Published in the Church of England Newspaper and on Fulcrum

Life is always more interesting when things don’t go as planned. That alone should make the Anglican Communion Covenant interesting in 2012. General Synod rarely refers matters to dioceses. When it does, it often seems – as with women bishops – a procedural necessity with a foregone positive conclusion. As 2011 closes, the covenant has departed from that script. It has the support of four dioceses but been rejected by four dioceses. At least 23 of the 44 dioceses must support it for it to return to General Synod for final approval. The 2012 diocesan synod debates are therefore crucial. To resource these, Fulcrum has recently collated various articles and produced a short “Churchgoer’s Guide to the Anglican Communion Covenant”. This concludes with the following ten reasons to support the covenant.

1. It has been consistently supported by the Church of England which significantly shaped its content through the years of its development and so we should not now reverse our positive and constructive response.
2. It is a development in line with the Communion’s evolving life and is faithful to Anglicanism’s theological and ecclesiological tradition and identity.
3. It gives form to a vision of ‘communion with autonomy and accountability’ that has been central to the Communion’s self-understanding and is a genuine Anglican via media avoiding the dangers of both a centralised, controlling Curia and a fragmenting, fractious federation.
4. It enables Anglicans across the world and Christians in other denominations to understand who we are as Anglicans and how we seek to live together and share in God’s mission together as part of the body of Christ.
5. It provides a clear agreed framework for debate, diversity and development through shared discernment within agreed affirmations and commitments.
6. It facilitates changes in continuity and dialogue with both our Anglican tradition and our fellow Anglicans around the world and thus serves our unity in Christ.
7. It preserves provincial autonomy but allows the clear articulation of the catholic consensus within the Communion and an ordered – rather than the recent chaotic – response within Anglicanism when provinces believe they need to act contrary to this.
8. It offers the best, perhaps the only, means of preventing further bitter fragmentation by enabling the highest degree of communion among Anglicans.
9. It does not explicitly address specific controversial issues but cultivates practices and provides processes for addressing whatever innovations – for example, lay presidency – might arise when some Anglicans may feel called to act in a way that others do not recognise as faithful developments.
10. The Archbishop of Canterbury has asked the Church of England to support him and the other Instruments in working for the widest possible acceptance of the covenant within the Communion.

Given these, and many other reasons, why has the Church of England so far appeared half-hearted?

There are various factors. For some, the covenant has appeared from nowhere and is tainted by recent Communion divisions. For others, opposition may reflect an inherent natural conservatism suspicious of new developments or even a sub-Christian nationalism that fails to recognise the importance of living within a global communion of churches. In addition, relatively little has been done until now to explain the covenant simply and show its importance and value – hence Fulcrum’s recent guide. In contrast, there has been a vociferous organised international campaign against it.

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition is driven by various commitments. It has an alternative, incompatible vision of life in communion whose theory and practice are rarely explained or scrutinised. This is centred on a minimalist Anglican identity (sometimes almost reduced to a principle of celebrating unbounded diversity) which rejects interdependence and mutual accountability so provinces can unilaterally act however they wish without reference to Anglicans elsewhere.

This vision lay behind the actions of North American dioceses and provinces which in 2003 tore the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level. Despite the rhetoric of inclusive diversity, it has divided the church and established liberal dominance in the Episcopal Church in America (TEC). It also justifies their continued refusal to heed repeated requests to stop, wait, consult and persuade for the good of the wider church. A covenant that could help repair the tear by re-affirming provinces’ commitment to longstanding Anglican patterns of life in communion is something this vision’s supporters are determined to resist. Sadly, despite appealing to reason and tolerance, their campaign has at times misrepresented the covenant and painted extreme scenarios based on such distortions to engender anxiety and fear.

Evangelicals won’t be attracted by this alternative vision but some seem tempted to form an unholy alliance with it by opposing the covenant or abstaining. Their concern is the mirror-opposite: the covenant is too weak and should be abandoned for the GAFCON vision of confessional Anglicanism. That vision, however, whatever its strengths, lacks the covenant’s commitments to cultivate ecclesial virtues and institutions which nourish communion. It isn’t clear how it will reform and strengthen the Communion rather than facilitate its fragmentation and demise.

In fact, much in the covenant should delight and encourage evangelicals. There is nothing to which we fundamentally object. That’s why it has been consistently supported by the Global South leadership. There can also be little doubt its defeat in the Church of England would be claimed – and widely seen – as a triumph for those who have supported TEC.

Archbishop Rowan’s recent Advent letter continued “to commend the Covenant as strongly as I can”, arguing it will enable us “to agree on ways of limiting damage, managing conflict and facing with honesty the actual effects of greater disunity”. For those reasons and the others outlined by Fulcrum, in 2012 evangelicals from across evangelicalism should be well-informed, enthusiastic and committed supporters of the covenant, speaking and voting for it in deanery and diocesan synods and then in General Synod.

The Revd Dr Andrew Goddard is Tutor in Christian Ethics at Trinity College, Bristol, a Fellow of the Anglican Communion Institute and on the Leadership Team of Fulcrum (www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk)

First, the Board’s decision is explicitly based on the recognition of a distinction between official actions of the Diocese of South Carolina and statements and acts by Bishop Lawrence as an individual. Bishop Henderson’s statement, here speaking for the Board as a whole, suggests that the Board probably regarded certain “actions by conventions of the Diocese of South Carolina” as “abandonment of the Church and its discipline by the diocese” (emphasis in the original). The Board, of course, did not state this conclusion so definitively, and we will address its qualifications below. But it is important to note that the Board acknowledged that the actions in question were official acts of “the diocese” even when they might constitute abandonment of TEC.

We have advocated for some time the traditional polity of TEC that recognizes the legal autonomy of its constituent dioceses. Although we have consistently urged those dioceses not to abandon TEC, we have recognized their autonomy and legal right to do so. One often hears it said that only individuals can leave TEC. It is encouraging to have the Board, the body responsible under the canons for the discipline of TEC bishops, state quite plainly that “actions by conventions of the Diocese of South Carolina” might constitute “abandonment of the Church and its discipline by the diocese.” For reasons we will elaborate further below, we believe this traditional understanding of TEC’s polity holds the key to greater unity in the Church in the days ahead.

Second, as already noted, the Board qualified its opinion as to whether the Diocese had abandoned TEC by adding that the undisputed actions of the diocesan conventions “seem…to be pointing toward” abandonment by the diocese. The facts concerning what the Diocese did are not in question; only their legal consequences. It is not clear whether the Board’s qualification on this issue is due to the fact that it lacks jurisdiction over the Diocese or also due to the view that the actions by the diocesan conventions do not yet constitute abandonment, but may only “point toward” such a possibility in the future.

We hope the Board has reached both of these conclusions. Findings of abandonment should be limited to those cases where there has been explicit disaffiliation with TEC. And in the case of the Diocese of South Carolina, there has been no suggestion of disaffiliation. To the contrary, it has very intentionally retained in its constitution an accession to TEC’s Constitution. It has with equal determination defended TEC’s constitutional polity as traditionally understood. We have undertaken a thorough review of the constitutional history of clergy discipline in TEC and can only conclude that no fair minded reader could find the position of the Diocese of South Carolina to be unreasonable on this issue. It cannot be a renunciation of the discipline of the Church to seek to uphold that discipline as specified in the Constitution by resisting unconstitutional encroachment on the Diocese’s exclusive authority.

TEC’s credibility has been greatly damaged in recent years by the abuse of the abandonment canon. We hope this decision signals a return to the traditional and proper use of this canon by limiting it to cases where there has been true abandonment. Deeming the principled defense of the Church’s discipline to be the renunciation of that discipline would only undermine the very discipline the Church seeks to protect.

Third, despite the Board’s expressed concerns about the actions of the Diocese, it concluded that Bishop Lawrence himself had not abandoned the Church or renounced its discipline notwithstanding his unequivocal support of the Diocese’s actions. Renunciation has traditionally been understood to include not only actions but statements. Indeed, under Title III, “renunciation of the ordained ministry” is defined as a declaration in writing to the Presiding Bishop. In the context of the abandonment canon, when the Board considers the standard of “an open renunciation of the Doctrine, Discipline or Worship of the Church” it necessarily reviews not only official acts but also any relevant statements by the bishop who has been charged with abandonment. Although the breadth of this standard makes it subject to abuse, this same breadth produces an extraordinarily broad exoneration when charges are dismissed. In the case of Bishop Lawrence, all matters related to the canonical changes by the Diocese of South Carolina, by far the most important part of the allegations against him, have been adjudicated, and he has been cleared. Given the breadth of the “open renunciation” standard and Bishop Lawrence’s explicit and public support for the diocesan canonical changes, no further action by him in relation to these matters could revive these charges.

Indeed, the findings in respect of Bishop Lawrence are even broader. As we have noted before, under the new Title IV all clergy are required to report to the Intake Officer “all matters which may constitute an Offense.” The failure by the Board to refer these matters to the Intake Officer thus necessarily constitutes a finding by them, the body responsible for the trial of bishops under Title IV, that not only has there been no abandonment, neither has there been a violation of any of the other disciplinary canons. In other words, Bishop Lawrence has been given the broadest possible clearance.

Fourth, turning to the final sentence in Bishop Henderson’s statement in which he emphasizes that he is speaking only for himself, we note that the express reservation here underscores the fact that the rest of his statement is made on behalf of the entire Board. As to the substance of this sentence, we are unsure what Bishop Henderson means when he expresses his hope that the minority in South Carolina will be given a “safe place.” We are unaware of any allegations that dissident clergy have been disciplined or otherwise treated unfairly by Bishop Lawrence or the Diocese. There was a single allegation concerning a chapel comprised of dissenters from the diocesan majority, but this related not to any alleged discipline or persecution but only to whether this chapel would be organized as a diocesan parish or mission. Bishop Lawrence has in the past vigorously refuted this allegation, pointing out that he has worked closely with this chapel to provide them with priests, including the licensing of priests from other dioceses. In any event, this allegation was dismissed along with the others.

