As for a proposed alternative course, I would respond, “What [another name deleted] said,” only raise him a level. I don’t think a telephone poll is a good enough response. It doesn’t address the root problem, which is that, technically, there was a valid vote on the question of deposing Bishop Schofield, and the motion failed. That question is therefore settled: He is not deposed, because the number of Aye votes was less than a majority of “the whole number…entitled to vote”. (This, BTW, is precisely what prevented the legitimate Standing Committee of San Joaquin from stepping in an assuming the role of Ecclesiastical Authority; I have it on good authority that they were within a hair-trigger of doing so when the procedural fiasco was revealed, preventing them from acting.) What the PB needs to do is invite the Title IV Review Committee to provide a finding of abandonment with a fresh date (this should not be too difficult), get the three Seniors to consent to an inhibition, serve said inhibition, and bring the matter before the September HOB meeting in Utah, with the understanding of the level of consent needed for a valid deposition. The case of Bishop Cox is more complicated, because the PB neglected her canonical duty of inhibiting him before brining the question before the House, so there was no valid vote, whatever the outcome. So, once again, we need a fresh finding from the Review Committee (a five-minute conference call should suffice), and then the whole rest of the process. Yes, this sounds fastidious to an onerous degree. But nothing other than this course of action will serve to restore trust that the leaders of this Church are committed to abiding by the rules of this Church. Anything less will only hasten the political meltdown that we are in the middle of.
Thanks for posting this, and the one before it.
Its safe for Fr. Martins to say all this now, but I wonder if after the Disneyland Convention (GC 09), if he and many others of us might be called to court (under the proposed new Title IV Discliplinary Canons into the “church court” in his diocese for speaking out?
Just ask’n.
Gloria in South Carolina
True, Schofield was not deposed from ordained ministry. But it’d be ludicrous to pretend he was still the diocesan of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin after his de facto resignation December 8. (His failure to obtain consent to resign from the House of Bishops was a breach of the canons, but his resignation was none the less effective, because consent is not a prerequisite; in legal terms, the consent requirement is a covenant, not a condition.)
And +KJS arguably had a valid reason for refusing to recognize the former standing committee: Those of its members who failed to timely and publicly speak out against ‘secession’ are deemed to have assented to it, and thereby to have constructively resigned from the standing committee. This is analogous to members of a corporation’s board of directors, who can be held liable for certain board actions, even if they didn’t support those actions, unless they timely dissented on the record.
(What I don’t know is whether there were enough standing-committee members left to constitute a quorum; I haven’t read that there were.)
So far as I know, neither of the above lines of reasoning has been espoused by 815. That doesn’t matter. Let me borrow again from the centuries-old wisdom of the common law: An appellate court will normally uphold a judgment of a trial court, even if the trial court’s stated reasons were wrong, as long as the evidentiary record at trial reveals an alternative basis for the judgment. What matters is that the trial judge got it right in what s/he did. Here, what +KJS did was to facilitate the installation of a new standing committee in DSJ. Indisputably, she had ample reason to do so, even if those reasons have not (yet) been articulated by anyone at 815.
Given the fact that we delegates to the last diocesan convention overwhelmingly voted to accept ++Venables’ offer last December, and the fact that +Schofield is now a member of the House of Bishops of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of the Americas, does it really matter?
What Schori and her friends in the House of Bishops of TEC did was canonically illegal and therefore immaterial to +John-David, I’m sure. We are GONE……along with our bishop.
If TEC’s leaders don’t intend to abide by their own canons except when it suits them to do so, then what hope is there for their Church?
[blockquote]The case of Bishop Cox is more complicated, because the PB neglected her canonical duty of inhibiting him before brining (sic) the question before the House, so there was no valid vote, whatever the outcome.[/blockquote]
It would appear that it’s not really complicated at all, no?
FWIW, I was deemed an extremist lunatic and banned for making this exact argument at a far-left TEO blog.