Lambeth Beginnings: The Rest of the Story (II)

I continue with my earlier post responding to the Sunday bulletin insert published by Episcopal Life for June 1, an introduction to the early Lambeth Conferences condensed, by an unnamed editor at Episcopal Life, from a longer article by the Rev. Christopher Webber of which he posted the first part here, and whose three other parts may be read from links at the left of the page here. In Part I we looked at the historical background of the first Lambeth Conference; here we shall correct some of the bias in the reduction, by the anonymous editor (whom I am calling a "reductor," for reasons explained in the first post), of Father Webber's discussion of the next three conferences.

Here is the entirety of the reductor's highly condensed discussion of what took place at the second Lambeth Conference in 1878:

Nonetheless, the idea of the conference seemed good and the bishops met again in 1878 to grapple with the nature of Anglican unity and pass some resolutions that are still relevant today. It is, they said, “of great importance for the maintenance of union among the Churches of our Communion” that “the duly certified action of every national or particular Church . . . should be respected by all the other Churches” and that “no bishop or other clergyman of any other Church should exercise his functions within (some other) diocese without the consent of
the bishop thereof.”

The first point to note here is that the reductor purports to quote "some resolutions" that "passed" at the Lambeth Conference of 1878. The problem with this claim is that historically, no resolutions were voted on or adopted at that Conference. Instead, as this site summarizing the history of the Conferences explains, the committee reports from the 1867 Conference, which had been carried over to the 1878 Conference due to a lack of time to consider them, were presented and adopted virtually in toto into the encyclical letter which was issued at the end of the Conference. The reports embodied what they specifically called "recommendations," and not "resolutions", because they were not debated individually on the merits, and were "adopted" only in the sense that the report of which they formed a part was approved. So it is two of these "recommendations", lifted from one of the five reports, which the Sunday bulletin insert characterizes, in an attempt to mislead the modern reader, as "resolutions [passed at the Conference]." (In his original article, Father Webber states clearly that resolutions as such were "first brought before the bishops and officially adopted" at the third Lambeth Conference, in 1888.)

The second thing to note is that the reductor asserts that these "resolutions . . . are still relevant today"---and actually, Father Webber agrees. Is anyone surprised at the ones that someone writing from the narrow perspective of TEC would choose to quote, out of the twelve recommendations which the Official Archives site culled from the reports incorporated into the Conference encyclical? They would seem, from the quotations given, to be rather relevant to today's issues. But is that what they really say? Let's quote the full text of both recommendations from the Archives. They are both taken from the same report on "Union Among the Churches of the Anglican Communion"; I have italicized the portions which the author of the Bulletin saw fit to leave out:

There are certain principles of church order which, your Committee consider, ought to be distinctly recognised and set forth, as of great importance for the maintenance of union among the Churches of our Communion.

First, that the duly certified action of every national or particular Church, and of each ecclesiastical province (or diocese not included in a province), in the exercise of its own discipline, should be respected by all the other Churches, and by their individual members.

Secondly, that when a diocese, or territorial sphere of administration, has been constituted by the authority of any Church or province of this Communion within its own limits, no bishop or other clergyman of any other Church should exercise his functions within that diocese without the consent of the bishop thereof. [Footnote omitted.]

So---the second Lambeth Conference did not say that every "certified action" of a national Church should be "respected by all the other Churches"---in other words, there is no support to be gained here for the notion that the election of V. Gene Robinson to be a Bishop of The Episcopal Church was an action that, once "certified" by TEC, required instant assent throughout the Churches in the Anglican Communion. No, that is not what the original text says: it is speaking only of matters of discipline. The concept here was with reference to the case of Bishop Colenso, and expressed the desire that his deposition by a tribunal convened under the authority of a primate of the Church of England (in South Africa) would receive recognition from all the other branches of the Anglican Communion. It is thus ironic in the greatest degree that the news organ of The Episcopal Church would be citing this particular paragraph: it is, after all, The Episcopal Church who is today "deposing" bishops and priests right and left for their "abandoning communion" when they have the temerity to transfer themselves to other Churches within the Anglican Communion. One sees here the height of TEC's hypocrisy: they are asking the rest of the Anglican Communion to respect their "disciplining" of those who elect to stay within it!