Perhaps Bishop Henderson was using the term “safe place” to suggest that Bishop Lawrence permit the dissenters to perform same sex blessings, call priests who are in same sex relationships or practice communion of the unbaptized, practices that are widespread elsewhere in TEC but prohibited in the Diocese of South Carolina. There is much esteem and affection for Bishop Henderson in the Church, but his hopes on this point are simply those of one bishop expressed openly to another. For our part, we have little doubt that Bishop Lawrence will continue to require that all under his episcopal authority adhere to traditional standards of sexual ethics, standards required by diocesan canons, regardless of any decision made to approve blessings at next year’s General Convention.

Finally, we note that Bishop Lawrence has largely succeeded in keeping his diocese intact and within TEC notwithstanding the intense disagreement with the current trajectory of TEC by an overwhelming majority of the diocese. We attribute this unity not only to Bishop Lawrence’s profound faith and leadership, but also to his decision to forego attempts to coerce this unity. Paradoxically, the greatest unity has come not because it is enforced but because it is voluntarily offered. TEC as a whole has tried the opposite approach, and not surprisingly that has been met with the opposite results. Millions of dollars have been spent on endless litigation in an apparent attempt to erect a “Berlin wall” around TEC. The result has been the loss of almost a quarter of TEC’s attendance during the last decade. Although only four dioceses have voted formally to disaffiliate from TEC, the equivalent of over twenty average size dioceses has been lost in the last ten years.

How much of this could have been avoided had TEC decided to forgo attempts at coercion? TEC is blessed with a traditional polity of decentralized authority dispersed among autonomous dioceses, a polity ideally suited to today’s challenges and disputes. We hope the decision by the Board to dismiss charges against Bishop Lawrence signals a renewed recognition of these founding principles. The greatest possible unity in TEC will be found when dioceses exercise their authority to address the difficult issues facing the Church through their own local processes.

Sources:
A Statement by the President of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops Regarding the Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina

South Carolina: Upholding the Church’s Discipline by Upholding the Constitution

Title IV and the Constitution: Dioceses’ Exclusive Authority

First, the Presiding Bishop addresses a psychological report prepared for the Roman Catholic Church in 2000 that found he had “a proclivity to re-offend with minors.” The Presiding Bishop states:

I wrote to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas and the Diocese of Santa Fe, receiving brief responses from each bishop, who indicated no problematic behavior.  I wrote to Conception Abbey, from whom I received only an acknowledgement that he had served there, been sent for treatment to a facility in New Mexico, and had been dismissed for this incident of misconduct. Neither then nor later did I receive a copy of any report of a psychological examination in connection with his service in the Roman Catholic Church.

In a signed statement earlier this year, however, Parry stated:

Also in 2000, I considered joining the Prince of Peace monastery in Riverside, California. Prince of Peace had me undergo a series of psychological tests. After the testing, Prince of Peace’s Abbot Charles Wright informed me I was no longer a candidate. The psychological evaluation had determined that I had a proclivity to reoffend with minors. Abbot Wright called Conception Abbey’s Abbot Gregory Polan with this information.

Abbot Polan would later share the information with Robert Stoeckig from the Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas, Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the human resources department at Mercy Ambulance in Las Vegas. Bishop Daniel Walsh, Monsignor Ben Franzinelli, Bishop Joseph Pepe, Archbishop Robert Sanchez and Rev. Bob Nelson were also made aware of my previous misconduct.

The Presiding Bishop’s statement does not directly contradict Parry’s assertion that she was told of the “information” in the report. Parry did not state that she had “received” the report. Can the Presiding Bishop categorically deny Parry’s statement that she was told of the information in the report?

Second, according to the Episcopal News Service:

Edwards told ENS Nov. 15 that Parry has resigned from both All Saints and the diocese, has not functioned as a priest since the summer and will not do so in the future.

We note that Parry is still listed as a priest resident in the Diocese of Nevada on the clergy finder.

Bishop Edwards does not state that Parry has renounced his orders, but that he “resigned” from the diocese and that he will not function as a priest. We are not clear what “resigning” from a diocese is. Renunciation of orders requires a certification that the renunciation “was for causes which do not affect the person’s moral character.” Has Bishop Edwards given that certification? If he has not accepted a renunciation, has Parry’s ministry been restricted under Title IV? If neither has occurred, on what basis are we assured that Parry will not function as a priest in the future?

The question of how a former Roman Catholic priest who has admitted to repeated abuse of minors under his care and who agreed to be laicized could have been received into TEC as a priest has been much discussed. It is startling that the Diocese of Nevada acknowledges that it was aware of his past misconduct, including a police report, prior to his reception, but proffers the reassurance that the Bishop and Commission on Ministry

did not decide to put children at risk. By accepting Fr. Bede as a priest, they were determining that he was not a threat to children.

Few have found this very reassuring, especially since a near-contemporaneous psychological evaluation made by the Roman Catholic Church shortly before Parry began his process of reception into TEC found that he had a “proclivity to re-offend with minors.” Indeed, notwithstanding the prior determination of safety by the diocese, Parry immediately tendered his resignation as a priest in TEC—characterized by ENS as Parry’s “renouncing his orders”—the moment his past conduct became public knowledge.

One of the most remarkable aspects of this entire matter is that immediately after accepting Parry’s resignation the current Bishop of Nevada, Dan Edwards, also said of the original decision:

It was a multi-level decision which meticulously followed the applicable canons….

As I review what was done 2002 – 2004, I find no fault with the actions of any of our people, lay or ordained.

And TEC’s Office of Public Affairs, working for the Presiding Bishop, released a statement at the same time that emphasized:

Diocese of Nevada Bishop Dan Edwards and his staff have reviewed the records and shared with appropriate commissions and the diocesan chancellor, and they confirmed there were no departures from established policies and procedures. As in all Diocese of Nevada workings, all canons were followed; all policies and procedures were followed, and continue to be followed. (Emphasis added.)

The canonical implications of this have been much discussed, most ably by Allan Haley who concludes to the contrary that there were canonical violations in this process. We believe Haley makes a strong case. Our purpose, however, is not to debate this point, but instead to consider the implications of the position taken by the Diocese of Nevada and the Office of Public Affairs: that a child abuser could knowingly be received into TEC’s priesthood while complying “meticulously” with all canons, policies and procedures. If true, this is a bigger cause for concern than what may have been a one-time canonical violation. That bishops violate the canons is hardly news. That confessed child abusers are not barred by TEC’s child abuse policies is more troubling.

Bede Parry Was a Typical Abuser

In his defense of the actions of the Diocese of Nevada, Bishop Edwards begins with an odd claim:

First, what this story is not: This is not the horrifying story of a predatory pedophile priest who is passed from parish to parish so he can continue his predatory behavior. Far from it. For those who have the story of the predatory pedophile fixed in their minds, it will be difficult to hear and accept the actual facts. These facts will not fit their entrenched assumptions. But if we are to tell the truth, we must tell a different story.

He then elaborates;

An incident with a late adolescent, while certainly morally wrong, and unquestionably a matter for serious concern, does not indicate pedophilia. Pedophilia is sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. It is a condition that is usually compulsive, so repeated misconduct is common. American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. 1994) (DSM IV) Pedophilia Sec. 302.2 pp. 527-528. Fr. Bede is not a pedophile. This is not a moral difference but it is a psychological difference that matters a great deal in determining whether someone is likely to err again.

This claim at the heart of Bishop Edwards’ defense is misplaced for two reasons. First, if the diocese knowingly received as a priest someone who sexually abused minors under his care, it is of no consequence that the priest was not also a pedophile in the clinical sense.

More significantly, however, Bede Parry fit in almost every respect the standard profile of clerical abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. He was a typical abuser.

The 2011 John Jay report prepared for the Catholic bishops summarized the research conducted over the last decade with the following:

Less than 5 percent of the priests with allegations of abuse exhibited behavior consistent with a diagnosis of pedophilia (a psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges, and behaviors about prepubescent children). Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as “pedophile priests.” (p. 3)

The majority of victims (81 percent) were male, in contrast to the distribution by victim gender for sexual crimes in the United States. National incidence studies have consistently shown that in general girls are three times more likely to be abused than boys. Despite this widely accepted statistic on victim gender, recent studies of sexual abuse of minors within institutions have shown a higher percentage of male than female victims. (pp. 9-10; footnotes omitted)

“The majority of victims were pubescent or postpubescent” with 78% percent being 11 and older. (p. 10) In their earlier 2004 report, the John Jay team noted more specifically that “the majority of victims are males between the ages of 11-17.” (p. 70)

And based on their analysis of both the formal allegations and “potential allegations” (known indications of abuse that were not the subject of formal allegations presented to the dioceses) the John Jay team concluded in 2004 (p. 52) that half of the Catholic priests who abused minors did so to more than one victim.  And these “serial abusers” were more likely to be reported to the police than those who abused only one victim. (p.64)

To summarize, half of the Catholic abusers had more than one victim; fewer than five percent were clinical pedophiles. There were nine non-pedophile repeat abusers for every pedophile. To say that Parry was not a pedophile tells us virtually nothing about whether he was likely to abuse again. And his own history confirms this: he acknowledges that he was a repeat abuser, and the psychological evaluation performed shortly before he began the process of being received into TEC found that he had a proclivity to re-offend with minors. Bishop Edwards’ excursus on clinical precision is an irrelevant detour.

