Advent in Two Minutes

The folks at BustedHalo.com, a spiritual seekers' site run by some very energetic Catholics, have produced this video to give everyone a two-minute refresher course on Advent, which is timely in view of all the emphasis on Christmas itself:

As mentioned at the end, they also are running a video Advent calendar, with film clips, songs and timely quotes for each day until Christmas.

For some reason -- probably the same reason for which the video is an antidote -- I find that Advent is for me the season in the Church year which passes most quickly. (The season that passes most slowly for me is not Trinity, but Lent.) One can so easily get lost in all the parties, concerts, shopping for presents, writing cards, and special events. It is a good idea to step back and take stock of oneself -- for He is coming, the day and the hour we know not. Like the foolish virgins who let their lamps go out, it will not do to be caught unprepared.

A joyous, fruitful and contemplative Advent to you all!

Disciplinary Board Clears Charges Against Bishop Lawrence

The Rt. Rev. Dorsey Henderson, President of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops, has released a statement announcing that the eighteen-person Board could not muster a majority to charge the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence of South Carolina with "abandonment of the Communion of this Church." Thus ends a clumsy attempt to take seriously the allegations of "abandonment" lodged by dissidents from Bishop Lawrence's own Diocese, who tried to turn his steadfast insistence on the central importance of Holy Scripture to the life of the Church into a case for his abandonment of it.

Bishop Henderson, stung by the vehemence with which his initial announcement of "serious charges" against Bishop Lawrence was greeted, appears to have been unable to refrain from letting loose a parting shot, even as he retreated from the fray in ignominy (my italics added):

It is also significant that Bishop Lawrence has repeatedly stated that he does not intend to lead the diocese out of The Episcopal Church—that he only seeks a safe place within the Church to live the Christian faith as that diocese perceives it. I speak for myself only at this point, that I presently take the Bishop at his word, and hope that the safety he seeks for the apparent majority in his diocese within the larger Church will become the model for safety—a “safe place”— for those under his episcopal care who do not agree with the actions of South Carolina’s convention and/or his position on some of the issues of the Church.

"Apparent majority", Bishop Henderson? Did your investigations uncover that the dissident Episcopal Forum (some of whose members must have anonymously filed the childish charges) has at best about a thousand members? (There are even fewer, if we count just those who are willing to have their names publicly associated with the group.) And did you learn that Bishop Lawrence's Diocese has more than twenty-five times that number of Episcopalians, who are choosing to remain under his pastoral care?

Just what is this talk of a "safe" place for those dissidents, Bishop Henderson? Did you intend to add to their already neurotic fears and anxieties? I will wager that they are far safer in the Diocese of South Carolina, which is led by an actual Christian bishop who believes in Jesus' command to "love one another as I have loved you", than they would be under a bishop who believes instead in the Old Testament adage of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." (I refer to certain bishops who shall go unnamed, but who have signaled their vengeful intentions with words such as: "There's a new sheriff in town.")

The real question is just this: is Bishop Lawrence truly "safe" now, Bishop Henderson -- or will you be shortly sending him notification of new charges brought against him on account of his having authorized quitclaim deeds to be delivered to every parish in his Diocese? Those deeds renounce any and all claims (such as claims of any trust interest pursuant to the Dennis Canon) to that parish's property on behalf of the Diocese, and hence all claims on behalf of the Episcopal Church itself, since the latter entity can act locally only through one of its dioceses.

There persists, among the dissidents in South Carolina, and among similar canonical ignorami scattered throughout other dioceses and the Episcopal blogosphere, a notion that the South Carolina Supreme Court did not mean what it said in its decision in the All Saints Waccamaw case. Here is one such view, chosen at random from many such offered on the Web for public consumption:

Three years ago {Ed. note: Actually, it was two years ago, but who cares about being accurate here?}, the state's Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of All Saints, Pawleys Island that seemed to suggest that the Episcopal Church -- and any other similarly structured church organization like the Presbyterians and Methodists -- does not have a legal interest in parish property held in trust by the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina. {Ed. note: How screwed up can you make things? The parish property was "held in trust by the Episcopal Church"? Didn't you mean to say that in your view, it was "held in trust for the Episcopal Church in the DSC?}

All Saint's was trying to break away from the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Province of Rwanda, which it eventually was allowed to do. {Ed. note: I'm sure the congregation of All Saints Pawley's Island must be eternally grateful that some unspecified person or body "allowed" them to join the Province of Rwanda, but that implies they had to ask someone for permission, when the Court held precisely that they did not. Their amendments to their own articles and bylaws were fully sufficient, under South Carolina law, to accomplish that result -- without anyone else's "permission."}

Legal authorities and those familiar with the Court's thinking {Ed. note: You mean that the Court thought other things than what it so plainly said in its opinion, and that one has to be "familiar with its thinking" in order to understand what it really meant? Good grief.} say that the ruling was specific to the unique nature of All Saint's case. However, the Diocese of South Carolina, under Bishop Lawrence, disagrees.