As for the matter of bishops exercising functions in other dioceses without permission, it should be noted that this language also referred to the Colenso affair, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with his convocation, had officially sanctioned the creation of a second "Diocese of Maritzburg" that was coterminous with the already existing Diocese of Natal headed by Bishop Colenso---as well as the consecration of a bishop to lead it. Thus it may be regarded as the statement of a principle that was more honored in the breach than in the observance.

It did not occur to Father Webber, and it obviously did not fit the preformed mold of the anonymous Episcopal Life reductor, to quote this passage from the report in which the recommendations just quoted appear:

I. In considering the best mode of maintaining union among the various Churches of our Communion, the Committee, first of all, recognise, with deep thankfulness to Almighty God, the essential and evident unity in which the Church of England and the Churches in visible communion with her have always been bound together. United under One Divine Head in the fellowship of the One Catholic and Apostolic Church, holding the One Faith revealed in Holy Writ, defined in the Creeds, and maintained by the Primitive Church, receiving the same Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as containing all things necessary to salvation these Churches teach the same Word of God, partake of the same divinely-ordained Sacraments, through the ministry of the same Apostolic orders, and worship one God and Father through the same Lord Jesus Christ, by the same Holy and Divine Spirit, Who is given to those that believe, to guide them into all truth.

2. Together with this unity, however, there has existed among these Churches that variety of custom, discipline, and form of worship which necessarily results from the exercise by each "particular or national Church" of its right "to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man s authority, so that all things be done to edifying." We gladly acknowledge that there is at present no real ground for anxiety on account of this diversity; but the desire has of late been largely felt and expressed, that some practical and efficient methods should be adopted, in order to guard against possible sources of disunion in the future, and at the same time further to manifest and cherish that true and substantial agreement which exists among these increasingly numerous Churches.

No, it would not have fit into the mold to remind everyone that the Anglican Communion in 1878 was based on an "essential and evident unity in which the Church of England and the Churches in visible communion with her have always been bound together." Nor would it have been appropriate to include the paragraph making clear, as did the Windsor Report some 126 years later, that "adiaphora" had to do with adapting Church rites to local custom, and not with reading Scripture to allow the consecration of gay bishops provided they were in a committed monogamous relationship. Better just to lift out the part about bishops keeping to their own dioceses.

The third Lambeth Conference of 1888 resulted in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, and for once our anonymous reductor excerpts the relevant part of Father Webber's article on this point. But when it comes to the fourth Lambeth Conference of 1897, we are back to the preformed mold. And because of the extreme reduction that has been done to make a propaganda point, a reader of the bulletin insert might well be confused by this passage:

The issue of freedom and unity was addressed again in the statement that: “it is important that, so far as possible, the Church should be adapted to local circumstances, and the people brought to feel in all ways that no burdens in the way of foreign customs are laid upon them, and nothing is required of them but what is of the essence of the faith, and belongs to the due order of the Catholic Church.” The first of these statements, of course, left undefined what was meant by being “in full communion with the Church of England,” and the second left open “what is of the essence of the faith, and belongs to the due order of the Catholic Church.” Over a century later, these questions remain unanswered.

One wants to ask: what "first statement"? Where is there anything said about being "in full communion with the Church of England"? For the answer, one has to go back to Father Webber's original article, where one finds that the reductor has left out the following introductory sentence:

In 1897, at the fourth Lambeth Conference, the bishops set out to define themselves by referring to letters of the earlier conferences which had been addressed to “Archbishops, Bishops Metropolitan, and other Bishops of the Holy Catholic Church, in full communion with the Church of England, one hundred in number, all exercising superintendence over Dioceses, or lawfully commissioned to exercise Episcopal functions . . . .”

Oh, that communion. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered to clear up the confusion. For the reality is that Father Webber here has drawn upon the most superficial part of the entire body of 62 resolutions adopted at the 1897 Conference. (Yes, I know---the anonymous bulletin reductor claims that there were 69 resolutions adopted in 1897. But we can't get our history from mass-produced Sunday bulletins, remember?) He has done so in order to set up his manufactured conclusion about "these questions" remaining, "[o]ver a century later, . . . unanswered." (Questions? The bishops at the Conference of 1897 did not see them as questions, but rather as fixed points of their universe. It is only in the post-modern world that we see them as questions.) In doing so, Father Webber passes over some resolutions that were noteworthy, such as Resolution 5, which called for the formation of what eventually---seventy years later---became the Anglican Consultative Council (he does mention it in a later part of his series, however). He also mischaracterizes the ones that he does quote from. Resolution 24, for example, does not say that it would be "very wrong" for two bishops of the Church to attempt to carry on a ministry in the same area; it addresses the problem of overlapping missionary dioceses, and suggests that Bishops coordinate their efforts with one another:

That, while it is the duty of the whole Church to make disciples of all nations, yet, in the discharge of this duty, independent Churches of the Anglican Communion ought to recognise the equal rights of each other when establishing foreign missionary jurisdictions, so that two bishops of that Communion may not exercise jurisdiction in the same place, and the Conference recommends every bishop to use his influence in the diocesan and provincial synods of his particular Church to gain the adhesion of the synods to these principles, with a view to the framing of canons or resolutions in accord therewith. Where such rights have, through inadvertence, been infringed in the past, an adjustment of the respective positions of the bishops concerned ought to be made by an amicable arrangement between them, with a view to correcting as far as possible the evils arising from such infringement.

Reading into this language a message for today---and still worse, seeing such a message as a consistent theme of the Lambeth Conferences, is wishful editing. But then, history as such is not what one expects to find in preprinted Sunday bulletin inserts.

[A printable version of this post may be found here.]

Lambeth Beginnings: The Rest of the Story (I)

There is a technique used by good chefs to make a concentrated red wine sauce: simply take an entire bottle of red wine, and gently simmer it (with, say, some minced shallots, garlic and herbs) over low heat until the 25 ounces of wine have been reduced to about 3 ounces of rich, red sauce. It's a marvelous sauce marchand de vin (without any butter or fat) to accompany grilled meat---but as any good chef will tell you, how the sauce turns out depends on the wine with which you started.

Episcopal Life, the national news organ of The Episcopal Church, is currently publishing a series of Sunday bulletin inserts that deals with the history of the Lambeth Conference---the decennial gathering of all the active Bishops in the Anglican Communion under the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Like a sauce marchand de vin, the series has been condensed from a longer series written by the Rev. Christopher L. Webber, the author of Welcome to the Episcopal Church, and Re-Inventing Marriage (as well as others described on his Web site). The parent series, entitled "Unity and Diversity in the Lambeth Conference," was posted on the now-ended Episcopal Majority site; you can read it in four parts here, here, here and here.

By the time the longer series has been reduced to the bulletin version, what remains is chiefly the pro-American, pro-Episcopal Church bias of its author, but the theme of the longer series---"Unity and Diversity"---has been boiled down (by some anonymous editor at Episcopal Life, I must assume, for reasons shortly to appear) to a single note of "Change---It's Healthy, Necessary, and Inevitable." Please do not misinterpret me: there is nothing wrong with bias; we each have our own. The problem I am reacting to is the lack of balance in the resulting condensed product. To counteract this lack of balance, I offer in this series some perspective from a more Anglican, and less TEC-centered, point of view. (A printable version of this essay is here.)

In the insert for last Sunday, June 1, the anonymous reductor (as I shall choose to call him or her) covers the first three Lambeth Conferences, of 1867, 1878 and 1888. Given the original author's pro-American bias, it is not surprising that the opening fact, which emerged from the process of reduction into bulletin format, is this:

John Henry Hopkins was Bishop of Vermont and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church when he suggested in 1851 that a gathering of Anglican bishops would be useful, but nothing happened. Fifteen years later the Canadian Anglican Church suggested the same thing to the Archbishop of Canterbury and got his reluctant consent.

This makes it sound as though the impetus for the first Lambeth Conference began with the American church, and that is not correct. Our anonymous reductor has, without being aware of the actual history, ascribed to an American actor much more authority and responsibility than that actor deserves in the instigation of the Lambeth Conferences.  John Henry Hopkins was Bishop of Vermont in 1851, but he did not become Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church until near the end of the Civil War, in January 1865. During his three years as Presiding Bishop, his chief accomplishment was to work with his friend, the Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott of Georgia (who was Presiding Bishop of the secessionist Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America) in reuniting the two churches. He may have saved the Episcopal Church as a single entity, but his determined stance that slavery was an institution sanctioned by God hardly justifies his being singled out in a Sunday bulletin as the moving cause for the first Lambeth Conference.