The Roman Catholic Response

In January 2002 the Boston Globe began a series of reports exposing abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church. Later that year the Catholic bishops responded with a new policy, subsequently revised and commonly known as the “Dallas Charter,” that implemented a “one strike and you’re out” policy. It cannot be a coincidence that in that same year, 2002, Bede Parry was laicized (with his consent) in the Catholic Church and began the process of reception into TEC.

The norms promulgated by the Catholic bishops in 2002 and subsequently revised in 2005 are unequivocal:

When even a single act of sexual abuse by a priest or deacon is admitted or is established after an appropriate process in accord with canon law, the offending priest or deacon will be removed permanently from ecclesiastical ministry, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state, if the case so warrants… If the penalty of dismissal from the clerical state has not been applied (e.g., for reasons of advanced age or infirmity), the offender ought to lead a life of prayer and penance. He will not be permitted to celebrate Mass publicly or to administer the sacraments. He is to be instructed not to wear clerical garb, or to present himself publicly as a priest.

Significantly, “sexual abuse” is broadly defined to include not only inappropriate conduct in personal encounters, but also “the acquisition, possession, or distribution by a cleric of pornographic images of minors” (defined in the United States as minors under the age of eighteen).

It was clear under this policy that Bede Parry would be removed permanently from ecclesiastical ministry. In fact, he consented in 2002 to his removal from the clerical state, commonly known as “laicization.” That same year he began the process of being received into TEC. He has stated publicly that he was attracted to TEC because it does not have a “one strike and you’re out policy.”

The TEC Response: Background

TEC’s development of policies on sexual abuse began even before the Roman Catholic scandal as a result of an incident of misconduct and large legal judgment against the church in the 1990s. By 2001, a special “Committee on Sexual Exploitation” had surveyed all the domestic dioceses and reviewed the policies on sexual abuse of seventy dioceses. It concluded that “none of the policies gathered was a truly state-of-the-art, ‘next generation’ policy that could serve as a model for those dioceses planning on revising and updating their current policies.” After the Catholic scandal became public in 2002, the TEC committee reported to the 2003 General Convention that “denial has existed at all levels.”

As a result, the Church Pension Group began to develop model child sexual abuse prevention and response policies. And consideration of this issue, which had been moving slowly, became more urgent. The CPG made a presentation at the March 2003 House of Bishops meeting entitled “What Every Bishop Should Know About Pedophiles and Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in the Church.” In a pastoral letter to the church from the bishops later in 2003, they made clear that they were using “pedophilia” not in the narrow, clinical sense cited by Bishop Edwards but as synonymous with sexual abuse of minors under 18: “Pedophilia is pervasive; one in eight males and one in four females will be molested before they reach the age of eighteen.”

A year after the Roman Catholic bishops adopted their “Dallas Charter,” the TEC policy began taking shape. The 2003 General Convention passed Resolution B008 “Protection of Children and Youth from Abuse” and the House of Bishops issued a pastoral letter on “Child Sexual Abuse.” The latter cited Resolution B008 but stated further:

In addition we asked the Presiding Bishop to create a working group from among our members to partner with the Church Pension Group, the Church Insurance Corporation and other agencies and appropriate organizations to develop the materials necessary to provide the Church with consistent expectations and standards.

These “consistent expectations and standards” were released by the CPG in 2004 as “Model Policies for the Protection of Children and Youth from Abuse.”

Finally, both the Title III canons on Ministry and the Title IV canons on Discipline were comprehensively revised over the period 2003 to 2009.

These documents constitute the canons, policies and procedures on child sex abuse of TEC. When the Presiding Bishop’s office and the Diocese of Nevada say that all “canons, policies and procedures” were “meticulously followed” they are referring to this set of documents, all of which were adopted after the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal and the Catholic bishops’ response and most of which were in their current form or were substantially the same as those that now exist when Bede Parry was received in 2004.

TEC Policies

When these new canons and policies, developed in the last decade in the light of public scandals, are reviewed carefully, one can with effort see how the claim could be put forward by those defending the decision that all canons and policies were complied with when the Diocese of Nevada received a repeat offender from the Catholic Church as a priest in TEC. None of these canons or policies explicitly prohibits a child abuser from serving as either a TEC priest or in any other position that regularly works with children. The CPG policy requires “screening” of church personnel, but does not prohibit outright the employment of child abusers. The disciplinary canons make child sexual abuse a violation, but do not mandate removal of clerical abusers, either permanently or even temporarily. Indeed, the new disciplinary canons give the diocesan bishop more, not less, discretion in disciplinary matters. While there is little doubt that most bishops will respond aggressively to credible allegations of abuse, such a response is not mandated. The ordination and reception canons similarly contain no explicit prohibition on the ordination of known sex abusers, and the argument that such a prohibition is implicit is disputed as we have seen. The closest any of these canons and policies come to an outright prohibition is the 2003 pastoral letter from the House of Bishops, which states only that:

In the case of pedophilia, our consistency in carefully screening, choosing and training all who work with children and youth will serve to allay any concerns about favoritism or carelessness, prohibiting those who have harmed children from ministries involving children, while providing the ability to firmly guide those who might harm children into other areas of ministry which serve the Church and contribute to our mission.

Indeed, it is startling in this context to compare Bishop Edwards’ recent conclusion with the Roman Catholic norm.

Bishop Edwards:

It was a multi-level decision which meticulously followed the applicable canons….As I review what was done 2002 – 2004, I find no fault with the actions of any of our people, lay or ordained.

RC norm:

When even a single act of sexual abuse by a priest or deacon is admitted or is established…, the offending priest or deacon will be removed permanently from ecclesiastical ministry.

Similarly, it is unsettling to compare the Roman Catholic norm on child pornography—possession in any form is a grave offense for which a single instance will result in permanent removal from the ministry—with the TEC policy:

10. Church Personnel are prohibited from possessing any sexually oriented materials (magazines, cards, videos, films, clothing etc.) on church property or in the presence of children or youth except as expressly permitted as part of a pre-authorized educational program.

11. Church Personnel are prohibited from using the Internet to view or download any sexually oriented materials on church property or in the presence of children or youth.

12. Church Personnel are prohibited from discussing their own sexual activities, including dreams and fantasies, or discussing their use of sexually oriented or explicit materials such as pornography, videos or materials on or from the Internet, with children or youth.

This carefully worded policy clearly exempts pornography held on private property and not shared with children. A youth worker could have a massive library of child pornography at home without being in violation of this policy.

In response to any claim that ours is a tendentious reading of these TEC policies, it is sufficient merely to note that we are addressing vigorous claims that the knowing reception into the priesthood of a child sex abuser was fully in accord with these policies. We can only conclude that to the extent the inexplicably bad judgment exercised in the case of the reception of Bede Parry was fully in accord with TEC’s canons and policies, this serves not to exonerate that judgment but only to indict those policies. When TEC revised its canons and policies in recent years in light of public scandals, it chose to adopt the model of discretion formerly used by Catholic bishops instead of the strict policy those bishops themselves adopted in response to these scandals. The result is Bede Parry as an Episcopal priest. We have little doubt that most TEC bishops would exercise better judgment than that shown in Nevada, but the biggest scandal in the Parry affair is that after the events of the last decade it can plausibly be claimed that receiving a known child abuser as a priest is fully consistent with TEC’s revised policies.

This analysis reveals serious problems with our canons as they now stand. Clearly they need review and revision. It is also the case, however, that the most adequately drawn laws require for their implementation leaders who exercise judgment in prayer and with accountable concern for Christ’s body. In the case of Bede Perry, the best one can say is that the judgments involved, although layered, were poor. Much is simply unknown with the result that many legitimate questions remain unanswered. Despite the seriousness of the questions, the Presiding Bishop, who had the final decision in this matter, has remained silent. Nevertheless, given the serious nature of the issue involved in this case, the Episcopal Church is right to ask for a more adequate accounting of the reasoning behind the decisions that were made in this case.

Sources:

Statement by Bishop Dan Edwards

Statement by the Office of Public Affairs

Analysis by Allan Haley

2011 John Jay Report (“Causes and Context”)

2004 John Jay Report (“Nature and Scope”)

Roman Catholic Bishops’ “Dallas Charter”

Church Pension Group Model Policy, including 2003 Resolution B008 and the 2003 HOB Pastoral Letter

We have considered carefully the available information related to the allegations against Bishop Mark Lawrence that are currently under review by the Disciplinary Board for Bishops. That information discloses an extended and troubling sequence of events that raises serious questions about transparency in the church.

