Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday TED Talk: Alain de Botton on Success and Failure
The 2009 TED Global talks are starting to come on line. One of the first is this scintillating verbal essay by British (originally Swiss) social philosopher Alain de Botton, who advocates a kinder view of the difference between success and failure, since there are so many random factors at work in peoples' lives. (I have to say again how much I appreciate the fine British art of extemporizing on the spot, using only minimal notes, and without a script or teleprompter. A small foretaste of what is in store: "The next time you see someone driving a Ferrari, don't think: 'This is someone who's greedy' --- think: 'This is somebody who is incredibly vulnerable, and in need of love.'" Though a postmodern intellectual, he can still see the wisdom in Christian sources such as St. Augustine.)
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Fresno: A Taste of Things to Come
There are far bigger problems in Fresno County, California, than the ongoing lawsuit brought by Bishop Lamb and ECUSA against Bishop Schofield. Today, the Toronto Globe and Mail came out with a well-written and detailed story about an ongoing clash between farmers in the San Joaquin Valley whose irrigation water supply has been cut to negligible amounts due to environmental agitation to save the delta smelt. Delta smelt are steel-blue, six-inch long fish who serve primarily as food for invasive larger species of fish such as the striped bass and largemouth bass. They cannot survive encounters with the large pumps used to send water from the delta south to the San Joaquin Valley for irrigation. Their numbers dropped in recent years to the point where they became listed as an Endangered Species and hence entitled to federal protection. The reduction in the water supplies for the San Joaquin Valley, following on two years of drought, have forced farmers first to watch crops wither in the field, and then to let their fields lie fallow.
The economic consequences are now severe. The story in the Globe and Mail relates the following facts:
The lineup at the makeshift food bank by the old rodeo grounds is almost a kilometre long.
Tent cities for the homeless have sprung up on H Street in Fresno.
The last bank, Westamerica, in the nearby town of Mendota has a new sign in the window saying it will close for good.
In California, authorities have begun to issue IOUs instead of cash.
Unemployment stands at 11.6 per cent and 180 cities are set to sue the state over a budget that proposes to close a $26.3-billion shortfall by taking $4.7-billion from their coffers.
In all of this, Fresno County . . . has the unenviable distinction of being the hardest-hit county in the state.
Its jobless rate reaches 40 per cent in some towns. America's housing crisis was its most pronounced here, with prices almost triple a home's value. Nearly half of all sales these days involve foreclosure.. . . [The] Central Valley, a semi-arid, 650-kilometre stretch of land is the heart of California's $37-billion agricultural industry. Half of the country's vegetables are grown here. It also ranks as the world's largest agricultural area.. . .
Today, Interstate 5, the highway that slices through the San Joaquin Valley, is flanked by parched fields. Signs, in English and Spanish, proclaim: “Congress-created dustbowl” and “No water, No future” and “Like foreign oil? You'll love foreign food.”
The bitter irony that farm families in the region known as America's salad bowl are flocking to food giveaways at churches and community centres is lost on no one.
Without water, farmers have left an estimated 200,000 hectares of once-productive farmland fallow. Thousands of farm workers, mainly Spanish-speaking migrants, have been laid off.
. . . [L]ost farm revenue in the San Joaquin Valley could top $2-billion this year and will suck as many as 80,000 jobs out of its already-battered economy.
And what is the importance of the delta smelt? You can search for a long time on the Web, and you will find no one who wants to stick his or her neck out. To be sure, there is lots of talk about "integrated ecosystems", the smelt "as a warning indicator for other species", and similar concepts, but the bottom line is that it has been declared an Endangered Species. And under the mandated protections of the Federal and State Acts, there are no options but to stop the pumps, even though there are absolutely no guarantees that the smelt will survive other ecosystem pressures --- like those invasive predators they attract. The people who depend on the distribution of irrigation water to make their living feel they are being unfairly singled out to take the bulk of the penalty for long-term and wide-scale ecosystem mismanagement.
This statement is from the Association of California Water Agencies, whose 450 members are responsible for about 90% of the water delivered in California:
"This decision focuses on a single species when, instead, we need to focus on the entire ecosystem. It regulates only water project operations when the science clearly indicates that other stressors -- including exotic species, land uses and pollution -- play a major role in the demise of the aquatic ecosystem. Further, this decision will do nothing to solve the underlying structural causes of the conflict between the needs of the aquatic environment and the state's water system.Now go and re-read the Globe and Mail story with that background in mind. California's politicians are too mired in budgetary woes to address the problem --- budgetary woes which are being exacerbated by the level of farm unemployment and business failures caused by their collective inaction. And Congress is too busy trying to impose crazy cap-and-trade schemes and mandated healthcare madness to pay attention to a few more farmers being wiped out. (Besides, the farmers are probably all Republicans.)
"The benefits to Delta smelt are highly speculative because of the very limited approach being taken. What is not speculative, however, is the very real impact on our economy these actions will have. This will certainly add to on-farm jobs losses, push additional businesses into failure, and further burden our urban and agricultural economy at a time when the state and the nation are in an economic tailspin.
"What's happening here is a single-species, single-stressor approach using half-century-old infrastructure that pits species protection against the California economy -- all under the control of a federal judge. It's an approach inherited from the past, and frankly we need new leadership.
"It should be apparent to everyone that we are on the wrong train. This single-species, single-stressor train left the station decades ago and has yet to produce satisfactory results for any species or our long-term water supply reliability. There is no reason to think the next round of narrowly focused actions will be any more beneficial for fish than the last one -- and we know it's more bad news for water supplies and the state and national economy. This week it is Delta smelt, last week it was longfin smelt, and in a few months it will be the salmon. The requirements of these decisions will almost certainly be in conflict with each other, and everything will be in conflict with a healthy economy.
"The only way forward is to get off this train and board a new one with the right destination -- a comprehensive approach that focuses on the ecosystem and a portfolio of solutions, including actions to address all stressors and structural improvements in the water supply system, including conveyance and storage, to reduce conflict between the aquatic environment and water supply reliability. We need to move, on an urgency basis, to adopt such a comprehensive approach that can work for the environment and our economy.
"This must be a priority for the new administration in Washington, D.C. Every day we stay on the wrong train is another day of further ecosystem decline and lost water supplies."
Truly these are sad times. Due to the downward spiral effect, as more failures lead to more layoffs, defaults and more failures, they can only get much, much worse before they will begin to get better. The stimulus plan has been great thus far only for Goldman Sachs, whose employees are set to receive average bonuses of $700,000 apiece this year, and for banks and other firms on Wall Street. Meanwhile, your government is printing money to pay interest to its foreign creditors, with no thought for the future inflation that will be inevitable.
And in Fresno, Todd Allen and his family are sitting on 600 acres of land made useless by a probably futile but showy gesture. The gesture was demanded by environmentalists to save a small fish so that bigger, invasive species can have something to eat. This will ensure that as they continue their ecological depredations, the striped and largemouth bass will be well supported. And once they wreak their environmental havoc on the salmon habitat, watch for more drastic environmental measures to protect them.
One spiral leads downward, to economic collapse, poverty and joblessness.
The other spiral leads outward, to spreading ecological collapse, dwindling food supplies, and extinction.
And the politicians fiddle.
When all the pieces start to fit together like this, foresight and hindsight begin to merge. There seems to be no escape from the picture that is forming before our eyes. At least, not until our leadership starts to act responsibly, and to stop making the bad worse.
Hope and change? We got the change which so many seemed to want just nine short months ago. But where's the hope?
[UPDATE 08/01/2009: Now comes word of another population of delta smelt which is unaffected by the pumping, because they thrive in a different portion of the delta. But does that information soften the harshness of the environmentalists' stance? Not on your life.]
[UPDATE 07/31/2009: Not that I need to clinch my point, but the video below shows that the fiddling is going on at all levels. Note especially the level of understanding of farm economics that is on display (and this is just one video in a series!):
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Whither the Anglican Communion? (Redux)
One year ago today, in the midst of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, I put up a post entitled "Whither the Anglican Communion?" Following General Convention 2009, and the reflections in response to it by the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is time to bring back that post for a second look at the success of its prognostications to date. (Besides, some of the links are outdated, and need refreshing.) Below is the original post, in blue, with my new commentary interspersed.
There is an important new post by Dr. Andrew Lilico, whose profile you may peruse here, on what the future split of the Anglican Communion will look like, and on how the coming split is inexorable. In contrast to the rumors and speculations you can read at the mainstream media sites, this writer gives informed specifics, broken down by each interest group, and also analyzed against the peculiar background of the Church of England's Erastianism.
As for The Episcopal Church, does anyone doubt that it will be a return to business as usual once the September meeting of the House of Bishops convenes? Will our bishops' experiences at Lambeth cause them to change course, to drop the phony deposition threat against Bishop Duncan, and to work with him, San Joaquin and Virginia on a way to end all the litigation? I have seen nothing from the remarks of our Presiding Bishop thus far to indicate that. Thus if the bishops "depose" Bishop Duncan in September, the Diocese of Pittsburgh will follow the Diocese of San Joaquin out of The Episcopal Church, and the Dioceses of Fort Worth and Quincy will leave shortly after that. There will then be enough of a critical mass to organize a new North American province for those who have left TEC.
That new province will receive immediate recognition from the GAFCON Primates' Council, but to be accepted as a province of the Anglican Communion will require action by the Anglican Consultative Council and all the Primates of the Communion, and the process would have to begin with the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, as explained in this article:
Comment: This is still true, as far as I can see. The Queen's Mum lived to the ripe old age of 101, and Elizabeth II shows no sign of withdrawing any time soon.
Against all these interacting currents, the two weeks of Lambeth 2008 will seem like the calm where interfering waves temporarily cancel each other out. The turbulence will emerge beyond, just as though there had been no interference. Anything of significance that is accomplished at Lambeth will be whatever is done to advance the draft of the Covenant. For if all turns out the way envisioned in the articles above and in my own added comments, it will be around such a document that the core of the New Anglican Communion coalesces---and quickly. (Already the voices in TEC are saying that they will not be able to take up the subject of a covenant at GC 2009 because of the timing, and that its consideration will have to wait for GC 2012. That is exactly right, and by 2012 any contribution to it by TEC will hopefully have become irrelevant.)
Sic transit gloria Communionis anglicae . . .
Whither the Anglican Communion? (07/29/2008)
There is an important new post by Dr. Andrew Lilico, whose profile you may peruse here, on what the future split of the Anglican Communion will look like, and on how the coming split is inexorable. In contrast to the rumors and speculations you can read at the mainstream media sites, this writer gives informed specifics, broken down by each interest group, and also analyzed against the peculiar background of the Church of England's Erastianism.
After you have absorbed Dr. Lilico's post, go and read Cranmer's additional thoughts on how there will always be a Church of England---at least, so long as there is a reigning British monarch.
Then, for dessert, read this piece at Fr. Al Kimel's blog: Is The Episcopal Church Truly a Catholic Church?
Comment: (Note that Father Kimel has rearranged his Weblog. To read the piece just linked, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to the last post, numbered "XVIII" and dated July 29, 2008.)
Each of these articles is pertinent to my title, especially in light of the second Lambeth address given last night by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dr. Lilico sees most clearly what I think all the fuss and bother at Lambeth about sexuality--- now we'll discuss it, now we won't---is obscuring: the Church of England is coming apart right under Archbishop Rowan's nose. The refusal of General Synod to make continued provision for its Anglo-Catholic wing means that they will not be able to stay in the same Church with women bishops: they regard the latter as an invalidation of the historical apostolic succession. The evangelicals, meanwhile, will not tolerate the election of practicing homosexuals to the episcopate in clear violation of Scripture, as I explain in this post; with the Anglo-Catholics gone, there will be no means of halting the inexorable trend that begins, as TEC has seen, with the ordination of women, and the Church of England will have at least one openly gay bishop before Lambeth convenes again. Dr. Lilico foresees a two-thirds reduction in the number of CoE priests when these two groups take their leave. At the same time, however, he does not predict that the separate groups will fall out of Communion with each other, but will remain as "sister churches"---because of the incredible complexities of property ownership going back to medieval times. (He also believes that the departing evangelicals and the Anglo-Catholics will maintain their present alliance. I am more skeptical that they will both make the break at the same time, and so think that they will end up separate because they will break off that way.)
Dr. Lilico sees most clearly what I think all the fuss and bother at Lambeth about sexuality--- now we'll discuss it, now we won't---is obscuring: the Church of England is coming apart right under Archbishop Rowan's nose. The refusal of General Synod to make continued provision for its Anglo-Catholic wing means that they will not be able to stay in the same Church with women bishops: they regard the latter as an invalidation of the historical apostolic succession. The evangelicals, meanwhile, will not tolerate the election of practicing homosexuals to the episcopate in clear violation of Scripture, as I explain in this post; with the Anglo-Catholics gone, there will be no means of halting the inexorable trend that begins, as TEC has seen, with the ordination of women, and the Church of England will have at least one openly gay bishop before Lambeth convenes again. Dr. Lilico foresees a two-thirds reduction in the number of CoE priests when these two groups take their leave. At the same time, however, he does not predict that the separate groups will fall out of Communion with each other, but will remain as "sister churches"---because of the incredible complexities of property ownership going back to medieval times. (He also believes that the departing evangelicals and the Anglo-Catholics will maintain their present alliance. I am more skeptical that they will both make the break at the same time, and so think that they will end up separate because they will break off that way.)
Comment: All still true. The failure of Synod to make adequate provision for its Anglo-Catholics has resulted in dire warnings and foreboding statements from that group's leaders. While the ordination of women to the episcopate in the Church of England is not yet a fait accompli, it is still very much on track.
As for The Episcopal Church, does anyone doubt that it will be a return to business as usual once the September meeting of the House of Bishops convenes? Will our bishops' experiences at Lambeth cause them to change course, to drop the phony deposition threat against Bishop Duncan, and to work with him, San Joaquin and Virginia on a way to end all the litigation? I have seen nothing from the remarks of our Presiding Bishop thus far to indicate that. Thus if the bishops "depose" Bishop Duncan in September, the Diocese of Pittsburgh will follow the Diocese of San Joaquin out of The Episcopal Church, and the Dioceses of Fort Worth and Quincy will leave shortly after that. There will then be enough of a critical mass to organize a new North American province for those who have left TEC.
Comment: All has turned out as predicted.
That new province will receive immediate recognition from the GAFCON Primates' Council, but to be accepted as a province of the Anglican Communion will require action by the Anglican Consultative Council and all the Primates of the Communion, and the process would have to begin with the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, as explained in this article:
Since the geographic United States is already a province, it would have to be split in some manner for another province to be formed. This has never before happened for doctrinal reasons.Indeed---nor do I, so long as it is Katharine Jefferts Schori whom we are talking about. However, once the total bill for her disastrous litigation strategy comes due, I predict that she will not serve out her full term in that position.
The ACC requires the presiding officer or primate of the original province to request it to begin the process leading to division. That could be the first formidable hurdle for a theoretical new Anglican province in the United States. "I don't envision the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church requesting such a division," Sessum said.
Comment: The full bill for the Presiding Bishop's disastrous litigation strategy has yet to be presented. General Convention 2009 swept it under the rug, and allocated $4 million to litigation and "discipline" proceedings over the next triennium --- an amount that will undoubtedly be revised upward by the Executive Council in the next year or two. On top of the $4.7 million already spent, this will represent a probable total of over $10 million in just six years. Litigation takes time --- a long, long time; but the Presiding Bishop's term runs until 2015. There is thus still plenty of time for this prediction to be fulfilled.
Even if she does [serve out her term], then the person elected to replace her will have different marching orders, because by then the entire Anglican Communion will look very different from what it is now. As Dr. Lilico foresees, the Church of England will follow the Queen. (It probably does not want to wait for Prince Charles to assume the throne, because he has long intimated that he would regard himself in that post as the "Defender of Faith", not the "Defender of the Faith.") So, presumably, will the Archbishop of Canterbury. And if the Queen decides for the traditional Anglo-Catholic wing, then the liberals in the Church of England will have to call themselves something else, to say nothing of the evangelicals if they are then separate.
Comment: This is still true, as far as I can see. The Queen's Mum lived to the ripe old age of 101, and Elizabeth II shows no sign of withdrawing any time soon.
Having an Anglo-Catholic Church of England would facilitate rapprochement with the GAFCON group, and in a short time after the dust settles, we could have a new Anglican Communion, surprisingly along the lines currently envisioned by Archbishop Rowan in his plans for a Covenant.
Comment: And last Monday, the Archbishop reaffirmed the two-tiered structure he envisions occurring as a result of some churches in the Communion adopting the Covenant and of others rejecting it.
There would be the core national Churches who signed onto the Covenant, presumably including the new North American province, which would be part of the compromise reached with GAFCON. (Once there are two or three different Anglican churches in England, all objections to two separate Anglican churches in the territorial United States will become meaningless.)
Comment: There will not be any final action by ECUSA on the Covenant until at least 2012, so this part of the prediction (that the Church of England could splinter before the Communion does) may well come true. However, another big factor in the picture will be what kinds of revisions are proposed to section 4 of the Ridley Draft at the Joint Standing Committee meeting this next December.
Then there would be the non-covenantal, or "affiliate" churches like TEC and ACoC, still nominally "in communion" with the Archbishop of Canterbury, but preaching an entirely different, "inclusive" Gospel, as described so well by Fr. Kimel.
Comment: (Remember how to find the link to the post I was referencing --- scroll to the bottom of the page. However, the posts that precede and lead up to it are all worth your while, as well.) In the time between now and 2012, the separatist tendencies of these two churches will only increase. They will never give up their views of "justice" (about which, see this post) as the price of remaining (what they see as unjust) Anglicans.
Finally, there would be those on the fringe, not in communion, but preserving the Anglican faith in various forms, just as we have with the Continuing Churches today. (The new North American province may also splinter in time, between its own Anglo-Catholics' views on the ordination of women, and its evangelicals who are not opposed to women priests. If that happens, the United States will end up mirroring what happens in England.)
Comment: It would be sad if this turns out to be true. But as Fr. Kimel observes (in post XIII at this link), "church division is intrinsic to Protestant Christianity."
Against all these interacting currents, the two weeks of Lambeth 2008 will seem like the calm where interfering waves temporarily cancel each other out. The turbulence will emerge beyond, just as though there had been no interference. Anything of significance that is accomplished at Lambeth will be whatever is done to advance the draft of the Covenant. For if all turns out the way envisioned in the articles above and in my own added comments, it will be around such a document that the core of the New Anglican Communion coalesces---and quickly. (Already the voices in TEC are saying that they will not be able to take up the subject of a covenant at GC 2009 because of the timing, and that its consideration will have to wait for GC 2012. That is exactly right, and by 2012 any contribution to it by TEC will hopefully have become irrelevant.)
Sic transit gloria Communionis anglicae . . .
Comment: It looks to me as though the decline of the Communion is on track to fulfillment. One final striking observation from Father Kimel comes to mind:
Pontificator’s Fourth Law: A church that does not understand itself as the Church, outside of which there is no salvation, is not the Church but a denomination or sect.
With this abandonment of an exclusive sense of being Church, must be appended Anglicanism’s rejection of the historic Episcopate as belonging to the essence (esse) of the Church. One can find, beginning with Archbishop Laud and his colleagues, various bishops and theologians arguing for its essential necessity, but such views have always remained the views of individual churchmen, not of Anglicanism. The historic Episcopate may be commended in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral; but it has never been formally asserted as essential to Church polity, and in recent decades Anglican practice has witnessed to the tacit abandonment of such views.
And of course more recently Anglicanism has embraced the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate, a move denounced by Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
Pontificator’s First Law: When Orthodoxy and Catholicism agree, Protestantism loses.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Ex Cathedra
One week to the day after he was expected to deliver it, the Archbishop of Canterbury has now published his reaction to the events at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church (USA) in Anaheim. Not reaction, actually, but reflections --- because Dr. Williams never reacts; he reflects.
There will be commentary enough in the Anglican blogworld about the layers of meaning discoverable in his statement. What I would like to do here is to juxtapose his remarks with the requests delivered to him by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson. On July 16, with the Convention not yet concluded, they first wrote to him as follows concerning the enactment of Resolution D 025:
As you know, The General Convention voted this week to adopt Resolution D025, “Commitment and Witness to the Anglican Communion”—a multilayered resolution that addresses a range of important issues in the life of The Episcopal Church that clearly have implications for our relationships within the Anglican Communion. . . .
We understand Resolution D025 to be more descriptive than prescriptive in nature—a statement that reaffirms commitments already made by The Episcopal Church and that acknowledges certain realities of our common life. Nothing in the Resolution goes beyond what has already been provided under our Constitution and Canons for many years.
To which Dr. Williams replies:
No-one could be in any doubt about the eagerness of the Bishops and Deputies of the Episcopal Church at the General Convention to affirm their concern about the wider Anglican Communion. . . . even the wording of one of the more controversial resolutions . . . make[s] plain the fact that the Episcopal Church does not wish to cut its moorings from other parts of the Anglican family. There has been an insistence at the highest level that the two most strongly debated resolutions (DO25 and CO56) do not have the automatic effect of overturning the requested moratoria, if the wording is studied carefully. . . .
However, a realistic assessment of what Convention has resolved does not suggest that it will repair the broken bridges into the life of other Anglican provinces; very serious anxieties have already been expressed. The repeated request for moratoria on the election of partnered gay clergy as bishops and on liturgical recognition of same-sex partnerships has clearly not found universal favour, although a significant minority of bishops has just as clearly expressed its intention to remain with the consensus of the Communion. The statement that the Resolutions are essentially 'descriptive' is helpful, but unlikely to allay anxieties. . . .
Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and President Anderson had stressed ECUSA's commitment to welcoming LGBT persons into all walks of Church life:
In reading the resolution, you will note its key points, that:
- Our Church is deeply and genuinely committed to our relationships in the Anglican Communion;
- We recognize the contributions gay and lesbian Christians, members of our Church both lay and ordained, have made and continue to make to our common life and ministry;
- Our Church can and does bear witness to the fact that many of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters live in faithful, monogamous, lifelong and life-giving committed relationships;
- While ordination is not a “right” guaranteed to any individual, access to our Church’s discernment and ordination process is open to all baptized members according to our Constitution and Canons . . .
And Dr. Williams responds:
. . . [A] blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole. And if this is the case, a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond; whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions, and thus it is hard to see how they can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires.
In other words, the question is not a simple one of human rights or human dignity. It is that a certain choice of lifestyle has certain consequences. So long as the Church Catholic, or even the Communion as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle. . . .
On July 17, the two ladies from ECUSA wrote Dr. Williams again, with regard to the recently enacted Resolution C 056, allowing bishops a "generous pastoral response" to same-sex couples:
Like Resolution D025, about which we wrote to you several days ago [Ed. note: actually it was just the day before, but we know how time flies when one is busy saving the world at General Convention], Resolution C056 will impact both the life and work of The Episcopal Church and have implications for our relationships within the Anglican Communion. . . .
While the Resolution honors the diversity of theological perspectives within The Episcopal Church, it does not authorize public liturgical rites for the blessing of samegender unions. . . .Resolution C056:
• Calls on the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music . . . to collect and develop theological and liturgical resources around the blessing of same gender unions . . . .
• Allows bishops, particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where samegender marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnerships are legal, to provide a generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this Church.It is now left to each bishop to determine what such a generous pastoral response might mean in her or his diocesan context. . . . The Resolution honors and acknowledges this Church's continuing commitment to and honoring of theological diversity and the inclusion of a variety of points of view on matters of human sexuality.
And Dr. Williams has this to say in reply:
. . . [T]he issue is not simply about civil liberties or human dignity or even about pastoral sensitivity to the freedom of individual Christians to form their consciences on this matter. It is about whether the Church is free to recognise same-sex unions by means of public blessings that are seen as being, at the very least, analogous to Christian marriage.In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also. A major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.This is not our situation in the Communion. . . .
The way I read the requests and the responses to them, the score is ABC 2, ECUSA 0 at this point. Dr. Williams has firmly, but politely and gently, told Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and Dr. Anderson "This will not fly in the greater Communion. You are on your own . . .". Only he says it to them much more indirectly:
The second issue is the broader one of how a local church makes up its mind on a sensitive and controversial matter. It is of the greatest importance to remember this aspect of the matter, so as not to be completely trapped in the particularly bitter and unpleasant atmosphere of the debate over sexuality, in which unexamined prejudice is still so much in evidence and accusations of bad faith and bigotry are so readily thrown around.
When a local church seeks to respond to a new question, to the challenge of possible change in its practice or discipline in the light of new facts, new pressures, or new contexts, as local churches have repeatedly sought to do, it needs some way of including in its discernment the judgement of the wider Church. Without this, it risks becoming unrecognisable to other local churches, pressing ahead with changes that render it strange to Christian sisters and brothers across the globe.This is not some piece of modern bureaucratic absolutism, but the conviction of the Church from its very early days. The doctrine that 'what affects the communion of all should be decided by all' is a venerable principle. . . . It takes time and a willingness to believe that what we determine together is more likely, in a New Testament framework, to be in tune with the Holy Spirit than what any one community decides locally.
[We should not] ignore or minimise the . . . danger of so responding to local pressure or change that a local church simply becomes isolated and imprisoned in its own cultural environment.. . .
In recent years, local pastoral needs have been cited as the grounds for changes in the sacramental practice of particular local churches within the Communion, and theological rationales have been locally developed to defend and promote such changes. . . . But it should be clear that an acceptance of these sorts of innovation in sacramental practice would represent a manifest change in both the teaching and the discipline of the Anglican tradition . . .
To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity. It would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent 'community of Christian communities'.
Here is the subtext: "In other words, +Katharine and Bonnie, your way leads to a federation of autonomous churches. I want no part of that. What I lead is a community of churches in the Anglican tradition, and I am not about to let you hijack it. See those words 'the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches'? A global consensus, 'such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity'? That is what is driving me. It is spelled 'C - o - v - e - n - a - n - t.'"
