Resolution A036 is another matter. It alters the canon governing marriage to make the language gender-neutral. My handful of allies and I felt this is where we needed to make our stand. We immediately moved a minority report that emerged from the Special Committee on Marriage as a substitute for the resolution. This report was simply a document affirming the traditional understanding of marriage, and was not an alternate canonical change. We had cleared it in advance with the parliamentarian, who deemed it in order. But one of the bishops fairly quickly challenged the Presiding Bishop’s ruling that the substitute was in order, and called for a vote on the matter, which is allowed in Roberts Rules. A majority of the bishops voted to overturn the Presiding Bishop’s ruling, so our substitute was taken out of play. The parliamentarian was, of course, correct, so this was simply the names exercise of raw power. The mood of this convention is “spike the ball.”
Debate proceeded, and there were a couple of amendments and amendments to amendments moved, but none carried. My allies and I did successfully request a roll-call vote, however, which tends to annoy people. Nonetheless, we felt it important for us to be on the record for the benefit of worldwide consumption, particularly among our Global South friends, who are always under pressure to cast us aside in favor of an exclusive relationship with the ACNA. There was some 150 or so bishops still around (down quite a bit from Saturday’s PB election). There were 26 No votes and five abstentions. We got our heads handed to us.
One could argue that there are some details still in play before it’s possible to conclusively say, “Done deal.” And the House of Deputies still has to act, though the conclusion there is more foregone than with the Bishops. Nonetheless, the Episcopal Church has, today, effectively redefined marriage–a universal and timeless human social institution that Christians have believed is, in fact, not merely a human social institution, but a gift from God that is literally prehistoric, participating in the order of creation. We have done so, moreover, without even a pretense of consultation with the other provinces of the Anglican Communion, to say nothing of the rest of the Christian world. It is an act of breathtaking hubris, an abuse of common sense truly worthy of the descriptor Orwellian.
Is it heresy?
This is an interesting piece of optimism.
“I can and will prohibit their use in the Diocese of Springfield, though I will be obligated, upon request, to facilitate their availability. Referral of such requests to an appropriate neighboring diocese will be considered a good-faith response. I can live with that.”
Perhaps the Bishop knows that the size and complexion of his diocese make this solution both a genuine possibility and something he ‘can live with.’ I don’t know the diocese so would have to take his word.
It would strike me as a very unworkable arrangement in many other places. Couples wanting ssm as drawn up GC are hardly going to leave their parishes to travel to some nearby diocese. And nothing I have read thus far makes this kind of arrangement obligatory. No, presumably a Diocesan would find some way for the ssm arrangements to be delegated within one’s own diocese.
“Facilitate their availability” may take different forms, but it is hard to see how a conservative Bishop would not think this somehow avoided their OK. That has been coopted, so far as I can tell.
Perhaps we will have a better picture once the HOD irons out all the necessary ‘facilitation’ options…
+CFL states he can forbid the new rites altogether…
http://cfdiocese.org/mydiocese/bishop-brewers-7th-report-from-general-convention-78/
I guess we will have to see the dust settle on what in fact has happened. I read the resolution as saying the rites must be available in every diocese, though the Diocesan can be inventive about how to do that.
Why would anyone doubt T. Haller’s evaluation? He’s in the wheelhouse. He writes this:
“It is true that the proposal allows a diocesan to regulate the use of the liturgies within his diocese, which could include not authorizing them for general use. However, the resolution also requires that all couples in the diocese WILL be provided with access to these rites…
the bishop who disagrees with this will have to find a way to make the liturgy accessible to every couple. I’m sure many creative ways can be found to do this in the small number of dioceses in which this will be true.”
I view heresy as a doctrine that can be spiritually damaging to the point of interfering with a person’s salvation. So from that viewpoint, it is heresy.
Dr. Seitz, I agree that it’s unlikely that refusing these rites will last very long in ECUSA. Naturally +Martins and +Brewer want to think so.
I think that some “conservative” bishops are reading the resolutions with rose colored glasses. While I think a bishop could prohibit the clergy of his diocese from using new rites (I am less certain about the amended prayer book rites), it seems the language is perfectly clear that if a gay couple requests to be married, the bishop must find a way to make that happen, and I see nothing there that requires the couple in question to inconvenience themselves by traveling to another diocese. The bishop and his clergy might not perform the ceremony, but I think we can bet that it will happen in the couple’s home parish, even if a priest must be imported from another jurisdiction. And regardless of who is doing the traveling- the priest or the couple, who pays the expenses? I figure the home diocese of the couple.
