Southern Cone under Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables.

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At its best, the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion have so much to offer to the wider Church and to the world. Unfortunately, at the moment we are far from being at our “best.” Like many of you, I am deeply grieved by the growing division within The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion. I had hoped and still do that the proposed Anglican Covenant could help bring healing into the Communion. As many of you know, the most recent version, the Ridley Cambridge Draft, has been put on hold, due to concerns raised
by some members of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) over Section 4, which deals with the possible disciplinary actions. I remain hopeful that it will be worked out and that we will have an opportunity to vote on the Covenant. In preparation for that, we as a diocese will be studying the Ridley Cambridge Draft and any changes that may be made to it over the coming year. In addressing the ACC, as reported in The Living Church, Archbishop Rowan Williams urged Anglicans not to “put off discussion of the covenant,” stating that, “The texts are
out there. Please pray through them, and talk them through, starting now.” (TLC May 31, 2009)

There has been some question as to whether dioceses will be allowed to officially vote on the covenant if and when it finally comes out. While some within The Episcopal Church believe that only provinces should be allowed to vote, I believe strongly that each diocese should be allowed to vote. That belief is based on my understanding of the true polity or organization and governance of The Episcopal Church, as outlined in its Constitution and Canons and as described in a recently published document entitled “Bishops’ Statement On The Polity Of The Episcopal Church,” signed by myself along with 14 other bishops in the Episcopal Church and three highly distinguished Episcopal theologians.

Read it carefully and read it all.

I thought I would remind people of this material, in which I am sure additions and/or corrections would be welcomed.

If one thinks of a true hierarchy like the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no question as to who could authorize a bishop to speak for it in court: it would be the Pope, and nobody but the Pope. Since ECUSA, however, lacks any metropolitan archbishop (the Presiding Bishop is called a “Primate” without the word signifying anything other than that the Presiding Bishop represents ECUSA to the other Churches in the Anglican Communion), there is a very nice question as to just who has sufficient authority under its Constitution to represent it in a court of law. If it were a regular corporation, like General Motors, the matter would be clear: its Chief Executive Officer (or President, as the case may be) would be authorized by the Board of Directors to speak for the corporation in court; or the Board could give him the authority to delegate the task of spokesperson to some other officer of the Corporation.

Nothing like that, however, has happened here. General Convention, ECUSA’s only legislative body, has not met since 2006, and has never (to my knowledge, at least) specifically authorized any official within the Church to file suit in its name and to speak for it in court. Even if it had purported to do so, there is no provision in the Constitution to which General Convention could point as granting it the authority from the member dioceses to designate a spokesperson to represent the views of all of the dioceses in court—as though they were one. Elementary common sense suggests that the members of a group have to vote on an issue in accordance with their procedures before the position of the group as a whole on that issue may be stated. Even then, there is usually provision made for some means by which any division of opinion can be exhibited: by a “minority report”, or by a “statement of the views of the minority”, which always accompanies any presentation of the views of the majority.

The recent publication of the Statement by the (Communion Partner) bishops is evidence that just such a minority viewpoint exists in ECUSA today.

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It is not short but you need to be aware of it, especially if you are interested or involved in questions of this sort.

“We want the rest of the church to know that our bishop has our support,” said the Very Rev. Peter J.A. Cook, president of the Western Louisiana standing committee and rector of St. Michael and All Angels’ Church, Lake Charles. He added that the standing committee and the bishop have no plans to leave, but are committed to working for reform from within the church.

Fr. Cook said the statement also was intended to prepare the diocese for the possibility that it will need to approve the proposed Anglican Covenant on its own if General Convention fails to do so when it meets in Anaheim later this summer.

“If General Convention does not approve the Covenant or fails to consider it, I’d be most surprised if our diocese did not take up a resolution to approve it for ourselves with the encouragement of our bishop,” he said.

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The authority of the Episcopal Church resides at the diocesan level. This is witnessed to by the structure of the church as “that of a voluntary association of equal dioceses.” Also, the Constitution and Canons of the Church make no provision for either a central hierarchy or a Presiding Bishop with metropolitan authority. Furthermore, our General Convention representation is as dioceses and not as communicants, with only an administrative role for the convention leadership, the voting members of the leadership themselves drawn from the diocesan deputations. In addition, the ordinal does not contain any language acknowledging or committing to submit to any metropolitan or central hierarchal authority.