Dr. Williams uses the word "ecumenical" no less than eight times in his response. That is no accident. Remember that he had a "friendly meeting" with the Pope in May 2008, and that he arranged for a deliberately strong ecumenical delegation at Lambeth later that summer, including the Vatican's Cardinal Dias, whom he invited to speak to the assembled bishops. He has his eye on the main ecumenical prize --- a greater unity between Canterbury and Rome (not a complete reversal of the Reformation, but a full recognition of Anglican orders would be a good start). The path of ECUSA leads emphatically away from this prize. (The Church of England itself threatens to derail it as well, if it approves women as bishops; but remember that Dr. Williams weighed against the measure in Synod, reminding everyone about the "heavy and serious ecumenical cost" of going forward.)
He not only says that the path of ECUSA is contra-ecumenical; he suggests that bishops of ECUSA will no longer be appropriate representatives for the Communion in ongoing ecumenical talks (Bishop Epting, please call your office):
There is also an unavoidable difficulty over whether someone belonging to a local church in which practice has been changed in respect of same-sex unions is able to represent the Communion's voice and perspective in, for example, international ecumenical encounters.
This seems to me to be the chief point of the Archbishop's message: ECUSA can abandon any hope of ecumenical relations if that is its choice, but we in the Anglican Communion will do everything in our power to keep that door open, and stay in dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. And to facilitate the Communion's process in that regard, Dr. Williams has his hopes pinned on an Anglican Covenant. His piece, after all, is entitled: "Communion, Covenant, and our Anglican Future" (emphasis added):
As Anglicans, our membership of the Communion is an important part of our identity. However, some [sc. ECUSA] see this as best expressed in a more federalist and pluralist way. They would see this as the only appropriate language for a modern or indeed postmodern global fellowship of believers in which levels of diversity are bound to be high and the risks of centralisation and authoritarianism are the most worrying. There is nothing foolish or incoherent about this approach. But it is not the approach that has generally shaped the self-understanding of our Communion – less than ever in the last half-century, with new organs and instruments for the Communion's communication and governance and new enterprises in ecumenical co-operation.
There is that word "ecumenical" again --- "new enterprises in ecumenical co-operation." No, they shall not be derailed by whatever ECUSA chooses to do on its own. For the Covenant process represents a mutual desire for accountability in Communion --- the exact opposite of what General Convention expressed in its "me, me" Resolutions D025 and C 056:
The Covenant proposals of recent years have been a serious attempt to do justice to that aspect of Anglican history that has resisted mere federation. They seek structures that will express the need for mutual recognisability, mutual consultation and some shared processes of decision-making. They are emphatically not about centralisation but about mutual responsibility. They look to the possibility of a freely chosen commitment to sharing discernment (and also to a mutual respect for the integrity of each province, which is the point of the current appeal for a moratorium on cross-provincial pastoral interventions). They remain the only proposals we are likely to see that address some of the risks and confusions already detailed, encouraging us to act and decide in ways that are not simply local.
They have been criticised as 'exclusive' in intent. But their aim is not to shut anyone out – rather, in words used last year at the Lambeth Conference, to intensify existing relationships.
Only those who demand that their way be accepted by everyone else could feel "excluded" by the talk of an Anglican Covenant. For the Covenant will be an expression of what Anglicans have in common, and not of what is driving them apart. But there is to be, as yet, no talk of throwing anybody out --- the Covenant is not in final form yet, and so ECUSA will have one last chance to sign on if it chooses:
It is possible that some will not choose this way of intensifying relationships, though I pray that it will be persuasive. It would be a mistake to act or speak now as if those decisions had already been made – and of course approval of the final Covenant text is still awaited. For those whose vision is not shaped by the desire to intensify relationships in this particular way, or whose vision of the Communion is different, there is no threat of being cast into outer darkness – existing relationships will not be destroyed that easily.
And if ECUSA refuses to sign it? There still will be no final moment for its role in the Communion --- it will just shift slightly, to a non-covenanted level:
But it means that there is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a 'covenanted' Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with 'covenanted' provinces.This has been called a 'two-tier' model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure. But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a 'two-track' model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure. If those who elect this model do not take official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the 'covenanted' body participates, this is simply because within these processes there has to be clarity about who has the authority to speak for whom.
(Note that the Archbishop speaks again of certain disqualification from "official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes . . .". UPDATE: Bishop Epting coincidentally just put up a post in which he confirms that ECUSA is laying off his "Associate for ecumenical relations." To that small extent, at least, ECUSA and Archbishop Williams seem to be on the same track.)
This is classic Rowan Williams --- the "peace negotiator" I described in this earlier post. Doing whatever is necessary to keep everyone at the table, even if it is a two-tiered one, and even if only those at the upper tier are qualified to represent the Communion in ecumenical interchanges, he blames no one, criticizes no one, but simply describes where their actions will take the group as a whole, and what sort of picture will result. As Giles Fraser puts it in a passage I quoted in the post just linked:
To put it at its starkest: peace is better than truth. Of course, this is not a description that advocates of this position would recognize. In typically Hegelian fashion, they reject the suggestion that peace and truth stand in opposition to one another. This is why, when the Archbishop is charged with sacrificing truth for unity, as he often is, his comeback has consistently been that unity is a means by which truth is made visible, that we come to truth through the process of uniting conversation. In other words the 'struggle to conceive of a structural wholeness nuanced enough to contain what appeared to be contradictories' applies even to the apparent antithesis of truth and peace.
Thus, in the remainder of his response, Dr. Williams begins to spell out the consequences of ECUSA's marching to its own drummer. In considering what follows (and what has preceded it), one has to bear in mind that he is just the Archbishop of Canterbury, and not the Pope. He may be a metropolitan within the Church of England, but within the wider Communion he has no powers save that of moral suasion, and the power to withhold invitations to Lambeth and to the Primates' Meeting. And finally, one has to bear in mind that British custom and etiquette demand that he leave unsaid what he really means to say. If the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies are not able to read between the lines, he will wait until the next occasion presents itself to make things a little clearer. For the present, however, he is content to offer one last carrot, and one last stick. First, the carrot, i.e., an indirect message to ECUSA's Bishops that should they want to consider some sort of action in September that would make clear their intention not to agree to any more elections or consecrations that could threaten the wider Communion, then he certainly would be receptive to it (bold emphasis added):
It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are – two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion. It should not need to be said that a competitive hostility between the two would be one of the worst possible outcomes, and needs to be clearly repudiated. The ideal is that both 'tracks' should be able to pursue what they believe God is calling them to be as Church, with greater integrity and consistency. It is right to hope for and work for the best kinds of shared networks and institutions of common interest that could be maintained as between different visions of the Anglican heritage. And if the prospect of greater structural distance is unwelcome, we must look seriously at what might yet make it less likely.
And then the stick --- not overt, mind you; just a gentle hint at what he might decide to do in order to accommodate dissenting dioceses who want to subscribe to the Covenant, even if ECUSA does not:
It is my strong hope that all the provinces will respond favourably to the invitation to Covenant. But in the current context, the question is becoming more sharply defined of whether, if a province declines such an invitation, any elements within it will be free (granted the explicit provision that the Covenant does not purport to alter the Constitution or internal polity of any province) to adopt the Covenant as a sign of their wish to act in a certain level of mutuality with other parts of the Communion. It is important that there should be a clear answer to this question.
Might this last bit even be an indirect signal to ACNA? A means, in short, for it to cross the threshold of the Communion without having to go through the bureaucratic obstacles of the ACC? (Remember, the goal is to keep everyone at the table.) It certainly will be interesting at General Synod next February when the motion to recognize ACNA comes to the floor. (Hint to ECUSA's Bishops: read carrot again, then read stick, and then carrot once more.)
The ball thus is returned to ECUSA's court --- but with a precatory spin added to its trajectory:
All of this is to do with becoming the Church God wants us to be, for the better proclamation of the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ. It would be a great mistake to see the present situation as no more than an unhappy set of tensions within a global family struggling to find a coherence that not all its members actually want. Rather, it is an opportunity for clarity, renewal and deeper relation with one another – and so also with Our Lord and his Father, in the power of the Spirit. To recognise different futures for different groups must involve mutual respect for deeply held theological convictions. Thus far in Anglican history we have (remarkably) contained diverse convictions more or less within a unified structure. If the present structures that have safeguarded our unity turn out to need serious rethinking in the near future, this is not the end of the Anglican way and it may bring its own opportunities. Of course it is problematic; and no-one would say that new kinds of structural differentiation are desirable in their own right. But the different needs and priorities identified by different parts of our family, and in the long run the different emphases in what we want to say theologically about the Church itself, are bound to have consequences. We must hope that, in spite of the difficulties, this may yet be the beginning of a new era of mission and spiritual growth for all who value the Anglican name and heritage.
Amen, Dr. Williams. We in the traditional wing of the Episcopal Church must hope, indeed.
[UPDATE 07/29/2009: In a move that some have suggested might even have been "choreographed", the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has come out with a statement in support of the Archbishop's ecumenical reflections. Others, like the Very Rev. Nicholas Knisely, blogging at Entangled States, have picked up on ++Rowan's aspirations to keep the Anglican Communion in meaningful conversation with Rome.]
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Fresno Court Decision Examined
The ruling by the Fresno Superior Court in the San Joaquin case has now been put online (by another remnant Diocese, naturally), so it is possible to do a more detailed examination of its reasoning, which lay people can follow. (One of the disadvantages of Blogger as a host site is that it does not yet allow the uploading of Adobe Acrobat documents.) Moreover, there is (as I predicted) so much trumpeting of the case by the Episcoleft as a "final, definitive and authoritative adjudication" of the issues that I feel compelled to put the matter into a better legal perspective --- again, for the lay person who wonders what all the fuss is about.
First of all, as to the "finality" of the decision: it is anything but "final". It is a ruling on a "motion for summary adjudication" --- that is, a motion claiming that there are no disputed issues of fact needing a trial --- on one cause of action in a second amended complaint, which is no longer operative, because that version has been superseded by what is now the fourth amended complaint, and which has seven causes of action.
Thus in the first place, the ruling has to do with a pleading that no longer even counts in the case. As I explained in my earlier post on the subject, that makes the decision irrelevant --- even though the court itself at the moment does not agree. But it is just the court assigned to the case for law and motion purposes, and is not necessarily the court that will actually try the case. (The master calendar judge of the Fresno Superior Court will assign a trial judge only when the case comes up for trial, and his assignment will depend on which judge has a calendar clear enough at that time to handle a two-to-three-week trial.)
As an interim ruling, and not a final decision, it is subject to modification, or even reversal, at any time up to the entry of final judgment. Moreover, the decision is not binding at all on the defendant law firm of Wild, Carter and Tipton, because they were added as defendants by the third amended complaint, and this ruling deals with the second amended complaint. So the defendant law firm will, notwithstanding the ruling, be able to offer evidence at the trial to the effect that ECUSA is not hierarchical with respect to its Dioceses.
So with that out of the way, let's proceed to the ruling itself, and see how it has been put together, and how well it stands up to an examination of its reasoning.
In ruling on a motion for summary judgment or summary adjudication, the court must "consider all of the evidence' and all of the 'inferences' reasonably drawn there from and must view such evidence and such inferences 'in the light most favorable to the opposing party." (Aguilar v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (2001) 25 Cal.4th 826, 843.) In making this determination, courts usually follow a three-prong analysis: identifying the issues as framed by the pleadings . . .
Now let us look at how the court follows the first step it acknowledges, namely, to "identify the issues as framed by the [now irrelevant and superseded] pleadings . . .": First it states the question involved:
Defendants argue that the issue of whether the relationship between an Episcopal diocese and the Episcopal General Convention is one of first impression [i.e., meaning that no cases have previously decided this issue]. It is true that cases regarding the Episcopal Church have involved the relationship between parishes and their dioceses. However, it is beyond dispute that the Episcopal Church is a hierarchical church.
Well, now, that's a nice way to go about your task, isn't it? State what your view of the ultimate issue is before you get around to looking at any of the evidence. Acknowledge that it is a question that has never been decided before, and then decide it --- just like that! Now, of course, follow that up with your authority for making such a statement --- and be sure to cite as authority those very cases you just acknowledged did not decide this particular question:
Both the California Supreme Court in In Re: Episcopal Church Cases and the appellate court in New v. Kroeger found it to be so. (In Re: Episcopal Church Cases, supra, 45 Cal.4th at p. 494; New v. Kroeger, supra, 167 Cal.App.4th 816-817.)
Oh, really? One might have thought, from what was said earlier, that those cases involved the relationship of individual parishes to a diocese, and not that of a diocese to the Church as a whole, and so were not authority on this issue. Well, if one had thought that, one would simply be wrong, evidently:
The fact that the Supreme Court and the Fourth District were ultimately analyzing the actions of a parish, rather than the actions of a diocese, do [sic] not invalidate the findings regarding the nature of the Church as a whole.
Now that certainly follows from the premise, doesn't it? Let me restate the argument just made in classical Aristotelian form:
A. (Major premise) Whether the Episcopal Church (USA) is hierarchical in respect to an individual diocese has never been decided by the courts before.
B. (Minor premise) Two California courts, however, decided that the relationship of a diocese to a parish was hierarchical.
C. (Conclusion) Therefore, it is "beyond question" that the Church must be hierarchical as to one of its dioceses.
Yes, that clears it up --- all nice and logical, isn't it? Let's look at how the court now justifies its conclusion, by citing to the plaintiffs' evidence on the point:
Moreover, and more importantly, a review of the Constitution and Canons of the Church indicates that it is indeed hierarchical.The Episcopal Church's Constitution provides for the establishment of a General Convention composed of two houses, the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, each with the right to originate and propose legislation. (Mullin Decl. Exhibit 1, Constitution of Episcopal Church Article I, Sec. 1.) Among the duties of the General Convention is the enactment and amendment of the Canons. (See Mullin Decl. Exhibit 1, Canons of Episcopal Church Title I, Canon I, sec. (2) (n) (3), Title V, Canon I, Sec. 1.) The General Convention approves and consents to the admission of new dioceses and the election of new bishops. (Mullin Decl. Exhibit I, Constitution of Episcopal Church Article II, Sec. 2, Article V, Sec. 1.) Currently, new dioceses must express "unqualified accession to the Constitution and Canons" before they can be in union with the general convention and admitted to the Episcopal Church. (Mullin Decl. Exhibit 1, Constitution of Episcopal Church Article V, Sec. 1.)
Why, it is now just so absolutely clear, isn't it? There are two houses in the Church's legislature, and the legislature adopts rules (canons) and admits new dioceses! And those new dioceses (but not the Diocese of San Joaquin, which was admitted well before the Constitution was amended in 1982) have to express an "unqualified" accession to the Constitution and Canons, too. (Ignore the fact for the moment that the Diocese of San Joaquin did not accede to the Canons, but only to the Constitution. We'll get to that later.) So the Church must be hierarchical --- because (today, but not earlier) you have to say that you join it without any reservations!
Well, that's what the plaintiffs' evidence says. So what about the defendants' evidence? (Remember the very first rule acknowledged by the Court in dealing with summary judgment motions [see first quote above]: the court must "consider all of the evidence".) And how does the court proceed to follow that rule? Why, simply by excluding the defendants' evidence, that's how:
Defendant's attempt to dispute the hierarchical nature of the Episcopal Church with the declaration of Rev. Wantland is unavailing. His declaration as to the nature of the Church is an inadmissible opinion and a legal conclusion. "[It] is thoroughly established that experts may not give opinions on matters which are essentially within the province of the court to decide." (Carter v. City of Los Angeles (1945) 67 Ca1.App.2d 524, 528.)
Again, one might have thought the court had just admitted Dr. Mullin's expert evidence on the very same issue. One would have been mistaken. Apparently citing to Dr. Mullin's declaration is not the same thing as considering it. Or maybe it is that when a court first proceeds to decide the issue before looking at any of the evidence, then it needs to look at and cite just that evidence which supports the conclusion it reached beforehand. Yes, that must be it; that must be how a court proceeds to make a decision in accordance with the rules stated at the outset above.
Nor is the hierarchical nature of the church something to be determined on a "case by case basis" or based on a showing of the powers and authority ceded to the general Church by the various constituent Dioceses, as defendants have argued. The hierarchical nature of the Church is apparent from its governing documents as a matter of law.
Not supposed to look at "the powers and authority ceded to the general Church by the various constituent Dioceses", are we? But the court said this just three paragraphs earlier:
A hierarchical church is one in which individual churches are organized as a body with other churches having similar faith and doctrine, and with a common ruling convocation or ecclesiastical head vested with ultimate ecclesiastical authority over the individual congregations and members of the entire organized church. (New v. Kroeger (2009) 167 Cal.App.4th 800, 815 (New).) In a hierarchical church, an individual local congregation that affiliates with the national church body becomes a member of a much larger and more important religious organization, under its government and control, and bound by its orders and judgments.
So how is one supposed to determine the nature of the relationship between the Dioceses and the Church if one does not look at "the powers and authority [they] ceded to the general Church"? Oh, remember: one does not look at the "powers and authority they gave up"; one looks at the powers of the national Church as expressed in the Church's governing documents. Yes, it all becomes quite clear now, if we again put the syllogism into Aristotelian form:
A. (Major premise) To be termed "hierarchical", a Church must be governed by a religious organization which is "much larger and more important" than any individual local congregation.
B. (Minor premise) To determine if that is the case, one looks just at what the Church's governing documents say, and not at what powers the individual members gave up in creating the national organization, or at the powers they retained (such as the right to amend their own Constitution).
C. (Conclusion) Therefore, if the governing documents say there is a religious organization which is "much larger and more important" than any individual Diocese on its own (which must, for these purposes, be considered as identical to a "local congregation"), we don't have to look at the powers retained by the individual Dioceses.
Or, stated in other terms, the fact that the governing documents spell out that General Convention is "much larger and more important" than any one Diocese is sufficient on its own to determine the issue.
Once again, it all becomes perfectly clear when the logic of the argument is laid out for anyone to see. And what is that bit about "bound by its orders and judgments"? One must have missed the language in ECUSA's Constitution where it says: "This Constitution, and the Canons and other Enactments of General Convention which shall be made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme Law of the Church; and the several Dioceses in each State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in their Constitutions or Canons to the Contrary notwithstanding." So that explains why, when General Convention enacted Canon III.9.6 (a), requiring equal licensing of priests for women as well as men, and then later amended it to require the same for all persons without regard to their sexual orientation, all the Church's Dioceses immediately began to employ women and gay priests. And that is why Bishop Lamb himself is free to offer communion to the unbaptized, notwithstanding the language of Canon I.17.7 stating that Holy Communion is only for those who have been baptized.
Yes, it all becomes perfectly clear, now --- the Episcopal Church (USA) must be hierarchical, because its Constitution says so. We cannot be troubled to look at any evidence (other than the plaintiffs', of course, which happens to agree with us) --- that might confuse things, and one must have clarity, not confusion. Ah, but we are not done with the legal argument just yet. We still have to deal with that pesky fact that the Diocese of San Joaquin never agreed to abide by or accede to ECUSA's Canons:
Although defendants make much over the fact that the Diocese acceded only to the Constitution, and not the Canons of the Episcopal Church, the court finds that the only reasonable interpretation of the documents before it is that the Diocese implicitly acceded to both the Constitution and Canons by virtue to acceding to the Constitution. The function of the Constitution is to form a legislative body, the General Convention. The General Convention adopted and amends the Canons. Acceding to the Constitution that creates the legislative body, and recognizing the authority of the legislative body, while simultaneously denying accession to the product of the legislative body is nonsensical.
Once again, this needs to be put in the form of a syllogism so the logic of it may be appreciated:
A. (Major premise) The function of a legislative body like General Convention is to make Canons.
B. (Minor premise) A Diocese which accedes to the document creating the legislative body must thereby also accede to the product of that legislative body, i.e., the Canons in this case.
C. (Conclusion) Therefore the requirement that a new Diocese accede to the Constitution and the Canons of the Church is superfluous. By acceding to the Constitution, one necessarily accedes to the Canons as well.
Apparently the court had its own undisclosed reasons for refusing to follow this principle of contractual interpretation, as expressed in Section 1641 of the California Civil Code:
§ 1641. Whole contract, effect to be given
Effect to be given to every part of contract. The whole of a contract is to be taken together, so as to give effect to every part, if reasonably practicable, each clause helping to interpret the other.
Under that statute, the words "accession . . . to the Canons" have to have a meaning that is separate and apart from the meaning of the words "accession to the Constitution." But no longer. The latter now means the same as the former. Thus ECUSA no longer has to worry about the fourteen Dioceses that were like San Joaquin, and never acceded to the Canons upon joining the Church. (Maybe it doesn't have to worry about the twenty-nine Dioceses that never acceded to either, as well. That is some hierarchy.)
And what about the meaning of the word "accede"? As defined in the dictionary, it means "to agree to, to accept". And as used in the world of treaties, it means "to sign on to, or to accept." Thus many countries have acceded to the Charter of the United Nations. But it has never been implied from that act that a nation could not ever withdraw its accession. (The Charter, like the Constitution of ECUSA, is silent on the subject of member withdrawal.) Moreover, the United Nations fits the court's definition of a hierarchical organization, because its General Assembly is "much larger and more important" than any one single member country. But if that is the case, how is it that a country can withdraw from the United Nations on its own (as Indonesia did on January 7, 1965)? And why are not the resolutions of General Assembly binding on its member nations, such as Iraq under Saddam Hussein?
For the Fresno Superior Court, "accede" appears to have a peculiar and special meaning. In the court's view, accede means "agree forever", "to sign on to for all time":
Defendants contend that there was no legal impediment to their 2006 amendment qualifying the accession clause such that they acceded to the Episcopal Church's Constitution only to the extent that it was not inconsistent with the Constitution and Canons of the Diocese, as amended from time to time and further this 2006 amendment allowed for the 2008 amendment deleting the accession clause entirely and withdrawing from the Episcopal Church. Defendants are incorrect. The original accession clause itself prevents such amendment. If the Constitution of the Diocese incorporates and accedes to the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church, which require accession, then the Constitution of the Diocese cannot be amended to remove such language.
One wonders where this reading of the word came from, other than from the briefs of ECUSA's attorneys. To quote the California Civil Code again:
§ 1644. Sense of words
Words to be understood in usual sense. The words of a contract are to be understood in their ordinary and popular sense, rather than according to their strict legal meaning; unless used by the parties in a technical sense, or unless a special meaning is given to them by usage, in which case the latter must be followed.
The court cannot be using the word in a technical sense, or in a special meaning given to it by usage, because both of those senses would require expert testimony to explain the special meaning, or the particular usage. And that would mean that it was an issue of fact, not decidable as a question of law. So it is puzzling to think how the court could be using the word "accede" in its "ordinary and popular sense." Under that sense, a person can freely change his mind about giving his consent, and can withdraw next week from that to which he accedes today.
The court's puzzling opinion goes on to find that it is immaterial that the Episcopal Church did not follow its own rules in electing Bishop Lamb:
Defendants contend that there was no proper notice of the March 29, 2008 special convention at which Lamb was elected. It is true that there is no competent evidence that 30 days notice of the meeting was given. Hall's declaration only establishes that he received the notice on March 2, 2008. (Decl. Hall ¶ 20; Exhibit 9.) He did not mail the notice. It is undated. Defendants also contend that the deposition of Schofield was contrary to Church policy, procedure and law. However, we may not look into the propriety of the election and deposition of church officers according to church regulations and rules.
Thus according to the Court, the Diocese of San Joaquin must follow the rules, and the Court will inquire into whether it did so in withdrawing from the Church. But the Court will not inquire into whether ECUSA itself, or the Diocese's successor did so --- that would be a forbidden inquiry into matters of church polity. So the question naturally suggests itself: Why is the withdrawal of a Diocese not a "forbidden question of church polity" every bit as much as the recognition of a new one? One will look in vain in the court's ruling for an answer to that question. Logic does not appear to be the rule in this particular domain.
In fact, one of the cases cited by the court, Vukovich v. Radulovich (1991) 235 Cal.App.3d 281, would appear to be contrary to the very ruling made by the court in the present case. In Vukovich, the Court of Appeal affirmed a trial court's decision that it could not interfere in the decision of a disaffiliated church to rejoin the mother church. It said that was a forbidden issue of church doctrine and polity. But the decision of a Diocese to leave the mother church, apparently, is not such an issue. Go figure.
The court's most striking departure from the rules of logic, however, is reserved for this observation:
Defendants claim that the corporation sole that is a party plaintiff is not the true corporation sole known as No. C0066488, the latter of which they claim to operate. Defendants are incorrect for the reasons previously expressed above. The Diocese of San Joaquin (plaintiffs) is not a new organization that "split off" from defendants' older organization. It is the older organization from which defendants' removed themselves.
The dissenters, however --- seven parishes and 21 clergy --- had to come together in their own special assembly, sign a special "oath of conformity" to ECUSA in order to participate, and then they proceeded to vote to "undo" the changes that were made by the majority at the earlier meeting. As the court admits, the dissenters did not follow the rules of the group's Constitution in so assembling, and came together without lawful notice having been given. Under any version of Roberts Rules except the one apparently invented by ECUSA and Bishop Lamb, their meeting was, therefore, null and void. And despite that fact, the court treats the ones who broke their own laws as the continuation of the older group --- again, because ECUSA waves its magic wand and "recognizes" them as such.
One is entitled to be very confused here. At the outset of its opinion, the court claimed that it was applying "neutral principles": that it would look only at "the deeds to the property in dispute, the local church's articles of incorporation, the general church's constitution, canon, and rules . . .". Here, however, we see the court deliberately ignoring the church's Constitution and canons, and saying that because it is a church, ECUSA and whoever it recognizes as a "diocese" get to do whatever they like, whether it is in accord with the Constitution and canons, or not.
But no one contends that Bishop Schofield's Diocese is not a church as well. So why the double standard? Why does the court find that by withdrawing, Bishop Schofield's Diocese failed to follow the proper procedures, but that by staying, Bishop Lamb's Diocese did not have to follow any procedures whatsoever? What is going on here makes no sense.
