Now you should see the dilemma in which the revisionist clergy find themselves. In jumping the gun in 2012 to rush into church-sanctioned same-sex marriages (as a matter of “generous pastoral response” to a tiny minority of parishioners), they did not have the patience first to change either the Canons or the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. (The latter would have required action by two successive General Conventions, or a minimum of four years.)
As a consequence, every single bishop and every single priest in ECUSA who has presided over the solemnization of a same-sex marriage up to now — whether using a rite “authorized by the diocesan” or not — is liable to discipline under Title IV of the Church Canons. Need I bother declaring the odds of such proceedings ever taking place? No matter — the Canons have still been, and still are, knowingly violated and so, disrespected — by the very persons charged with conforming to them.
And now comes the Task Force with its “proposal” to amend Canon I.18, as embodied in proposed Resolution 2015-A036. In my next post, I will show how their proposal continues to make a mockery of the Canons and of the Book of Common Prayer. In the process, it manages to create a thorough mishmash of “Christian marriage” in the Episcopal Church (USA). All in all, that is quite a feat!