The reason I can attribute this misplaced emphasis to an anonymous reductor is that, in his original article, Father Webber has the facts right. He says, quite concisely and with a fair amount of accuracy (with emphasis added by me):

It was the Bishop of Vermont who first suggested a conference of Anglican bishops; but it was an appeal from the Canadian bishops, who saw the political unity between their country and England beginning to dissolve, that brought about the first gathering.

There is little to criticize about the statements I have italicized; they are the truth, as far as they go. (One quibble: I would add after his words "political unity" the phrase "with its shared ecclesiastical heritage". And as we shall see, there is obviously even more to tell than Father Webber can cover in just two sentences.) The pity (or rather, the lesson) is that in such a juxtaposition with sources, we can learn---to our dismay or to our satisfaction; it does not matter---exactly what the Sunday bulletin's editors think should be emphasized, or brought forward, in lieu of the facts. And as expressed in the maxim, "The truth is stranger than fiction," when we get to the bottom of the matter we find that the Sunday bulletin's artful recastings of events are no match against the account of what really happened. The lesson to be drawn here is: don't get your history from mass-produced Sunday bulletins. (And, Father Webber---you might want to be more careful to whom you lend your byline.)

In light of today's controversies sparked by Episcopal Church activism, what actually did serve as the impetus for the first Lambeth Conference simply does not fit conveniently into the mold which our anonymous Sunday bulletin reductor constructed before he or she began the work of reduction. The full story is far too long, and too full of shadings, for a short summary here. I will instead refer the reader to these links: first, the controversy created by the publication in 1860 of "Essays and Reviews," as a result of which two of the book's seven authors (collectively referred to, in the genteel academic prose of the day, as "the Seven Against Christ"; one of whom was named Rowland Williams) were deposed in the Court of Arches on charges of heresy, with the judgments of deposition then reversed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (the Archbishop of Canterbury vigorously dissented). Next was the ruling by the Privy Council, at the same time and in connection with its reversal of the deposition of Bishop John William Colenso of the Diocese of Natal in South Africa for heresy, "that in any colony possessed of an independent legislature, the Crown has no jurisdiction whatever in ecclesiastical matters." That ruling, in turn, led (as explained in the documents in the link just given) to the cessation of the Queen's issuing a mandate to the Metropolitan of Canada for the consecration of any new Bishop elected in that country's church. The upshot of these events was to make the leaders of the Church aware of two basic facts: first, the Church of England could not constitutionally exert itself worldwide; and second, without any supreme authority, the branches of the Church that had been started outside of England could be left adrift, without a rudder, and so in time become less and less "Anglican." (Shades of the fears that drive us today!)

The realization that gradually came from these rulings in Privy Council---that there was no overall authority to be exercised from England over the colonial branches of its Church, including even in matters of doctrine---led to an appeal in 1866 by the Bishop of Toronto and the Archbishop of Montreal for a "Pan-Anglican Synod" to be convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which was eventually convoked at Lambeth Palace in 1867, as Father Webber explains. But the reader who has diligently pursued all the foregoing links now has, hopefully, a little more appreciation for what the anonymous reductor set out to accomplish in boiling down Father Webber's account into those first two sentences of the Sunday insert. 

It is thus ironic, to say the least, that the original Lambeth Conference was called in response to a perceived threat to the organic unity of the Church of England as it had spread itself into the wider world. The initial instinct of the bishops was to circle the wagons, and to get rid of those like the African liberal Bishop John Colenso, who tried to adapt Church teachings to native ways (particularly in regard to Zulu polygamy). Indeed, the first Lambeth Conference was nearly derailed by the insistence of those who had tried to depose Bishop Colenso, and those who sympathized with their views, on seeking a Conference-backed consensus that they had been right in doing so, notwithstanding the judgment of the Privy Council. They did succeed in getting the Conference to endorse the call for his replacement, and this led in turn to the creation of a separate but parallel diocese occupying the same geographical territory as Colenso's diocese. (Shades of San Joaquin! This nineteenth-century precedent for the current situation in TEC was backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, then as now. It also led to a call for a "voluntary spiritual tribunal", which never gained momentum and has been unfavorably likened to today's call for an Anglican Covenant.)