It will be up to the Court of Appeal for the Fifth Appellate District --- not the one that decided In re: Episcopal Church Cases, or New v. Kroeger, but the one that decided California-Nevada Annual Conference of United Methodist Church v. St. Luke's United Methodist Church (2004) 121 Cal.App.4th 754 --- to set things right, whether now or at the end of the whole case.
And note, please, that the California Supreme Court's decision is not binding in this matter, either. As regards ECUSA, it was simply a decision that overruled the defendants' demurrer to ECUSA's complaint. Thus it was describing the law that would apply if ECUSA proves the allegations in its complaint --- such as that it is the hierarchical church it claims to be. The allegations in ECUSA's complaint in the Fresno case are necessarily different from those involving the parish of St. James in the Newport Beach case, except for the claim to be hierarchical. ECUSA will still have to prove that is the case in its Newport Beach lawsuit, and if the Court of Appeals corrects Judge Corona's decision as it should, then ECUSA will have to prove it in Fresno as well.
In the meantime, it would be helpful to public discussion if people recognized that (a) the ruling by the Fresno Superior Court is not final; hence (b) it is not authoritative; and hence (c) it cannot serve as a precedent for any other court, in California or elsewhere.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Friday TED Talk: Nina Jablonski on Skin Color
In this talk from the February 2009 TED Conference, anthropologist Nina Jablonski rehearses the simple correlation between skin color and exposure to the sun. Charles Darwin had alluded to this as a factor in the evolution of skin color, but as Prof. Jablonski explains, he lacked access to the definitive kind of data that NASA could provide, and so was reluctant to publish it as a conjecture:
You may read more about Nina Jablonski here; there is information about the book she has written on this topic here. A transcript of an interview she gave to TED is here. The high-res version of her talk is here, and you may download the talk in other versions from this page.
The TED Global2009 Conference just finished, and there were some truly marvelous talks which I plan to feature as the videos are put up on the TED site. (Right now, the only one available is the talk by Gordon Brown which I featured earlier this week.)
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Brace Yourselves in San Joaquin - Sound and Fury Follows
Word has just been received that the Fresno County Superior Court has affirmed its earlier tentative ruling granting the plaintiff ECUSA's and Bishop Jerry Lamb's motion for summary adjudication of the first cause of action in their second amended complaint. The court issued its final ruling after having held the matter under submission for 77 days. The court heard extensive oral arguments on the motion on May 5, after having postponed the hearing six times since February 25 until it issued its tentative decision in the plaintiffs' favor. (As an informal indication of how impartial the decision is, note that the court sustained [upheld] every one of the plaintiffs' objections to the evidence offered by Bishop Schofield, while it overruled all twenty-one of Bishop Schofield's objections to the plaintiffs' evidence. It also reversed its tentative ruling made at the hearing to keep out the last-minute declarations filed by Bishops Lamb and Buchanan to cover gaps they had left in their original evidence. It allowed that evidence in, and said it did not need to hear the defendants' evidence, or give them any chance to respond.)
By law, the court was required to render its decision within 90 days of May 5, or by Monday, August 3. (Unlike the case with the State's legislators and their duty to enact a budget by July 1 of each year, if a judge cannot certify that all matters submitted to him within the last 90 days have been decided, he cannot draw his paycheck.) The lengthy period between hearing and final decision appears not to have been used to modify the court's earlier ruling to any great extent. (The ruling does not affect the case against Bishop Schofield's attorneys, who were added as defendants after the plaintiffs filed their motion.)
Surprisingly, the court's decision to grant the motion is no longer the bad piece of news it would have been had it happened on February 25, or shortly thereafter. I write this post immediately after receiving word of the court's ruling, in order to forestall the impact of the trumpet-blaring from Bishop Lamb, his supporters, and the Episcoleft blogworld that will now inevitably follow.
The reason why the ruling is not bad news for the defendants any longer is quite simple: the case itself has moved on. The parties are no longer concerned with the second amended complaint, which was the subject of the court's ruling. The plaintiffs have now filed, and the Schofield defendants have now answered, their fourth amended complaint in this case. That fourth amended complaint contains whole new theories about the alleged collusion between the various defendants (including the Bishop's law firm) to remove property from the Episcopal Church (USA) and its allegedly still-existing diocese.
A motion for summary adjudication of a single cause of action, just like a motion for summary judgment on an entire complaint, is framed by the pleadings that are at issue in the case --- meaning the most current pleadings. It is, therefore, in my view a meaningless act to grant adjudication with regard to the second amended complaint, since it is no longer the operative pleading.
The filing of an amended complaint supersedes any earlier version of it --- even if, as here, the plaintiffs are careful not to change one word in the cause of action under consideration. (The amendments plaintiffs were forced to make all had to do with later causes of action they asserted against Bishop Schofield's attorneys, the law firm of Wild, Carter & Tipton in Fresno.) The fact they did not change anything in their first cause of action (for declaratory relief) is not the end of the matter, however, because the plaintiffs reiterated and incorporated the allegations of that first cause of action in all the subsequent causes of action as well. And as just noted, plaintiffs have extensively changed and added new theories to those subsequent causes of action, which are each based on the first. Likewise, Bishop Schofield has not remained pat, either. His latest answer to the fourth amended complaint contains new defenses (against all causes of action, not just the first) which were not asserted in response to the earlier complaints.
So the case has passed the motion for summary adjudication by, and for all intents and purposes, that motion was moot when the court finally acted on it. There is even at least one reported California decision (note: you may have to register with Findlaw to view the link) which expressly holds that it is reversible error for a trial court to grant summary adjudication on a first amended complaint after it has granted leave to file a second amended one. In Perry v. Atkinson (1987) 195 Cal.App.3d 14, 16-17, the court's opinion described the proceedings below as follows:
The court describes how the plaintiff Perry did her best to try to get the court to recognize that its ruling on the earlier complaint was moot, and how the court tried to cover its tracks by then --- without any notice or motion --- granting summary adjudication on the same cause of action in the second amended complaint, on the ground that it had not changed from how it was pled in the first amended complaint:
The Court of Appeals then gave its view of such proceedings in no uncertain language (195 Cal.App.3d at 18):
As to Perry's first amended complaint, Atkinson moved for summary judgment or alternatively summary adjudication of issues. Before the hearing on Atkinson's motions, Perry filed a second amended complaint, adding allegations of physical harm and further facts regarding her confidential relationship with Atkinson. Atkinson demurred to Perry's second amended complaint.After hearing, the court rendered its written decision, denying Atkinson's motion for summary judgment as to Perry's cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and granting Atkinson's motion for summary adjudication as to the fraud and deceit cause of action. . . .
Perry contends the court erred in granting summary adjudication of issues as to her first amended complaint because her second amended complaint superseded the first. She asserts once the court sustained the demurrer without leave to amend, it had nothing to summarily adjudicate as to that cause of action.Perry filed her first amended complaint on September 22, 1982, and her second amended complaint, with the court's permission, on July 24, 1985. The court heard Atkinson's summary judgment motion to Perry's first amended complaint on September 27, 1985 and took the matter under submission. The court issued its memorandum decision on October 3, granting summary adjudication as to Perry's cause of action for fraud and deceit in her first amended complaint. On October 4, the court heard Atkinson's demurrer to the fraud and deceit cause of action in her second amended complaint, but ruled that issue was moot in light of its memorandum decision granting summary adjudication.On October 15, Perry filed a motion for reconsideration, arguing, in part, the summary adjudication was improper because the first amended complaint had been superseded by the second. On October 28, the court issued two orders: one granting summary adjudication of the fraud and deceit cause of action in Perry's first and second amended complaints and another sustaining without leave to amend Atkinson's demurrer to the fraud and deceit cause of action in Perry's second amended complaint. On November 1, the court denied Perry's reconsideration motion. . . .
We agree with Perry the court improperly granted summary adjudication as to the fraud and deceit cause of action in her first amended complaint. The record reflects the court granted Perry leave to file her second amended complaint with respect to her causes of action for fraud and deceit and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Once Perry did so, that complaint superseded her first amended complaint. [Citations omitted.] Thus, we treat the summary adjudication order as void . . . .
Defendants attempted to call this situation to the attention of the trial court, but it rejected defendants' argument and held the Perry case inapplicable on the ground that the San Joaquin plaintiffs, unlike Perry, had not changed any of the allegations in the cause of action on which summary adjudication was granted. Thus the defendants will now file a petition with the Court of Appeals to have the order vacated. This petition will be based on the ground that, as the Perry case just quoted decides, the motion had become moot in the interim while further versions of the operative pleadings were being filed. It will also be argued that the court's decision is wrong for all of the reasons discussed in two of my earlier posts (here and here).
With regard to the merits of the matter, the trial court in essence decided that ECUSA is hierarchical as a matter of law. But it did so by refusing to consider any of the defendants' expert evidence on the point, and ruled that evidence inadmissible. At the same time, it allowed in and did consider the evidence of the plaintiffs' expert, Dr. Mullin. We are once again in a never-never land of ECUSA's own making, in which it convinces a court to look only at what it says, and not at anything the defendants have to say. That is not the way a court is supposed to adjudicate cases. It has a duty to hear and consider the evidence of both sides before making a ruling, even on a point of law. The only way it could find ECUSA to be hierarchical as a matter of law would be if it found that the expert opinion on both sides raised no disputed issues of fact. But since it excluded all of the defendants' evidence, it cannot even claim to have made such a determination. Such an arbitrary manner of proceeding, which overwhelmingly favors the plaintiffs and gives the defendants no chance to be heard, will be the defendants' strongest reason for asking the appellate court to reverse the trial court's decision.
Most intermediate (interlocutory) petitions to the Courts of Appeal are denied, and this one could be as well, if the Court of Appeal in this instance decides that the case can still go to trial without the issue being prejudiced for an appeal at the end of the whole case. But if the Court of Appeal grants the petition and issues the writ vacating the order, the scheduled trial date --- currently February 1, 2010 --- will have to be moved still further out because of the time taken for the writ proceedings on appeal. (The parties cannot effectively engage expert witnesses and prepare for trial until they know for certain just which causes of action will be tried.)
Thus this "victory" for the plaintiffs on their motion is, in my view, a hollow one. Just ignore all the trumpet-blaring and cheering (or jeering) from the Episcoleft. It is all "sound and fury, signifying nothing . . .". Their victory will in all likelihood not stand for long, and will serve only to drag the case out still further. And since the plaintiff faux diocese of San Joaquin is far from being self-sustaining, and will need yet more cash infusions from the mother church (itself struggling to make up for lost revenues) to keep going, any such extension will not long be cause for rejoicing on that side, once the reality of what has actually happened sinks in.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Gordon Brown at TED: Political Heresy Equal to +Schori's
There was a surprise appearance yesterday afternoon by Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the TED Global 2009 Conference here in Oxford. He spoke entirely extemporaneously (i.e., without a script or teleprompter), and showed the extensive knowledge and ability to make a point with a story or a reference to history for which he is noted. (Americans by now should be starved for this style of oratory.)
However, he also revealed the mindset of a consummate politician: "Things need fixing all right, and we can do this by changing our institutions. We'll start with the United Nations and the IMF. We're all world citizens now. We can adopt a one-world currency and a empower a World Bank [not said in so many words; you have to listen between the lines]. Then we can all do what is necessary [sc. "print more money"] to get our way out of the current mess." For all of his smoothness, and seeming capability, that exudes from the talk below, ask yourself as you watch and listen: how does this man's proposed program for the world's current ills differ from that of President Obama's?
(When TED puts it up, you may watch the high-res video of his talk from this link.)
I find it remarkable that there have been two global gatherings of approximately the same size in the last two weeks --- one at Anaheim, and one here at Oxford --- at which the same message has been featured: one from the religious side, and one from the secular. The message from Presiding Bishop Schori in her opening sermon was: "We're all in this together. Ubuntu --- I in you and you in me makes we. The idea that any individual can save himself is the great Western heresy." Echo Gordon Brown, from the secular point of view.
What is the matter with this message, from my humble point of view, is that it is the common theme among all great collectivist leaders. "You can't do this on your own! For the good of all, you must subsume your identity into the greater identity of all." It is a call to leadership from the top down. "Trust us, your leaders. We know what we're doing, and if you simply let us run things, we'll get you to where we all want/need to go."
I can draw no greater a contrast with this top-down message than by showing you the video below, made by a wonderful speaker, Mark Johnson, who followed Gordon Brown and, as the last act for the day, was the perfect antidote to the former's speech. This video, part of Mark Johnson's Playing for Change program, shows how powerful a message truly can be when it comes from the bottom up. Mark explained (the video of his talk at TED is not yet available, but you can watch an introduction of his purpose and methods at the site I just linked) how he heard Roger Ridley's performance of the song that starts the video, and had the brainstorm of taking his recording studio to the street, instead of bringing the performer into the studio. Then he took the music he had recorded and shared it, one by one, with other musicians of all stripes and colors around the world, each one adding his or her (or their, in the case of groups) own heart-felt contribution to what they heard through the headphones. The resulting mix he finally obtained is simply inspiring (the video below has been watched, in its various forms, over 30,000,000 times). It shows the true way of making ubuntu --- "Stand by Me":
Monday, July 20, 2009
No One Is Minding the Store
The following video is disturbing, to say the least. On the surface, it presents a straightforward picture that the Fed is careening out of control, and that the Inspector-General assigned to its oversight has not a clue as to what is going on:
That is disturbing enough. But what makes the video really disturbing is that the Congressman cannot answer his own question. The branch of government which has the primary responsibility for overseeing the Federal Reserve is not its Inspector-General's office, but Congress itself. All I see is that one Congressman has the ability to read the news and ask questions so as to embarrass a witness, who admittedly is clueless to begin with. ("Off-balance-sheet transactions? I'm afraid I haven't read the Bloomberg story to which you are referring.")
That is disturbing enough. But what makes the video really disturbing is that the Congressman cannot answer his own question. The branch of government which has the primary responsibility for overseeing the Federal Reserve is not its Inspector-General's office, but Congress itself. All I see is that one Congressman has the ability to read the news and ask questions so as to embarrass a witness, who admittedly is clueless to begin with. ("Off-balance-sheet transactions? I'm afraid I haven't read the Bloomberg story to which you are referring.")
As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke heads to Capitol Hill for two days of testimony beginning this morning, there will be no want of opportunity to question him. But without any meaningful regulatory oversight of the Fed's operations, Congress is pretty much forced to accept whatever answers he wants to give.
For example, in a foretaste of his testimony, Mr. Bernanke has published an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal. In it, he supposedly provides an answer to the question of whether the Fed will be able to apply the brakes in time to prevent run-away inflation. I say "supposedly", because if you read it closely, you will find that the methods he proposes to stop inflation all involve more flim-flam with paper money. Either he prints more money out of thin air to pay the banks interest on the reserves he earlier loaned them (yes, you read that right --- the Fed loans the banks money, which they turn around and invest at the Fed, which pays them interest), or the Treasury sells debt obligations to the public and "invests" the proceeds at the Fed, or the Fed itself sells some of its huge inventory of largely worthless securities and keeps the proceeds in its own account. All three methods involve transferring some of the "money" held by the banks and the public to the vaults of the Fed. This takes it out of circulation, true --- but what we get in place of that paper money is just a different kind of paper money: interest or worthless securities. It's just a never-ending carousel of revolving debt paid for with "money" printed out of thin air.
There are, to be sure, calls to regulate the Fed as it once used to be regulated. (The Wall Street Journal linked above has some useful links to past articles about the history of the struggle by the Fed to win "independence".) But the debate has an unreal character about it that comes from a false dichotomy: either the Fed must be allowed to make up the rules as it goes, without any interference by the politicians, or the politicians must be allowed to curb the Fed according to popular demand. The truth, of course, lies elsewhere; the "debate" is intended only to distract your attention.
Even with 274 or so co-sponsors, Congressman Ron Paul's proposed bill to require a first-ever audit of the Fed has no chance of enactment without Nancy Pelosi's say-so. (Being a "sponsor" of a bill does not mean you will vote for a bill's enactment --- it just means you are in favor of bringing it to the floor for a vote, or want to send a signal of sorts to the Fed --- or to the Administration.) So what is truly scary about the above video is that the Congressman depicted (Rep. Alan Grayson, a Freshman Democrat from Orlando, Florida) is asking all the right questions, but of the wrong person.
And as a freshman, even a Democrat freshman, he won't be given the chance to ask the right person for years. So where is the rest of Congress on this matter? Asleep at the switch, while the train derails. Or actually, not asleep, but in fact providing the worst possible example of how not to run fiscal policy. In fact, while the Fed's off-balance-sheet transactions are skyrocketing and causing tremendous concern over its grasp of monetary policy, Congress is proposing to do even worse with the Treasury's balance sheet --- and thereby demonstrating its utter lack of ability to manage fiscal policy. Take a look at this graph (from the recent testimony of the Director of the Congressional Budget Office --- it runs from 29:30 to 35:30 on the video):
The graph depicts the outstanding debt of the Treasury held by the public (including principally the Chinese) as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product --- the value of all the goods and services produced by Americans --- under two scenarios. The "Baseline Scenario" is with the CBO's current published projections given legislation already enacted. The "Alternative Scenario" is with the bills Congress currently has under consideration (universal health care, cap and trade, second stimulus, etc.). That the two could even be placed side by side is not the joke; it is that the one is labeled "baseline" while the other is labeled "alternative".
Notice that the percentage has never gone as high as 100% since in the aftermath of having to finance World War II, when the economy (in terms of GDP) was only one-sixth of what it is today. And notice, too, how short and steep the peak was in 1949, versus the unknown size of the mountain we are scaling today. The numbers are going off the charts on both the fiscal and the monetary scales, and we are assured that everything is under control.
Pray for your country --- no one is minding the store.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Food for Thought
Some random notes and thoughts to ponder while I am away from blogging for a while (see previous post):
1. It's the end of another week, and there is still no final ruling from the Fresno Superior Court on the motion for summary adjudication filed by Bishop Lamb et al. in the case pending there. If the ruling comes down while I am away, there won't be much to say that has not already been said (check the San Joaquin page in the Guide to This Site). If the court grants the motion, the defendants will have twenty days in which to file a petition in the Court of Appeal to review the ruling; and if the court denies the motion, the parties will conduct a lot of discovery to prepare for the trial scheduled for next February 1.
2. General Convention 2009 will soon be history. All of its accomplishments, great and small, will soon enough end up in another thick, fat book ("Scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?) on my shelf, to be consulted only as absolutely necessary.
3. When so many people ascribe so much importance to a mindlessly ineffectual Resolution such as B033 from GC 2006, something else has to be going on. As I explained in the post linked, both B033 itself and the HoB's affirmation of it at New Orleans in 2007 were a form of political fig leaf to allow both ECUSA and the Archbishop of Canterbury to say to the rest of the Communion: "We/[They] have agreed to play nice, and not break any more rules." (See this latest statement from Fulcrum affirming in detail this same reading of the fig leaf.)
4. But now, with its passage of D025 and C056, GC 2009 and the HoB in particular have pulled off the fig leaf, to everyone's consternation. It is still inaccurate and unhelpful to speak of a "repeal" of B033 --- as long as people continue to do that, the Presiding Bishop and Dr. Anderson will gain traction from saying it did not happen. The best way to describe the effect of D025 and C056 is to say that the "mind of the Convention" has now changed in 2009 from what it was in 2006.
5. With the collective change in mind, the commitment to restraint is now solely on a bishop-by-bishop and standing committee-by-standing committee basis. The confirmation of the election of a practicing LGBT to the episcopate in ECUSA will happen when it happens --- but it will happen; and the blessing and celebration of same-sex unions will continue at a now-quickened pace.
6. The acid test of this outcome, brought to you by Integrity and the other activists in ECUSA, will be what happens to the attendance figures by the time of GC 2012. Susan Russell+ claims the numbers will increase; Father Tim Fountain is already reporting exactly the opposite. We shall see, and the numbers will not lie (unless they change the method of counting by then).
7. The budget for the triennium 2009-12 is reduced by $23 million, but still includes $3 million earmarked for litigation against departing dioceses and bishops, and still more money earmarked for support for the remnant groups who cannot sustain themselves as Dioceses on their own. This is another form of fig leaf, designed to get the budget as a whole voted upon. Over the next 154 weeks until there is another General Convention (reduced from ten days to eight), the Executive Council can rig the numbers any way it wants to. It did this before GC 2009, and it will do it again before GC2012.
8. The thing to notice about the numbers is their trends. The budget is shrinking overall, as are the expected contributions from Dioceses from 2009 to 2012. Meanwhile, the Budget Committee was compelled to increase the item for litigation over the next triennium from $1.8 million to $3 million (plus another $1 million for Title IV "discipline", increased from $300,000), and the financial support required for the remnants to hang on while their litigation is being carried on for them will increase as well. The staff of ECUSA is losing 37 positions, but Goodwin Procter is hiring more attorneys, and the Presiding Bishop is not cutting her own personal litigation consultant --- whom she has to help her in addition to her Chancellor.
9. ECUSA is eating its seed corn while squandering money on litigation it can ill afford, and which will not be resolved for five years, or even longer. The pressure for immediate results in litigation is prompting ECUSA to take ever more extreme positions in court that are at variance with how it actually runs (or fails to run) itself. The dichotomy used to be kept under wraps at 815, but now it is in the open for all to see, and ECUSA's bishops will not be able to sustain the tension it requires for as long as the current litigation will take to resolve.
10. Another major loss in court, such as happened in Virginia, will put enormous pressure on 815 to cut its litigation expenses. People will stop giving money that goes just to pay attorneys to fight a losing battle in court.
11. Theologically speaking, ECUSA is so off in left field that the audience for its fanciful pronouncements is steadily diminishing as well, and will soon be reduced just to the choir of the already convinced. Its message of "inclusion" is seen for what it really is: a wholesale adoption of the current culture. As J. Gresham Machen observed so long ago, the Church has taken on "an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance. . . Without the consciousness of sin, the whole gospel will seem to be an idle tale." Meanwhile its Presiding Bishop is doing her level best to alienate the remaining orthodox, by telling them that they are the heretics (how "inclusive" does that make them feel?).
12. Despite his disappointing track record, I yet hold some hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury will show some backbone. He has followed his own Christian teaching thus far by absorbing blows from left and right in order to keep everyone at the table, still talking. But his absolutely minimal participation in GC 2009 this year, contrary to all precedent, coupled with his unambiguous warning about the General Convention making "decisions in the coming days which will push us further apart", may be interpreted as a sign that he has given up trying to protect ECUSA from the consequences of its actions.
13. To protect his own position in the Church of England, he has to align himself now with the decision of its Synod. The motion there to recognize ACNA will be acted on next February, and the hasty joint letter from the Presiding Bishop and Dr. Anderson may be viewed as an expression of the concern they have that ACNA may indeed be recognized, and their heretofore exclusive Anglican franchise in America declared forfeit.
14. The House of Bishops may try in September one more time to put the fig leaf back on, by adopting some gobbledygook about their "interpretation" of D025 and C056. But once the fig leaf is off, there's no putting it back; its utility has run its course. By definition, a fig leaf works only once.
15. All eyes will be on Lambeth on Monday, to see the text of the promised "statement" in reaction to the events at Anaheim. It will in all likelihood be an anticlimax, because after all, there will be nothing that can be done in the short run. The next true test for Dr. Williams to pass or fail will come at the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC, scheduled for December 15-18, 2009. The Committee, which includes the Presiding Bishop, is supposed to take up the revisions made by the working group announced May 28 to section 4 of the Ridley Draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant. If the Presiding Bishop still has support enough to water down its language to meaninglessness, the death of the Anglican Communion will not be far off. But if she is the one to go away miffed from the meeting, there may be some life to ++Rowan yet.
1. It's the end of another week, and there is still no final ruling from the Fresno Superior Court on the motion for summary adjudication filed by Bishop Lamb et al. in the case pending there. If the ruling comes down while I am away, there won't be much to say that has not already been said (check the San Joaquin page in the Guide to This Site). If the court grants the motion, the defendants will have twenty days in which to file a petition in the Court of Appeal to review the ruling; and if the court denies the motion, the parties will conduct a lot of discovery to prepare for the trial scheduled for next February 1.
2. General Convention 2009 will soon be history. All of its accomplishments, great and small, will soon enough end up in another thick, fat book ("Scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?) on my shelf, to be consulted only as absolutely necessary.
3. When so many people ascribe so much importance to a mindlessly ineffectual Resolution such as B033 from GC 2006, something else has to be going on. As I explained in the post linked, both B033 itself and the HoB's affirmation of it at New Orleans in 2007 were a form of political fig leaf to allow both ECUSA and the Archbishop of Canterbury to say to the rest of the Communion: "We/[They] have agreed to play nice, and not break any more rules." (See this latest statement from Fulcrum affirming in detail this same reading of the fig leaf.)
4. But now, with its passage of D025 and C056, GC 2009 and the HoB in particular have pulled off the fig leaf, to everyone's consternation. It is still inaccurate and unhelpful to speak of a "repeal" of B033 --- as long as people continue to do that, the Presiding Bishop and Dr. Anderson will gain traction from saying it did not happen. The best way to describe the effect of D025 and C056 is to say that the "mind of the Convention" has now changed in 2009 from what it was in 2006.
5. With the collective change in mind, the commitment to restraint is now solely on a bishop-by-bishop and standing committee-by-standing committee basis. The confirmation of the election of a practicing LGBT to the episcopate in ECUSA will happen when it happens --- but it will happen; and the blessing and celebration of same-sex unions will continue at a now-quickened pace.
6. The acid test of this outcome, brought to you by Integrity and the other activists in ECUSA, will be what happens to the attendance figures by the time of GC 2012. Susan Russell+ claims the numbers will increase; Father Tim Fountain is already reporting exactly the opposite. We shall see, and the numbers will not lie (unless they change the method of counting by then).