Critical to the Court's ruling in the All Saints' case was a "quitclaim" deed executed by the Diocese in 1903 relinquishing any legal interest it might have to All Saints' property.

The existence of that deed tipped the Court's view of property ownership in favor of All Saints' over that of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese.

Not so fast. That 1903 Quitclaim Deed was certainly cited in the Court's decision as one factor in the ruling confirming that the Diocese of South Carolina had released all claims to All Saints Waccamaw's property at that time, but what about the 106 years following? The only hook on which the Episcopal Church and the Diocese (then under Bishop Lawrence's predecessor, Bishop Salmon) could try to hang their claims of a trust interest was the enactment of the Dennis Canon by the national Church in 1979, and of a counterpart by the Diocese two years later.

Thus, regardless of the 1903 Quitclaim Deed, if the Dennis Canon or its diocesan counterpart had been sufficient to create a new trust interest in All Saints' property from 1979-1981 and forward, then it would have not mattered what the South Carolina Supreme Court found with regard to the 1903 Deed. Instead, however, the Court made short shrift of the national Church's and the Diocese's attempts to declare a trust interest in property which they never owned:

Furthermore, we hold that neither the 2000 Notice [of claim to a trust interest in the property, recorded by the Diocese] nor the Dennis Canon has any legal effect on title to the All Saints congregation’s property. A trust “may be created by either declaration of trust or by transfer of property….” Dreher v. Dreher, 370 S.C. 75, 80, 634 S.E.2d 646, 648 (2006). It is an axiomatic principle of law that a person or entity must hold title to property in order to declare that it is held in trust for the benefit of another or transfer legal title to one person for the benefit of another. The Diocese did not, at the time it recorded the 2000 Notice, have any interest in the congregation’s property. Therefore, the recordation of the 2000 Notice could not have created a trust over the property.

For the aforementioned reasons, we hold that title to the property at issue is held by All Saints Parish, Waccamaw, Inc., the Dennis Canons had no legal effect on the title to the congregation’s property, and the 2000 Notice should be removed from the Georgetown County records.

(Emphasis added. The Court speaks of the "Dennis Canons" in the plural, because both the Diocese and the national Church had enacted similar provisions in an attempt to create a trust interest.)

What is so hard to understand here? The 1903 Quitclaim Deed was not at all the "tipping point" which decided the case in the parish's favor; nor was it a "unique" factor which would enable a later court to distinguish the All Saints case from any other attempt to invoke the Dennis Canon (or its former diocesan equivalent). The Court's language could not have been more plain: "The Dennis Canons had no legal effect on the title to the congregation’s property . . .". "No legal effect" means "no legal effect." The two Dennis Canons, whether singly or together, were incapable of creating a legal trust interest which could be recognized by any South Carolina court, because they did not satisfy the basic requirement of having the consent of the property's owner to the creation of such a trust, evidenced by its signature on a written trust instrument spelling out its terms.

One of the things I have noticed in writing this blog is that left-leaning, liberal Episcopalians simply will not accept a rule, decision, canon or other pronouncement of law which they do not like. They will invent all sorts of reasons or rationales for evading the plain effect and language of the rule, decision, canon or other pronouncement of law, or for treating it as only a "special case," with no precedential value whatsoever.

Thus the Presiding Bishop found it "inconvenient" to allow the three senior bishops in the Church to have a "veto" over her ability to inhibit a bishop charged with "abandonment of communion", and so she simply ignored that limitation and went ahead and inhibited Bishops Cox and Duncan anyway. Or again, she found it "inconvenient" to require a written renunciation of his orders to get rid of Bishop Iker, so she treated one of his public statements as such a renunciation, and had him deposed on that basis. Likewise, it was most inconvenient to have to muster up a majority vote of "the whole number of bishops entitled to vote in the House of Bishops", since that language included retired ("resigned") bishops who also constitutionally have a vote in the House, and retired bishops hardly ever attend its meetings. So she simply declared that the inconvenient language meant something else, and got her wholly neutral and unbiased Chancellor to issue a ruling backing her up: from now on, a "majority of the whole number" meant only a majority of those who bothered to show up and vote.

