Things went only downhill from there. In the first place, there was no clear plan on how to present and to vote on the differing resolutions dealing with the Covenant that had been prepared by the Resolutions Committee. Three of its members, as I mentioned, favored putting off adoption of the entire Covenant at this meeting. Because of ECUSA’s strong opposition to it, expressed in one of the small indaba groups, they wanted the ACC to send Part IV of the Covenant back for a rewrite before it would be presented to the churches of the Communion. They accordingly drafted a Resolution to accomplish this, and it was presented as “Resolution A”:
The ACC:
a) resolves that section 4 of the Ridley Cambridge Draft be detached from the Ridley Cambridge Draft for further consideration and work;
b) asks the Archbishop of Canterbury, in consultation with the Secretary General, to appoint a small working group to consider and consult with the Provinces on Section 4 and its possible revision, and to report to the next meeting of the Joint Standing Committee;
c) resolves that the reconsidered Section 4 may, at the request of the JSC, be offered for adoption as an addendum to the Covenant text.
Simultaneously, in order to reflect the position favored by the great majority of the discussion groups, they presented a second Resolution, which they called “Resolution B”:
The ACC:
a) thanks the Covenant Design Group for their faithfulness and responsiveness in producing the drafts for an Anglican Communion Covenant and, in particular for the Ridley Cambridge Draft submitted to this meeting;
b) recognises that an Anglican Communion Covenant may provide an effective means to strengthen and promote our common life as a Communion;
c) asks the Secretary General to send the Ridley Cambridge draft, at this time, only to the member Churches of the Anglican Consultative Council for consideration and decision on acceptance or adoption by them;
d) asks those member Churches to report to ACC-15 on the progress made in the processes of response to, and acceptance or adoption of, the Covenant.
It should have been obvious that these resolutions were mutually incompatible, and could not both have passed. Therefore, proper parliamentary awareness should have required the Resolutions Committee to (a) decide upon the order in which the various parts of the Resolutions should have been taken up, and (b) in the process present a coherent choice between possible outcomes. For example, paragraphs (a) and (b) of Resolution B could have stood on their own, and been presented for approval at the very outset. Then the choice would have been between detaching section 4 or not, and a clear vote could have been taken which would decide which approach the group as a whole preferred to follow.
Instead, what the ACC representatives got was a parliamentary mishmash, by the end of which no one could follow what was happening.
Oh, people followed what happened alright.
The covenant went down in flames due to the political machinations and clever manipulations of those who do not want it to succeed.
Fairly simple
Would it have made one iota of difference if the covenant had passed the was we conservatives would have liked? Who would have made TEC adhere to it? No one.
Check out Anglican TV’s video on it here: http://anglicantv.org/node/223
I am disappointed that the ACC could not get the covenant out to the Churches sooner. But gee, it is good to know that a “small group” yet-to-be-named will certainly be much more able that the design group.
As for the lawsuit moratoria, I’ll put my trust in the laws of the State of Texas and its judicial system over whatever the ACC “moral high ground” might be. The best hope now is for the Diocese of Fort Worth to prevail in court. My prayers are with the corporation board, especially Dr. Salazar.
I agree with A.S. Haley that a spirit of confusion took hold of the gathering. Yet, the strangeness of Dr. Williams’ intervention at the end makes me wonder if he hasn’t served the Communion better than we realize. I’m reminded of how God put words into the mouths of prophets, even Balaam’s ass. Surely if the Lord wishes to delay this man-made covenant, he can made an Archbishop speak!
I regret very much having to disagree with those who were there on the ground, like Robert Lundy and Kevin Kallsen, who deserve only the highest of praise for their excellent coverage of the events.
But it cannot escape my attention—nor can I let the otherwise excellent TV summary they have prepared pass without comment—that the vote on the motion by the Rev. Janet Trisk of the Church of Southern Africa to amend Resolution B to include the just-rejected provisions of Resolution A was only a procedural amendment—that is, it voted to add only those two paragraphs to the resolution in question. It was decidedly not a motion to approve their content as such, since under proper procedure they first had to be voted into the current resolution before the group could vote on their content.
So the vote to “segregate Part IV”, with all due respect to Anglican TV, was not a vote to do that, but only a vote to put language to that effect into the Resolution then being considered paragraph-by-paragraph. Once that vote passed, those provisions were then part of the Resolution under consideration. But the Chair immediately passed them over to take up subparagraph (e) of the (thereby amended) Resolution, without ever calling for a vote on the new subparagraphs (c) and (d) (as relettered by the Rev. Trisk’s motion approved by a vote of 33-30, with two abstentions).
The only final legitimate result attained was the approval of Resolution B without passing on the added two rejected subparagraphs from Resolution A. Therefore, the proposed Anglican Covenant should go to the Churches in the Communion as is, without any further input to Part IV from either the ABC’s “task force” or from the Joint Standing Committee.
The tragedy of the current leadership in the Anglican Communion, however, is that they will not take such a plainly correct and forthright stand, because it is contrary to the wishes of ECUSA and its Presiding Bishop. So because of the lack of Anglican leadership, we face another six years, at the minimum of indecision and wallowing in the current morass.
#6 Chancellor,
I appreciate your comments. I spoke with Bishop Gregory Cameron about the point you made and he assured me that it was within the power of the ACC to add entire clauses to a resolution and then NOT vote on the resolution as amended. I too was concerned that there were mistakes made. It is also interesting to note that today, the ACO brought out Mr. John Ress, top lawyer for the ACO and CofE. Mr. Ress told reporters that there were NO specific rules for how the ACC should adopt resolutions and that it was totally up to the chairman how to proceed. It is also interesting that ++Williams at tonight’s presidential address said that he thought that ACC-15 should have a brief overview on how to make a resolution and how these sorts of procedures work.
Convenient, eh? Wonder will that bit of shenanigans pay off the Lambeth debt. Seems that ECUSA/TEC/GCC.EO-PAC and sycophants are owing that much for the stellar performance of the the ABC and chair in subverting the Communion. Maybe a bit more. Sinecures in the new thang (c) global north gathering of the minions of the Dominatrix will probably be comfortable.
At its most basic level it is less a matter of law than fact whether a resolution has passed.
If a resolution is amended by vote, that amends the resolution to be put to the meeting; it does not pass the resolution which needs to be put to the meeting and voted on, as amended. A vote to amend is not a vote to resolve. Without that it is not a resolution of the meeting.
The fact that it is claimed that a body has no meeting rules does not give the chairman the right to decide that that a resolution has been voted on when it hasn’t.
The really disturbing thing is that we have people like Rees and Cameron prepared to enter the same dishonest gymnastics which Beers and the TEC HOB Parliamentarian engaged in at the TEC HOB meeting to depose bishops illegally. The real tragedy is we have just seen decision-making at Communion level descend to the same level of lawlessness Mrs Schori brought to TEC and its institutions, and the Archbishop has been complicit.
When the rule of law is thrown out of the window, where are we?
And what does it say for the prospects for a Covenant birthed in a lawless and dishonest process, connived in by the very Instruments who expect to be trusted to play central roles in the Covenant.
I think Williams, Rees, Cameron, the GS and all the rest of us need to pause and see where we and they are going with all this. It does not look good, not good at all.