7. The budget for the triennium 2009-12 is reduced by $23 million, but still includes $3 million earmarked for litigation against departing dioceses and bishops, and still more money earmarked for support for the remnant groups who cannot sustain themselves as Dioceses on their own. This is another form of fig leaf, designed to get the budget as a whole voted upon. Over the next 154 weeks until there is another General Convention (reduced from ten days to eight), the Executive Council can rig the numbers any way it wants to. It did this before GC 2009, and it will do it again before GC2012.
8. The thing to notice about the numbers is their trends. The budget is shrinking overall, as are the expected contributions from Dioceses from 2009 to 2012. Meanwhile, the Budget Committee was compelled to increase the item for litigation over the next triennium from $1.8 million to $3 million (plus another $1 million for Title IV "discipline", increased from $300,000), and the financial support required for the remnants to hang on while their litigation is being carried on for them will increase as well. The staff of ECUSA is losing 37 positions, but Goodwin Procter is hiring more attorneys, and the Presiding Bishop is not cutting her own personal litigation consultant --- whom she has to help her in addition to her Chancellor.
9. ECUSA is eating its seed corn while squandering money on litigation it can ill afford, and which will not be resolved for five years, or even longer. The pressure for immediate results in litigation is prompting ECUSA to take ever more extreme positions in court that are at variance with how it actually runs (or fails to run) itself. The dichotomy used to be kept under wraps at 815, but now it is in the open for all to see, and ECUSA's bishops will not be able to sustain the tension it requires for as long as the current litigation will take to resolve.
10. Another major loss in court, such as happened in Virginia, will put enormous pressure on 815 to cut its litigation expenses. People will stop giving money that goes just to pay attorneys to fight a losing battle in court.
11. Theologically speaking, ECUSA is so off in left field that the audience for its fanciful pronouncements is steadily diminishing as well, and will soon be reduced just to the choir of the already convinced. Its message of "inclusion" is seen for what it really is: a wholesale adoption of the current culture. As J. Gresham Machen observed so long ago, the Church has taken on "an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance. . . Without the consciousness of sin, the whole gospel will seem to be an idle tale." Meanwhile its Presiding Bishop is doing her level best to alienate the remaining orthodox, by telling them that they are the heretics (how "inclusive" does that make them feel?).
12. Despite his disappointing track record, I yet hold some hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury will show some backbone. He has followed his own Christian teaching thus far by absorbing blows from left and right in order to keep everyone at the table, still talking. But his absolutely minimal participation in GC 2009 this year, contrary to all precedent, coupled with his unambiguous warning about the General Convention making "decisions in the coming days which will push us further apart", may be interpreted as a sign that he has given up trying to protect ECUSA from the consequences of its actions.
13. To protect his own position in the Church of England, he has to align himself now with the decision of its Synod. The motion there to recognize ACNA will be acted on next February, and the hasty joint letter from the Presiding Bishop and Dr. Anderson may be viewed as an expression of the concern they have that ACNA may indeed be recognized, and their heretofore exclusive Anglican franchise in America declared forfeit.
14. The House of Bishops may try in September one more time to put the fig leaf back on, by adopting some gobbledygook about their "interpretation" of D025 and C056. But once the fig leaf is off, there's no putting it back; its utility has run its course. By definition, a fig leaf works only once.
15. All eyes will be on Lambeth on Monday, to see the text of the promised "statement" in reaction to the events at Anaheim. It will in all likelihood be an anticlimax, because after all, there will be nothing that can be done in the short run. The next true test for Dr. Williams to pass or fail will come at the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC, scheduled for December 15-18, 2009. The Committee, which includes the Presiding Bishop, is supposed to take up the revisions made by the working group announced May 28 to section 4 of the Ridley Draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant. If the Presiding Bishop still has support enough to water down its language to meaninglessness, the death of the Anglican Communion will not be far off. But if she is the one to go away miffed from the meeting, there may be some life to ++Rowan yet.
Friday TED Talk: Karen Armstrong on the Proper Goal for Religion
The TEDGlobal 2009 Conference in Oxford begins next week, and I plan to be there. (I am very much looking forward to my first ever visit to that city; I will be staying, appropriately enough, in Keble College, named for one of the founders of the Oxford Movement.) One of the speakers will be Karen Armstrong, the one-time nun who thought she had left religion for good to become a professor of English literature, only to become immersed in the history and comparative study of religions after she made a life-changing visit to Jerusalem. (You can see a list of the numerous books she has authored here.)
When she spoke at the TED Conference in Monterey in 2008, she had been awarded the highest honor TED bestows: named a recipient of the TED Prize, which carries a stipend of $100,000 plus the right to express a wish that will change the world, and invite TEDsters and any other willing participants to turn the wish into reality. Here is the video of the talk in which she formulated her wish:
You may watch the talk in high-res video, or download it in other formats from this page. There is a YouTube video here which describes the project she launched, the Charter for Compassion. And here is a page where you can learn more about the progress made thus far on realizing Karen Armstrong's wish, including a video update presented at the TED 2009 gathering.
As you may imagine, my blogging schedule will be light over the next few weeks, although I will (if the WiFi connections work) try to post some updates from TEDGlobal 2009. Use the Guide to This Site at the right to immerse yourself in any of the topics covered by this blog. By the time I return, I should be refreshed and ready to take up the cudgel once more.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Court Blocks End Run Around St. James
Judge Thierry Patrick Colaw of the Orange County Superior Court has issued a ruling that blocks an attempt by the plaintiff Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and the plaintiff in intervention ECUSA to circumvent the right of the defendant St. James Parish of Newport Beach to have a trial. This ruling comes on remand of the case from the amended decision of the California Supreme Court, which I wrote about in this post. It also comes while the petition filed by St. James for review of the California Supreme Court's decision is pending in the United States Supreme Court.
In order to understand Judge Colaw's ruling, a .pdf copy of which may be downloaded from this page (the ruling begins on page 5 of the document), one has to know a little background about the special California procedures that were followed in the litigation which ended up in the California Supreme Court. Essentially, the previous steps were these:
1. After St. James voted to leave the Diocese of Los Angeles, the Diocese brought suit against the parish corporation, its rector and other clergy, and vestry members, in Orange County Superior Court, where the parish is located.
2. The parish did not immediately answer the Diocese's complaint. Instead it brought what is called a "SLAPP" motion under California law.
[Long-winded explanation for those interested: The acronym stands for "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation". The paradigm for such a motion was when a large oil company brought a trade libel lawsuit against an individual who had been asking the State health department to investigate one of its home plumbing products. The court found that the only purpose of the lawsuit was to make it expensive for the individual to pursue his claim before a public agency, and that the underlying lawsuit had no real merit.
Out of this paradigm the California Legislature developed a statute allowing defendants in certain kinds of cases to challenge at the outset lawsuits brought by plaintiffs solely for the purpose of silencing their opponents' participation in public proceedings. Instead of answering to such a complaint, the defendant files a "SLAPP" motion, and since the move is directed against the "strategic lawsuit" itself, it is sometimes also called an "Anti-SLAPP" motion, so the terminology can get confusing for non-lawyers.
The trial court has a two-part inquiry before it in dealing with a SLAPP motion. First, it must ascertain whether the lawsuit being challenged is of the kind defined by the statute --- namely, whether it is directed against an individual or group in an effort to suppress their "participation in matters of public significance". If it answers that query in the affirmative, it then moves on to the second query: has the plaintiff established a probability that, notwithstanding the nature of his lawsuit, he will prevail on his claims against the defendant(s)?]
3. In the suit brought by the Diocese of Los Angeles against St. James, the trial court determined that the answer to the first inquiry was "yes", but that the answer to the second was "no" --- that the Diocese probably would not win its lawsuit. (Up to that point the leading authority in California church property cases involving the Episcopal Church was the Barker case. That case, also involving a complaint brought by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, held that three of four parishes leaving the Church could keep their property, because the Dennis Canon had not been enacted until well after they had originally joined the Diocese. [The fourth parish had the bad luck to have been incorporated after ECUSA adopted the Dennis Canon.] St. James also had been incorporated before the adoption of the Dennis Canon, and so on the authority of Barker, the trial court held that the Diocese's lawsuit showed no probability of success.)
4. The trial court accordingly dismissed the Diocese's lawsuit, and the Diocese appealed. In its opinion in The Episcopal Church Cases, the Court of Appeal surprised many observers by holding that Barker (and similar cases) had been wrongly decided, and (since it was not the same appellate court) declined to follow it. It therefore held that the Diocese's lawsuit did have a probability of success, because it decided that the parish had acceded not just to the canons existing at the time it was incorporated, but also to all subsequently enacted canons as well. On the first part of the inquiry, it also found that the Diocese's lawsuit did not come within the parameters of a SLAPP action, because it was a dispute over property, and not "public participation".
5. One might well wonder why, if the Appellate Court decided that the SLAPP statute did not apply, it even bothered to address the second part of the SLAPP inquiry --- the probability of success of the plaintiff's case on the merits. Here is the explanation it gave:
7. On ECUSA's appeal from that judgment, therefore, the Court of Appeal had to consider whether the authority of Barker was as controlling as the trial court had thought. As just mentioned, it held that it would not follow Barker. Instead, it resurrected an earlier line of cases that had deferred to hierarchical churches. (Barker had been a decision following "neutral principles of law", about which you may read more here.) It held that, following that line of cases, courts had to defer to the hierarchical authority of the national church, and that the Dennis Canon trumped state property law, under which a trust could not be imposed upon a person's property without that person's consent in writing. So it ruled that ECUSA's complaint was sufficient to state a claim. In doing so, it held that the Diocese had stated a claim (under the Dennis Canon, as enabled by a state statute) on which it would probably prevail, too.
8. It was in this posture that the California Supreme Court accepted review of the case. Its decision came to the same conclusion as the Court of Appeal: that the suit was a property dispute, not a SLAPP action; and that the plaintiffs had a good probability of prevailing on the merits. However, it decided to arrive at the second conclusion not by following the cases relied upon by the Court of Appeal, but by saying it was deciding case under the (more chic) "neutral principles" approach. (In the final analysis, it did not matter --- as I explained in this post about the decision, the Supreme Court in effect deferred to hierarchical churches by holding that they could bypass State property law and impose a trust on their parishes' property just because they were "hierarchical".)
9. The Court chose some very strange language, however, in which to express its opinion. At first it said:
Now you are finally in a position to appreciate the significance of Judge Colaw's ruling, handed down Monday. You see, the plaintiff Diocese and the plaintiff in intervention ECUSA just could not accept the fact that the Supreme Court had not ruled on the merits in their favor, but had only decided that they probably would win on the merits under the law as now interpreted by the Supreme Court. Despite the express language of section 425.16 I just quoted above, the Diocese demurred to St. James's cross-complaint on the ground that it had already been declared to have won the case on the merits --- without ever having gone to trial! And for its part, ECUSA joined in the fray, by making a motion for a "judgment on the pleadings" --- essentially, a ruling that the answer filed by St. James to its complaint was inadequate, as a matter of law, to state any defense --- so that they, too, claimed the right to a judgment against St. James without a trial.
In his ruling filed Monday, Judge Colaw decisively and thoroughly rejected the plaintiffs' spurious arguments. He patiently explained that no court had actually purported to decide the merits, and that the Supreme Court had expressly corrected its earlier decision to make it clear that it was not claiming to have done so. Thus he overruled the Diocese's demurrer --- meaning that it will now have to answer the St. James cross-complaint based on then-Canon McPherson's 1991 letter. And he denied ECUSA's motion for a judgment on the pleadings --- meaning that there will be no judgment, and the case will now proceed to discovery and a trial.
This was a correct ruling on the law. It is typical of ECUSA's and the Diocese's scorched-earth tactics that they would try to exploit to their advantage any little crumb, however small, they could glean from the Supreme Court's table. Now there will be a lot of expensive discovery ensuing, with depositions galore, as the parties seek to jockey for admissions which they can use either to shortcut the need for a trial altogether, or to use at any trial to discredit the opponent's position. Either way, they are in for a long haul.
And meanwhile, the possibility of a grant of review by the United States Supreme Court hovers in the wings. We will not find out about that until the first Monday in October (if then).
In order to understand Judge Colaw's ruling, a .pdf copy of which may be downloaded from this page (the ruling begins on page 5 of the document), one has to know a little background about the special California procedures that were followed in the litigation which ended up in the California Supreme Court. Essentially, the previous steps were these:
1. After St. James voted to leave the Diocese of Los Angeles, the Diocese brought suit against the parish corporation, its rector and other clergy, and vestry members, in Orange County Superior Court, where the parish is located.
2. The parish did not immediately answer the Diocese's complaint. Instead it brought what is called a "SLAPP" motion under California law.
[Long-winded explanation for those interested: The acronym stands for "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation". The paradigm for such a motion was when a large oil company brought a trade libel lawsuit against an individual who had been asking the State health department to investigate one of its home plumbing products. The court found that the only purpose of the lawsuit was to make it expensive for the individual to pursue his claim before a public agency, and that the underlying lawsuit had no real merit.
Out of this paradigm the California Legislature developed a statute allowing defendants in certain kinds of cases to challenge at the outset lawsuits brought by plaintiffs solely for the purpose of silencing their opponents' participation in public proceedings. Instead of answering to such a complaint, the defendant files a "SLAPP" motion, and since the move is directed against the "strategic lawsuit" itself, it is sometimes also called an "Anti-SLAPP" motion, so the terminology can get confusing for non-lawyers.
The trial court has a two-part inquiry before it in dealing with a SLAPP motion. First, it must ascertain whether the lawsuit being challenged is of the kind defined by the statute --- namely, whether it is directed against an individual or group in an effort to suppress their "participation in matters of public significance". If it answers that query in the affirmative, it then moves on to the second query: has the plaintiff established a probability that, notwithstanding the nature of his lawsuit, he will prevail on his claims against the defendant(s)?]
3. In the suit brought by the Diocese of Los Angeles against St. James, the trial court determined that the answer to the first inquiry was "yes", but that the answer to the second was "no" --- that the Diocese probably would not win its lawsuit. (Up to that point the leading authority in California church property cases involving the Episcopal Church was the Barker case. That case, also involving a complaint brought by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, held that three of four parishes leaving the Church could keep their property, because the Dennis Canon had not been enacted until well after they had originally joined the Diocese. [The fourth parish had the bad luck to have been incorporated after ECUSA adopted the Dennis Canon.] St. James also had been incorporated before the adoption of the Dennis Canon, and so on the authority of Barker, the trial court held that the Diocese's lawsuit showed no probability of success.)
4. The trial court accordingly dismissed the Diocese's lawsuit, and the Diocese appealed. In its opinion in The Episcopal Church Cases, the Court of Appeal surprised many observers by holding that Barker (and similar cases) had been wrongly decided, and (since it was not the same appellate court) declined to follow it. It therefore held that the Diocese's lawsuit did have a probability of success, because it decided that the parish had acceded not just to the canons existing at the time it was incorporated, but also to all subsequently enacted canons as well. On the first part of the inquiry, it also found that the Diocese's lawsuit did not come within the parameters of a SLAPP action, because it was a dispute over property, and not "public participation".
5. One might well wonder why, if the Appellate Court decided that the SLAPP statute did not apply, it even bothered to address the second part of the SLAPP inquiry --- the probability of success of the plaintiff's case on the merits. Here is the explanation it gave:
We cannot stop with prong one, however. The propriety of the sustaining of the demurrer to the national church’s complaint in intervention depends solely upon the merits of the case. We now turn to the relevant authorities that govern the issue of disputes over church property in California. We will examine them in chronological order.6. So at this point, in order to understand what followed, I need to acquaint you with what happened to ECUSA's complaint. As I have explained elsewhere, California allows a defendant to file what is called a "demurrer" to a complaint. When a party "demurs" to a pleading, he in effect says to the court: "Even if everything X alleges were in fact true, the facts are insufficient to establish a claim on which this court could grant relief. So either make X amend his pleading, or if there is no plausible way he could amend to state a claim, then dismiss it." St. James had demurred to the complaint by ECUSA (on the principal strength of the Barker case --- that the Dennis Canon did not apply to it), and the trial court agreed that the complaint did not state a claim on which relief could be granted. It also saw no way in which the defect could be fixed by an amendment, since there was no dispute that the parish had incorporated before the enactment of the Dennis Canon. Thus it dismissed ECUSA's complaint without St. James having to file an answer to it.
7. On ECUSA's appeal from that judgment, therefore, the Court of Appeal had to consider whether the authority of Barker was as controlling as the trial court had thought. As just mentioned, it held that it would not follow Barker. Instead, it resurrected an earlier line of cases that had deferred to hierarchical churches. (Barker had been a decision following "neutral principles of law", about which you may read more here.) It held that, following that line of cases, courts had to defer to the hierarchical authority of the national church, and that the Dennis Canon trumped state property law, under which a trust could not be imposed upon a person's property without that person's consent in writing. So it ruled that ECUSA's complaint was sufficient to state a claim. In doing so, it held that the Diocese had stated a claim (under the Dennis Canon, as enabled by a state statute) on which it would probably prevail, too.
8. It was in this posture that the California Supreme Court accepted review of the case. Its decision came to the same conclusion as the Court of Appeal: that the suit was a property dispute, not a SLAPP action; and that the plaintiffs had a good probability of prevailing on the merits. However, it decided to arrive at the second conclusion not by following the cases relied upon by the Court of Appeal, but by saying it was deciding case under the (more chic) "neutral principles" approach. (In the final analysis, it did not matter --- as I explained in this post about the decision, the Supreme Court in effect deferred to hierarchical churches by holding that they could bypass State property law and impose a trust on their parishes' property just because they were "hierarchical".)
9. The Court chose some very strange language, however, in which to express its opinion. At first it said:
Both lower courts also decided the merits of the dispute over ownership of the local church — the trial court in favor of the local church and the Court of Appeal in favor of the general church. We will also decide this question, which the parties as well as various amici curiae have fully briefed.You should now be in a position to appreciate the inaccuracy of this assertion: the lower courts did not purport to decide "the merits"; they came to different conclusions about the plaintiffs' probability of success on the merits. So via the parish's petition for clarification, the California Supreme Court was forced to backtrack. In a subsequent modification of its opinion, it acknowledged that it and the lower courts had only "addressed" the merits ---"on this record". That meant that the case could go back to the trial court for the defendant parish to answer the complaints and go to trial on the factual issues. In fact, you should be aware of this specific paragraph in California's SLAPP statute (Code of Civil Procedure, section 425.16 [b] [3]):
If the court determines that the plaintiff has established a probability that he or she will prevail on the claim, neither that determination nor the fact of that determination shall be admissible in evidence at any later stage of the case, or in any subsequent action, and no burden of proof or degree of proof otherwise applicable shall be affected by that determination in any later stage of the case or in any subsequent proceeding.10. So on remand, St. James filed an answer and cross-complaint against the Diocese, in which it sought to bar the Diocese from claiming any trust interest in its property on the strength of a 1991 letter waiving such rights, written on behalf of the Diocese by its then-Canon-to-the-Ordinary D. Bruce McPherson (now Bishop of Western Louisiana). (To see a copy of the letter, download this brief and look on page 12.) It also filed an answer to ECUSA's complaint in intervention.
Now you are finally in a position to appreciate the significance of Judge Colaw's ruling, handed down Monday. You see, the plaintiff Diocese and the plaintiff in intervention ECUSA just could not accept the fact that the Supreme Court had not ruled on the merits in their favor, but had only decided that they probably would win on the merits under the law as now interpreted by the Supreme Court. Despite the express language of section 425.16 I just quoted above, the Diocese demurred to St. James's cross-complaint on the ground that it had already been declared to have won the case on the merits --- without ever having gone to trial! And for its part, ECUSA joined in the fray, by making a motion for a "judgment on the pleadings" --- essentially, a ruling that the answer filed by St. James to its complaint was inadequate, as a matter of law, to state any defense --- so that they, too, claimed the right to a judgment against St. James without a trial.
In his ruling filed Monday, Judge Colaw decisively and thoroughly rejected the plaintiffs' spurious arguments. He patiently explained that no court had actually purported to decide the merits, and that the Supreme Court had expressly corrected its earlier decision to make it clear that it was not claiming to have done so. Thus he overruled the Diocese's demurrer --- meaning that it will now have to answer the St. James cross-complaint based on then-Canon McPherson's 1991 letter. And he denied ECUSA's motion for a judgment on the pleadings --- meaning that there will be no judgment, and the case will now proceed to discovery and a trial.
This was a correct ruling on the law. It is typical of ECUSA's and the Diocese's scorched-earth tactics that they would try to exploit to their advantage any little crumb, however small, they could glean from the Supreme Court's table. Now there will be a lot of expensive discovery ensuing, with depositions galore, as the parties seek to jockey for admissions which they can use either to shortcut the need for a trial altogether, or to use at any trial to discredit the opponent's position. Either way, they are in for a long haul.
And meanwhile, the possibility of a grant of review by the United States Supreme Court hovers in the wings. We will not find out about that until the first Monday in October (if then).
Who Is Right?
You be the judge: who is right --- Bishop Epting (who one may assume is giving the official ECUSA line) --- ?
----or Fulcrum?
And now, the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, weighs in --- from here:
Bishop Wright's exasperation with doing theology by majority vote comes through in his piece, which he must have dashed off for the Times to use as a counterweight to the paper's liberal (but unsigned) header endorsing the ECUSA move. Over at his blog, Scott Gunn+ fisks Bishop Wright's article in another standard rendition of that liberal hit tune "It's not us, it's you, that's who", which is sung in response to every attack from the right. (He even makes the outlandish claim that "A very good case can be made that the Episcopal Church is one of the only 'Windsor Compliant' provinces in the Anglican Communion" --- as though same-sex blessings and nominations of LGBTs for episcopal positions were not occurring in ECUSA, despite B 033.)
DO25 Does Not Overturn B033
By ecubishopThe Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops’ passage of resolution D025 does not overturn last General Convention’s call for care and “restraint.” That last resolution (B033) was never a “moratorium” on the ordination and consecration of gay and lesbian persons. It counseled care in approving any bishops whose “manner of life” would cause additional strain on the Anglican Communion.
Quite apart from the press’s (including Episcopal News Service) usual misunderstanding of such things, D025 simply re-asserts what has always been true — the ordination process in The Episcopal Church is governed by the Constitution and Canons of this church.
It would be perfectly possible for a bishop to have voted for D025 and still withhold consent for the election of any bishop-elect.
Access to the ordination process (though not guaranteed ordination!) is open to all. That’s part of what it means to be baptized — not that you are necessarily called to ordained ministry, but that your call may be tested by the Church.
----or Fulcrum?
Fulcrum Press Statement
on the decision by the House of Bishops of TEC to pass D025
The decision, by a 2-to-1 majority, of the House of Bishops of TEC to pass D025 represents a further determined walking apart by the
- Ignored the repeated requests by all the Instruments of Communion, most recently the Anglican Consultative Council, to uphold the
- Disregarded the explicit request of the Archbishop of Canterbury during his visit to General Convention when he stated “Along with many in the Communion, I hope and pray that there won't be decisions in the coming days that will push us further apart”.
- Failed to heed the Archbishop of Canterbury's warning at General Synod that “it remains to be seen I think whether the vote of the House of Deputies will be endorsed by the House of Bishops. If the House of Bishops chooses to block then the moratorium remains. I regret the fact that there is not the will to observe the moratorium in such a significant part of the Church in
- Overturned the recommendation of the bishops serving on the World Mission committee who asked the House not to support the resolution, explicitly citing such reasons as that passing the resolution amounted to a rejection of the process commended by Windsor and jeopardizes the covenant, would not reflect hearing the concerns of the Communion and disregards Lambeth I.10
- Withdrew the assurances given by the House of Bishops to the wider Communion in September 2007 in response to the Dar Primates' Meeting.1
It is important to recognise the multiple levels at which the resolution disregards the mind of the Communion both in relation to human sexuality and the nature of life together in Communion as expressed in the Windsor Report and the Anglican Covenant. It:
- selectively quotes from Lambeth I.10 and affirms only the Listening Process but not the teaching and practice of the Communion consistently reaffirmed by the Instruments since 1998 which is the framework within which the Listening Process should occur.
- contradicts the teaching of Scripture and the Communion by reaffirming that same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect and careful, honest communication display “holy love”.
- recognizes that “gay and lesbian persons who are part of such relationships have responded to God's call and have exercised various ministries in and on behalf of God's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and are currently doing so in our midst” despite the clear statement of Lambeth I.10 rejecting ordination of those in same-sex unions.
- reaffirms they were right to consent to the election of Gene Robinson and proceed to his consecration by affirming “that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church” despite Windsor's request for a statement of regret for that action.
- asserts their right autonomously to determine the suitability of candidates for ordination “through our discernment processes acting in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church” without reference to the discernment of the wider church or the requested moratorium.
In relation to the Anglican Communion and the Windsor and Covenant Processes, the Windsor Continuation Group stated that “A deliberate decision to act in a way which damages Communion of necessity carries consequences. This is quite distinct from the language of sanction or punishment, but acknowledges that the expression and experience of our Communion in Christ cannot be sustained so fully in such circumstances. A formal expression of the distance experienced would therefore seem to be appropriate” (
In relation to the Church of England, it has recently been reaffirmed, with regard to the Church of Sweden, that “the teaching and discipline of the Church of England, like that of the Anglican Communion as a whole as expressed in the Lambeth Conference of 1998, is that it is not right either to bless same-sex sexual relationships or to ordain those who are involved in them” and that “changes in the understanding of human sexuality and marriage” will lead to impairment of relationships and limit the inter-changeability of ordained ministry.2 These consequences must now logically follow in relation to those bishops within TEC who have voted to support D025. They could be expressed by such means as actions under the Overseas Clergy Measure and a decision that the Church of England not be represented at future TEC consecrations.
Over coming weeks, in discerning a proportionate response to this latest development it is important that
- a clear differentiation is made between the majority in TEC who voted for the resolution and those – centred on the Communion Partners – who upheld the mind of the Communion within TEC. We hope that many Church of England bishops will clearly reaffirm their continued full communion with those TEC bishops who voted against the resolution.
- similar disregard for the moratoria in a significant number of dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada are not ignored
- critical attention also be given to the relationship of both the Communion and the Church of England with the Anglican Church in North America.