We note the following:

1. In January 2010, Thomas Tisdale sent nine letters to the Diocese of South Carolina requesting voluminous documents from the diocese and its parishes. He advised the diocese that he had been retained to act “as South Carolina counsel for The Episcopal Church” by the chancellor to the Presiding Bishop. This caused the diocese to conclude that “perhaps the Presiding Bishop’s Chancellor, if not the Presiding Bishop herself, is seeking to build a case against the Ecclesiastical Authorities of the Diocese (Bishop and Standing Committee) and some of our parishes.” The Presiding Bishop subsequently told the Executive Council that “I think it’s important that people who want to stay Episcopalians there have some representation on behalf of the larger church.”
2. In August/September 2010 the directors of the Episcopal Forum of South Carolina, a group that describes its mission as “primarily to promote The Episcopal Church, its vision and polity, within the Diocese,” wrote to the Executive Council and each member of the House of Bishops requesting an investigation by TEC “leadership” into allegations of “abandonment” by Bishop Lawrence that they attached to their letter. The attached allegations included matters previously raised by Tisdale on behalf of the Presiding Bishop’s office and allegations that were subsequently included, verbatim at points, in the “Addendum” of allegations filed with the Disciplinary Board for Bishops.
3. In October 2010 Canon Gregory Straub replied to the Forum on behalf of the Executive Council that: “the Presiding Bishop’s office is invested in responding in all the ways that are canonically and pastorally possible to the concerns you and others have raised”; “the realities of our church polity mean that there are canonical limits to how her office and the Executive Council can intervene”; “there are, however, other formal and informal ways in which the diocese is connected to the wider church”; and “we are aware that the Forum is making good use of some of these informal connections already.”
4. In March 2011, the President of the House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson, and her chancellor met with the Forum and others in South Carolina. In response to questions, Ms. Anderson’s chancellor explained the abandonment procedures, including the role of the Presiding Bishop.
5. In April and May 2011 the allegations of abandonment in the “Addendum” that would later be filed with the Disciplinary Board appear to have been put in final form. The footers to the attachments show they were printed out during this period: none is dated after May 1, 2011. The Addendum does not refer to events after May 2011, including the action taken by the Executive Council in June 2011 (described below).
6. Some time prior to July 1, 2011, the lawyer advising the Title IV Review Committee, the predecessor under the former Title IV to the Disciplinary Board, began working on “the Bishop Lawrence information.” When he was again assigned to this matter in October 2011, he was described as “already more than familiar with that information and the task which is now [the Disciplinary Board’s].” This was not disclosed at the time but only in October 2011 when the President of the Disciplinary Board, Bishop Dorsey Henderson, wrote to Board members and made the communication public. Bishop Henderson has not said who initiated this prior investigation but he later said that the Board itself had not initiated such an inquiry “within memory, if ever.”
7. On May 25, 2011, Melinda Lucka, a lawyer and director of the Forum, wrote to the Presiding Bishop, Bonnie Anderson and Gregory Straub (as officers of the Executive Council) “on behalf of” five additional signatories consisting of the chair and four other directors and members of the Forum. This letter asked the Executive Council to nullify several resolutions passed at the 2010 and 2011 conventions of the Diocese of South Carolina. In support of this request, the letter accused the diocese of “disloyalty to and disassociation with” TEC and taking actions in violation of TEC’s Constitution. It also alleged that “the Diocese and its leadership” had rejected “any meaningful effort to uphold the…polity of The Episcopal Church.” Attached to the letter was a sixteen page “Addendum” of diocesan resolutions that is identical to Tab One of the Addendum that is now being considered by the Disciplinary Board. This letter has never been made public nor was it provided to the diocese until September, but we later learned that the Executive Council’s Joint Standing Committee on Governance & Administration “spent considerable time taking up the concerns raised” in this letter on June 16, 2011 at a regular meeting of the Executive Council without informing the diocese.
8. On June 16, 2011, the Joint Standing Committee concluded that a 2007 Executive Council resolution declaring certain actions of other dioceses (Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Quincy and San Joaquin) “null and void” also applied to recent actions by the Diocese of South Carolina. According to the draft minutes of the Joint Standing Committee, those present included the Presiding Bishop, her chancellor, Ms. Anderson and Canon Straub. The same day, June 16, 2011, Straub wrote Lucka and advised her of the above action and also advised her that “the Joint Standing Committee and Executive Council will continue to monitor the actions of the Annual Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina.” Straub’s letter was not copied to Bishop Lawrence or the diocese nor were they otherwise informed at the time of this Executive Council action. Lucka later stated that she was waiting for this letter to be sent to the diocese before informing others, but there is no instruction in the letter itself that she was to wait or any indication that it would ever be provided to the diocese. Nor is there any indication that Lucka ever considered providing the letter to the diocese herself.
9. On July 1, 2011, the new Title IV became effective and the Disciplinary Board was established. Two of its bishop members were serving on its predecessor, the Title IV Review Committee.
10. In late August 2011 the Diocese of South Carolina received by mail from Straub a copy of the June 16 letter from Straub to Lucka. The letter was postmarked August 26, 2011. Added to the copy in a different font were “cc’s” to Bishop Lawrence and the prior president of the Standing Committee. Straub later explained the delay by saying that he had sent the copy to the diocese at the request of Lucka, but there is no explanation as to why the Executive Council did not inform the diocese in a timely fashion as a matter of its own good order or why Lucka did not do so herself. Straub subsequently sent the diocese a copy of Lucka’s May 25 letter at the request of the diocese.
11. On September 22, 2011, two days after the conclusion of the fall meeting of the House of Bishops, Lucka formally advised the chair of the Forum (one of those on whose behalf the May 25 letter had been sent) of the Straub response of June 16. She stated that she had “waited to let EFSC and others know about this until the Diocese also was informed. I am told the Diocese has received word of the decision.” The Forum immediately made this letter public. Contradicting any implication that this letter was the means by which the Forum was in fact informed of the action by the Executive Council, one of the other signatories to the May 25 letter published this information on his website the day before this letter was sent.
12. One week later, on September 29, 2011, Bishop Henderson informed Bishop Lawrence that “serious charges” of abandonment were under investigation by the Disciplinary Board. Bishop Lawrence was also given a copy of the allegations under review, which were contained in an “Addendum” (described in # 5 above), but was not given any other documents, including the letter or document to which the “Addendum” was attached, that might clarify the context of the allegations. The cover document could have been redacted to protect the identity of individuals. One of the signatories to the May 25 letter has stated on his website without citation of any other source that these allegations against Lawrence were submitted to the Disciplinary Board “during the summer.”
13. The next day, September 30, 2011, the attorney for the Disciplinary Board wrote the diocese requesting copies of certain records as part of the Board’s review of the matter.
14. On October 17, 2011, Bishop Henderson wrote fellow Disciplinary Board members that “because I believe that time is of an essence, I have made a command decision and today requested” that the lawyer who had formerly worked on “the Bishop Lawrence information” replace the attorney who had sent the September 30 letter only later to recuse herself on October 14.

In light of this sequence of events and the manifest importance of this matter for the church as a whole, we believe greater transparency is required than has thus far been displayed. In particular, we suggest the following questions are of sufficient importance to require prompt answers:

1. When was “the Bishop Lawrence information” first brought to the Title IV Review Committee and who initiated this process? When first submitted to that Committee was the information contained in the document entitled “Addendum” that was subsequently provided to Bishop Lawrence? Or was it initially submitted in another form or by other parties?
2. Why was the Lucka letter of May 25 to the Presiding Bishop, Bonnie Anderson and Executive Council, which prompted the Executive Council’s June action, not provided to the diocese at the time or ever made public? What is the relation between its “Addendum” and the (in part identical) “Addendum” now under review by the Disciplinary Board?
3. Why was the June “decision” by the Executive Council handled as it was? Why was the diocese not informed for over two months? How has the Executive Council continued “to monitor the actions” of the South Carolina convention? Who, if anyone, suggested to Lucka that she “wait” to inform others, including those on behalf of whom she had sent her original letter? Who later “told” her to do so on September 22? Was this timing connected in any way with Bishop Henderson’s call to Bishop Lawrence on September 29 and the renewed activity in the Board’s review?
4. To what extent have there been communications among the Presiding Bishop’s office, Bonnie Anderson and her chancellor, the Executive Council, the Title IV Review Committee/Disciplinary Board and the Forum and others in the Diocese of South Carolina about these issues? They have expressed public interest in these matters for some time and have been in communication about them. To what extent have they coordinated their actions?
5. After all this confusing delay and consideration of this matter at all levels of the church for several months, why is time now of the essence?

This matter has now been fast tracked into an abandonment procedure that has but two stops: the Disciplinary Board and the House of Bishops. As Bishop Henderson noted in contrasting abandonment with the normal hearing procedures of Title IV, “the abandonment canon makes no provision for the involvement of the Intake Officer, any of the panels, for appeal to a court of review, or for conciliation (short of retraction or satisfactory denial) for bishops, priests or deacons.”

The church is entitled to transparency about this process, abbreviated as it is.

In the interest of transparency, ACI notes that it supports and works with the Communion Partner dioceses on Title IV and other matters.

UPDATE:   This post was updated on October 23, 2011 to correct paragraph 9 to clarify that two of the Disciplinary Board members were serving on the Title IV Review Committee prior to July 1, 2011.  Other members of the Board served on other committees and task forces related to the drafting, implementation and review of the new Title IV.

One of the allegations now being made against Bishop Lawrence is that the decision by the Diocese of South Carolina to continue to adhere to the prior Title IV canons rather than adopt the controversial new revisions constitutes abandonment by being an open renunciation of the discipline of TEC.  Last March Alan Runyan and I published an article that undertook a careful examination of the history of TEC’s Constitution as it relates to clergy discipline. We started at the beginning in 1789, but gave particular attention to those constitutional revisions in 1901 that the drafters of the new Title IV claim “profoundly changed” the constitutional allocation of authority in the church. That article provides conclusive proof that the Constitution as now in effect allocates authority for discipline of priests and deacons exclusively to the dioceses except for appeals.

This issue has been much debated in the history of TEC, and our article contains a detailed examination of that history. But throughout those years of debates, the result was always the same: disciplinary authority remained with the dioceses. Our article provides compelling proof that the revisions to Title IV are unconstitutional.  It cannot be a renunciation of the discipline of the church to uphold that discipline as specified in the Constitution by resisting unconstitutional encroachment on the diocese’s exclusive authority. One might disagree with the opinion of the Diocese of South Carolina, but one cannot regard upholding at great personal cost the constitutional polity of the church as always understood in the past as an “open renunciation.”