The second half of this week's insert takes up the subjects addressed at the next two Lambeth Conferences. Because of the ongoing manipulations of our anonymous reductor, that portion of the insert deserves a separate treatment on its own, which I shall post later. For the moment, I think it is more important to call attention to what has been manufactured (or more accurately, cast---since we are dealing here with a preformed mold) about the Conference's origin.

The Lambeth Conference of 2008 threatens to derail over the exclusion of an American bishop (or, alternatively, over the inclusion of many American bishops) advocating a teaching that is unacceptable to the majority of traditional Anglicans, most of whom are in Africa. The irony that we have arrived at such a point, 140 years after the first Lambeth Conference threatened to derail over the expulsion of an African bishop over teachings that were unacceptable to the majority of traditional Anglicans in England and America, is a history lesson that has been lost (or purposefully erased) in the reduction of Father Webber's articles. And as we continue in this series of counterbalancing Lambeth essays, I hope readers will come to appreciate much more about the heritage of Lambeth, and what its real relevance is to the Church today, than what you can read in your Sunday bulletin.

[There is a printable version of this essay here.]

A Primer on the Crisis (The Short Version)

I have now devoted seven rather lengthy posts to the history and misuse, both past and current, of the "Abandonment of Communion by a Bishop" Canon (Canon IV.9). In response to some requests for a boiled-down, just-the-meat-of-it version, I am putting up this post. A printable version of it may be found here.

The Current Problem

The current problem can be summed up in the names of just two people: Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her Chancellor, David Booth Beers. In recent proceedings under Canon IV.9 brought against the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield and the Rt. Rev. William J. Cox (who had been, prior to his so-called "deposition," the most elderly Bishop of the Church), they ran roughshod over the plain requirements of the Canon. When they were called on what they had done, they gave audacious responses that denied that anything had been done wrong. Not only that, but Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori has just as audaciously announced her intention of going forward with a vote, at the next House of Bishops meeting in September, to depose the Rt. Reverend Robert Duncan from his see in the Diocese of Pittsburgh---on the same illegal basis as the one on which she proclaimed the "deposition" of Bishop Cox.

The Violations of the Canon

First, Canon IV.9 provides (see the end of this post for the text) that when charges of abandonment have been certified by the Title IV Review Committee, notice of the charges shall be given "forthwith" to the Bishop so charged. The charges against Bishop Cox were certified to Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori on May 29, 2007. She did not notify Bishop Cox of them until January 9, 2008---more than seven months later.

Second, before giving notice of the charges, the Presiding Bishop was required to seek the consent of the three most senior active Bishops in the House to inhibit Bishop Cox from performing any episcopal functions pending the vote on his deposition. She did not do so, and she did not obtain any consent to his inhibition, but obtained it in regard to Bishop Schofield.

Third, the Canon provides the "inhibited Bishop" with sixty days to respond to the charges, and says nothing about any further proceedings against a Bishop who was not inhibited. Notwithstanding that language, when Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori notified Bishop Cox of the charges, she told him he had sixty days to respond before he would be deposed.

Fourth, when the sixty days had run, the Presiding Bishop brought a resolution to consent to Bishop Cox's deposition before the House of Bishops at its meeting in Camp Allen on March 12. Again, the language of the Canon provides that only a Bishop who has been inhibited shall be "liable to deposition," but in clear violation of those words, she took up the resolution with the House anyway.

Fifth, the Canon requires that the House of Bishops give its consent to deposition "by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote." Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution spells out which Bishops are "entitled to vote" in the House---counting those both active and retired ("resigned" is the technical term), there were 294 such Bishops entitled to vote as of March 12. Thus a majority of that number would be 148. But only 131 Bishops registered at the meeting when it began on March 9, and that number was down to 116 as of the last day, the morning of March 12. By the time the resolutions to depose came up for discussion, the roll call registered just the bare minimum of active Bishops needed for a quorum: 68. The vote on the resolution was by voice only; no record of the actual votes exists. But it is obvious that the requirement for a minimum of 148 votes to approve the deposition could not possibly have been satisfied.

Notwithstanding all these defects in the procedure, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori signed certificates of deposition with respect to both Bishops shortly thereafter. When she was challenged on the procedures that had been violated, she defended her actions by saying that she had been advised throughout by her Chancellor, David Booth Beers, and he himself issued a statement that the depositions had been conducted properly.