The All Saints decision was most certainly a setback for the Dennis Canon in South Carolina. But Episcopalians everywhere must now face the fact: the Dennis Canon was completely ineffective to work its usual magic in that State, because that State has a Court which actually could apply the law of trusts, and of how one is properly created. Just because courts in other States have given the Episcopal Church a pass on its Dennis Canon is no reason to expect such special treatment everywhere. South Carolina, Louisiana, and (soon, I hope) Indiana are States which respect the traditional law of trust creation, and hence in which the Dennis Canon or its equivalents will have "no legal effect."

The dissident Episcopalians are thus blowing smoke when they claim that Bishop Lawrence and the Diocese did something un-Episcopalian in issuing quit-claim deeds to each and every parish. What Bishop Lawrence and his Diocese did was simply following the law as declared by South Carolina's highest State court -- and if to follow the law is un-Episcopalian, well -- there you have it, don't you? To be Episcopalian (at least, to be a member of the South Carolina Episcopalians group) is to ignore what the law plainly says, and to fault and try to drag down others for actually following it (and thereby disagreeing with you).

Accordingly, Bishop Henderson, your warning to Bishop Lawrence is utterly misguided. No one in South Carolina has anything to fear from a Diocese or its Bishop who scrupulously follows the law -- both civil and scriptural. It is precisely the ones who will not follow the law who make the place unsafe for law-abiders.

Rot from Without, Decay from Within

Let me say at the outset that I began this blog in 2008 because I believed that there were things going on in my Church -- the Episcopal Church (USA), of which I had been a faithful member from baptism -- which required broader attention from those potentially most affected. Specifically, I believed that events ever since 2003 needed attention from those lay people in the Church who might not be able to interpret the legal niceties being urged in the various court and disciplinary proceedings which had been brought in the Church's name up to that time, but who could, as traditional Episcopalians, appreciate that not all of the legal positions being taken by their Church were, shall we say, "kosher".

Ever since my first post, I have focused on the constitutional and canonical violations by those at the head of the Church -- generally the steps they took to remove from the Church's ministry those with whom the leadership disagreed on matters such as same-sex marriage, and to alienate the Church from the vast majority of the Anglican Communion. If you are an Episcopalian, I ask that you put all of the hype which you may have read about the Episcopal Church (USA, that is) being "in the forefront" of the movement to recognize same-sex "marriages" into the context of what I shall now relate.

Others have sketched the history by which gay and lesbian activists gradually increased their representation in the deliberative bodies of the Church, beginning in the 1970s and increasing steadily until General Convention 2003. At that Convention, the same-sex activists achieved their first significant advance with the confirmation, in both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, of New Hampshire's election of an openly gay man, who had divorced his wife and left his children to partner with another man, as their bishop.

Yet in 2003, it still was not legal for newly elected Bishop V. Gene Robinson to "marry" his same-sex partner in the State of New Hampshire. Nor could such a "marriage" have been recognized within the Episcopal Church (USA). Its Book of Common Prayer, then as now, sets out on page 422 the rubrics for holy matrimony solemnized by the Church, which include this statement (bold emphasis added):

Christian marriage is a solemn and public covenant between a man and a woman in the presence of God. In the Episcopal Church it is required that one, at least, of the parties must be a baptized Christian; that the ceremony be attested by at least two witnesses; and that the marriage conform to the laws of the State and the canons of this Church.

In conformity to this rubric, Canon I.18.2 of the Episcopal Church (USA) has since 1972 contained language to this effect (emphasis again added):

Sec. 2. Before solemnizing a marriage the Member of the Clergy shall have ascertained:
. . .
(b) That both parties understand that Holy Matrimony is a physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman, entered into within the community of faith, by mutual consent of heart, mind, and will, and with intent that it be lifelong.

In addition, the current Canons require that every couple married in the Church sign a very specific statement beforehand, the text of which is set out as follows in Canon I.18.3, subparagraphs (e) through (g), with emphasis added as before:

Sec. 3. No Member of the Clergy of this Church shall solemnize any marriage unless the following procedures are complied with:

. . .