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First, the document is consonant with my understanding of our Church’s polity which I first encountered in Powell Mills Dawley’s The Episcopal Church and its Work (the last volume in the first Church Teaching Series, see p. 115-16) while as a layperson, new to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the early 1970s, being trained to be a lay reader. Further reading in our history during seminary and while teaching courses on The Episcopal Ethos at San Joaquin School for Ministry and in Adult classes in the parish has only confirmed what Dr. Dawley wrote almost fifty years ago.

Secondly, this statement of the bishops is also in keeping with the resolution that the Standing Committee and I brought before our recent Diocesan Convention and which was subsequently passed, “Resolution 1: Proposed Anglican Covenant”. It is, among other things, seeking to defend the authority of dioceses to sign onto the Anglican Covenant should other bodies in TEC choose not to.

Thirdly, it is in all of our interests not to have our polity and heritage redefined by civil courts in litigation with departing dioceses without a more thorough vetting of our Church’s history and polity, as well as the larger Communion’s ecclesial reflections.

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The Fundamental Structure of The Episcopal Church Is That of a Voluntary Association of Equal Dioceses

Given the constitutional reservation of authority within the diocese to the Bishop and Standing Committee, it is not surprising that the fundamental structure of our Church is that of a voluntary association of equal dioceses.

It is significant that the same term, “voluntary association,” has been used by both the founding father of The Episcopal Church to describe the organization he was so instrumental in forming and by the civil law to describe religious societies and other unincorporated voluntary organizations in general. Our Church’s primary architect was, of course, William White, and his blueprint was The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered, published in 1782 as the Revolutionary War was nearing an end. As a result of American independence, many of the former Church of England parishes had become independent churches while others were still organized as state churches under the control of state legislatures. White’s concept, later accepted by others in the former colonies, was that the Anglican churches would first be organized into state churches and then the state churches would organize themselves nationally as a voluntary association of state churches (now called “dioceses”). Pursuant to this plan, White was one of the first two Americans consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1787 to serve in the Episcopal Churches. When The Episcopal Church eventually was duly organized in 1789, Bishop White and Bishop Samuel Seabury, consecrated by the Scottish Episcopal Church, sat as the first House of Bishops at the first General Convention.

Just as the thirteen states were the “independent and sovereign” constituents of the American confederation that existed when the church now known as The Episcopal Church was being formed, the state churches were the bodies that combined to constitute what was initially called the Protestant Episcopal Church.

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The Diocese of Central Florida is thankful to the Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. (ACI) for taking the initiative in making a statement (see below) about the nature of hierarchy and governance within the Episcopal Church. We fully support and are grateful for The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, The Rt. Rev. Bruce MacPherson and the other signatories to the statement.

We fully share the concerns expressed in the statement regarding recent court filings and arguments made by the Presiding Bishop’s chancellor to “turn The Episcopal Church’s governance on its head.”

We oppose any attempt, in this civil litigation or in any other secular forum to turn Dioceses into “subordinate units” of the General Convention, the Executive Council or the office of the Presiding Bishop–something they never have been and must not become.

We are deeply concerned that the Presiding Bishop is seeking to reinterpret the Constitution and Canons of this Church and overturn 220 years of settled church custom and law by appealing to an outside secular court.

We welcome and encourage other dioceses within the Episcopal Church to stand with us in resisting this redefinition of our ecclesiastical polity through the use of the secular courts by the Presiding Bishop and her chancellor.

….Here are some questions to consider, derived from the Ordination liturgy, which outlines in some detail what is entrusted to and expected from any bishop:

1. Does the person believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation? (BCP 513)
2. Has the person consistently conformed to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church? (BCP 513) If not, why not? Has any failure to conform been theologically or pastorally justifiable? Has this person accepted the consequences of such failure? Is this person willing to uphold the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church as the standard expected behavior of the clergy over which this person will exercise oversight?
3. Are there any doubts that this person has been lawfully elected? (BCP 514)
4. Have concerns been raised in any quarter as to this person’s suitability? (BCP 514) If so, what are the concerns? Are they justified? Are these concerns so serious that they raise the question of whether this person will engage in inappropriate or scandalous behavior in the future or compromise the witness that The Episcopal Church is called to maintain?
5. Is this person “one with the apostles in proclaiming Christ’s resurrection and interpreting the Gospel?” (BCP 517)

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