Here are key excerpts from our March article:

The defenders of the recent Title IV revisions acknowledge that from the inception in 1789 and throughout the nineteenth century the General Convention did not have constitutional authority to enact a uniform disciplinary canon for presbyters and deacons. They argue, however, that the constitutional allocation of authority was “profoundly changed” in 1901:

[Quoting the drafters of the Title IV revisions] The wording adopted in 1901, however, profoundly changed this Constitutional scheme. Instead of reserving to the several Dioceses the “mode” ‐ the full range ‐ of disciplinary activities, it very precisely prescribed that which is left to the Dioceses: the “institution” of the “Court” by which Priests or Deacons may be tried. No longer do the Dioceses have exclusive rights with respect to the full range of disciplinary activities; from and after 1901, the only part of those activities exclusively reserved to the Dioceses is the establishment of the Court before which trial, if there is to be one, is to be conducted. As a result of this change, General Convention is now constitutionally free to legislate in the area of clergy discipline.

Mr. Runyan and I then noted:

If the apparently minor wording change from “mode of trying instituted” to “tried by a court instituted” were the profound reversal of constitutional authority claimed by the revisers of Title IV, one would expect legislative history articulating that significance which would otherwise be obscure. The revisers cite none, only a common dictionary. One would also expect that White & Dykman, as a part of its discussion about the many rejected attempts that had been made to limit diocesan authority over the discipline of its clergy, would have noticed this “profound change” if it had been made. They did not because such a reading is simply wrong.

In fact, the legislative history of the 1901 constitutional revision points conclusively in the other direction.

We then considered in detail the history of the 1901 revisions, including the reasons for using the identical new terminology to describe the respective authority of both General Convention and the dioceses and the very intentional change of “may” to “shall” when describing diocesan authority to indicate after decades of debate in the nineteenth century that General Convention had no concurrent authority in this area. We concluded:

With this careful study of the legislative history of Article IX, we can summarize the conclusions and readily see that the 1901 revision to the Constitution did not “profoundly change” the constitutional allocation of exclusive authority for the trial of other clergy in the diocesan conventions:

• The authority of both General Convention and diocesan conventions in their respective areas was preserved, but restated using the terminology of “establish courts” rather than “mode of trying.” If the authority of diocesan conventions was “profoundly changed,” the authority of General Convention was as well.
• The authority of General Convention for appeals is expressed using the same terminology as used in the cases of trials.
• That the authority to “establish courts” was not seen as lesser than the authority to institute the “mode of trying” is apparent from the unsuccessful proposals using that language as a means of transferring authority from diocesan conventions to General Convention.
• Changing “may” to “shall” closed the argument debated in the nineteenth century that the use of “may” signaled concurrent jurisdiction by General Convention.
• White & Dykman do not suggest any change in the allocation of authority in their summary of the changes to the disciplinary article made in 1901.

The March article, “Title IV and the Constitution: Dioceses’ Exclusive Authority,” can be read here.

The pdf version with footnotes can be read here.

Many in the church had assumed that the Lawrence matter was being processed by the normal intake procedures specified under the new Title IV. Included among these were bishops sympathetic to the national church who assumed that this was the beginning of an extended procedure involving the Reference Panel, subsequent Conference and Hearing Panels, and the normal process of notice and opportunity to be heard inherent in the trial process. We were dubious of that assumption ourselves, but that was one of the questions we raised in our earlier piece on this matter. We are grateful for an answer.

It is now clear that there will be no such process. The matter will be considered by the Disciplinary Board for Bishops, meeting as a whole, which will vote whether to certify Bishop Lawrence for abandonment. If it were to certify that Bishop Lawrence has abandoned the church, his ministry would be restricted immediately (what formerly was called inhibition) and the matter would be sent straight to the House of Bishops at its next meeting (following a period of at least sixty days). If the Disciplinary Board votes by the end of this year, that meeting would be the March meeting of the House of Bishops at which Bishop Lawrence would be deposed if the House so votes by a majority vote.

One issue Bishop Henderson does not address is the apparent failure of all involved in this matter to comply with the canonical duty imposed on all clergy to “report to the Intake Officer all matters which may constitute an Offense.” (IV.4.1(f).) Contrary to Bishop Henderson’s implication that these deal only with a narrow category (“moral and/or legal infractions”) the offenses that must be reported include (i) any material instance of “knowingly violating or attempting to violate, directly or through the acts of another person, the Constitution or Canons of the Church or of any Diocese”; and (ii) any material failure to “abide by the promises and vows made when ordained.” This reporting obligation was the primary focus of our earlier piece, and the failure, if it was one, to provide this information to the Intake Officer as required suggests that all of the bishops and others familiar with these facts had concluded that they do not even arguably constitute a canonical offense or a violation of ordination vows.

It does not matter that this is also being investigated as potential abandonment. Unlike the abandonment process, which is discretionary, reporting to the Intake Officer is mandatory. This is not optional, nor is there an exception if one decides on one’s own that this matter may also be so serious as to constitute a case of abandonment. This is not a trivial matter; it is important even in the case of something that is arguably abandonment to follow the normal intake process and for the Reference Panel to consider whether these issues might benefit from those aspects of due process that the normal hearing process provides.

This duty to report falls on all clergy with knowledge of the facts, including the Presiding Bishop, the President of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops, and all other bishops, priests and deacons of the church. It is well known that these allegations have been presented to the Presiding Bishop, the Executive Council and the House of Bishops on numerous occasions. How the abandonment process meshes with the normal Title IV procedures is not at all clear, just one of the many failings in the new title. But this much is crystal clear: all matters that even arguably are a violation of the canons or a violation of ordination vows must be reported to the Intake Officer.

And unless we have entered a Kafkaesque realm of canonical jurisprudence, one cannot be found to have “abandoned” The Episcopal Church if one has unarguably complied fully with the Constitution and canons and one’s ordination vows. But this appears to be the realm in which Bishop Lawrence now finds himself. For he is being fast-tracked for abandonment when all the leaders of the church, including the Disciplinary Board itself, implicitly must have concluded that these matters do not rise to the level that they even “may” constitute a violation of the canons or Bishop Lawrence’s ordination vows.

ACI has long been concerned about the provisions of the new Title IV. We first raised our concerns about the constitutionality of the new canons in a memorandum circulated privately two years ago. This eventually made its way to those responsible for drafting and implementing the new canon, who later replied—unsatisfactorily from our perspective. Later, in September 2010 we began publishing a series of articles by Alan Runyan and Mark McCall addressing Title IV issues more comprehensively. The first of these “Title IV Revisions Unmasked” outlined the scope of the due process and constitutional problems presented by the new disciplinary canon. The second, “Title IV Unmasked: Reply to Our Critics,” focused primarily on the constitutional issues related to the unprecedented expansion of the authority of the Presiding Bishop. The third, “Title IV and the Constitution: Dioceses’ Exclusive Authority for Clergy Discipline,” demonstrated conclusively that clergy discipline is a matter committed exclusively to the dioceses. Messrs. Runyan and McCall also summarized these concerns when they were interviewed by a group of bishops and members of the Presiding Bishop’s staff as part of an investigation conducted by the House of Bishops.

The new title became effective on July 1, 2011, and already has been invoked in two proceedings against bishops of the Church. Given our past concerns, it is appropriate to take initial stock of the new canons as applied. Our succinct summary: it is even worse than we expected. We address three issues below: (1) what procedures are followed in initiating proceedings against bishops; (2) what standards are applied when restricting the ministry of bishops before trial; (3) what standards are applied in evaluating allegations before deciding to proceed with an investigation.

Procedures for Initiating Disciplinary Proceedings Against Bishops

At first glance, the procedures for initiating proceedings against bishops appear to be among the more straightforward of the provisions of the new canons. The starting point is the duty imposed on every “Member of the Clergy” to “report to the Intake Officer all matters which may constitute an Offense.” “Information concerning Offenses may be submitted to the Intake Officer in any manner and in any form.” (IV.4.1(f); IV.6.2.) When submitted, this information triggers canonical duties of the Intake Officer and the Presiding Bishop. The Intake Officer is required to make an initial determination as to whether the information if true would constitute an offense. If the answer is no, he must confer with the Presiding Bishop and, if she concurs, the matter is dismissed. If the answer is yes, he must prepare a written report and give it to the Presiding Bishop and President of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops.

These are not discretionary steps; they are canonical duties. They must be done. (IV.6.) The Presiding Bishop, the President of the Disciplinary Board and the Intake Officer (the “Reference Panel” in the terminology of the new canons) have discretion as to how to proceed next if the allegations survive this initial stage, but there is no discretion simply to do nothing at the outset.

While these initial procedures may seem simple in the abstract, their application in the case of the proceedings against Bishop Mark Lawrence quickly becomes incomprehensible. Bishop Lawrence has been informed by the President of the Disciplinary Board, Bishop Dorsey Henderson, that there are “serious charges” that he has abandoned The Episcopal Church. But Bishop Henderson also released a public statement that “the information was not brought forward by the Presiding Bishop’s office, or by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church. Therefore, the matter is not being handled by the Presiding Bishop’s office or anyone in the employ of the Episcopal Church Center.”

We take Bishop Henderson at his word on this. That the charges were not “brought forward” by the Presiding Bishop’s office is apparent to anyone familiar with allegations, which have long been made by dissidents in Bishop Lawrence’s own diocese. The “serious charges” made public against Bishop Lawrence this week follow almost verbatim in some places allegations sent over a year ago by the South Carolina dissidents to the entire House of Bishops and the Executive Council. Bishop Lawrence published an answer to these charges in The Living Church at that time.

We also accept Bishop Henderson’s statement that “the matter is not being handled by the Presiding Bishop’s office or anyone in the employ of the Episcopal Church Center.” But this is where the confusion arises. The entire church has been aware of most of these matters for over a year. They have been given to the House of Bishops. The House of Bishops has discussed them. If any bishop or other clergy considers them to be “matters which may constitute an Offense” he or she has a canonical duty to report them to the Intake Officer. This duty falls on the Presiding Bishop, all the bishops in the HOB, all the clergy on the Executive Council, the dissident clergy in South Carolina, Bishop Henderson and the clergy on the Disciplinary Board for Bishops. And if someone did report this information to the Intake Officer, he and the Presiding Bishop then have canonical duties to consider it.