(d) The Member of the Clergy shall have required that the parties sign the following declaration:

(e) "We, A.B. and C.D., desiring to receive the blessing of Holy Matrimony in the Church, do solemnly declare that we hold marriage to be a lifelong union of husband and wife as it is set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.

(f) "We believe that the union of husband and wife, in heart, body, and mind, is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God's will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.

(g) "And we do engage ourselves, so far as in us lies, to make our utmost effort to establish this relationship and to seek God's help thereto."

The reports of same-sex marriage ceremonies carried out within the Episcopal Church (USA), such as those conducted by Bishop Thomas Shaw of the Diocese of Massachusetts, and by clergy at All Saints Church (Pasadena) in the Diocese of Los Angeles with the approval of Bishop J. Jon Bruno, thus make a mockery of both the foregoing canons, as well as of the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer.

The latter (rubrics), by the way, outrank the canons of the Church. General Convention can vote to amend the Canons at any single session, but it can effect an amendment to the Book of Common Prayer only in the same manner that it can amend ECUSA's Constitution -- by passage of the amendment at two successive General Conventions, with referral in the interim to each of the Church's several dioceses for their consideration and approval.

Thus, same-sex marriage ceremonies in the Church could not be approved unless and until there was an amendment approved to the Book of Common Prayer. To my knowledge, no such proposal to amend the BCP rubrics has been proposed for GC 2012 in Indianapolis -- the only proposal of which I am aware is to establish rites for the blessings of same-sex civil unions (or "marriages", if that is what the law of the particular State involved recognizes). If none is properly proposed before the applicable deadlines for such legislation, then same-sex marriage ceremonies in the Episcopal Church (USA) could not be approved at least until GC 2018.

The foregoing paragraphs describe, to the best of my ability, the current state of the canon and liturgical law of the Episcopal Church (USA) with regard to "marriage" between persons of the same sex. Such "ceremonies" are neither recognized, nor allowed to be performed, within the authorized liturgies of the Church. It is once again a measure of the lawlessness that reigns at all levels of ECUSA (with the primary example having been long since established by the Presiding Bishop's repeated defiance of the Canons) to note that neither Bishop Shaw nor Bishop Bruno has been required to account, under the more flexible disciplinary canons which took effect last July 1, for their open and flagrant violations of the BCP rubrics, and the canons of the Church, as quoted above. (One can only wonder what kind of "certificate" Bishop Shaw required Dean Ragsdale and her lesbian partner to sign, before he "married" them, that was in complete accordance with Canon I.18.3 (d) quoted above.)

Because these openly acknowledged violations have not been, and will not be, prosecuted by the appropriate Church authorities, one may conclude only that a form of decay has commenced within its venerable halls, which is eroding the very structures designed and intended to hold the Church together as a Church. And a further conclusion thereby presents itself, as an inevitable corollary to the foregoing: those who currently are (mis)leading the Church in this respect must want such decay to have its inevitable effect, in order to hasten the day when the last Scripturally based barriers to officially recognized and sanctioned same-sex relationships will have been discarded as outmoded and anachronistic, and fit only for the scrap heap.

To this dismal picture (from the point of view of Church traditionalists) I am now constrained to add another dimension, which is just as dismaying. Let me begin by filling in some background.

In 1993, the Supreme Court of Hawaii decided the case of Baehr v. Miike, which signaled that a State must have a "compelling interest" in order to deny legitimacy to same-sex marriages. Fearing that a State court's recognition of same-sex marriages might force all other States to recognize such unions under the "Full Faith and Credit" clause of the U. S. Constitution, Congress reacted by enacting, with overwhelming majorities, the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"), which President Clinton signed into law in 1996. This law, relying on the clause in the Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) which gives to Congress the ultimate power "by general Laws [to] prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings [of an individual State] shall be proved, and the Effect thereof [in another State]", defined marriage for all federal purposes as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" (Section 3), and provided that no State "shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State . . . respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State . . . , or a right or claim arising from such relationship" (Section 2).

Since its enactment in 1996, DOMA has been the subject of multiple challenges in various federal courts, which are recapitulated in detail in this article. Of particular interest to Episcopalians is the current case in Massachusetts of Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, which resulted in a judgment by the federal district court in Boston that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. This ruling is now on appeal to the federal Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, also situated in Boston.