Shortly after she began the proceedings against Bishops Cox and Schofield, the Presiding Bishop also notified Bishop Duncan that charges of "abandonment" had been certified against him by the Review Committee. As in the case of Bishop Cox, she was not able to get the consent of the three senior active bishops to his inhibition. Nevertheless, she gave him 60 days in which to respond to the charges. This 60-day period expired after the meeting of the House of Bishops ended on March 12, so she could not bring a resolution to depose him at the meeting. At its conclusion, she announced she would poll the members of the House about holding a special meeting in May to consider his deposition. When the results of that poll were apparently negative, she announced that she would bring a resolution to depose Bishop Duncan before the House at its next regular meeting in September. Both Bishop Duncan (through his attorney) and the Standing Committee of his diocese have protested that such a step would be in violation of Canon IV.9. And there the matter stands.

Questions and Answers

Q What's the big deal about Bishops Cox and Schofield? They didn't protest the charges, and they both wanted to leave The Episcopal Church for other pastures.

A Since they were not objecting, what would have been so hard about following the procedures spelled out in the Canon (or about applying the right one to begin with)? Out of the many answers this question calls for (we live under a rule of law, not men/women; ignoring the law is anarchy, etc.), I think this one applies best: The big deal is that Katharine Jefferts Schori is a BISHOP, and not just any Bishop, but our Presiding Bishop. A law-breaking Bishop is a contradiction in terms---an oxymoron. To have a law-breaking Bishop who presides over the whole Church is a calamity of the first magnitude.

Q Hadn't both Bishops already resigned from the Church?

A Yes, that's part of the tragedy here. When faced with a trial on the charges made against him (for ordaining, on U.S. territory, ministers into another church of the Anglican Communion [God forfend!]), Bishop Cox sent a letter of resignation rather than undergo the ordeal (after all, he was 85 years old, and dealing with a wife who had Alzheimer's Disease). That resignation mooted the charges, but Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori took his letter (of resignation, mind you!) and promptly referred it to the Review Committee for new charges that he was now "abandoning the communion of this Church," and so needed to be deposed. (That is punishing with a vengeance, and can in no sense be termed Christian---particularly in light of her breaking the law to achieve her end. Don't be shocked by my blunt language: somebody has to call the Presiding Bishop to account for her brazen unlawfulness. Her own advisors are clearly not up to the task, and if it takes a curmudgeon to do it, so be it.)

As for Bishop Schofield, he resigned his seat in the House of Bishops, but not his see as the Bishop of San Joaquin. This meant that a new bishop could not be chosen to lead the Episcopalians in the diocese who wanted to remain with The Episcopal Church (TEC) until that see was vacant. Rather than negotiate with Bishop Schofield for a resignation that would have accomplished this, Presiding Bishop Schori chose the deposition route under Canon IV.9, and then failed to get the required number of votes for his deposition. So technically, even though he does not see himself as still affiliated with TEC, Bishop Schofield remains the Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin until he has been properly deposed, or until the House of Bishops accepts a properly negotiated resignation.

Q I thought the Presiding Bishop had appointed the Rt. Rev. Jerry Lamb as the Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin to replace Bishop Schofield.

A That's another can of worms arising out our Presiding Bishop's refusal to follow the Constitution and Canons. She did not follow them in claiming that Bishop Schofield was deposed, so everything she did in San Joaquin after that declaration was without any validity. She had no authority under the Canons to "derecognize" the Standing Committee; she had no authority to call a "Special Convention" on less than 30 days' notice; and there was not even a proper quorum at the Special Convention to approve the designation of Bishop Lamb.

Q How is it that Canon IV.9 was not followed in the deposition of Bishop Schofield? He was inhibited first as the Canon requires, right?

A Yes, he was, but as I explained earlier, there were not sufficient votes on March 12 to depose him, and so the motion to depose failed to carry. If the Church wants to try again to depose him, it will have to begin the process anew. And there is a problem even there: Bishop Schofield was charged with "abandoning the communion of this Church", because he left it for the Province of the Southern Cone, which is another Church in the Anglican Communion, with which The Episcopal Church considers itself to be "in communion." But the second clause of the first section in the Canon (see the text below) defines "abandonment" to mean the joining of a church that is "not in communion" with this Church. So how can he be considered to have "abandoned the communion of this Church" by joining a church that is in communion with us? Well, they charged him with renouncing "the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship of this Church” under the first clause. So either the Canon’s definition contradicts itself, or the “Doctrine, Discipline and Worship” of the Episcopal Church is not the same as the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the rest of the Anglican Communion, and the Episcopal Church has no business calling itself a “constituent member” of that Communion. Take your pick.