Bishop Henderson may have chosen his words very carefully when he used the present tense in saying that the matter “is not being handled” by the Presiding Bishop’s office. But if he also meant that the matter has never to date been considered by the Presiding Bishop’s office, we have a major breakdown in the application of the new Title IV in one of its first cases.

This gives rise to the following questions:

• Did the clergy of the church, including the Presiding Bishop, collectively conclude that these matters do not rise to the level that they “may constitute an Offense” and therefore also conclude there was no reason to report them to the Intake Officer? If so, why is the Disciplinary Board for Bishops proceeding as if they are “serious charges” of abandonment?
• If they were not reported to the Intake Officer as required, why not? Put simply, if there is a mandatory duty to report possible offenses and those offenses include violating or even attempting to violate the Constitution or canons of the Church or failing to “abide by the promises and vows made when ordained,” how could the principal clergy charged with enforcing the disciplinary canons charge full speed ahead with an investigation of allegations of abandonment of the Church without thinking to inform the Intake Officer as canonically mandated?
• Were the allegations in fact reported to the Intake Officer, but he did not act on them at all in violation of his canonical duty?
• Did the Intake Officer and the Presiding Bishop agree that these charges would not constitute an offense even if true and dismiss them?
• Or did the Intake Officer, the Presiding Bishop and the Disciplinary Board decide simply to deal with this as a case of abandonment and pay no attention to the canonical duties outlined above?

Without knowing the answers to these questions, two inferences seem reasonable at this point. First, the canonical authorities designated by the new canons do not understand the procedures they are canonically required to follow. And second, there is something approaching an official and conclusive determination that the matters under consideration by the Disciplinary Board are not matters that “may constitute an Offense.” Otherwise, we would have proof of a massive canonical failure by the entire church leadership, including the officers designated by Title IV, the House of Bishops and the Executive Council, at the very outset of the new title.

Standards for Restricting the Ministry of Bishops Before Trial

Concurrent with the commencement of the investigation against Bishop Lawrence was the first instance in which the Presiding Bishop has used the new Title IV authority to restrict the ministry of a fellow bishop. This action was taken against Bishop Vincent Warner, the retired bishop of Olympia, and announced publicly by his successor on the same day Bishop Lawrence was informed of the proceeding against him. Public information concerning the Warner matter is justifiably meager. We know only that it involves allegations of “infidelity.” Of more significance than the facts of that particular case, however, is the articulated standard on which the decision to restrict Warner’s ministry was based. In reporting the restriction, Bishop Rickel said:

I received allegations regarding Bishop Warner several weeks ago, and promptly reported them to the presiding bishop’s office. The Rt. Rev. F. Clayton Matthews, in his capacity as the Episcopal Church’s intake officer for allegations regarding bishops of the church, reviewed the complaints with the presiding bishop, and found that according to Title IV (Section 6.7), the evidence presented, if true, constitutes an offense.

Bishop Rickel characterized the information as a “credible allegation of recurrent marital infidelity” and said that the matter is under investigation.

Leaving aside the issue of the restriction of ministry for a moment, it is obvious from what we said above that this is how a matter is supposed to proceed under the new Title IV. Information about something that may constitute an offense is given to the Intake Officer, who then confers with the Presiding Bishop to decide whether to dismiss or proceed.

Our concern with the Warner matter is not these procedures, but rather what standard, if any, is used to restrict the ministry of a bishop before trial. The only standard articulated publicly in this case is that the allegation, if true, would constitute an offense. But that is simply the minimal standard for non-dismissal of an allegation, the bare minimum for having the case go forward. Will it be the practice of the Presiding Bishop to impose a restriction of ministry on a bishop any time there is an allegation that if true would be an offense? Even prior to investigation, which is said to be underway in the case of Bishop Warner? This would make restriction virtually automatic at the outset of an investigation. Or does the Presiding Bishop not have an articulable standard and simply treats this as a matter of discretion?

Bishop Rickel does say that the allegation was “credible,” but it is not clear whether that was his standard in deciding whether to forward the allegation to the Intake Officer or the result of some preliminary investigation by the Presiding Bishop’s office. We are told only that the investigation is underway. We are also assured that this does not involve minors or any individuals who were in the bishop’s pastoral care—in other words that it probably does not constitute “sexual misconduct” as defined by Title IV—but we are not informed what canon has been violated.

It is instructive to compare the new Title IV with the prerequisites for temporary inhibitions under the old canon. Such inhibitions could be issued only if “in the opinion of the Presiding Bishop, the Charge or complaint of serious acts is supported by sufficient facts.” This former standard tracks in its requirement of factual support and gravity the standard that is widely used in civil courts for granting preliminary remedies before trial. It is near universal in the civil law that such preliminary relief is only granted on a showing of likelihood of success on the merits (i.e., that the factual allegations are likely true) and that there will be immediate irreparable injury without the preliminary relief. Such preliminary relief is supposed to be rare, not the norm.

One of our major concerns with the new Title IV is that it contains no such standard. The Presiding Bishop may very well have concluded that in the Warner case the allegations were serious, likely to be true and required immediate restriction. But if that conclusion were reached, it was not articulated as the standard to be applied. It is troubling to say the least to find that in the first use of this power, the only articulated standard would suggest that restriction is virtually automatic in such cases even prior to completion of an investigation.

Standards for Evaluating Allegations before Deciding to Proceed with an Investigation

We have already discussed above whether the canons were followed in considering the allegations against Bishop Lawrence. One place where the apparent failure to follow canonical procedures becomes significant is the nature of some of the allegations now being investigated. Did anyone ever consider what they are required to review as the first step in a canonical processing of a disciplinary matter: whether the allegation if true would constitute an offense? There are many examples we could cite here, including statements apparently made by Bishop Lawrence when he was still a rector before he (twice) went through the consent process for becoming a bishop. We will focus, however, on only one of these examples: what is listed as count no. 9 in the list of allegations.

Bishop Lawrence was referenced in an Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) conference document from September 13, 2009, wherein a report was presented that included Bishop Lawrence and the Diocese of South Carolina.

The report referenced was a statement made by several TEC bishops after meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was widely reported at the time, including by ENS (“Seven Episcopal bishops urge covenant endorsement at all church levels”) and The Living Church (“Communion Partner Bishops Urge Support of Covenant”). Without quoting from the statement extensively, it is apparent from the titles of the news stories that the statement is not evidence of any canonical violation, much less abandonment. But the allegations against Bishop Lawrence do not in fact allege that the statement itself is such evidence. Rather the actions that “establish abandonment” are said to include the “reference” of this document in a “conference document” of ACNA. Even the most cursory of reviews would have established that this allegation is completely frivolous and not worthy of further investigation. Under no interpretation of the canons could merely being “referenced” by ACNA be something that even if true would constitute an offense. And it is precisely this determination that is the first duty of those charged with considering disciplinary matters. How could this have been neglected in the case of Bishop Lawrence?

Conclusion

We have not attempted to address all of the issues raised by the proceedings against Bishops Lawrence and Warner. Our purpose is simply to note at the very outset of the use of the new Title IV that our concerns are only increasing. Title IV is a bad canon being implemented badly. We understand that there are plans to propose amendments to the new title to try to rectify some of its shortcomings. The best course, however, would be to repeal it completely and replace it with the previous canon, one that has worked for years, provides adequate due process for those charged, does not expand unconstitutionally the powers of the Presiding Bishop, and not least is understood by those charged with administering it.

In the first place, the allegations against Bishop Lawrence, and the claim that they may amount to “abandonment” of TEC are so absurd as to cross the line into deceit and malice. The fact that these allegations are being made and taken seriously by the leadership of TEC in itself constitutes an affront to the commitments for which a Christian church stands – honesty, charity, care for the witness of the Church’s unity.

The main charge stems from Bishop Lawrence’s insistence on asserting the “sovereign” character of a diocese – any diocese, but obviously including his own – in relationship to the teaching and discipline of the church. Since Bishop Lawrence has repeatedly stated that the Diocese of South Carolina is remaining a member of TEC and is committed to doing so, this insistence as enacted through various diocesan resolutions, represents an interpretation of TEC’s polity, and of his own diocese’s in relation to it. This interpretation, it needs to be said, is one that is grounded in well-known, traditional, and publicly argued historical and legal claims, that have yet to be adjudicated in any final way by any court. And the interpretation of diocesan sovereignty is in fact held by many faithful members of TEC (the present writer included). Historians, theologians, and canon lawyers disagree about these matters and these disagreements are serious and bound to substantive documentary, not to mention theological, matters. It is morally repugnant to imagine Bishop Lawrence being disciplined, let alone deposed, because he has vigorously upheld one side of an unresolved internal historical argument among Episcopalians. The disciplinary procedure on this front not only smacks of, but is clearly reflective of coercive intolerance, once associated with the worst of America’s McCarthy era.

Attached to this major issue, the allegations also include a collection of smaller accusations – who Bishop Lawrence talked to, who he has associated with, who has mentioned him in their newsletters, criticisms he has made about TEC’s more general policies and doctrinal drift, the fact that he has not engaged in legal battles with a departing congregation, etc.. All of these are meant to show that Bishop Lawrence is in fact a crypto-schismatic, because he has had friendly, or at least non-adversarial relationships with members of ACNA and AMiA. Many of these small accusations are in fact reports or quotations taken out of context, and therefore deliberately distorted in their implications from the start. But more important: why would a Christian leader not have friendly and non-adversarial relations with other Christians especially those who have once been Episcopalians? Would that all of us engaged in relationships of charity and welcome! To put in motion a process of deposition over this kind of behavior is, by implication, to put on trial the very commandments of Jesus Christ. God forbid!