And now, the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, weighs in --- from here:
In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States has voted decisively to allow in principle the appointment, to all orders of ministry, of persons in active same-sex relationships. This marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.
Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other “instruments of communion” that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops. They were rejecting the two things the Archbishop of Canterbury has named as the pathway to the future — the Windsor Report (2004) and the proposed Covenant (whose aim is to provide a modus operandi for the Anglican Communion). They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates’ unanimous statement that this would “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to “walk apart”. . . .
The question then presses: who, in the US, is now in communion with the great majority of the Anglican world? It would be too hasty to answer, the newly formed “province” of the “Anglican Church in North America”. One can sympathise with some of the motivations of these breakaway Episcopalians. But we should not forget the Episcopalian bishops, who, doggedly loyal to their own Church, and to the expressed mind of the wider Communion, voted against the current resolution. Nor should we forget the many parishes and worshippers who take the same stance. There are many American Episcopalians, inside and outside the present TEC, who are eager to sign the proposed Covenant. That aspiration must be honoured.
Contrary to some who have recently adopted the phrase, there is already a “fellowship of confessing Anglicans”. It is called the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is now distancing itself from that fellowship. Ways must be found for all in America who want to be loyal to it, and to scripture, tradition and Jesus, to have that loyalty recognised and affirmed at the highest level.
Bishop Wright's exasperation with doing theology by majority vote comes through in his piece, which he must have dashed off for the Times to use as a counterweight to the paper's liberal (but unsigned) header endorsing the ECUSA move. Over at his blog, Scott Gunn+ fisks Bishop Wright's article in another standard rendition of that liberal hit tune "It's not us, it's you, that's who", which is sung in response to every attack from the right. (He even makes the outlandish claim that "A very good case can be made that the Episcopal Church is one of the only 'Windsor Compliant' provinces in the Anglican Communion" --- as though same-sex blessings and nominations of LGBTs for episcopal positions were not occurring in ECUSA, despite B 033.)
And so it goes, round and round in circles. One needs to return to the Fulcrum piece above for a grounding on what ECUSA's adoption of D025 actually does within the context of the Anglican Communion. Or allow me to do what the Fulcrum Statement does, but in a more direct way:
Here is a passage from the Windsor Report (2004, paras. 124-129; footnotes omitted):
Anglicanism has always maintained that a bishop is more than simply the chief pastor to a local church. Bishops are consecrated into an order of ministry in the worldwide Church of God. They represent the universal to the local, and the local to the universal. Their acceptability to the wider Church is signified through 'confirmation of election' undertaken by the metropolitan bishop in consultation with the other bishops of the province . . . .
The Communion has also made its collective position clear on the issue of ordaining those who are involved in same gender unions; and this has been reiterated by the primates through their endorsement of the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution. By electing and confirming such a candidate in the face of the concerns expressed by the wider Communion, the Episcopal Church (USA) has caused deep offence to many faithful Anglican Christians both in its own church and in other parts of the Communion. . . . [B]ishops of the Episcopal Church (USA) subsequent to the Primates' Meeting in October 2003 must be taken to have acted in the full knowledge that very many people in the Anglican Communion could neither recognise nor receive the ministry as a bishop in the Church of God of a person in an openly acknowledged same gender union. This inevitably raises the question of their commitment to the Episcopal Church (USA)'s interdependence as a member of the Anglican Communion to which its own Constitution and Canons makes reference.
And now here, for contrast, is part of Resolution D 025 as finally enacted:
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention recognize that gay and lesbian persons who are part of such relationships have responded to God's call and have exercised various ministries in and on behalf of God's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and are currently doing so in our midst; and be it further
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention affirm that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church . . . .
That's about as "in your face" as it gets. Forget what the Anglican Communion recognizes; it's what we recognize that counts. (Or as the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon so succinctly puts it: "Those involved in pastoral care know that a relationship is deeply frayed when one or other party insists “this is who I am”[, and] the outcome will be disastrous. The same will be the case with D025, both inside the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.")
The fig-leaf is off the statue, and all can now see exactly how ECUSA ranks its priorities. At least the other members of the Anglican Communion now have clarity. (Bishop Wright gets the picture, loud and clear: "[S]aying 'we want to stay in, but we insist on rewriting the rules' is cynical double-think. We should not be fooled.")
As the other items on the LGBT agenda clear General Convention, one by one, the picture inevitably fills in of a church that chooses to walk apart. (See previous post.)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Nothing New Under the Sun
In light of the path being chosen by the Episcopal Church (USA) at its current General Convention, and the resulting reaction from around the Anglican Communion, I have invited a worthy guest to blog here on a topic which he knows well: the history of past heresies and schisms in the Church Catholic. He is worthy of your attention, but also, I have to say (alas), a bit wordy --- I have had to edit his submission down to manageable length. [Note to speed readers: I have placed the key passage in blue type.] The wealth of knowledge he brings to the topic will nonetheless, I assure you, repay the attention that it demands. Please contrast the current state of affairs in Christendom with the situation as my guest depicts it in the fourth century:
* * * [Begin guest blog] * * *
How was the man to guide his course who wished to join himself to the doctrine and fellowship of the Apostles in the times of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Augustine? Few indeed were the districts in the orbis terrarum, which did not then, as in the Ante-nicene era, present a number of creeds and communions for his choice. . . .
My thanks to His Eminence John Cardinal Newman, of soon-to-be sainted memory, for sharing his broad perspective with us. (Text excerpted from An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, ch. 6, secs. 1 and 2.)
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
* * * [Begin guest blog] * * *
There is a religious communion claiming a divine commission, and holding all other religious bodies around it heretical or infidel; it is a well-organized, well-disciplined body; it is a sort of secret society, binding together its members by influences and by engagements which it is difficult for strangers to ascertain. It is spread over the known world; it may be weak or insignificant locally, but it is strong on the whole from its continuity; it may be smaller than all other religious bodies together, but is larger than each separately. It is a natural enemy to governments external to itself; it is intolerant and engrossing, and tends to a new modelling of society; it breaks laws, it divides families. It is a gross superstition; it is charged with the foulest crimes; it is despised by the intellect of the day; it is frightful to the imagination of the many. And there is but one communion such.
Place this description before Pliny or Julian; place it before Frederick the Second or Guizot. "Apparent diræ facies." [Aeneid, II 620-23: "Dread shapes come to view . . ."] Each knows at once, without asking a question, who is meant by it. One object, and only one, absorbs each item of the detail of the delineation.
. . .How was the man to guide his course who wished to join himself to the doctrine and fellowship of the Apostles in the times of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Augustine? Few indeed were the districts in the orbis terrarum, which did not then, as in the Ante-nicene era, present a number of creeds and communions for his choice. . . .
How was an individual inquirer to find, or a private Christian to keep the Truth, amid so many rival teachers? The misfortunes or perils of holy men and saints show us the difficulty; St. Augustine was nine years a Manichee; St. Basil for a time was in admiration of the Semi-arians; St. Sulpicius gave a momentary countenance to the Pelagians; St. Paula listened, and Melania assented, to the Origenists. Yet the rule was simple, which would direct every one right; and in that age, at least, no one could be wrong, for any long time without his own fault. The Church is everywhere, but it is one; sects are everywhere, but they are many, independent and discordant. Catholicity is the attribute of the Church, independency of sectaries. . . .
The Church might be evanescent or lost for a while in particular countries, or it might be levelled and buried among sects, when the eye was confined to one spot, or it might be confronted by the one and same heresy in various places; but, on looking round the orbis terrarum, there was no mistaking that body which, and which alone, had possession of it. The Church is a kingdom; a heresy is a family rather than a kingdom; and as a family continually divides and sends out branches, founding new houses, and propagating itself in colonies, each of them as independent as its original head, so was it with heresy.
[Ed. Note: In urging approval yesterday in the House of Bishops of Resolution D 025, Bishop Dorsey Henderson characterized the Resolution as follows: “This is family talk,” Bishop Henderson declared, adding that “what we do affects a larger family.” Continuing with guest blog:]
Simon Magus, the first heretic, had been Patriarch of Menandrians, Basilidians, Valentinians, and the whole family of Gnostics; Tatian of Encratites, Severians, Aquarians, Apotactites, and Saccophori. The Montanists had been propagated into Tascodrugites, Pepuzians, Artotyrites, and Quartodecimans. Eutyches, in a later time, gave birth to the Dioscorians, Gaianites, Theodosians, Agnoetæ, Theopaschites, Acephali, Semidalitæ, Nagranitæ, Jacobites, and others. This is the uniform history of heresy. . . .
Scarcely was Arianism deprived of the churches of Constantinople, and left to itself, than it split in that very city into the Dorotheans, the Psathyrians, and the Curtians; and the Eunomians into the Theophronians and Eutychians. One fourth part of the Donatists speedily became Maximinianists; and besides these were the Rogatians, the Primianists, the Urbanists, and the Claudianists. . . .
This had been the case with the pagan rites, whether indigenous or itinerant, to which heresy succeeded. The established priesthoods were local properties, as independent theologically as they were geographically of each other; the fanatical companies which spread over the Empire dissolved and formed again as the circumstances of the moment occasioned. So was it with heresy: it was, by its very nature, its own master, free to change, self-sufficient; and, having thrown off the yoke of the Church, it was little likely to submit to any usurped and spurious authority. Montanism and Manicheeism might perhaps in some sort furnish an exception to this remark.
In one point alone the heresies seem universally to have agreed,—in hatred to the Church. . . . She was that body of which all sects, however divided among themselves, spoke ill; according to the prophecy, "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of His household." They disliked and they feared her; they did their utmost to overcome their mutual differences, in order to unite against her. Their utmost indeed was little, for independency was the law of their being; they could not exert themselves without fresh quarrels, both in the bosom of each, and one with another. "Bellum hæreticorum pax est ecclesiæ" ["The heretics' war is the peace of the Church"] had become a proverb; but they felt the great desirableness of union against the only body which was the natural antagonist of all, and various are the instances which occur in ecclesiastical history of attempted coalitions. . . .
It had been so from the beginning: "They huddle up a peace with all everywhere," says Tertullian, "for it maketh no matter to them, although they hold different doctrines, so long as they conspire together in their siege against the one thing, Truth." And even though active cooperation was impracticable, at least hard words cost nothing, and could express that common hatred at all seasons. Accordingly, by Montanists, Catholics were called "the carnal;" by Novatians, "the apostates;" by Valentinians, "the worldly;" by Manichees, "the simple;" by Aërians, "the ancient;" by Apollinarians, "the man-worshippers;" by Origenists, "the flesh-lovers," and "the slimy;" by the Nestorians, "Egyptians;" by Monophysites, the "Chalcedonians;" by Donatists, "the traitors," and "the sinners," and "servants of Antichrist;" and St. Peter's chair, "the seat of pestilence;" and by the Luciferians, the Church was called "a brothel," "the devil's harlot," and "synagogue of Satan:" so that it might be called a [characteristic] of the Church, as I have said, for the use of the most busy and the most ignorant, that she was on one side and all other bodies on the other.
Yet, strange as it may appear, there was one title of the Church of a very different nature from those which have been enumerated,—a title of honour, which all men agreed to give her,—and one which furnished a still more simple direction than such epithets of abuse to aid the busy and the ignorant in finding her, and which was used by the Fathers for that purpose. It was one which the sects could neither claim for themselves, nor hinder being enjoyed by its rightful owner, though, since it was the characteristic designation of the Church in the Creed, it seemed to surrender the whole controversy between the two parties engaged in it. Balaam could not keep from blessing the ancient people of God; and the whole world, heresies inclusive, were irresistibly constrained to call God's second election by its prophetical title of the "Catholic" Church. St. Paul tells us that the heretic is "condemned by himself;" and no clearer witness against the sects of the earlier centuries was needed by the Church, than their own testimony to this contrast between her actual position and their own. Sects, say the Fathers, are called after the name of their founders, or from their locality or from their doctrine. So was it from the beginning: "I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas;" but it was promised to the Church that she should have no master upon earth, and that she should "gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad." Her every-day name, which was understood in the market place and used in the palace, which every chance comer knew, and which state-edicts recognized, was the "Catholic" Church. . . .
It was an argument for educated and simple. When St. Ambrose would convert the cultivated reason of Augustine, he bade him study the book of Isaiah, who is the prophet, as of the Messiah, so of the calling of the Gentiles and of the Imperial power of the Church. And when St. Cyril would give a rule to his crowd of Catechumens, "If ever thou art sojourning in any city," he says, "inquire not simply where the Lord's house is, (for the sects of the profane also make an attempt to call their own dens houses of the Lord,) nor merely where the Church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For this is the peculiar name of this Holy Body, the Mother of us all, which is the Spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ." . . . When Adimantius asked his Marcionite opponent, how he was a Christian who did not even bear that name, but was called from Marcion, he retorts, "And you are called from the Catholic Church, therefore ye are not Christians either;" Adimantius answers, "Did we profess man's name, you would have spoken to the point; but if we are called from being all over the world, what is there bad in this?"
"Whereas there is one God and one Lord," says St. Clement, "therefore also that which is the highest in esteem is praised on the score of being sole, as after the pattern of the One Principle. In the nature then of the One, the Church, which is one, hath its portion, which they would forcibly cut up into many heresies. In substance then, and in idea, and in first principle, and in pre-eminence, we call the ancient Catholic Church sole; in order to the unity of one faith, the faith according to her own covenants, or rather that one covenant in different times, which, by the will of one God and through one Lord, is gathering together those who are already ordained, whom God hath predestined, having known that they would be just from the foundation of the world . . . .
But of heresies, some are called from a man's name, as Valentine's heresy, Marcion's, and that of Basilides (though they profess to bring the opinion of Matthias, for all the Apostles had, as one teaching, so one tradition); and others from place, as the Peratici; and others from nation, as that of the Phrygians; and others from their actions, as that of the Encratites; and others from their peculiar doctrines, as the Docetæ and Hematites; and others from their hypotheses, and what they have honoured, as Cainites and the Ophites; and others from their wicked conduct and enormities, as those Simonians who are called Eutychites."
"There are, and there have been," says St. Justin, "many who have taught atheistic and blasphemous words and deeds, coming in the name of Jesus; and they are called by us from the appellation of the men whence each doctrine and opinion began ... Some are called Marcians, others Valentinians, others Basilidians, others Saturnilians." "When men are called Phrygians, or Novatians, or Valentinians, or Marcionites, or Anthropians," says Lactantius, "or by any other name, they cease to be Christians; for they have lost Christ's Name, and clothe themselves in human and foreign titles. It is the Catholic Church alone which retains the true worship."
"We never heard of Petrines, or Paulines, or Bartholomeans, or Thaddeans," says St. Epiphanius; "but from the first there was one preaching of all the Apostles, not preaching themselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord. Wherefore also all gave one name to the Church, not their own, but that of their Lord Jesus Christ, since they began to be called Christians first at Antioch; which is the Sole Catholic Church, having nought else but Christ's, being a Church of Christians; not of Christs, but of Christians, He being One, they from that One being called Christians. None, but this Church and her preachers, are of this character, as is shown by their own epithets, Manicheans, and Simonians, and Valentinians, and Ebionites." "If you ever hear those who are said to belong to Christ," says St. Jerome, "named, not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some other, say Marcionites, Valentinians, Mountaineers, Campestrians, know that it is not Christ's Church, but the synagogue of Antichrist."
St. Pacian's letters to the Novatian Bishop Sympronian require a more extended notice. The latter had required the Catholic faith to be proved to him, without distinctly stating from what portion of it he dissented; and he boasted that he had never found any one to convince him of its truth. St. Pacian observes that there is one point which Sympronian cannot dispute, and which settles the question, the very name Catholic. He then supposes Sympronian to object that, "under the Apostles no one was called Catholic." He answers, "Be it thus; it shall have been so; allow even that. When, after the Apostles, heresies had burst forth, and were striving under various names to tear piecemeal and divide 'the Dove' and 'the Queen' of God, did not the Apostolic people require a name of their own, whereby to mark the unity of the people that was uncorrupted, lest the error of some should rend limb by limb 'the undefiled virgin' of God? Was it not seemly that the chief head should be distinguished by its own peculiar appellation? Suppose this very day I entered a populous city. When I had found Marcionites, Apollinarians, Cataphrygians, Novatians, and others of the kind, who call themselves Christians, by what name should I recognize the congregation of my own people, unless it were named Catholic? ... Whence was it delivered to me? Certainly that which has stood through so many ages was not borrowed from man. This name 'Catholic' sounds not of Marcion, nor of Apelles, nor of Montanus, nor does it take heretics for its authors."
. . .In citing these passages, I am not proving what was the doctrine of the Fathers concerning the Church in those early times, or what were the promises made to it in Scripture; but simply ascertaining what, in matter of fact, was its then condition relatively to the various Christian bodies among which it was found. That the Fathers were able to put forward a certain doctrine, that they were able to appeal to the prophecies, proves that matter of fact; for unless the Church, and the Church alone, had been one body everywhere, they could not have argued on the supposition that it was so. And so as to the word "Catholic;" it is enough that the Church was so called; that title was a confirmatory proof and symbol of what is even otherwise so plain, that she, as St. Pacian explains the word, was everywhere one, while the sects of the day were nowhere one, but everywhere divided. Sects might, indeed, be everywhere, but they were in no two places the same; every spot had its own independent communion, or at least to this result they were inevitably and continually tending.
St. Pacian writes in Spain: the same contrast between the Church and sectarianism is presented to us in Africa in the instance of the Donatists; and St. Optatus is a witness both to the fact, and to its notoriety, and to the deep impressions which it made on all parties. Whether or not the Donatists identified themselves with the true Church, and cut off the rest of Christendom from it, is not the question here, nor alters the fact which I wish distinctly brought out and recognized, that in those ancient times the Church was that Body which was spread over the orbis terrarum, and sects were those bodies which were local or transitory.
. . .
It may be possibly suggested that this universality which the Fathers ascribe to the Catholic Church lay in its Apostolical descent, or again in its Episcopacy; and that it was one, not as being one kingdom or civitas "at unity with itself," with one and the same intelligence in every part, one sympathy, one ruling principle, one organization, one communion, but because, though consisting of a number of independent communities, at variance (if so be) with each other even to a breach of communion, nevertheless all these were possessed of a legitimate succession of clergy, or all governed by Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
But who will in seriousness maintain that relationship, or that sameness of structure, makes two bodies one? England and Prussia are both of them monarchies; are they therefore one kingdom? England and the United States are from one stock; can they therefore be called one state? England and Ireland are peopled by different races; yet are they not one kingdom still?
If unity lies in the Apostolical succession, an act of schism is from the nature of the case impossible; for as no one can reverse his parentage, so no Church can undo the fact that its clergy have come by lineal descent from the Apostles. Either there is no such sin as schism, or unity does not lie in the Episcopal form or in the Episcopal ordination. And this is felt by the controversialists of this day; who in consequence are obliged to invent a sin, and to consider, not division of Church from Church, but the interference of Church with Church to be the sin of schism, as if local dioceses and bishops with restraint were more than ecclesiastical arrangements and by-laws of the Church, however sacred, while schism is a sin against her essence. Thus they strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. Division is the schism, if schism there be, not interference. If interference is a sin, division which is the cause of it is a greater; but where division is a duty, there can be no sin in interference.
Far different from such a theory is the picture which the ancient Church presents to us; true, it was governed by Bishops, and those Bishops came from the Apostles, but it was a kingdom besides; and as a kingdom admits of the possibility of rebels, so does such a Church involve sectaries and schismatics, but not independent portions. It was a vast organized association, co-extensive with the Roman Empire, or rather overflowing it. Its Bishops were not mere local officers, but possessed a quasi-ecumenical power, extending wherever a Christian was to be found. "No Christian," says Bingham, "would pretend to travel without taking letters of credence with him from his own bishop, if he meant to communicate with the Christian Church in a foreign country. Such was the admirable unity of the Church Catholic in those days, and the blessed harmony and consent of her bishops among one another." . . .
Moreover, this universal Church was not only one; it was exclusive also. As to the vehemence with which Christians of the Ante-nicene period denounced the idolatries and sins of paganism, and proclaimed the judgments which would be their consequence, this is well known, and led to their being reputed in the heathen world as "enemies of mankind." "Worthily doth God exert the lash of His stripes and scourges," says St. Cyprian to a heathen magistrate . . . Inexplicable and heavy is the sin of discord, and is purged by no suffering ... They cannot dwell with God who have refused to be of one mind in God's Church; a man of such sort may indeed be killed, crowned he cannot be." And so again St. Chrysostom, in the following century, in harmony with St. Cyprian's sentiment: "Though we have achieved ten thousand glorious acts, yet shall we, if we cut to pieces the fulness of the Church, suffer punishment no less sore than they who mangled His body." . . .
One more remark shall be made: that the Catholic teachers, far from recognizing any ecclesiastical relation as existing between the Sectarian Bishops and Priests and their people, address the latter immediately, as if those Bishops did not exist, and call on them to come over to the Church individually without respect to any one besides; and that because it is a matter of life and death. To take the instance of the Donatists: it was nothing to the purpose that their Churches in Africa were nearly as numerous as those of the Catholics, or that they had a case to produce in their controversy with the Catholic Church; the very fact that they were separated from the orbis terrarum was a public, a manifest, a simple, a sufficient argument against them. "The question is not about your gold and silver," says St. Augustine to Glorius and others, "not your lands, or farms, nor even your bodily health is in peril, but we address your souls about obtaining eternal life and fleeing eternal death. Rouse yourself therefore . . . "
On the whole, then, we have reason to say, that if there be a form of Christianity at this day distinguished for its careful organization, and its consequent power; if it is spread over the world; if it is conspicuous for zealous maintenance of its own creed; if it is intolerant towards what it considers error; if it is engaged in ceaseless war with all other bodies called Christian; if it, and it alone, is called "Catholic" by the world, nay, by those very bodies, and if it makes much of the title; if it names them heretics, and warns them of coming woe, and calls on them one by one, to come over to itself, overlooking every other tie; and if they, on the other hand, call it seducer, harlot, apostate, Antichrist, devil; if, however much they differ one with another, they consider it their common enemy; if they strive to unite together against it, and cannot; if they are but local; if they continually subdivide, and it remains one; if they fall one after another, and make way for new sects, and it remains the same; such a religious communion is not unlike historical Christianity, as it comes before us at the Nicene Era.
* * * [End guest blog] * * *My thanks to His Eminence John Cardinal Newman, of soon-to-be sainted memory, for sharing his broad perspective with us. (Text excerpted from An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, ch. 6, secs. 1 and 2.)
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Night and Day
ECUSA's 76th General Convention is now halfway through its course. The House of Deputies has approved a compromise Resolution drafted and reported by the Legislative Committee on World Mission, Resolution D 025, whose text as it goes to the House of Bishops is as follows (I am showing the amendments made in its passage: new language added is in italics, and old language deleted is shown in strikethrough):
Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That
thisthe 76th General Convention reaffirm the continued participation of The Episcopal Church in the Anglican Communion; give thanks for the work of the bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 2008; reaffirm the abiding commitment of The Episcopal Church to the fellowship of churches that constitute the Anglican Communion and seek to live into the highest degree of communion possible; and be it furtherResolved, That
thisthe 76th General Convention encourage dioceses,parishescongregations, and members of The Episcopal Church to participate to the fullest extent possible in the many instruments, networks and relationships of the Anglican Communion, including but not limited to networks involving youth, women, and indigenous people; networks and ministries concerned with ecumenical and interfaith work, peace and justice, liturgy, environmental issues, health, and education; and companion diocese relationships; and be it furtherResolved, That
thisthe 76th General Convention reaffirm its financial commitment to the Anglican Communion and pledge tomaintain its full asking forparticipate fully in the Inter-Anglican Budget; and be it furtherResolved, That
thisthe 76th General Convention affirm the value of "listening to the experience of homosexual persons," as called for by the Lambeth Conferences of 1978, 1988, and 1998, and acknowledge that through our own listening the General Convention has come to recognize that the baptized membership of The Episcopal Church includes same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships "characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God" (2000-D039); and be it furtherResolved, That
thisthe 76th General Convention recognize thatindividualsgay and lesbian persons who are part of such relationships have responded to God's call and have exercised various ministries in and on behalf of God's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Churchover the centuriesand are currently doing so in our midst, often without the church's recognition of their lifelong committed relationships and the blessings bestowed by such relationships; and be it furtherResolved, That
thisthe 76th General Convention affirm that God has called and may call such individuals,like any other baptized members,to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church, which call is testedin our politythrough our discernment processescarried out under Canon IIIacting in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Churchand the canons of its dioceses; and be it furtherResolved, That
thisthe 76th General Convention acknowledge that, while themembers of The Episcopal Church, like those in our sister Provincesas of the Anglican Communion, based on careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and in light of tradition and reason, are notallof one mindon this issue, andthatChristians of good conscience, based on careful study of the Holy Scriptures, may disagree about this issue, the validity of the Church's sacraments comes from the action of the Holy Spirit in and through them, not from the frail humans celebrating them in God's namedisagree about some of these matters.
There is currently a lot of speculation and wondering about the effect of this language on Resolution B 033 enacted at the 75th General Convention in 2006. Apparently the Chancellor to the President of the House of Deputies rendered an opinion to the effect that a Resolution of General Convention, once adopted, continues in effect until the same is either revoked, repealed, rescinded, or superseded by a later Resolution inconsistent with it. Now this is, as a straightforward statement of the general situation, entirely correct --- as far as it goes. But it is a general statement, addressed to the case in general. The problem is that it is not addressed to the particular language of B 033.
I analyzed the legal effect of B 033's language in this earlier post. Essentially, I took the language of the resolution at face value:
"Resolved, the 75th General Convention receive and embrace The Windsor Report’s invitation to engage in a process of healing and reconciliation; and be it further
"Resolved, That this Convention therefore call upon Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint . . ."