Q Haven't reasonable people disagreed over what number of votes the language of the Canon requires in order to consent to the deposition of a Bishop?

A The Canon says that the House of Bishops must consent to a deposition "by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote." Some reasonable people, like the Rev. Mark Harris, Father Jake, and some of those who comment at his blog, side with the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor and say that there were enough votes, because in their view the language really means "by a majority of the whole number of Bishops present at the meeting and entitled to vote." But that view is contradicted by the history of the Canon itself, and by other analogous passages in the Constitution and Canons.

Q Explain what you mean, please.

A Ever since its first version adopted in 1853, and throughout its three subsequent amendments since then, the Canon has used language that meant the majority of the whole House of Bishops had to approve the deposition of a fellow Bishop. (See the details here.)

In 1901, as part of a complete revision of the Constitution and Canons begun in 1895, the General Convention of the Church adopted a Constitution which used the exact same language in requiring that any changes to the Book of Common Prayer, and any further changes to the Constitution itself, had to be approved by the same "majority of the whole number of the Bishops entitled to vote in the House of Bishops" (Constitution, Arts. X and XII). So when the revisers of Canon IV.9 adopted this same language in 1904, they were saying that the deposition of a Bishop---which, remember, had theretofore always required such a majority---would continue to require such a majority.

It cannot seriously be argued that the language of Arts. X and XII as so adopted could be read to mean that just a simple majority of the Bishops present at a meeting could approve changes to the Constitution or to the Book of Common Prayer. Look at what this would mean if it were true today: with 294 Bishops entitled to vote (as of March 12, 2008), a quorum of the House of Bishops is just 68 active Bishops (because Art. I, section 2 of the Constitution spells out that for purposes of a quorum, only active Bishops with jurisdiction are to be counted). So under such a reading of the language as originally adopted in 1901, at a meeting where just 68 active Bishops were present and voting (as on March 12), a change proposed for the Book of Common Prayer, for example, would pass if it got just 35 votes, or just twelve percent of the total number of votes entitled under that language to be cast on the question. That is not reasonable, by any means of construction.

Q OK, but as I look at the language of Arts. X and XII today, it's not the same anymore as the language in Canon IV.9, is it?

A No, you're right, and that difference supplies, ironically, the clincher to this argument. The reason is that General Convention amended those Articles in 1937 to insert the phrase "excluding retired Bishops not present" into the language describing the majority needed to approve any changes. The key point is that neither General Convention 1937, nor any Convention since, ever made the same change to the language of Canon IV.9---they left its language untouched. But the language they inserted into Articles X and XII shows unarguably that by excluding the count of any retired Bishops who are not present, they must by the same token be including in the count any active Bishops who are not present, since only those who are both retired and not present are to be excluded. So that means, before this change was made, the drafters understood the language to require the inclusion in the count of all Bishops, active and retired, who were not present at the meeting itself---and that is precisely the reading that has been uniformly followed throughout the history of Canon IV.9.

Q Well, not really "uniformly," correct?

A (Sigh.) Again, you're right. Supporters of Chancellor Beers's view, such as Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington in his recent Memorandum to the House of Bishops, regularly trot out two examples of depositions that occurred in the past fifteen years where it also appears, from the records that survive, that there was not a full majority of all the Bishops in the House present and voting for the depositions. But an act done in violation of the Canon cannot serve as a precedent for how to follow the Canon---that's a logical impossibility. The solution, if you want to depose people on the vote of just those who show up, is to strike the words "whole number" from the Canon and add the words "present at the meeting"---just as the drafters did in the case of Canon III.12.8 (d), which provides that a Bishop's resignation may be accepted by "a majority of those present" (emphasis supplied).

Q So, what's going to happen in the case of Bishop Duncan?