Of course, the more practical consequence of this disciplinary process is to weaken TEC itself. It is the case that Bp. Lawrence has walked a careful line in keeping the Diocese of S. Carolina within TEC even while many aspects of TEC’s official witness have deeply offended the faith of a good number of her members. Yet he has done so, and the people of his diocese have followed – a diocese that remains one of the few, if not perhaps the only, growing diocese in TEC itself. To reward such a difficult pastoral accomplishment with allegations of disloyalty and abandonment of the church is to declare openly and formally to all such faithful members of TEC who have sought a way to maintain their membership and witness in the face of much opposition that such membership and witness is no longer welcome and will no longer be tolerated. That may come as no surprise to people like me, but its fall-out will prove self-fulfilling: the “abandonment” of TEC by many ardent and resourceful Christians. Given the imploding financial and structural condition of the national church and of many other individual dioceses, this can only strengthen the church decline.

I personally stand beside Bishop Lawrence and the people of South Carolina. If he has abandoned TEC, then it must mean that I have as well. Will you drive all of us out, Bishop Jefferts Schori? I say as clearly as I can: Presiding Bishop, you have bankrupted your apostolic office, broken your vows, and sullied this church, of which I and others are still members despite your folly, and of which I am still proud to be a member precisely because of bishops like Mark Lawrence whose witness proves that God, in his mercy, has at least not abandoned us.

After several iterations and a good bit of political chicanery the proposed Anglican Covenant has been sent to the provinces for their consideration, adoption or rejection. Prediction is always a chancy matter. Nevertheless, despite the welcome accession of the Province of South East Asia and the Affirmation of the Church of Ireland, if one observes the virtual disappearance of the Archbishop of Canterbury from the process, and if one looks at the comments that fly around on the blogs it appears that the chances for adoption are in decline. The moral authority vested in the Archbishop is not being exercised. Emboldened by silence from the center, with growing vigor progressive voices object to the fourth section of the proposal because they see in it a form of centralized authority that would limit the autonomy of the provinces. Similarly emboldened, traditionalists object that the covenant lacks sufficient doctrinal specificity and effective means of discipline. They want shared belief and practice to play a dominant role in the definition of Anglicanism. As clearly illustrated by the recent statement by the GAFCON Primates Council, many with conservative convictions want to give the covenant a more confessional form and they want it to contain effective means of enforcement.

This dispute both reflects and creates a good bit of heat. It does not, however, create much light. Indeed, in its present form the dispute serves to obscure what the covenant is actually proposing. Both parties miss the meaning and implications of the two terms upon which the logic of the covenant depends. Both miss the covenant’s central proposal, and direct attention to matters that do not and cannot serve as the basis of communion.

I will return to the inadequacies of both the progressive and traditionalist objections, but these inadequacies will be more easily grasped if what I will call the logic of the present proposal is put on display. At the base of this logic stand two terms–”mutual accountability” and “recognition” (4.2.1). Both progressives and traditionalists have missed the significance of these terms and in consequence neither party understands the covenant proposal adequately. Even a cursory reading of the proposed covenant should reveal this failure. To be specific, attention to the affirmations and commitments contained in the covenant shows that if those of a progressive persuasion miss the significance of “mutual accountability” those of a traditional cast of mind miss the significance of “recognition.” How is this so?

The First Three Sections of the Covenant along with its Introduction

The proposed covenant has an “Introduction” and “Preamble” that are followed by four sections, each containing a series of affirmations and commitments. I will consider first the “Introduction” along with sections one through three. What do they affirm and to what do they ask commitment? The “Introduction” states the theological foundation of the covenant. That foundation is “communion.” All churches are called through Christ into communion with the Triune God. In communion with Christ and one another Christians share in the very life of God. The mission of the Anglican Communion is to share with all other churches in calling the peoples of the earth into this life, and to show it forth in the relations of its various provinces one with another.

Calling people into communion with the Triune God requires shared responsibility and interdependence among the provinces. According to Section One, communion and shared mission involve shared beliefs as well as shared resources. Thus each province adopting the covenant affirms a “common inheritance of faith.” This common inheritance has as its center communion in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church that worships one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This church holds the Catholic and Apostolic Faith “uniquely revealed in Holy Scripture and the catholic creeds.” The historic formularies of the Church of England (as appropriated in various ways in the Anglican Communion) “bear authentic witness” to this faith.

According to the covenant proposal, affirmation of the faith that Anglicans share requires certain commitments. These all stem from a faithful and communal reading of Holy Scripture that is attentive to the councils of the Communion, the Communion’s ecumenical agreements, the teaching of Bishops and synods, the work of scholars and the voice of prophetic and faithful leadership.

Having established the importance of a shared inheritance of faith, the proposed covenant moves on in Section Two to describe in greater detail “Our Anglican Vocation.” Anglicans understand their vocation from within God’s providential ordering of his world. The place God has provided Anglicans within that ordering offers special opportunities that are set forth in five commitments taken largely from the Baptismal Covenant found in the Book of Common Prayer now in use within The Episcopal Church.

I suspect that the description of “Our Anglican Vocation” (though perhaps it should) will not cause much controversy. However, Section Three most certainly will. It concerns “Our Unity and Common Life.” This section asks Anglicans to affirm that by incorporation into the body of Christ they are called “to pursue all things that make for peace and build up our common life.” This affirmation carries with it a resolve “to live in a Communion of Churches” in which each “orders and regulates its own affairs…through its own system of government and law.” In doing so, however, each church of the Communion understands itself to be living “in communion with autonomy and accountability.” This accountability is not mediated through a “central legislative and executive authority” but by “mutual loyalty sustained through common counsel of the bishops in conference and the other instruments of Communion.”

From this affirmation flow a variety of commitments. Chief among these is a commitment “to respect the constitutional autonomy of all the churches of the Anglican Communion while upholding our mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Body of Christ, and the responsibility of each to the Communion as a whole.” Concretely this commitment means that each of the churches of the Communion, before taking a controversial action, will seek a shared mind though the Communion’s councils. Further it means that when an action “by its intensity, substance and extent” threatens the unity of the communion or the credibility of its mission, a province will act only (if it does so at all) with “diligence, care and caution.”

I do not believe it is possible to read the affirmations and commitments of Sections One and Three without concluding that the covenant requires that the exercise of provincial autonomy be carried out from within a more fundamental commitment to “Our Inheritance of Faith” and “Our Unity and Common Life.” Shared responsibility and interdependence within the Communion involve more than sharing resources. They necessarily involve sharing in forms of common belief and life as well.

A Misplaced Debate

The call for shared responsibility and interdependence goes all the way back to the first and only Anglican Congress in 1963. There the matter was phrased as “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ” (MRI). The innovations in sexual ethics recently made by The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada have forced into the open profound disagreements about the meaning of mutual responsibility and interdependence. The much disputed Section Four of the covenant sets out a procedure and lays down a framework in which this sort of dispute can be resolved. Sadly, the parties to this dispute have to date (sometimes deliberately) failed to understand the exact nature of the covenant proposal, and have failed (sometimes deliberately) to address adequately either its understanding of the nature of communion or the way in which communion is to be maintained within a communion of self-governing churches. As a result the debate between them (if indeed it can accurately be called a debate) has to date been misplaced.

If one looks carefully at what the contestants in this dispute say and do, and then compares what one sees to the actual specifications of Section Four, the truth of this statement becomes obvious. How so? What is the progressive and what is the traditional argument, and how do these arguments correspond to the proposals contained in the covenant? Listen first, for example, to the progressive voices within The Episcopal Church. To exempt its innovations from the claims of interdependence, The Episcopal Church insists that it has a prophetic warrant for what it has done. Further, it has insisted upon the primacy of autonomy when it comes to disputes over doctrinal and ethical matters. Interdependence has, accordingly, been effectively limited to mutual aid in mission (understood as a struggle for social justice). The plea of The Episcopal Church is for a communion that allows for doctrinal pluralism on the one hand but on the other calls for interdependence when it comes to social mission. Interdependence takes place almost exclusively at the level of praxis rather than shared belief.

Many with more traditional convictions have strong objections to this view. In reaction to what they see both as false prophecy and a false claim to autonomy in matters of faith and morals, they have called for limitation of autonomy by more doctrinal specificity within the covenant itself. Typically the Jerusalem Declaration is cited as the sort of specific doctrinal commitment called for. Not surprisingly, the view of these more tradition minded people of Section Four is exactly opposite to that of those with more progressive convictions. If many with progressive views fear that adoption of Section Four will lead to an Anglican Vatican, many of those with more traditional views look at Section Four and see no point at which “discipline” can be imposed on a province or diocese that departs from the common inheritance of faith or that disrupts the unity and common life of the communion. One group looks at Section Four and sees too much centralization. The other looks at it and fails to see enough.

Section Four: Common Commitments, Mutual Accountability and Mutual Recognition

What does Section Four actually say? Its specific proposals flow from a definition of the Anglican Communion that summarizes the contents of sections one through three. “The Anglican Communion is a fellowship, within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of national or regional Churches, in which each recognizes (emphasis added) in the others the bonds of common loyalty to Christ expressed through a common faith and order, a shared inheritance in worship, life and mission, and a readiness to live in an interdependent life” (4:1.1). The covenant exists “to express the common commitments and mutual accountability in the relationship of communion one with another” (4.2.1). Most important, “recognition of, and fidelity to” the covenant enable “mutual recognition (emphasis added) and communion.”

