This is such a crucial preface to what follows that I shall restate it: only dioceses, in their given territories, are legal members of the association which is the Episcopal Church (USA). As such, they are free, under the First Amendment, to join it or to leave it at their pleasure, through duly enacted amendments to their governing documents — which ECUSA is, again under the Constitution’s First Amendment, powerless to annul or forbid.
Now comes an utterly supercilious pronouncement by an official on behalf of ECUSA’s Executive Council (citing the “decision” of one of its joint standing committees) with regard to the Diocese of South Carolina, and which purports to “declare” certain acts taken by a member diocese to be “null and void”. [A tip o’ the Rumpolean bowler to the Rev. Steve Wood’s blog, which in this instance was authored in his temporary absence by Greg Shore.]
Oh, really? And just who, pray tell, is this supra-diocesan “Executive Council”, or its “Joint Standing Committee on Governance and Administration”?
This so-called “Executive Council” is nothing more than a group of rubber-stamp [i]consigliori[/i] who, by claiming to speak for TEC’s Presiding Bishop, attempt to give her legitimacy, and nothing more.