On the Impossibility of Enacting Trial Rites for Same-Sex Blessings without Violating the Constitution (III)

[Note: This post is Part III of a series on amending the BCP and adopting trial or experimental liturgies for use in the Church, as we head into General Convention LXXVII later this week. Part I is at this link, Part II is at this link, and Part IV will follow tomorrow.]


Having looked at the ways by which General Convention may amend, add to, or supplement the Book of Common Prayer, let us now evaluate the various proposals which the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music has made to the 77th General Convention, meeting in Indianapolis this week. We begin with the text of Resolution A049, which I quoted at the outset of this series (my bold emphasis):

Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 77th General Convention commend "Liturgical Resources I: I Will Bless You and You Will Be a Blessing" for study and use in congregations and dioceses of The Episcopal Church; and be it further 

Resolved, That the 77th General Convention authorize for trial use "The Witnessing and Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant" from "Liturgical Resources I: I Will Bless You and You Will Be a Blessing" beginning the First Sunday of Advent 2012, under the direction of a bishop exercising ecclesiastical authority...

We may ignore the first paragraph; it simply "commend[s] ... for study and use" the background materials the Commission prepared for its same-sex blessings liturgy. The meat of the Resolution is in the second paragraph, where we see that (1) General Convention is asked to (2) authorize for trial use the rite in question (3) under the direction of a bishop with jurisdiction ("exercising ecclesiastical authority").

Is this a proper request? Well, yes, it is -- if General Convention proceeds under the "trial use" (second) paragraph of Article X (quoted and discussed here, in Part I of this series). But there is a problem. That provision requires that any trial rite be approved by a majority of "the whole number" of Bishops in the HoB, and as shown in Part I, that language means that all Bishops, including those not present and voting at General Convention, must be counted in determining the required majority.

According to the official House of Bishops page on the ECUSA Website, there are "nearly 300 active members" in the House of Bishops. Thus, in order to adopt any rite for trial use in the Church as a whole, it would require the affirmative vote of around 151 Bishops. The problem is that most of the Bishops in the HoB are retired ("resigned" from their jurisdictions), and do not come to its meetings, although many more attend sessions of General Convention.

The HoB is projected to have about 200  Bishops present for its sessions in Indianapolis this week, but in the current economic downturn, that estimate may prove too optimistic. Even if just 50 or so voted against of SSB's (and there are a number of Bishops who will do so), there might not be enough votes to pass A049. It will be retired Bishops who do attend who will determine the final outcome, and many of them tend to be more conservative. We shall have to wait and see how the numbers come out.

But the Resolution also uses the language "under the direction of a Bishop." Does that change anything?

It could be that the drafters intended by that language to invoke the language of the final paragraph of Article X, which we discussed in Part II of this series. As shown there, however, that paragraph (a) does not authorize Bishops to approve "trial" rites for Church-wide use, but only rites for "special occasions," and then only in their own diocese. In other words, it does not take a vote of General Convention to authorize a Bishop to approve a rite for use on a special occasion in his/her own diocese.

So the quoted language from Resolution A049 is, in a sense, superfluous. Even in the case of trial rites approved for Church-wide use, their use in any given diocese is still subject to the discretion of its Bishop, whether or not the authorizing resolution so provides.

That is why I wrote the headline to this series. It may well be impossible for the House of Bishops to gather enough of its members in favor of SSB's at Indianapolis to provide the required number for the approval of Resolution A049 adopting a rite for same-sex blessings in the Church.

On the day on which the measure comes up for a vote, the first job should be to determine how many Bishops are actually in attendance at that point. Unless there are more than 152 or so present, any attempt to hold a vote should be preceded by raising a point of order with the House's parliamentarian, and the language of Article X should be explicitly cited. The point should be to have the measure declared defeated, if there are not enough Bishops present to satisfy the number of votes required for approval. There would be no reason to hold the vote in such a case.

Indeed, the point of order could be that the House lacks a quorum of the number of Bishops necessary to entertain the motion under the Constitution. A quorum to do ordinary business requires, as we saw in Part I, a majority of the Bishops in the House with jurisdiction. But that is for transacting ordinary business of the House, which  can be approved by a simple majority of those present and voting. The Constitution's explicit language in Article X, however, makes the approval of trial rites a matter which is outside the scope of the HoB's ordinary business, because of the supermajority which it requires for any such approval.

If more than 152 or so Bishops are present when the Resolution comes up for a vote in the House of Bishops, then a roll call vote should be demanded by three or more Bishops present, and the number of aye votes thereby exactly determined. If less than the required supermajority, given the number of total Bishops who are qualified to vote in the HoB, then the measure cannot be declared to have passed, under the language of the Constitution.

Resolution A049 is not the only obstacle facing General Convention this week. In the next post in this series, we will look at the other proposals which the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music has laid before the Convention. Some of them suffer from the same disability to be enacted. In the process, we will see how General Convention has been able in previous years to slide past this problem -- but not now, and not for its foreseeable future.