The language does two things: it makes a motion that a very specific body --- the 75th General Convention, which passed out of existence forever in 2006 --- "receive and embrace" an invitation; and it moves that the same body, which no longer exists, "call upon" certain other persons to exercise a certain restraint. Both the "receiving and embracing", as well as the "calling upon", were accomplished with the passage of the Resolution by both Houses of the 75th General Convention. The Resolution, in short, as drafted and enacted had, and could not by its own language have, any ongoing or continuing effect (unlike a Canon, or an amendment to the Constitution or Prayer Book).
So the opinion of the Chancellor was a little lacking in specific detail applicable to Resolution B 033. Yes, a Resolution may have ongoing effect. For example, a Resolution that the budget for the next General Convention be set at ten million dollars would stay in effect until it was "revoked, repealed, rescinded, or superseded". But the same is not true of Resolution B 033. Its effect was instantly over and done with, as soon as it passed both Houses.
[UPDATE 07/13/2009: I note that the principal architect of Resolution D 025 agrees (emphasis added):
Gay Jennings: B033 wasn’t a moratorium. It was an urging. What the new language does is simply state where the Church already stands. Our discernment processes are governed by the Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal Church. . . . I did not ever understand B033 as having the weight of our canons. . . . It was still always within the purview of bishops and standing committees to grant or not grant consent.(End of Update)]
Thus you may imagine the view I take of the question of the effect of this new proposed Resolution D 025 on the former B 033. It does not expressly, in so many words, purport to "revoke, repeal, rescind or supersede" the earlier Resolution --- and if it did, it would be utterly meaningless, an indulgence in incoherency, like trying to revoke, repeal, rescind or supersede the Defenestration of Prague in 1618, or the first public performance of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony in 1805.
So let us instead look at what the language of proposed Resolution D 025 actually does. Here is the Curmudgeon's Condensed VersionTM , reduced just to subjects and verbs:
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention reaffirm . . . ; give thanks for . . . ; reaffirm . . . and seek to live . . . ; and be it further
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention encourage . . . ; and be it further
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention reaffirm . . . and pledge . . . ; and be it further
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention affirm . . . and acknowledge; and be it further
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention recognize . . . ; and be it further
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention affirm . . . ; and be it further
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention acknowledge . . .
And that is it. Do you see my point? All that this Resolution accomplishes is to propose certain actions be taken by the 76th General Convention ("reaffirm . . . encourage . . . affirm . . . recognize . . . acknowledge . . ."), which will have been taken by the very act of passing the Resolution. It thus expresses the current mood of that gathering, in the sense that a "mind of the House" resolution does: "This is what we think right now . . .". And as such an expression of the moment, it acknowledges implicitly that other people, gathered under different circumstances at a different time, might well think differently.
"Ah, but ---" you say: "the Resolution expresses not just the momentary mood of the 76th General Convention, but also, since the General Convention is the 'highest' body within ECUSA, it expresses the will of ECUSA itself." And there you have fallen into a giant figure-of-speech trap, called synecdoche: you are letting the part (this particular General Convention, whose deputies cannot be instructed or guided by anyone but the Holy Spirit) represent the whole, the Episcopal Church (USA), which is an infinitely more complex amalgam of individual dioceses. Indeed, it is a common assumption on the part of the activists who seek to control it that General Convention is the Episcopal Church (USA). But a moment's reflection on the matter would suffice to show that such an assumption cannot be true.
Think for a moment: can the Episcopal Church --- The Episcopal Church, as it likes to be called --- actually be defined for only two weeks out of every 156? If General Convention is The Episcopal Church while it is in session, then just who, pray tell, is The Episcopal Church the other 154 weeks of each triennium? Is it the Executive Council, delegated to carry out "the program and policies adopted by the General Convention"? But the membership of the Executive Council --- none of whom is elected by the member dioceses of the Church --- is comprised of people elected by General Convention and the nine Provinces, plus five members who sit ex officio, so how can it be said to represent The Church? It represents General Convention and the Provinces, plus the staff at 815 to various degrees, but it cannot be the Church all by itself: its authority is circumscribed by that of General Convention, which is not the Church, either. This is the fallacy inherent in synecdoche --- letting the part represent the whole (and vice versa).
So if we reject the false apparatus of synecdoche, we come back to the fact that about 840 people, gathered in the House of Deputies in July 2009, have expressed a sense of their collective mind that as a body, General Convention ought to do certain things --- each of which can be accomplished simply by passing the Resolution. What, therefore, is so contentious about all this? Why cannot the House of Bishops just concur in the Resolution and be done with it?
Ah, now we come to the heart of the matter. The House of Bishops of course could simply concur, and the Resolution would be both enacted and carried out simultaneously. General Convention 2009 could thereupon adjourn and go home, and nothing would be any different. Individual Bishops and Standing Committees in each diocese would still determine who is ordained to holy orders in that diocese, regardless of any "mind of the House" resolution passed by General Convention. Bishops and Standing Committees are bound to obey only Canons enacted by General Convention (and some dioceses have not even acceded to that proposition). Whatever else it may be, Resolution D 025 is not a Church Canon, and so it commands obedience from no one.
What has happened here is something that transcends General Convention, the Bishops and the Standing Committees as a whole. All the actors are playing parts which differ markedly from their real-life roles in the Church. For what the 75th General Convention did, by enacting Resolution B 033, was to put in place a fig-leaf, designed to cover over the real (and possibly offensive, to the majority of the Communion) desire of the assembled Deputies to tell the rest of the Anglican Communion where they could get off. Its passage was sold at the time by an emotional appeal to the Deputies to "make a gift" to the newly elected Presiding Bishop, thereby ensuring that she would continue to be received in the hallowed halls of the Communion.
The LGBT community within ECUSA saw this as a sell-out, a form of "feudal morality" imposed on it by those desirous not to cause any affront to the rest of the Anglican Communion. But as we have just seen, nothing was imposed on anyone. There was only a "calling upon" bishops and standing committees to exercise a certain restraint. However, the very idea that the two Houses of General Convention would join even in such a "call" was offensive to the LGBT community in ECUSA.
Now they have redoubled their efforts for this Convention, and they are determined not to let the same form of "feudal morality" be imposed upon them again. They have set their sights, however, upon a chimera --- the "repealing" or "rescinding" of a finished and completed act: the "call" that was made when B 033 was passed.
Only people with a profound and tragic sense of victimhood would perceive a one-time, non-obligatory "call" upon someone else as something to be "repealed" after it had happened. It was a form of "voter's remorse": "Yes, we did this to make a gift to our newly elected Presiding Bishop, but now we ought to take it back." (The deputy who pleaded with her colleagues to enact B 033 as a "gift" to Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori was the same confused Deputy who in today's debate pleaded with the Deputies to enact D 025 "as a gift reflecting our messiness to the Anglican Communion, but as an authentic statement about who we are.") The point is not to dwell upon a single, isolated incident of the past, even if it was an incident that involved a whole General Convention. That General Convention is dissolved forever into the ether; it can never reconvene or express its mind again.
But the point is equally not to create another single, isolated reference point which will in the end be just as ephemeral and non-binding as B 033. Those who think that Resolution D 025 is the solution to the problem are just as misguided as those who voted for B 033: in the final analysis, neither Resolution accomplishes a thing other than to express an inclination of the moment, a certain "mind of the House". "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions", or expressed in parliamentary terms, "the road to oblivion is papered with 'mind of the House' resolutions." Such resolutions are not only toothless, but cease to have any meaning once they are enacted. "So the 76th General Convention thought this on July 17, 2009: so what? What do the Bishops and Standing Committees, who will be giving the actual approvals for ordination, think? That is what I would like to know."
A kind of parliamentary fig-leaf thus becomes, through mutual and blind assent to unspoken premises, a perceived point of crisis in the lives of Episcopal LGBTs. None of them wanted it in the first place, but having voted for it, now they do not want a vote to remove it to be a source of condemnation for their having allowed it to be put in place three years ago. Having wholly manufactured the crisis in the first place, there is nothing anyone on the outside can do to rescue them from it; that is the nature of fig leaves. The first wisdom for those on the outside must come from realizing that no matter how sympathetic one might be towards their goals, they have gone about it the wrong way, as though General Convention were the be-all and the end-all to ECUSA's polity, and that nothing in one's power to do could grant them what they believe they must have. "As you sow, so shall you reap." The Episcopal LGBTs have only themselves to blame for their self-imposed predicament, and must live with the invited consequences of their tactics.
Now contrast, if you will, this current posture in which the activists of General Convention find themselves with what happened at the Lambeth Conference of 2008. Unlike General Convention 2009, which is all about doing as a group that which we came here to accomplish, Lambeth 2008 was all about listening --- to each other, but especially to the wise and marvelous teaching of Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Let me refer you to this earlier post, in which I quoted from one of his teaching sessions, as follows (I am going to quote both his remarks and my comments on them, because they are of a piece):
Archbishop Rowan now continues to emphasize the special calling of bishops:
So the only way of being a successful apostle is to be incapable of distancing oneself from the weakness of others. Bearing apostolic witness we have to speak of a new humanity in which we bear others burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ. Represent Jesus Christ and your defences will be down, and you will share in the weakness and loss of all, and your assumed loss will be part of the pain God takes upon himself in his infinite love. Paul sees the Church as being called to living the death and resurrection of Christ in the world.Note well, TEC (and all other) Bishops: you have to learn "to be incapable of distancing oneself from the weaknesses of others." So much of what passes for deliberation these days in TEC's House of Bishops , and all of the litigation TEC is embroiled in, shows exactly the opposite face to the Communion, and to the world as a whole. Think again about the oxymoron of a church that fully endorses abortion, and ponder on the Archbishop's words.
Having set up the assembled bishops for their special role, Archbishop Rowan now delivers the clincher:Therefore bishops can never, however much they’d like to be, become the spokesperson of a single nation, or cause, or group, however worthy they may be.
Dr. Williams, however, was not through with his teaching (or I with my comments):
"We have been taken hold of by Christ." This is the message that is wanting at General Convention. Instead, what we have in its place is this message (I have added the emphasis):Some will call it dithering — we have to find ways to make it prophetic. It would be much easier to turn the church into an association of people who sign up to particular ideas, or reflect the nation in some vague way.Such as abortion, gay/lesbian civil rights, liberation theology---you name it, it has been promoted in the name of our church and social justice. Just in case anyone is still wondering about the message of this study, Archbishop Rowan now says it a third time:What we actually have to do is express in our living the whole new humanity that is being gathered up in Christ. Therefore we can never simply be servants to one subgroup. We have been taken hold of by Christ. We may of course want to affirm this person or that, but we cannot without also some note of challenge as well as affirmation. Therefore bishops have to prioritise living and proclaiming the life of a Christ who gathers lost humanity into one in himself.
"If you don't want GLBT folks as bishops, don't ordain them as deacons, better yet, be honest and say 'we don't want you, you don't belong here' and don't bestow on them the sacrament of baptism to begin with," said Harris to applause. "How can you initiate someone and treat them like they are half-assed baptized."
From there Harris moved on to the sacrament of marriage: marriage is a civil contract to which the church adds a blessing. It is the firm belief of many that the church should get out of the business of marriage. Let same- and-opposite sex couples get married, where it is legal; it's now legal in six states. "Let the church then administer the sacrament of blessing on all such couples and their lives," she said.
Rather than speculating about the suitability or unsuitability of a person's manner of life, Harris said she would prefer the church to work to protect people from hate crimes. . . .
Harris concluded where she began with Peter's bold assertion: "God has no favorites. Whoever fears God and does what is right, is acceptable to God . . . all of us the baptized let us honor the sacrament of our baptism and our baptismal covenant, the only covenant we need."
According to this view, everything the Church has to give is a matter of contract rights that flow from the initial compact which is the baptismal covenant. This covenant ("the only covenant we need" --- as though man could be the judge of what covenants he "needs") is one's entitlement to all the trappings of salvation, which belong to one by virtue of one's baptism. To deny the gift of holy orders is not a consequence of the Church's subordination to Holy Scripture: the denial is not that of Scripture, but is an act of civil discrimination by the Church, which "initiates" someone and then "treat[s] them like they are half-assed baptized". At the same time, the Church has no business facilitating the sacrament of marriage as Christ recognized it; it must "get out of the business of marriage", because marriage is not a sacrament at all. But once the State does marry couples of whatever gender, then it is the Church's task "to administer the sacrament of blessing" on all such civil unions, share and share alike. Sacraments, in other words, are administered to those whom the State first qualifies; the Church serves only as a middleman.
This is heresy, pure and simple; spoken by an ordained bishop of the Episcopal Church (USA), however, it borders on blasphemy, in that it combines church and state in a fascist abomination. The Church is totally subservient to secular civil rights; Scripture can play no role in the Church if its message is contradicted by those who have been through the Battle of Birmingham. The admixture of State and Church is complete: both serve each other, and neither functions alone. For it is only by taking the secular State, where all the battles of the last sixty years have been mostly won, and imposing its hard-won principles of equal rights on the Church that the latter may finally fulfill its role here on earth: as a middleman to glorify and bless those whom the State has first liberated in its wisdom.
Such a message is poles apart from the one which Archbishop Williams was at pains to deliver to the bishops assembled at Lambeth (and please note: being a resigned bishop, without jurisdiction, Bishop Harris was not eligible to attend). For all of the criticism directed toward the time spent in indaba, Lambeth at least had the merit of two-way conversation, instead of the one-way street of ubuntu, where "I am in you whether you like it or not, because we start with the fact that I am me, and with you having nothing to say about that."
In marked contrast to Bishop Harris, the Archbishop of Canterbury told those assembled to hear him that having been "taken hold of by Christ", those who lead the Church "can never simply be servants to one subgroup" of the civil spectrum --- "the spokesperson of a single nation, or cause, or group, however worthy they may be."
The difference between Lambeth 2008 and General Convention 2009 is like day and night. With all the other intercessors being recruited by Father Rob Eaton at this site, I am praying that the clear, firm light of Christ will yet shine its way through the fog at Anaheim, and I invite you to join us.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Proposed Title IV Revisions Will Finally Isolate ECUSA
There is a good deal of commentary on the Web about the changes that are being proposed to the disciplinary canons of ECUSA (Title IV of the Canons). You can read an introductory summary of the changes from a viewpoint on the left here; and both Father Tim Fountain and attorney David Trimble have provided extensive commentary at their respective blogs from their more traditional (and, in the case of Father Fountain, "boots-on-the-ground") perspective (StandFirm is publishing links to their previous posts).
But I have seen no commentary or mention to date of what I regard as the single most drastic and isolationist proposal of all with regard to the Title IV Canons. The change I am referring to is a single, subtle modification of the language of the two Canons (IV.9 and IV.10) which deal with the subject of "Abandonment of Communion".
I have written extensively on the history and abuses of these two Canons in ECUSA; in fact, you will find a whole page devoted to them in the "Guide to This Site" at the right. (I suggest you review that page as an introduction to what follows.)
In order to understand the magnitude of the changes which ECUSA is proposing to make to just these two Canons, I first need to clear away some confusion that has arisen out on the Web about what is not being changed. I was following this morning the comments on a post over at StandFirm which quoted Still on Patrol to the effect that the revisions propose to expand the definition of abandonment by adding the little phrase "or in any other way", presumably so as not to have to define the particulars any further than they have already. But this is not accurate.
Let me quote for you the current version of Section 1 of Canon IV.10, dealing with the "Abandonment of Communion" by a Priest or Deacon:
If it is reported to the Standing Committee of the Diocese in which a Priest or Deacon is canonically resident that the Priest or Deacon, without using the provisions of Canon IV.8 or III.7.8-10 and III.9.8-11, has abandoned the Communion of this Church, then the Standing Committee shall ascertain and consider the facts, and if it shall determine by a vote of three-fourths of All the Members that the Priest or Deacon has abandoned the Communion of this Church by an open renunciation of the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship of this Church, or by a formal admission into any religious body not in communion with this Church, or in any other way, it shall be the duty of the Standing Committee of the Diocese to transmit in writing to the Bishop of such Diocese, or if there be no such Bishop, to the Bishop of an adjacent Diocese, its determination, together with a statement setting out in reasonable detail the acts or declarations relied upon in making its determination. . . .
So as you can see from my bolding, the phrase "or in any other way" is already in the text of Canon IV.10. In fact, Messrs. White & Dykman confirm that the phrase was added to the canon in 1874, right on the heels of the debacle over the the attempts to discipline those who left to found the Reformed Episcopal Church. We have, in other words, lived under this broad definition of "abandonment of communion" for 135 years. The proposed changes to Title IV do not alter this language, and so we will undoubtedly live under it for a good many years more.
It does say something, however, to note that the little phrase "or in any other way" was not added in 1874 to the Abandonment Canon which deals with Bishops (Canon IV.9). No, the definition of "abandonment" for Bishops is (supposedly, at any rate) more narrowly confined to just the methods stated:
CANON 9: Of Abandonment of the Communion of This Church by a Bishop
Sec. 1. If a Bishop abandons the communion of this Church (i) by an open renunciation of the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship of this Church, or (ii) by formal admission into any religious body not in communion with the same, or (iii) by exercising episcopal acts in and for a religious body other than this Church or another Church in communion with this Church, so as to extend to such body Holy Orders as this Church holds them, or to administer on behalf of such religious body Confirmation without the express consent and commission of the proper authority in this Church; it shall be the duty of the Review Committee, by a majority vote of All the Members, to certify the fact to the Presiding Bishop and with the certificate to send a statement of the acts or declarations which show such abandonment, which certificate and statement shall be recorded by the Presiding Bishop. The Presiding Bishop, with the consent of the three senior Bishops having jurisdiction in this Church, shall then inhibit the said Bishop until such time as the House of Bishops shall investigate the matter and act thereon. During the period of Inhibition, the Bishop shall not perform any episcopal, ministerial or canonical acts, except as relate to the administration of the temporal affairs of the Diocese of which the Bishop holds jurisdiction or in which the Bishop is then serving.
This little difference between the wording of the two Canons reflects the power differences in the relationship between bishops and their clergy and the relationship of bishops with each other. When it comes to disciplining their clergy, bishops must have the widest latitude to press charges --- and the Abandonment Canon for Clergy (Canon IV.10, quoted above) has been greatly abused in recent times, as I documented here. But when it comes to disciplining themselves, bishops are supposedly dealing with their equals, and so dignity demands that the basis for any charge be spelled out in advance. (That, too, however, has not stopped the House of Bishops from abusing other language in Section 2 of the Canon, as you can read about in the posts linked from this page.)
The proposed revisions to all of Title IV are embodied in Resolution A 185. One might have thought that these carefully deliberated changes, which have been in the works since 2003, would have laid to rest the ambiguity about the number of bishops required to vote in favor of deposing a colleague. As we know from the notorious abuses in the cases of Bishops Cox, Schofield, and Duncan, the phrase "a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote in the House of Bishops" was arbitrarily read by the Presiding Bishop and her Chancellor to mean only those Bishops who were actually present in the House at the time, instead of meaning all Bishops who had a right to vote, whether present at that meeting or not. (I say "arbitrarily", because on virtually the same day the Presiding Bishop was telling the House about her Chancellor's reading of the language in overruling the objections made to going forward with the vote on Bishop Duncan, that same Chancellor was telling the Circuit Court in Virginia that the language meant exactly the opposite.) However, if one had thought they might clear things up by amending the language of the Canon, one would have been wrong.
The solution to the problem lies instead in amending the Constitution so as definitively and finally to deprive all Bishops who have resigned their jurisdictions (i.e., retired) of any right to vote in the House of Bishops. So that amendment (which will pass its second reading at this session, as is required for all amendments to the Constitution) will take care of that.
Having cleared away that underbrush, let us now come to the main point. Let me quote to you the proposed revision to Section 1 of the Canon that will deal with the Abandonment by the Clergy, so that you can see exactly what the drafters propose to change (it receives a new number in the overall scheme: it will become Canon 16, Section 3):
(B) By a Priest or DeaconThere is that phrase again --- "or in any other way" ---so as you can see, they do not propose any change in that regard. So just what is this monumental change of which I speak? Let me give you now the text of the proposed revision to the Canon dealing with Abandonment by a Bishop, and see whether you catch it:
Sec. 3 If it is reported to the Standing Committee of the Diocese in which a Priest or Deacon is canonically resident that the Priest or Deacon, without using the provisions of Canon III.7.8-10 or III.9.8-11, has abandoned The Episcopal Church, then the Standing Committee shall ascertain and consider the facts, and if it shall determine by a vote of three-fourths of all the members that the Priest or Deacon has abandoned The Episcopal Church by an open renunciation of the Doctrine, Discipline or worship of the Church, or by the formal admission into any religious body not in communion with the Church, or in any other way, it shall be the duty of the Standing Committee of the Diocese to transmit in writing to the Bishop Diocesan, or if there be no such Bishop, to the Bishop Diocesan of an adjacent Diocese, its determination, together with a statement setting out in reasonable detail the acts or declarations relied upon in making its determination. If the Bishop Diocesan affirms the determination, the Bishop Diocesan shall place a restriction on the exercise of ministry by that Priest or Deacon for sixty days and shall send to the Priest or Deacon a copy of the determination and statement, together with a notice that the Priest or Deacon has the rights specified in Section 2 and at the end of the sixty day period the Bishop Diocesan will consider deposing the Priest or Deacon in accordance with the provisions of Section 4.
(A) By a Bishop
Sec. 1 If a Bishop abandons The Episcopal Church (i) by an open renunciation of the Doctrine, Discipline or Worship of the Church; or (ii) by formal admission into any religious body not in communion with the same; or (iii) by exercising Episcopal acts in and for a religious body other than the Church or another church in communion with the Church, so as to extend to such body Holy Orders as the Church holds them, or to administer on behalf of such religious body Confirmation without the express consent and commission of the proper authority in the Church, it shall be the duty of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops, by a majority vote of all of its members, to certify the fact to the Presiding Bishop and with the certificate to send a statement of the acts or declarations which show such abandonment, which certificate and statement shall be recorded by the Presiding Bishop. The Presiding Bishop shall then place a restriction on the exercise of ministry of said Bishop until such time as the House of Bishops shall investigate the matter and act thereon. During the period of such restriction, the Bishop shall not perform any Episcopal, ministerial or canonical acts.
Do you see it now? For those who do not, not to worry --- you are in good company, because as I say, I have not seen any other commentary that points to the change I am describing. Let me make it perfectly plain for anyone to see, by quoting the current and the new language in parallel (the old is in blue, the new is in red):
Current Language (Priest)
If . . . [a] Priest or Deacon . . . has abandoned the Communion of this Church . . .
Current Language (Bishop)
If a Bishop abandons the communion [sic] of this Church . . .
Proposed New Language (Priest)
If . . . a Priest or Deacon . . . has abandoned The Episcopal Church . . .
Proposed New Language (Bishop)
If a Bishop abandons The Episcopal Church . . .
They are proposing to drop just the three little words "Communion of this . . .", and to replace them with just one word: "Episcopal". To paraphrase Neil Armstrong, "That's one small step for a church, but one giant leap away from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church."
With that single change, buried in the midst of thousands and thousands of words revising Title IV, the leadership of ECUSA will accomplish the goal toward which it has been striving ever since 1976: a complete and final divorce of its polity and orders from the rest of the Anglican Communion, and in consequence from the Church Catholic as well.
No longer will it be possible, after these changes are voted (and they will be, without any doubt: how could they go back on the strategy at this point?), for Episcopal clergy to avoid a charge of "abandonment" when they seek to transfer to another church within the Anglican Communion. No longer will anyone refer to these Canons as the "Abandonment of Communion" Canons; they become the "Abandonment of ECUSA" Canons. The Communion, as such, is through, as far as ECUSA is concerned. Finito. Not "Ite - missa est", but Ite - finis est.
It matters nothing that they are retaining the old words of the definition: "by formal admission into any religious body not in communion with the same . . .". That language, as I explained in this earlier post, has been read out of the Canons by the depositions of Bishops Cox and Schofield, and by the deposition of literally hundreds of clergy since. It simply is ignored, and will continue to be ignored. All that future Standing Committees will ask, and all that the House of Bishops will ask, is: "Has the priest/deacon/bishop in question left the Episcopal Church?" If the answer is "Yes", then it will not matter in the slightest where the person went: he or she will be deposed. As I have written about the illogical consequences of such a stance before, there is no need to spell it all out again.
Instead, I will content myself with pointing out that by making this change, the Episcopal Church (USA) is aligning itself with one other church which also does not trouble to distinguish, for purposes of defining abandonment, between churches in the Anglican Communion and churches which are not: it will be making its abandonment canons exactly like those of the Anglican Church of Canada. As I said in this earlier post:
TEC's Bishops have now rewritten Canons IV.9 and IV.10 so that they equate "abandonment of communion" not only with joining the Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox Church, but also with joining the Anglican Church of Uganda, or the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. This turns the canons into measures like those of the Anglican Church of Canada, which do not differentiate between joining another religious body that is in communion with the Canadian Church, and one that is not---both acts are equally subject to inhibition and deposition for "abandonment". (Most recently, the Canadian canons were used in this way to threaten the 82-year-old evangelist Dr. J. I. Packer with inhibition.)We should truly be cautious before proceeding down Canada's path. What is happening in front of our eyes with all of the inhibitions and depositions is the balkanization of the Anglican Communion, in violation of the very principles of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral which lie at its heart. Soon, each province of the Communion will have two classes of clergy: those who are licensed to practice in that province, and those who cannot, but who are licensed elsewhere, even though they live and minister in the province in question. Once that happens, what can one say is left of the Anglican Communion? It will have become a tradition, in Hamlet's sad words, that is "more honor'd in the breach than the observance . . .".