After defending the constitutionality of Section 3 in lower courts, the Obama Justice Department, pursuant to instructions from President Obama himself, did an about-face on February 23, 2011, and notified the First Circuit Court of Appeals that it would no longer defend the constitutionality of Section 3 in the Gill v. Office of Personnel Management appeal. Since that notification, the House of Representatives (with its Republican majority) has voted to retain the counsel necessary to defend Section 3's constitutionality on appeal.

And there matters stood, while the various briefs on the appeal were being filed. But now comes word, via the public relations page of the law firm of Goodwin Procter -- the law firm of which the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor David Booth Beers is a member, along with her "Special Representative for Litigation" Mary Kostel -- that the firm, which previously acted as counsel for certain parties to the Gill case in an earlier lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Massachusetts' marriage laws, has both filed as counsel, and signed in its separate capacity as an employer in its own right, an amicus curiae ("friend of the Court") brief in Gill which argues for the unconstitutionality of the definition of marriage as embodied in Section 3 of DOMA.

To sum up the current anomalies, as presented in this post:

1. The Episcopal Church (USA) currently defines marriage, both canonically and in its rubrics, as the "physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman."

2. There is no current measure proposed in the governing bodies of the Episcopal Church (USA) which would alter or amend its definition of "marriage" so as to incorporate therein the joining in "marriage" of two persons of the same sex.

3. Notwithstanding the Episcopal Church (USA)'s Book of Common Prayer and its associated Canons, certain clergy (including diocesan bishops) have performed, or have allowed to take place within their Diocese, rites of "holy matrimony" for same-sex marriages within the Episcopal Church's liturgy.

4. The resulting spectacle of lawlessness is undermining the Church from within.

5. Now comes word that the law firm of the Presiding Bishop's own Chancellor, and of her Special Assistant for Church Property Litigation, has gone on record as opposing the Church's own definition of marriage in the BCP and in its Canons.

6. Notwithstanding #5, the Episcopal Church continues to employ both Goodwin Procter, the Chancellor, and the Special Assistant to the Presiding Bishop, as its counsel to litigate against departed parishes and dioceses who are opposed to the Church's apostasy, among other things, concerning Christian marriage.

This is both, as my title indicates, "rot from without and decay from within." The Church is actively subsidizing and promoting the former, while taking no steps to prevent the latter.

In consequence of the foregoing, we have a Church which is speaking with a forked tongue, or out of both sides of its mouth. A Church cannot uphold traditional teachings with regard to Christian marriage, on the one hand, and then work actively to undermine those same teachings in the secular arena, on the other hand. Still less can it employ as counsel those who are hopelessly conflicted with regard to the Church's traditional teachings, and who actively deny in the secular arena that those teachings have any social, legal, or moral validity.

Your Curmudgeon is an eager student of Church history, and is quite familiar with the various histories of Christ's universal Catholic Church, and of the Protestant Episcopal Church (USA) in particular. But for the life of him, he cannot identify any point in the larger Church's trajectory, or in that of the Protestant Episcopal Church (USA), at which one could say that it was more conflicted between its sacred and secular stances than it is this very day. A Church so divided against itself cannot stand, and will not continue to stand, because as such it is a contradiction of itself, and of God's holy Word.

Those who are pushing the agenda of same-sex marriages within the Church are set upon overthrowing (in just the Episcopal Church, and in just a very few years) five hundred and fifty years of documented tradition and rubrics -- in the name of -- what? "Social justice and equality"? Give me a break. Whose "justice", and whose "equality"? Has the Holy Spirit, anywhere or at any time, bestowed an unambiguous and unqualified blessing (using objectively measurable criteria such as increased membership), upon any "Church" which has officially sanctioned and blessed same-sex unions? Are we not, instead, witnessing a re-enactment of the now stereotyped "resistance" against a perceived "unjust denial" of what are regarded as "civil (or equal) rights"? But who is denying whom some "right" which is spiritually theirs to claim from God? Since when has Scripture needed to bend to the force of civil law?

This once-noble Church is being transformed, at the hands of single-minded activists, into a secular cult which will reflect only its lack of all Scripture-based grounding and tradition, and (in their place) will embody only the sacrifice to Caesar of those things which are properly God's. Nothing will then distinguish such a "Church" from its pagan predecessors. As a consequence, nothing about it will any longer have any claim to loyalty or adherence on the part of its traditional members.