A All of the Bishops in the House of Bishops are going to have to educate themselves on these issues, and show up in September prepared to address and discuss them, because I predict that a real donnybrook will ensue if the Presiding Bishop does go forward with her single-minded plan to remove him without having received consent to inhibit him first, as required by the Canon. If the House simply kowtows to her wishes and rubber-stamps a "deposition"---even with the full number of votes required this time---it still will be an unlawful act, because as the Canon itself says, only a Bishop who has first been "inhibited" is "liable to deposition". Bishop Duncan, remember, was not inhibited; therefore, the Canon says he cannot be deposed under its own terms. My hope is that, as the Bishops read about this and educate themselves, they will come to see that it will be futile to pile one illegal act upon another, no matter what Chancellor Beers or the Rt. Rev. Stacy Sauls advises them, and that they will either halt the proceeding in its tracks, or (better yet) inhibit the Presiding Bishop herself from going forward with her unlawful plan.

Q If I want more information than just what is in this summary, where should I look?

A These eleven posts (seven on the canons, and four on San Joaquin) will provide you with all the links that you need to become an expert on the situation:

1. Five Violations of the Same Canon!

2. A History of the "Abandonment" Canons

3. Abuses of the "Abandonment" Canons (First Part)

4. Abuses of the "Abandonment" Canons (Second Part)

5. Update on the History Canon IV.9.2

6. The Sauls Memorandum Refuted (First Part)

7. The Sauls Memorandum Refuted (Second Part)

On the Situation in San Joaquin:

8. How to Follow the Canons in San Joaquin

9. A Tale of Two Dioceses

10. Remaking San Joaquin

11. Can a Diocese Ever Leave the Church?

And finally, as a bonus, here's how the House of Bishops, if it has the spine to act, could ward off the coming donnybrook:

12. Who Will Stand Up for What Is Right?

Envoi: Anyone who takes the trouble to read the foregoing posts will know that I feel strongly that Canon IV.9 is absolutely the wrong Canon to apply to the cases of Bishops Cox, Schofield and Duncan. I express no opinion here on what would be the proper outcome of a presentment brought against any of them on charges made under Canon IV.1, because a such a presentment would require a trial, and the outcome of each trial would depend on what facts could or could not be proven in each individual case. But that is not my point.

Rather, the point I want to drive home here is that Canon IV.9 is not only the wrong Canon to use in these circumstances, but it is not even being followed. The procedure which the Presiding Bishop proposes to use to depose Bishop Duncan is unlawful, just as was the procedure she followed in "deposing" Bishop Cox, because neither of them was ever inhibited, as the Canon requires. Believe me, it will be in no Bishop's interest (other than that of the Presiding Bishop, because she alone is driving the agenda) to go on record as flouting the plain meaning of the Canon---and in September, the Bishops will not be able to hide behind a voice vote. Every single Bishop attending will have to be recorded as voting either "Yea" or "Nay" on allowing the resolution to depose to go forward. The lawlessness of those who cast their lots with the Presiding Bishop will then be out in the open for all to see. And for a Bishop knowingly to vote to break the law means not only that he or she will be committing the very act with which they are charging Bishop Duncan---that is, "openly renouncing the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of this Church", and breaking their own ordination vows to boot. It means also that by casting such a vote, each of them becomes a living contradiction of their faith, that is, a professed disciple of Christ who nonetheless tramples at will, when it is expedient, on the law of the Church.

In sum: the watchword among the Bishops in this instance had better be Matthew 11:15.

* * * * *

And now, here is the language of Canon IV.9 for reference:

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.

Sec. 2. The Presiding Bishop, or the presiding officer, shall forthwith give notice to the Bishop of the certification and Inhibition. Unless the inhibited Bishop, within two months, makes declaration by a Verified written statement to the Presiding Bishop, that the facts alleged in the certificate are false or utilizes the provisions of Canon IV.8 or Canon III.12.7, as applicable, the Bishop will be liable to Deposition. If the Presiding Bishop is reasonably satisfied that the statement constitutes (i) a good faith retraction of the declarations or acts relied upon in the certification to the Presiding Bishop or (ii) a good faith denial that the Bishop made the declarations or committed the acts relied upon in the certificate, the Presiding Bishop, with the advice and consent of a majority of the three senior Bishops consenting to Inhibition, terminate the Inhibition. Otherwise, it shall be the duty of the Presiding Bishop to present the matter to the House of Bishops at the next regular or special meeting of the House. If the House, by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote, shall give its consent, the Presiding Bishop shall depose the Bishop from the Ministry, and pronounce and record in the presence of two or more Bishops that the Bishop has been so deposed.