The Episcopal Church (USA) is a train that is headed for a wreck. Its leaders in the cab are blithely certain of themselves, and laughingly ignore all the accumulating danger signals --- the red lights and bells, the signs warning that the track is out ahead. How fitting that the three engineers of this grand strategy were gathered for a single photograph yesterday at General Convention (h/t: Father George Conger):
Friday, July 10, 2009
Friday TED Talk: Kary Mullis Goes A-Hunting
Molecular biochemist Kary Mullis is one of science's most remarkable characters. A maverick who sets himself apart from mainstream thought, he was responsible for the technology which enables simple DNA testing through the polymerase chain reaction. He conceived the idea while driving his car at night along the California coast --- he had been trying to solve one problem, and ended up solving another that was much more important (fortunately, he had the genius to recognize this --- for which development he subsequently received the 1993 Nobel Prize). He describes the consequences of that moment here:
I was working for Cetus, making oligonucleotides. They were heady times. Biotechnology was in flower and one spring night while the California buckeyes were also in flower I came across the polymerase chain reaction. I was driving with Jennifer Barnett to a cabin I had been building in northern California. She and I had worked and lived together for two years. She was an inspiration to me during that time as only a woman with brains, in the bloom of her womanhood, can be. That morning she had no idea what had just happened. I had an inkling. It was the first day of the rest of my life.
He has never stopped since. In this five-minute talk, given at the 2009 TED Conference, he describes how the death of a very close friend --- in a hospital, attacked by a (then) unstoppable and completely resistant strain of staphylococcus bacteria --- spurred him to delve back into the caverns of his mind. Once again, he developed (and has since tested) a remedy for which we may all soon be thankful (as soon as the FDA has its bureaucratic say, of course):
The thing to keep in mind is that this molecule works because the human immune system is particularly sensitive to it. But there are many more who slip in "under the radar", as it were. Life is a constant battle against pathogens, some of whom meet their deserved fate at the hands of our immune system, but the war is also against others who continually are trying to evolve the genetic material to evade (or fool) our defense systems. In the end (surprise!), it is just like real war --- except that this time, it is our lives that are at stake.
This is why, no matter how ethically challenged (or religiously agnostic) he may be, I thank God for people like Kary Mullis --- because unlike Richard Dawkins, he is not a proselytizer for the cause, but is just who he is --- a North Carolina farm boy who won a Nobel Prize. He is open to supernatural events that have no explanation in science; he is willing to do what authority commands him not to do (e.g., combine potassium perchlorate and sugar); and he is humble enough to recognize that just because he succeeds, he does not thereby become an authority.
There are more links about Karry Mullis here; a much longer TED talk here; and downloads of this shorter talk here. You may watch the talk in its high-res version here.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
T. W. I. T. Ch.
I am not sure whether Christopher Johnson of the Midwest Conservative Journal appreciated the irony of his juxtaposition of the following two Resolutions proposed for General Convention in two consecutive posts. The first is D 045, proposed by Ms. Katie Sherrod, D.D.:
Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 76th General Convention direct that the membership of all committees, subcommittees, task forces and panels elected or appointed by any body or leader of The Episcopal Church (including, but not limited to, the House of Deputies, the House of Bishops, the Executive Council, Standing Commissions, Committees, Agencies and Boards of The Episcopal Church and their respective Presiding Officers and Chairs) be made public no later than 30 days after election or appointment.
EXPLANATION
The Episcopal Church should model in its governance and life the transparency and openness all Christians are called to demonstrate. Our Baptismal Covenant calls us to seek Christ in all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. Transparency in our dealings with one another is one way human dignity is respected. Conversely, secrecy is destructive of human dignity and of our common life. Making public the names of persons elected or appointed to any body charged to work in Christ's name for the good of the Church serves the Church's health and promotes trust in one another.
As Christopher concisely explains, the goal of this Resolution is to compel the House of Bishops to make public the names of all those it appointed to its committee designated to produce two studies (one from the left, and one from the right) on human sexuality in the Church. It seems that the EpiscoGLBTs were, er, slightly upset over not being permitted to know the names until the studies were delivered and made public.
Thus, the Episcoleft is demanding complete "transparency in our dealings with one another". Then why does Christopher Johnson rate the following Resolution's chances of succeeding as being that of a "snowball in Hell"? From the Diocese of West Texas, we have Resolution C 067:
Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church direct the office of the Presiding Bishop and the Executive Council to provide the following information to each Diocese of the Church:
(a) The dollar amount spent by TEC on litigation against dioceses, parishes, groups of churches and individuals since General Convention, 2006;
(b) A list of the church accounts and/or budget items from which these funds were taken;
(c) An explanation of the line item described in the Domestic & Foreign Missionary Society Budgetary Summary as: Additional Draw from short-term reserve for legal support to dioceses exceeding budget for 2008-$1,520.000.00;
(d) The amount of money budgeted for litigation for the next Triennium;
(e) An estimate of the amount of property value retained and expected to be retained by the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (PECUSA) because of pending and completed litigation as of General Convention 2009.
EXPLANATION
The Episcopal Church has engaged in litigation in numerous dioceses across the country in cases involving property disputes with local parishes which have elected to depart TEC. This litigation has been initiated by either the local diocese or the parish against the other party. TEC intervened as a party in interest aligned with the local diocese. Substantial legal fees and related expenses have been incurred on behalf of TEC. Beginning in 2007, requests have been made by various parties to the Executive Council which is responsible for the governance of TEC between General Conventions for financial disclosure of the source of funds and the amounts expended. However no response has been made to date.
So the left demands the one disclosure, and the right demands the other. Both are cast in the form of a "direction" which General Convention issues: the first to no one in particular, and expressed in the passive voice; the second directed to the Presiding Bishop and the Executive Council. The only problem with such "directions" is that they are toothless, and can be disregarded with impunity. Once the 76th General Convention dissolves in ten days, there is no one left to hold accountable anyone who ignores its "directives". (The only way to add some teeth would be to turn these resolutions into proposed new canons of the Church. General Convention, however, is so absorbed with its ability to pass directives to all and sundry that it would require a collective understanding of the larger picture to do that --- a feat of which it is simply incapable.)
Still, demands from both the left and the right for "transparency" are remarkable when they coincide, as they do in these two Resolutions --- both from people in Texas, by the way. Watch to see whether they each pass, or only one does, or neither. They will serve as a good bellwether of the respective degrees of power commanded by the two factions.
Oh, yes, and the "inclusive Church of Ubuntu"? Remember? The theme of this year's General Convention, which symbolizes "the interconnectedness of humanity"? Please note the contrast between word and deed at General Convention. First, the word, from the opening remarks of Dr. Bonnie Anderson, also D.D., the President of the House of Deputies:
God’s Episcopal Church is my Church. It became my Church about 35 years ago for a reason that may seem simple. The Episcopal Church welcomed me. I don’t mean the kind of welcome that gave me coffee and shook my hand,, although that is important too. The Episcopal Church welcomed me in a way that told me the truth about who I am. The Episcopal Church told me that I am a child of God. The Episcopal Church told me that the gifts that God has given me will be put to good use. The Episcopal Church welcomed me in a way that brings me closer to wholeness.
Several weeks ago, Dr. Anderson matched a deed to these words, by announcing she had invited six special persons to be her guests at General Convention 2009. But that is apparently no longer her theme. For the General Convention Media Team, which she also heads (click on "Roster" to see the names), responded recently to the application by Father Matt Kennedy of StandFirm, until a while ago a priest in that same Church, for press credentials at General Convention (read the full story and comments here). Here is the complete text from "This Welcoming, Inclusive and Transparent Church", or "TWITCh" for short, speaking through the Program Officer of its Public Affairs office:
Matt,
Upon review of your application, the credentialling committee has declined your request for credentials.
Neva Rae Fox
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
How General Convention Really Works
General Convention 2009 starts tomorrow. With all of the claptrap about it filling the Web, I thought I would let you in on the secret of what is really going on.
First, the basics: there are currently just 105 legitimate Dioceses in the Episcopal Church (USA), plus the Navajoland Area Mission, plus one convocation --- the Convocation of American Churches in Europe, under the jurisdiction of the Presiding Bishop. No valid replacements have been erected under the civil laws of the respective States for the four Dioceses which pulled out of ECUSA: San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, and Quincy. Instead, the leadership at 815 has by sheer force of will maintained that only people left the Church, and that --- despite the reality that they are separate entities under their respective States' laws --- the legal structures of the respective Dioceses remain intact as inseparable units of the national body.
This question will ultimately be settled (and perhaps differently) in the various State courts, but in the interim the Credentials Committee of General Convention will have its marching orders: they must at all costs recognize the deputies selected (some at illegally noticed "conventions", at which the requisite quorums of clergy and/or laity were not present) by the four reorganized groups of Episcopalians who are presuming that minorities have the right to take over an unincorporated association whenever they disagree with what they majority has voted to do. (After all, isn't that the American way? Democracy --- in religion, anyway --- means that the majority always wins, unless the majority forms what 815 considers as the "recently departed", in which case the minority that 815 "recognizes" as "the majority" wins.)
Were the Credentials Committee to act otherwise, you see, that would create instant and huge problems for ECUSA in its scorched-earth litigation policy: if General Convention does not admit the delegations from the Potemkin dioceses, then the courts might be convinced to throw out the lawsuits they have each brought as well (except for Quincy, which is a special case). Never mind that none of the four Potemkin dioceses has bothered to apply to this General Convention for admission as a newly organized diocese --- that would not do, either, because to have done so would be to admit that they are brand new legal organizations, and not the old ones in which they were the minority.
Each Diocese, both regular and Potemkin, and the CACE will be represented at General Convention in two ways: in the House of Deputies, by up to eight elected deputies, consisting of no more than four laity and four clergy apiece; and in the House of Bishops, by the bishop(s) --- including co-adjutor, suffragan, assistant and (for perhaps the last time this Convention) resigned (that is, retired) --- from that Diocese. (There is a proposal, which is up for its second and final reading at this Convention, to amend the Constitution so as to deprive resigned bishops of any right to vote in the House of Bishops.) With 311 members currently in the House of Bishops, and a maximum of 111 x 8 = 888 deputies, there could theoretically be almost 1,200 voting participants (and each Diocese could theoretically send up to eight alternate deputies, as well). In reality, since many retired bishops do not attend, and since not all dioceses can afford to send eight deputies (plus at least one alternate), the actual number attending will (to use the 75th Convention as a guide) be on the order of 950 to 980.
This is still a very unwieldy number to consider all of the proposed legislation that is taken up during General Convention. So the work of both Houses is broken up into Committees, organized by subject area. The Committees consider and act on each Resolution proposed to the Convention, and make recommendations to the House of which they are a part. The recommendation for each Resolution is in the form of a "report" to that House, which receives a number for the computerized tracking system.
Depending on the nature and the source of the Resolution ("A" Resolutions come from official ECUSA committees, agencies and standing commissions working during the years since the previous Convention, "B" Resolutions are proposed by Bishops, "C" Resolutions are proposed by Dioceses or Provinces, and "D" Resolutions by Deputies), one of the two Houses is assigned to take it up initially. Only if that House passes it does the Resolution then go the other House --- for concurrence, amendment, or rejection. Theoretically, the House of initiation takes the legislative time to consider and vote separately on each Resolution, but the reality is otherwise.
As of this morning, the day before the General Convention begins, there are listed on its official Website 192 "A" Resolutions, 21 "B" Resolutions, 86 "C" Resolutions and 44 "D" Resolutions, making 343 Resolutions in all. (Additional Resolutions may still be introduced up until 5:00 p.m. on the second day of Convention.) The initial draft schedule for GC 2009 shows a total of only about twenty-four hours reserved for legislative sessions in each House. That works out to just about four minutes in which to debate and vote on each Resolution --- an obvious impossibility, given that in the House of Deputies, each of 888 potential Deputies normally may speak for three minutes on each item alone. So the powers that be have developed what is called a "Consent Calendar". The leadership of the House decides which Resolutions shall be assigned to debate on the floor; all the rest are placed on the Consent Calendar, which is acted on by a single vote.
And now we come to the truly amazing part. With all of this process being observed, one would think that General Convention must truly be a representative body, in which each Diocese participates through the votes of its elected bishops and deputies. But that is true only on the surface. For in reality, each deputy is repeatedly instructed in advance not to vote what their own Diocese "wants" them to do, but instead to vote their own conscience, guided by the Holy Spirit:
Deputies vote their conscience for the good of the church. They cannot be instructed to vote one way or another, for to do so would preclude godly debate and preempt the work of the Holy Spirit.
(Note to self: that is why, at bottom, when one really gets down to it, ECUSA can by no stretch of the imagination be called "hierarchical". General Convention is not the "highest legislative body" in the Church, because its deputies and bishops in attending it do not represent their dioceses. General Convention is simply the supreme loose cannon on the deck of a ship that is careening towards disaster.)
All voting in the House of Deputies is electronic, tallied by delegation. In many instances, therefore, unless a deputy discloses how he or she voted, not even a diocese's own delegation knows how its members individually voted, unless the lay or clergy vote in that delegation happens to be unanimous. In the House of Bishops most votes are "voice votes", and so are also generally anonymous, unless at least six bishops request a roll call vote.
The remarkable thing about all this is that, for all the time, energy and money devoted to bringing together so many people from all of its separate dioceses and areas, General Convention is a complete sham. It consists of some 950 people, chosen to be sure by their individual dioceses, but coming together for ten working days with no accountability whatsoever, and no duty to act on behalf of the diocese that sent them. The product of such a process is entirely predictable: the people who are the most actively involved on a given subject, and who have the most time and energy to devote to it, will end up carrying the day.
But the end result --- a thick book consisting of the Journals of each House, plus reports and appendices --- does not represent ECUSA by any means, since the members of General Convention are expressly instructed not to represent their dioceses. So dioceses feel free to disregard any measures enacted by General Convention, and no wonder.
What drama will take place at General Convention, if any, has been aptly described by David Virtue as follows:
GENERAL CONVENTION is a week away. 8,000 to 10,000 Episcopalians of all stripes will descend on Anaheim, California, to debate some 500 resolutions most of which will not affect the thousands of small hamlet Episcopal parishes that can barely muster enough money to pay a full time rector.
There will be lofty resolutions on the environment, liturgical creation cycles, etc., but the real elephant in the sacristy will be resolutions over same-sex blessings. Should homosexuals and lesbians (including bi-sexuals and trannies) have their relationships blessed in TEC or not? There are at least 15 such resolutions that will be whittled down to one or two. But a tug of war is brewing between Bonnie Anderson, House of Deputies president, and Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop over Resolution B033. Anderson wants it on the table to kick around; Jefferts Schori does NOT want it revisited.
B033 calls for restraint in ordaining bishops "whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church," mainly noncelibate homosexuals. It was passed amid calls by Anglican bishops overseas who were outraged after The Episcopal Church - the U.S. arm of Anglicanism - consecrated its first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, in 2003.
Anderson is apparently taking no chances. The House of Deputies will be asked to discuss B033 in two unusual sessions early in the 76th meeting of the General Convention. . . . [I have previously written about the utter pointlessness of this move.]
The irony should not be missed. Anderson wants a discussion and revisit of the issue while the Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori is on record as calling it unhelpful to revisit the issue at all.
It is "far more productive, I think, to have the hard conversations involved in claiming our current position and identity," Jefferts Schori said. So who will win this ecclesiastical tug of war? My money is on Jefferts Schori.
My money is, too. As you can see from my description of the process, whatever inanity the House of Deputies adopts with regard to B 033, it will go nowhere unless the House of Bishops concurs. And controlling the calendar of the House of Bishops is --- well, you guessed it.
A pre-Convention report from the Church Treasurer has it that budgeted revenues will be short by some nine million dollars this year. That happens to be the approximate amount being spent on the 76th General Convention. Too bad the dioceses did not see fit to take up the proposal made at the convention in South Carolina to skip this year's General Convention and save a lot of that money. But the activists running the show would never entertain such an idea. ECUSA is, as I say, a large ship that is running aground. Those who run it will be the last to leave, as they continue to wonder to the end what brought about the shipwreck.
[UPDATE 07/07/2009: Father Daniel Weir's gentle making of some good points in his comment below has caused me to reflect that the tone of this post may perhaps be too curmudgeonly --- even for a curmudgeon, and so I append this note. All of the people whom I know who are attending General Convention are good and well-intentioned Episcopalians, and I am sure that the same is true of the deputies as a whole. In scorning what General Convention can actually accomplish with all of the time, money and energy being devoted to it, I do not mean to be disrespectful of the deputies themselves. The problem is that a herd mentality takes over when there are so many people going through the same experiences in the limited time frame that a General Convention allows. So many people want to accomplish something they can feel good about, and there is so little time within which to do it, that there is precious little on which all 950 or so bishops and deputies can actually spend the time required to be of one mind. There is a tendency to coalesce around measures which are far from perfect, and whose ramifications are not fully understood, in the effort to "get something done". Or there is an illusion that sets in, which comes from the feeling that if there are this many people in one place who really care about peace and justice for all, then this gathering must be really important in the grand scheme of things --- especially since it will not happen again for three whole years. Meanwhile, the real problems facing the Church --- such as its lack of any real central structure or authority, and the resultant ability of just a few to set costly priorities for it (like ruinous lawsuits, with no possibility of compromise), are glossed over and left unaddressed. It is enough to make one on the whole rather grumpy, and if that rains on anyone's Ubuntu, then that's the way it is.]
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[CORRECTED UPDATE 07/07/2009: Scratch previous update; scratch mild approach (sorry, Father Weir --- your people are drawing the lines here): There is no such thing as an "inclusive" Episcopal Church; it is all more liberal lies and claptrap. My first curmudgeonly instincts were on target, and I should have trusted them. The so-called "Media Operations Office" at General Convention 2009 --- not to be confused with the "Credentials Committee", who are granting credentials to the "bishops" and "deputies" from the non-dioceses of San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, Fort Worth and Quincy --- have denied press credentials to the Rev. Matt Kennedy of StandFirm. ECUSA has thereby exposed, for any Episcopalian acquainted with the facts, its mind-boggling, benumbing, vindictive and thoroughly un-Christian pettiness. The "inclusive" Church --- the Church that stands for "peace and justice", and for "equal access to all the sacraments for all the baptized" --- cannot stand the idea of allowing one of its former clergy, who of all people is as well qualified to cover what is happening as any other member of the press, equal access to the floor to report its shenanigans. You shall reap what you sow. All gloves are off. No more trying to bridge the gap, because ECUSA every time will burn any bridge that one tries to build. Indeed, this single act of flinging down the gauntlet calls for some Shakespeare. Having just seen the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Macbeth, I recall this most vividly:
Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
Alea iacta est.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Ten Theses contra General Convention
It is time, as General Convention approaches its rendezvous with fate and the Holy Spirit (how is that for high drama?), to lay down a few markers. In doing so, although I cannot presume to claim the calling of a prophet, I have been moved to declare a firm position by this passage from today's Old Testament reading (our priest for the service, who has been in the Church for more than fifty years, observed wryly that it is "almost every minister's favorite sermon text"), from Ezekiel:
UPDATE #2 07/05/2009: As great minds continue to concatenate, first Father Tim Fountain, and now the Underground Pewster has affirmed this same message:
2:3 He said to me, “Son of man, I am sending you to the house of Israel, to rebellious nations who have rebelled against me; both they and their fathers have revolted against me to this very day. 2:4 The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and hard-hearted, and you must say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says.’ 2:5 And as for them, whether they listen or not – for they are a rebellious house – they will know that a prophet has been among them. . . ."
In addition to Ezekiel, I take as my model Martin Luther, who tacked his 95 Theses on the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg 492 years ago. He did so in response to the actions of the Catholic Church in sending into Germany a papal commissioner who offered indulgences to all baptized sinners that would let them, in exchange for money to be used to rebuild the edifice of St. Peter's in Rome, buy themselves (or any other baptized Christian) out of any unpleasant or inconvenient aspect of the afterlife. Well, as you read this, ECUSA is assembling its General Convention in my home State, and I feel similarly moved to put up my own "Ten Theses" in order to oppose what is a foregone conclusion will take place there.
(N.B. This is not a "proof-text" argument. Those who would dismiss it as such intend a disservice: the passages from Scripture which I cite are not intended to prove my theses, so much as to illustrate and support them. The proof of what I argue rests not in the supporting texts as rather in the reader's mind, after he/she has fairly taken to heart both what I say, and what I cite. Moreover, please bear in mind that this is written strictly from a traditionally religious point of view. Those who want to take up the civil legislation of what religion advocates as a moral standard would do well to read this post for some perspective on the current gap between religion and civil society.)
"Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen." No claim is made to equal Luther's forensic skills, but as he set the example, so I also will defend my theses to anyone.
1. The purpose for God's Holy Church Catholic is to bring the faithful together in the love of Jesus Christ. It has no more to do with sex (heterosexual or homosexual) than it does with food, drink, fine cigars, good books, or any other appetite of the mind or body.
Phil. 2:1 Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort provided by love, any fellowship in the Spirit, any affection or mercy, 2:2 complete my joy and be of the same mind, by having the same love, being united in spirit, and having one purpose. 2:3 Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself. 2:4 Each of you should be concerned not only about your own interests, but about the interests of others as well. 2:5 You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had,
2:6 who though he existed in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
2:7 but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
2:8 He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death
– even death on a cross!
2:9 As a result God exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
2:10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow
– in heaven and on earth and under the earth –
2:11 and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father.
2. We do not go to church to ask God's blessings on our appetites. Nor do we ask God's blessing upon us as we are. We ask God to bless us in the love of Jesus Christ, that we may grow in that love and teach others about it also.
Phil. 2:12 So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, 2:13 for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort – for the sake of his good pleasure – is God. 2:14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 2:15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without blemish though you live in a crooked and perverse society, in which you shine as lights in the world 2:16 by holding on to the word of life . . .
3. To be faithful to the tradition of the Church fathers is not to be homophobic. One cannot be homophobic and love Christ at the same time.
John 15:17 This I command you – to love one another. 15:18 If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me first.
4. To demand "equal access to the sacraments for all the baptized" is to mistake the nature of the sacraments. Sacraments cannot be defined by "access"; sacraments are given to us by grace, and are by grace received. The receiver has no power to command, or to compel, the giving of God's grace as expressed in the sacrament.
Mark 14:22 While they were eating, he took bread, and after giving thanks he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it. This is my body.” 14:23 And after taking the cup and giving thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
5. The words of Jesus Christ and St. Paul were not spoken or written in order that they might be twisted to support current cultural beliefs, however popular or high-minded.
Gal. 2:4 Now this matter arose because of the false brothers with false pretenses who slipped in unnoticed to spy on our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, to make us slaves. 2:5 But we did not surrender to them even for a moment, in order that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. 2:6 But from those who were influential (whatever they were makes no difference to me; God shows no favoritism between people) – those influential leaders added nothing to my message.
6. "Dialogue" or "conversation" to the end of changing the traditional understanding of their words is futile --- not because meanings can never change, but because it is of the very nature of God's word that it does not change.
1 Pet. 1:23 You have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. 1:24 For
all flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of the grass;
the grass withers and the flower falls off,
1:25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.
And this is the word that was proclaimed to you.
Also:
Heb. 6:17 In the same way God wanted to demonstrate more clearly to the heirs of the promise that his purpose was unchangeable, and so he intervened with an oath, 6:18 so that we who have found refuge in him may find strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us through two unchangeable things, since it is impossible for God to lie.
7. The changes which the "social justice" activists are forcing upon the Church are appetite- and ego-driven. No one has to demand equal access to Christ Jesus.
Gal. 3:1 You foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell on you? Before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified! 3:2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3:3 Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?. . .
3:26 For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. 3:27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female – for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
8. Those who demand that Scripture be reinterpreted so as not to discriminate against their lifestyle are seeking affirmation in themselves. No one needs affirmation in the love of Jesus.
Phil. 3:13 Brothers and sisters . . . I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, 3:14 with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 3:15 Therefore let those of us who are “perfect” embrace this point of view. . . 3:18 For many live, about whom I have often told you, and now, with tears, I tell you that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. 3:19 Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, they exult in their shame, and they think about earthly things. 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven – and we also await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 3:21 who will transform these humble bodies of ours into the likeness of his glorious body by means of that power by which he is able to subject all things to himself. . . .
4:8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. 4:9 And what you learned and received and heard and saw in me, do these things. And the God of peace will be with you. . . .Also:
John 3:14 "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 3:15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." 3:16 For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 3:18 The one who believes in him is not condemned. . . . 3:20 For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. 3:21 But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God.
9. As a sacrament of the Church, marriage is not a blessing of the heterosexual lifestyle, but of the union of a man with a woman which reflects the love of Christ, in fulfillment of God's purpose for them.
Mt 19:4 He answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female, 19:5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 19:6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. . . .”
Such a sacramental union is not based on appetite or ego, but reflects God's purpose for such couples ever since the beginning of the human race --- with us now having the benefit of Jesus' confirmation of that purpose, in such sayings as the one just quoted, and in such endorsements as His miracle at the wedding in Cana.
Be it noted that Jesus Himself never married. For Him to have done so would have elevated the sacrament of marriage over His purpose while here on earth. Thus, without going to the extremes acknowledged just six verses later, Jesus Himself set the example for others who cannot marry because of their circumstances --- a lesson which is all but forgotten in today's aimless quest for reinforcement of one's self-affirmation before God.
No other joining of any two humans but a man and a woman qualifies for the sacrament of marriage, because any such other joining depends on the former union for it even to be conceivable. To demand that the sacrament of marriage be extended to other unions is to conflate Jesus' affirmation of the purpose of such a union with the purpose itself. (UPDATE 07/05/2009: Father Dan Martins has put up a post along these same lines; see also this post.)
10. By maneuvering the Church so as to bless and affirm a particular lifestyle, those who do so are changing it from a Church into a cultural club of the like-minded, whose members mutually affirm their goodness because of their self-proclaimed inclusiveness. They should not, therefore, be surprised at the anger or refusal to participate invoked by these machinations. Such anger, and such refusals to participate are, to repeat, not the evidence of homophobia, narrow-mindedness --- or even fundamentalism (as they so frequently disparage it): they are the responses which Scripture itself commends.