Can Haiti (a very poor diocese with a very large ASA, on an island) afford plane fare and hotels for the wedding party, for every gay couple who might want to marry? How about Springfield itself, hardly a wealthy diocese? Being a non compliant diocese is going to cost thousands of dollars, quite probably 10s or 100s of thousands.
Stand Firm has published an (unofficial?) list of Bishops who voted against resolution A036 redefining marriage as being between any 2 people…
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/31907
19 Diocesans (including Province IX) apparently voted against.
I took the time to dig up vote tallies from certain key resolutions in 2003 and 2009 (I don’t have any similar lists handy from 2006 or 2012).
Basically in 2003 you had 43 – 48 Diocesan bishops taking an orthodox / conservative position.
By 2009 that number had dropped to around 27 – 30
Now we’re down to maybe 19 diocesans…. A drop of 60% in orthodox diocesan bishops in 12 years.
See details in my comment at SF
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/sf/page/31907/comment-sf/#513706
Another SF commenter reminded me of the vote on A049 in 2012 authorizing liturgies for same sex blessings / marriage.
http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution-complete.pl?resolution=2012-A049
That was also a roll call vote. Very interesting to note that just 3 years ago 30 diocesan bishops opposed these liturgies. Now that number is down to 19 diocesan bishops, a few of whom it seems only opposed this year’s resolution of grounds of not creating a conflict between the canons & the prayer book, NOT because they are actually against SSM.
George Conger has just posted the roll call
http://anglicanink.com/article/vote-roll-resolution-a036-amend-canon-i18-marriage
It’s sorted by chronological order of the bishops consecration – longest serving bishops first, so it makes it a bit confusing.
Perhaps later I will have a comparison of what dioceses voted to uphold orthodox positions in 2003, 2009, 2012, 2015 just to show the rapid decline in orthodox bishops.
Bishop Martins, Bishop Love, Bishop Bauerschmidt et, al. been doing the Lord’s work. For a while poor Bishop Martins was the progressive target of opportunity because of an unwise tweet. The HOB wouldn’t even discuss their proposal in the discussion about the marriage canon. Though it was ruled in order by the Presiding Bishop and Parliamentarian, the majority simply ruled it out of order in a petty and nasty expression of their power. It stood no chance of being passed but not even to permit it to be discussed was brutal.
BTW how will A054 work at a parochial level? Imagine a same sex couple comes to a priest who will not celebrate same sex marriages on Advent Sunday 2015 and requests marriage. Will the couple have to be referred to a priest who is willing to officiate at their wedding? Can a bishop demand the wedding take place at the parish at which the couple made the request (in my part of the Episcopal world there are parishes that are two hours from the next Episcopal church). If the first priest does not refer the couple will that now be a disciplinary offence?
There seems an asymetricality between the way male-female and same sex couples are now to be treated. Whereas a male-female couple requesting marriage can be declined at the minister’s discretion with no requirement to refer to episcopal authority, A054 seems to demand that a same sex couple must be so referred.
The whip is being cracked, I guess.
It may be best to recall that the HOB already has witnessed two experiments in accommodation: the Doyle Plan and the “Little Plan” (+Little sends those who want ssb/m to very contiguous Diocese of Chicago).
1. As of Advent 1, the automatic and universal availability is in play. No one need to anything but access the new rites.
2. If you are a Bishop Diocesan you have the permission of GC to ‘regulate’ this state of affairs, and instead of universal/automatic rites you can make provision for specified access o the rites; this could be a version of Doyle Plan (designated parishes) or the Little Plan, or maybe some fresh species of accommodation we haven’t seen yet.
3. Couple x accesses these rites and returns to parish x and celebrates the marriage, has adopted children baptized, serves at altar, etc;
4. Couple y object to this arrangement and demand marriage rites at their own parish y. What does Bishop do/rector do?
5. Come three years, the rites are universal and automatic for all.
That seems to me what has been passed in the HOB. Perhaps the HOD will clear up any confusion.
In dioceses in which there is little sympathy for the remaining conservative parishes – I don’t imagine Doyle Plans or Little Plans are going to be offered.
I wonder what accommodations will occur in dioceses in which the bishops were in favor of the resolution?
None whatsoever. You are right to note this.
But I wonder what parishes you refer to? St Matthews in Richmond has been a stalwart all along. I suspect the Bishops of VA will leave them alone.
Give an example you have in view. Kind regards.
I’m not keen to say much more, as you might guess. Imagine, say, a single small conservative parish somewhere west of the Mississippi. Tough times ahead, I’m thinking.