Acts 13:8 But the magician Elymas (for that is the way his name is translated) opposed them, trying to turn the proconsul away from the faith. 13:9 But Saul (also known as Paul), filled with the Holy Spirit, stared straight at him 13:10 and said, “You who are full of all deceit and all wrongdoing, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness – will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? 13:11 Now look, the hand of the Lord is against you, and you will be blind, unable to see the sun for a time!” Immediately mistiness and darkness came over him, and he went around seeking people to lead him by the hand.Also, from 1 Timothy:
1:3 As I urged you when I was leaving for Macedonia, stay on in Ephesus to instruct certain people not to spread false teachings, 1:4 nor to occupy themselves with myths and interminable genealogies. Such things promote useless speculations rather than God’s redemptive plan that operates by faith. 1:5 But the aim of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. 1:6 Some have strayed from these and turned away to empty discussion. 1:7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not understand what they are saying or the things they insist on so confidently. . . .Paul, who had earlier been one of the greatest of false teachers, acknowledged the righteousness by which he was extended ---in the ignorance of his unbelief --- the opportunity of God's grace in Jesus Christ:
1 Tim. 1:12 I am grateful to the one who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me faithful in putting me into ministry, 1:13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor, and an arrogant man. But I was treated with mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief, 1:14 and our Lord’s grace was abundant, bringing faith and love in Christ Jesus. 1:15 This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” – and I am the worst of them! 1:16 But here is why I was treated with mercy: so that in me as the worst, Christ Jesus could demonstrate his utmost patience, as an example for those who are going to believe in him for eternal life. 1:17 Now to the eternal king, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever! Amen.
UPDATE #2 07/05/2009: As great minds continue to concatenate, first Father Tim Fountain, and now the Underground Pewster has affirmed this same message:
Has my church sufficiently grounded me in Christ to defend His name?
Or should I just keep being a "good person" and be a silent example for Him?
To the last question I say, "No!" A vision of the rocks themselves refusing to be silent came to mind: Luke 19:37-40"And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen;I declare! Praise to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
Saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.
And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.
And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out."
Shout it out! Keep those stones from singing!
* * * * *
Non nobis, Domine, sed nomine tuo da gloriam.
Non nobis, Domine, sed nomine tuo da gloriam.
By way of an extended P.S., for the musically and literarily inclined:
I have chosen the Deller Consort version of this magnificent psalm text, in recognition of that group's contribution to our sacred heritage. The musical setting, by the way, is probably not by William Byrd. And my favorite story about Alfred Deller is this one:
After a concert in Germany, with an audience most of whom didn't really know what a counter-tenor was and who probably had never had an opportunity to hear one before, a well-meaning lady from the audience eager to learn more came up to him. She'd probably read something about castrati, but didn't know the proper English word. So she asked Deller, in heavily accented English:
"Excuse me, sir, are you eunuch?"
Deller politely replied:
"No, madam, I am unique."
As is each of God's children --- one should just not let it go to one's head, as Mark Twain explained here:
Was the World Made for Man?Mark Twain1903
“Alfred Russell Wallace's revival of the theory that this earth is at the center of the stellar universe, and is the only habitable globe, has aroused great interest in the world." -- Literary Digest
"For ourselves we do thoroughly believe that man, as he lives just here on this tiny earth, is in essence and possibilities the most sublime existence in all the range of non-divine being -- the chief love and delight of God." -- Chicago "Interior" (Presb.)
I seem to be the only scientist and theologian still remaining to be heard from on this important matter of whether the world was made for man or not. I feel that it is time for me to speak.
I stand almost with the others. They believe the world was made for man, I believe it likely that it was made for man; they think there is proof, astronomical mainly, that it was made for man, I think there is evidence only, not proof, that it was made for him. It is too early, yet, to arrange the verdict, the returns are not all in. When they are all in, I think they will show that the world was made for man; but we must not hurry, we must patiently wait till they are all in.
Now as far as we have got, astronomy is on our side. Mr. Wallace has clearly shown this. He has clearly shown two things: that the world was made for man, and that the universe was made for the world -- to steady it, you know. The astronomy part is settled, and cannot be challenged.
We come now to the geological part. This is the one where the evidence is not all in, yet. It is coming in, hourly, daily, coming in all the time, but naturally it comes with geological carefulness and deliberation, and we must not be impatient, we must not get excited, we must be calm, and wait. To lose our tranquility will not hurry geology; nothing hurries geology.
It takes a long time to prepare a world for man, such a thing is not done in a day. Some of the great scientists, carefully deciphering the evidences furnished by geology, have arrived at the conviction that our world is prodigiously old, and they may be right, but Lord Kelvin is not of their opinion. He takes a cautious, conservative view, in order to be on the safe side, and feels sure it is not so old as they think. As Lord Kelvin is the highest authority in science now living, I think we must yield to him and accept his view. He does not concede that the world is more than a hundred million years old. He believes it is that old, but not older. Lyell believed that our race was introduced into the world 31,000 years ago, Herbert Spencer makes it 32,000. Lord Kelvin agrees with Spencer.
Very well. According to Kelvin's figures it took 99,968,000 years to prepare the world for man, impatient as the Creator doubtless was to see him and admire him. But a large enterprise like this has to be conducted warily, painstakingly, logically. It was foreseen that man would have to have the oyster. Therefore the first preparation was made for the oyster. Very well, you cannot make an oyster out of whole cloth, you must make the oyster's ancestor first. This is not done in a day. You must make a vast variety of invertebrates, to start with -- belemnites, trilobites, jebusites, amalekites, and that sort of fry, and put them to soak in a primary sea, and wait and see what will happen. Some will be a disappointments - the belemnites, the ammonites and such; they will be failures, they will die out and become extinct, in the course of the 19,000,000 years covered by the experiment, but all is not lost, for the amalekites will fetch the home-stake; they will develop gradually into encrinites, and stalactites, and blatherskites, and one thing and another as the mighty ages creep on and the Archaean and the Cambrian Periods pile their lofty crags in the primordial seas, and at last the first grand stage in the preparation of the world for man stands completed, the Oyster is done. An oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a scientist has; and so it is reasonably certain that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen-million years was a preparation for him; but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited animal there is, except man. . . .
Saturday, July 4, 2009
A New Declaration of Independence
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has now organized, and nine of the 38 Provinces in the Anglican Communion have given it recognition, without waiting for the Anglican Consultative Council to act. (The Episcoleft still pats its collective back with the fact that the number of Provinces so recognizing ACNA is in a numerical minority, because they know that they control --- for the time being, at any rate --- the majority of Provinces in the ACC. The fact that those Provinces which have thus far recognized ACNA constitute nearly half of the world's Anglicans carries no weight whatsoever with them, because in their elitist liberal eyes, the people who make up those Provinces are "people who never were English, [and who] don't speak English as their native tongue", to quote one prominent member of ECUSA's Executive Council.)
Almost a year ago, when it appeared that everything was falling into place for the creation of what has since become ACNA, I put up a post in which I took the text of Mr. Jefferson's immortal Declaration of Independence and modified it ever so slightly to make it into a Declaration of Religious Independence. Using his descriptions of the tyrannical acts committed with respect to the Thirteen Colonies by the British sovereign, I provided links to descriptions of equivalent acts by ECUSA and its leadership. Just as His Excellency George III would not allow any dialogue or tolerate negotiations with the colonials, so has the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori refused to negotiate with those she regards as thieves and apostates who presume to cart off the parish silver at the same time as they refuse to recognize her authority. As is inevitable with the Internet, many of the links in that earlier post no longer work, and need updating.
Accordingly, now that ACNA has just finished its initial organizing convocation at Bedford Texas, and we are celebrating a real Fourth of July, it is timely to provide an update of that earlier post. I therefore dedicate the following remake of my earlier post to those who throughout the Anglican world, whether "in communion" with Canterbury or not, are steadfast in their resistance of the divisive and ruinous campaign in ECUSA and in ACoC to force the Anglican Communion to recognize and acquiesce in the tenet that all lifestyles are created equal, while all men and women are not. (Those who disagree are definitely homophobic and inferior, both mentally and culturally, and must therefore be hounded, derided, vilified and ultimately excluded from true Anglican society --see elitist remarks quoted above.) We are now at a watershed in the history of the Anglican Communion --- a time when the forces resisting the heterodoxy rampant within the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada can no longer be confined to the one-way mazes erected and maintained by those who demand from the Church a form of secular justice that is not its own to dispense. (As I so often have to remind those who come here, there are no civil rights which one can demand from God, who owes us sinners nothing.)
The forces of resistance are now more powerful than before, because they have organized into a single body. (And already those who have thus far not shied from disruption to achieve their ends are gloating that ACNA's "unity in diversity" cannot last.) The result is, for the first time in Anglican history, a genuine threat to the exclusivity of the franchises thus far held by ECUSA and ACoC. The new Province is a fact on the ground, and those who make gibes to the effect of "a Province of what Communion?" would do better to look to their own fading ties. The Church of England, on which ECUSA and ACoC have thus far leaned, is torn between the Scylla of ordaining women to the episcopate and the Charybdis of accommodating gays and lesbians while avoiding all forms of legislatively defined discrimination. Because it, too, cannot be all things to all Anglicans, it may split apart in the near future. Meanwhile, the stress on all the ties that bind Anglicans will be increased to the breaking point by the 76th General Convention that starts next week.
A Church that once turned all manner of backwards somersaults in order to be seen as faithful to its English origins (so that the bishops of the Church of England would not be dissuaded from consecrating bishops for them) now arrogantly presumes to call the tune to which all others must dance. Well, the dancers are leaving the floor in droves, and soon the orchestra may do so, too. ECUSA may own the dance floor, but after this next General Convention may find itself with few partners, and be forced to act as its own disc jockey.
A similar watershed was reached in times past, at a momentous point in the history of our country, and a document was created to memorialize the irrevocable resolve of its founders. That document---the Declaration of Independence---chronicled the abuses and misrule that led to the decision to throw off the King's yoke, and declared to all the world why George III had, by his actions, forfeited his exclusive franchise over the thirteen colonies.
There is no reason why a similar Declaration cannot be drafted now. In just the same way as King George's insults and abuses led our forefathers to declare themselves forever free of his polity, so the constituent members of the Anglican Church of North America, with the support of the Global South and the likewise newly organized Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, can declare themselves free of the polity of the Episcopal Church (USA) and of the Anglican Church of Canada.
WHEN in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the religious bands which have connected them with another, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these religious truths to be self-evident, that all Christians are baptized equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, which is Salvation by Grace through Faith.—That to secure these rights, Churches and their Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from God and from the consent of the governed.—That whenever any Form of Church Polity becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it; and to institute a new Church, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most conducive to their Salvation and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Churches long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Church, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these who are now united as Members of the Anglican Church of North America; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Church Polity. The history of the Presiding Bishop and General Convention of The Episcopal Church is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over Anglicans in America. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
They have refused their Assent to Resolutions affirming the basic Tenets of the Christian Faith, the most wholesome and necessary for the good of the body religious.
They have forbidden their Dioceses to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till their Assent should be obtained.
They intend other Laws demanding the payment of assessments by the Dioceses, unless those Dioceses would relinquish the right of Representation in the General Convention, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
They have called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant, so that the requisite majority needed for action could not attend, for the sole purpose of fatiguing the members into compliance with their measures, adopted without the required number of assents.
They have deposed Bishops and Priests repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness their invasions on the rights of the Dioceses and Congregations.
They have obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Presentments for violation of the Church Canons.
They have made Bishops dependent on their Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
They have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
They have established among us, in times of peace, Standing Committees without the Consent of any duly noticed Diocesan Convention.
They have affected to render the Presiding Bishop independent of and superior to the Canons that embody the Discipline of the Church.
They have combined with others to subject us to a theology foreign to our tradition, and unacknowledged by our scriptures; giving their Assent to the teaching of false doctrine.
For Quartering large bodies of clergy preaching and celebrating open sin among us:
For protecting them, by unscriptural enactments, from being excluded from ordination, or from deposition once ordained:
For cutting off our bonds with all parts of the Anglican Communion:
For imposing Immorality on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury through the abuse of the "Abandonment of Communion" Canons, and through new canons proposed for adoption:
For forcing us to look beyond the Seas for adequate pastoral oversight, and for denouncing and hindering our every attempt to do so:
For abolishing the free System of Canon law in the Diocese of San Joaquin, and establishing therein an Arbitrary Church government, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into other Dioceses:
For taking away the right freely to amend our Diocesan Constitutions, falsely construing our most valuable Canons, and thereby altering fundamentally the Forms of our Church Governments:
For suspending our own elected Ecclesiastical Authorities, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate and execute for us in all cases whatsoever:
They have forfeited and abdicated their exclusive Anglican franchise here, by declaring us out of their Protection and waging War against us.
They have squandered our reserves on wasteful proceedings at law, laid claim to our properties, seized our bank accounts, and destroyed the Lives of our people.
They are at this time plotting new resolutions and legislation for the next General Convention, to complete the works of desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a Christian religion.
They have constrained our fellow Bishops to bring charges against their Will, to become the deposers of their friends and Brethren, or to be deposed themselves by their Hands.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Primate, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free Church.
Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren, from whose Church we were born. We have warned them from time to time of the attempts by The Episcopal Church to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too---especially their Archbishop of Canterbury---have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in Oppression, in Faith Friends.—
WE, THEREFORE, the REPRESENTATIVES of the Anglican Church in North America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of our Churches, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Churches, Dioceses and their Members are, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT of The Episcopal Church in the United States of America and of the Anglican Church of Canada; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to or Dependence upon the said Churches, and that all political and canonical connection between them and those Churches, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent members of their own Anglican Communion, they have full Power to organize themselves as they deem fit, conclude Covenants, recognize and bestow Orders, establish Relationships in Communion, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Churches may of right do.—And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
A similar watershed was reached in times past, at a momentous point in the history of our country, and a document was created to memorialize the irrevocable resolve of its founders. That document---the Declaration of Independence---chronicled the abuses and misrule that led to the decision to throw off the King's yoke, and declared to all the world why George III had, by his actions, forfeited his exclusive franchise over the thirteen colonies.There is no reason why a similar Declaration cannot be drafted now. In just the same way as King George's insults and abuses led our forefathers to declare themselves forever free of his polity, so the constituent members of the Anglican Church of North America, with the support of the Global South and the likewise newly organized Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, can declare themselves free of the polity of the Episcopal Church (USA) and of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Some of the members of ACNA, like the Reformed Episcopal Church, declared themselves free more than a century ago, while others, like CANA and Forward in Faith North America, have from their beginnings been free of ECUSA and the ACoC. However, because of their hitherto exclusive Anglican franchises in North America, ECUSA and ACoC have been able to date to keep these outside organizations from being recognized as constituent members of the Anglican Communion. Thus the chief purpose of a modern Declaration would be to state the reasons why the franchises of those two churches can no longer be regarded as exclusive, and should be declared forfeit for their betrayal of the trust which the Communion extended to them at the outset. At the same time, a new Declaration can lay the foundation, if need be, for a new and independent Communion which will not have to be defined through the aimless dithering of the ACC and Canterbury.
In putting together the following exercise, I was constantly surprised at how Thomas Jefferson's words could be applied with very little change (once the document had been adapted as a religious, rather than a secular, declaration) to the offenses committed by the leadership of The Episcopal Church. (ACoC readers can easily substitute their own indictments.) Not all of the links below are serious, but most are, and as a whole they bear out the fact that the time has now come to begin the separation that must inevitably occur following the carefully pre-orchestrated outcome of General Convention 2009. Accordingly, with Mr. Jefferson's classic text as a model, here is what such a contemporary "Declaration of Independence" looks like:
The unanimous Declaration of the Anglican Church in North America
WHEN in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the religious bands which have connected them with another, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these religious truths to be self-evident, that all Christians are baptized equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, which is Salvation by Grace through Faith.—That to secure these rights, Churches and their Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from God and from the consent of the governed.—That whenever any Form of Church Polity becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it; and to institute a new Church, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most conducive to their Salvation and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Churches long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Church, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these who are now united as Members of the Anglican Church of North America; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Church Polity. The history of the Presiding Bishop and General Convention of The Episcopal Church is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over Anglicans in America. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
They have refused their Assent to Resolutions affirming the basic Tenets of the Christian Faith, the most wholesome and necessary for the good of the body religious.
They have forbidden their Dioceses to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till their Assent should be obtained.
They intend other Laws demanding the payment of assessments by the Dioceses, unless those Dioceses would relinquish the right of Representation in the General Convention, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
They have called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant, so that the requisite majority needed for action could not attend, for the sole purpose of fatiguing the members into compliance with their measures, adopted without the required number of assents.
They have deposed Bishops and Priests repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness their invasions on the rights of the Dioceses and Congregations.
They have obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Presentments for violation of the Church Canons.
They have made Bishops dependent on their Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
They have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
They have established among us, in times of peace, Standing Committees without the Consent of any duly noticed Diocesan Convention.
They have affected to render the Presiding Bishop independent of and superior to the Canons that embody the Discipline of the Church.
They have combined with others to subject us to a theology foreign to our tradition, and unacknowledged by our scriptures; giving their Assent to the teaching of false doctrine.
For Quartering large bodies of clergy preaching and celebrating open sin among us:
For protecting them, by unscriptural enactments, from being excluded from ordination, or from deposition once ordained:
For cutting off our bonds with all parts of the Anglican Communion:
For imposing Immorality on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury through the abuse of the "Abandonment of Communion" Canons, and through new canons proposed for adoption:
For forcing us to look beyond the Seas for adequate pastoral oversight, and for denouncing and hindering our every attempt to do so:
For abolishing the free System of Canon law in the Diocese of San Joaquin, and establishing therein an Arbitrary Church government, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into other Dioceses:
For taking away the right freely to amend our Diocesan Constitutions, falsely construing our most valuable Canons, and thereby altering fundamentally the Forms of our Church Governments:
For suspending our own elected Ecclesiastical Authorities, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate and execute for us in all cases whatsoever:
They have forfeited and abdicated their exclusive Anglican franchise here, by declaring us out of their Protection and waging War against us.
They have squandered our reserves on wasteful proceedings at law, laid claim to our properties, seized our bank accounts, and destroyed the Lives of our people.
They are at this time plotting new resolutions and legislation for the next General Convention, to complete the works of desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a Christian religion.
They have constrained our fellow Bishops to bring charges against their Will, to become the deposers of their friends and Brethren, or to be deposed themselves by their Hands.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Primate, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free Church.
Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren, from whose Church we were born. We have warned them from time to time of the attempts by The Episcopal Church to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too---especially their Archbishop of Canterbury---have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in Oppression, in Faith Friends.—
WE, THEREFORE, the REPRESENTATIVES of the Anglican Church in North America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of our Churches, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Churches, Dioceses and their Members are, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT of The Episcopal Church in the United States of America and of the Anglican Church of Canada; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to or Dependence upon the said Churches, and that all political and canonical connection between them and those Churches, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent members of their own Anglican Communion, they have full Power to organize themselves as they deem fit, conclude Covenants, recognize and bestow Orders, establish Relationships in Communion, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Churches may of right do.—And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Friday, July 3, 2009
What the Fourth Is All About
Since I'm on a roll this morning, I thought I would point you to this next story as a kind of counterweight to the previous post. This is a tale about the bravery of those who are fighting on our behalf to keep the independence that we all celebrate tomorrow --- those who are daily risking their lives so that all of us, yes, including those who are bringing you the media event "L.A. Night" at the Anaheim Arena next July 15, may live ours in freedom. I post the beginning of the story here, and give you a link to the rest at the bottom. The story includes a link to a video made of the event it depicts, which is not to be missed.
Read the rest of the story here. A tip o' th' Rumpolean bowler to Yiddish Steel at Six Meat Buffet, who spells out just why this story is so unusual, but at the same time so typical --- of the Marines, that is:
Spc. Channing Moss should be dead by all accounts. And those who saved his life did so knowing they might have died with him.
March 16, 2006. Southeastern Afghanistan. A fierce ambush and bloody firefight. It was over in a flash and Moss was left on the verge of death.
He was impaled through the abdomen with a rocket-propelled grenade, and an aluminum rod with one tail fin protruded from the left side of his torso.
His fellow soldiers worried: Could he blow up and take them with him? For all anyone knew, the answer was yes.
Still, over the course of the next couple of hours, his buddies, a helicopter crew and a medical team would risk their own lives to save his.
“Moss is an African-American and he’s gone to white. He’s in total shock from the loss of blood. But at the time, I really didn’t think about it. I knew [the RPG] was there but I thought, if we didn’t do it, if we didn’t get him out of there, he was going to die,” said flight medic Sgt. John Collier, 29, then a specialist.
“It was an extremely unusual set of events. He should have died three times that day,” said Maj. John Oh, 759th Forward Surgical Team general surgeon.
The 36-year-old’s surgical skill and command of his own nerves would be put to the ultimate test as, wearing helmet and body armor, he would operate to extract the ordnance from Moss’s booby-trapped body. One wrong move risked the lives of the patient, his own and those of the other members of the medical team.
He said the payoff was worth the gamble.
“For a soldier to be struck by an RPG and be flown and have surgery and survive … it’s unheard of,” said Oh. “It was a pretty remarkable experience.”
Read the rest of the story here. A tip o' th' Rumpolean bowler to Yiddish Steel at Six Meat Buffet, who spells out just why this story is so unusual, but at the same time so typical --- of the Marines, that is:
To Hell With Protocol.War Heroes. This is the account of PVT Channing Moss, who was impaled by a live RPG during a Taliban ambush while on patrol. Army protocol says that medevac choppers are never to carry anyone with a live round in him. Even though they feared it could explode, the flight crew said damn the protocol and flew him to the nearest aid station. Again, protocol said that in such a case the patient is to be put in a sandbagged area away from the surgical unit, given a shot of morphine and left to wait (and die) until others are treated. Again, the medical team ignored the protocol. Here’s a seven-minute video put together by the Military Times, which includes actual footage of the surgery where Dr. John Oh, a Korean immigrant who became a naturalized citizen and went to West Point, removed the live round with the help of volunteers and a member of the EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) team. Channing Moss has undergone six operations but is doing well at home in Gainesville, GA. To me, this is one of the most amazing stories of Military Battlefield and Operating Room Courage I’ve ever heard.I think you’ll find the video pretty remarkable.It makes me proud to be American knowing that there are people like Pfc Channing Moss, Major John Oh, and Staff Sargent Matt Brown serving our country and protecting what we often take for granted every day.
I second that, Yiddish Steel. Thanks for bringing this to our attention --- watching the video and reading the story as we prepare to celebrate the Fourth will help us to remember what this country is all about, and perhaps to take it that much less for granted.
Hollywood Goes Episcopal: Over to You, Greg!
OK, I am handing this one on to Greg Griffith: only his media savvy is up to commenting in depth about this event planned for Wednesday, July 15 at General Convention. It's brought to you by Bishop Jon J. Bruno and the Diocese of Los Angeles, and it will feature the likes of Jimmy Bartz (I invite Alice Linsley to comment on his exegeses of Genesis, which you can find here as podcasts), Barry Taylor, and Brian McLaren (on whom see also the links at this site). In what is styled "a liturgy for transformational living", the program, called "Genesis: From Breath to Wonder", will be an "evening of music, spoken word, light-painting and other visual effects [which] will create an environment focusing on God's creation and creativity." This You-Tube video, with its Hollywood-style effects and rap soundtrack, was created to give you a little foretaste of the event. It had received only 41 views as of this morning when I found it, and it obviously needs to be more widely seen.
Here's more background, from Bishop Bruno himself, in the latest issue of the diocesan publication "Episcopal News":
Whether you are here from afar, or from one of the 150 church sites within this Diocese, thank you for your participation in the community that unites us as God's people, as the General Convention, as the Episcopal Church Women, as volunteers and other groups represented in this place.
Bishops Chet Talton and Sergio Carranza join with Mary and me and our entire diocesan community in wishing you enjoyable and productive days here. Together we seek to bring you the best our Diocese has to offer, including insights into our current mission focus on "Faith & Our Future."
Great Emergence author Phyllis Tickle helped engage this topic when she spoke to our Diocesan Convention about the cycle of unprecedented global change that is reaching across the Church, financial markets, and digital communication, among other areas.
Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren will continue the conversation here in Anaheim, and also when our Diocesan Convention meets again this December. He and the Diocese's new Center for Creative Ministries will bring us L.A. Night on July 15 as an experience of "Genesis: From Breath to Wonder." The music will rock the Anaheim Arena while visual effects feature the artistry of light painting. Everyone is invited. Tickets are free and may be requested during General Convention at the Diocesan Hospitality Center or by email to lanight@ladiocese,org.
The Emergent Church brings us an authenticity that is refreshing in these times of pervasive change and transition. We hope you will see similar creativity and freshness in the ways in which this Diocese is welcoming all as Christ, renewing God's creation, serving with generosity, and building new community.
Facets of these priorities are reflected in these pages, in the video reports streaming at the Diocesan Hospitality Center, and in the stained glass featured here from All Saints' Church in L.A.'s Highland Park. The window offers a view of the fullness in Christ's outstretched arms and open-handed hospitality at the center of our faith and our future together.
Welcome to Southern California, and may God bless you . . .
que Dios lo bendiga . . .
[Chinese translation]
[Japanese translation]
Pagpalain nawa kayo ng Poong Maykapal.
". . . this Diocese is welcoming all as Christ"?? Wait --- I thought, Bishop Bruno, you voted against Kevin Thew Forrester for saying the exact same thing!
Hollywood goes Episcopal --- or is it Episcopal goes Hollywood? Take it from here, Greg!
Friday TED Talk: Gever Tulley on Teaching Kids Dangerously
Gever Tulley, with no kids of his own, has fun letting other people's kids learn by doing things their own parents probably would not let them do. He runs a summer "Tinkering School" for kids --- one-week sessions where they get to do and make things with real power tools and a full range of materials. (In another short video at the TED site, he has a film made by kids riding on a roller coaster they constructed!) In the process of showing what he does, he makes some very good points about how being too protective can actually harm kids when they eventually (as they will) encounter real life:
As you might imagine, Gever Tulley writes some of the most interesting Twitters around. The high-resolution version of his talk is here. The talk may be downloaded from this page, and you may learn more here about Gever Tulley and his summer camp.
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