In contradistinction to the claims of The Episcopal Church, the covenant holds that communion necessarily involves common faith. Also, in contradistinction to the claims of The Episcopal Church, the covenant holds that its adoption does not require “submission to any external ecclesiastical jurisdiction” (4.1.3). To put the matter another way, autonomy does not give free reign in matters of faith and morals, but, at the same time, the autonomy of each province is not compromised by a jurisdiction superior to its own governing bodies.

Common commitments and mutual accountability within the Communion encompass matters of faith and morals. The covenant does rule out what appears to be the present position of The Episcopal Church. Nevertheless, contrary to many conservative voices, matters of faith and morals are not within the proposed covenant to be determined by subscription to a common confession like that envisioned in the Jerusalem Declaration. Rather, these matters are to be determined by “mutual recognition.” Mutual recognition is arrived at by a common reading of scripture that accords with the catholic creeds and the witness of “the historic formularies of the Church of England” (1:1.2).

Anglicans throughout the Communion would be wise to pause and think on these matters. The Anglican Communion is not simply a federation of churches joined (voluntarily) in a common task. It is a communion of belief and worship as well as mission. Conversely, the Anglican Communion is not a confessional body that can be identified by common subscription to a series of assertions. It is a body bound in the communion of Christ by mutual “recognition”–recognition by each in the other of fidelity to the witness of Holy Scripture as mediated through the traditions of the church. Recognition arises out of honest exchange between partners committed to sustaining communion and arriving at a common mind. It involves not only determination of truth but also forms of relationship and the presence of graces through which truth can be discerned. According to this view communion involves both mutual adherence to the truth of God in Christ and mutual subjection in love.

“Recognition” is a different matter than “subscription.” Subscription requires ratification of a common statement of belief and practice. Recognition requires seeing in the different statements and practices of others a rendition of Christian belief and practice that is faithful to the biblical witness from which one’s own statements and practices are derived. If many people with progressive convictions miss the fact that communion cannot be communion apart from common belief, many with more traditional convictions miss the fact that common belief cannot be adequately determined and sustained by an agreed upon confession. Even if one had pledged loyalty to a confession, common belief arises out of and is sustained by forms of relationship responsible to the same sources of knowledge, in this case Holy Scripture.

Section Four seeks to provide these forms of relationship in a way that subscription to a common confession cannot. Take for example the only confession operative in the history of Anglicanism–The Thirty-nine Articles. From the outset, disputes arose over their meaning and in time subscription was no longer required. Presbyterians and Lutherans have encountered the same issues in the course of their stormy history. Articles and Confessions have to be interpreted, and once interpretation becomes an issue, one is faced, like it our not, with the question of recognition. Does one “recognize” in another’s interpretation of the articles of common subscription the same faith that one believes they express? Finally, how can mutual recognition come about apart from the demands of love that provide space and time for these matters to be determined?

In matters of faith and morals the proposed covenant wisely opts for “recognition” over “subscription,” and, again wisely, it opts for common faith, worship and order as a limit to autonomy. What it seeks to provide is a set of procedures that will allow both for “recognition” and for “consequences” if a province should refuse to recognize the faith and way of life the other provinces recognize in one another.

Procedural Adequacy?

The question is whether the procedures contained in Section Four lead, as progressive critics charge, to an Un-Anglican centralization of authority or, as traditional voices charge, to a communion in which “discipline” cannot be imposed upon a province whose innovations run contrary to the witness of Holy Scripture. Do the proposals in aid of recognition lead in the end either to an unacceptable change in Anglican polity or to a de facto inability to sustain common belief?

It seems to me that the second of these questions is more serious than the first, but both deserve a serious reply. Do the proposals for arriving at mutual recognition indeed destroy the autonomy of the provinces? Article 4.1.3 explicitly denies such to be the case. However, can it be said, as many progressive voices have, that the role assigned to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, despite claims to the contrary, sets up a centralized form of jurisdiction that compromises provincial autonomy?

This claim is false. What are the responsibilities of the Standing Committee? As an agent of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting, the Standing Committee “monitors” (rather than administers) the functioning of the covenant (4.2.2). When a dispute arises that is not resolved, the Standing Committee is to make every effort to procure an agreement, and in this effort may refer the matter directly to the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting for advice. The Standing Committee may also seek advice about “the nature of the matter in question” and the “relational consequences which may result” (4.2.4). Considering these deliberations, the Standing Committee may request that a church “defer a controversial action,” and it may recommend to any of the Instruments of Communion as a “relational consequence” that a province’s participation in that Instrument be “provisionally” (emphasis added) suspended until a further process is completed (4.2.5). That process requires advice to be given by the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates Meeting both about the nature of the matter in dispute and its appropriate consequences. With this advice in mind, the Standing Committee “may,” (emphasis added) declare that an action or decision would be “incompatible with the Covenant” (4.2.6). If a declaration of incompatibility is made, then it is the duty of the Standing Committee to recommend “relational consequences” either to the churches of the Communion or to the Instruments of Communion. The recommendations are to address “the extent to which the decision of any covenanting Church impairs or limits the communion between that Church and the other Churches of the Communion, and the practical consequences of such impairment (4.2.7).

It is a matter of great importance to note that the Standing Committee makes recommendations only. It does not make juridical decisions. Further, it is important note that each Church and each Instrument may either accept or reject the recommendations it has received (4.2.7). There are several matters of great significance here. First, there is no centralized jurisdictional body. There is no one body that can say province X is no longer a part of the Anglican Communion. There is, however, a process by means of which the Instruments and churches of the Communion, in an orderly fashion, can determine whether a disputed action is recognizable as being in accord with Holy Scripture, and there is a mechanism for reaching a common mind about appropriate consequences. In short, the covenant puts in place a process that will allow the Communion to respond to a threat to its common belief and life as a communion of churches rather than as individual provinces in a federation. The covenant provides a way in which provinces can be spared acting on their own, and so perhaps inadvertently compounding division.

Though it does seek to provide an orderly process for sustaining communion, it is simply impossible to find in this proposal a centralized authority that stands over the various provinces of the Communion. Though individual churches can make decisions about their relation with a province they believe to be in error, and though individual Instruments may make decisions about the participation of an erring province in their activities, no one body can make such decisions for the entire Communion. What the covenant provides is a way for the Communion to act as a Communion as it wrestles with such questions.

The charge that the covenant sets up a form of centralized authority contrary to Anglican tradition is false. What about the charge that the covenant prevents the exercise of “discipline” within the Communion? Though there is more to worry about in this case, the charge, as it stands, (if not false) is at a minimum misleading. It is misleading in that it misses the significance of the Covenant’s use of the words “recognition” and “consequences” rather than “discipline.” If the proposal had contained a process for discipline, it would have given license to a body that imposes such discipline. In this case, the covenant would have licensed a body with overarching juridical authority and so would have confirmed the worries of many progressive Anglicans about the “Vaticanizasion” of the Communion. By using the words “recognition” and “consequences” rather than “discipline” the architects of the covenant proposal have sought to address communion-threatening situations by means of a communal process rather than a juridical procedure. This second alternative would indeed have changed the nature of Anglican polity in a way the covenant seeks prevent and all decry (4.1.3).

There is, however, substance behind the cry for discipline. There is a legitimate worry that the procedures set forth in the covenant proposal cannot place effective checks on actions like those taken by The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. These worries have been brought into focus by the political maneuvering that took place at the recent meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica, by the changes recently made in the composition of the Standing Committee and by the silence of Canterbury. All these suggest that it is possible to “stack” the membership of the group charged with monitoring the covenant. All suggest that the very provinces whose actions threaten that communion can control both the procedures and the responsible bodies through which the communion of Anglicans is to be sustained.

It is of course the case that a central disciplinary body might fall victim to the same problems. Indeed, such charges have already been publically raised, from within conservative memberships, against decision-making groups within GAFCON, ACNA, CANA and AMiA. Political processes can subvert the best form of governance and the most transparent procedures. It is beyond doubt that the process set forth in Section Four is open to subversion. However, any process is so vulnerable, and, sadly, advocates of a strong disciplinary body fail to realize this fact. Establishment of a disciplinary body charged with determining whether or not a given province is “up to snuff” with their interpretation of the confession is as subject to political manipulation as is any other arrangement.

More important is the fact that this way of dealing with disputed issues avoids the hard work of being in communion. It by-passes the responsibility of churches in communion to sort out their disputes by seeking within the bond of love a common understanding of the witness of scripture and to shape their life together by the graces that lead to common understanding and interdependence. If the progressive understanding of communion expunges common belief, the confessional one by-passes the struggles and virtues that make communion a work of love and recognition as opposed to one that is juridical in nature.

The process presented in Section Four calls the Communion to move forward in a different way. It is a way that offers the possibility of sustaining both common belief within the Communion and self-government by each of its provinces. It suggests that any weakness within the common life of the Communion is to be found less in the procedures through which it operates and more in the spiritual strength of its membership. It suggests that if things fall apart, the fault will lie in ourselves rather than in our procedures.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the understanding of communion that has shaped the proposed covenant is vastly superior to the theologically vacuous one favored by many with progressive views and to the impractical confessional one favored by many with more traditional convictions. It provides a way to sustain a thick form of communion within the changes and chances of history and within the conflicts occasioned by differences in culture. It provides a way through history that does not reduce communion (as in the progressive case) to the chance overlap of moral commitments or (as in the traditionalist case) to a fixed point in the history of the church that can serve as a theological north star. The ship that is the church is best guided by common immersion in Holy Scripture and mutual recognition born of a grace filled struggle in the light of scripture’s witness to arrive at truth. That is what the covenant is all about.

It saddens me that the chances for general ratification are in decline. I am still hopeful that most of the provinces will ratify the proposal. The recent actions of South East Asia and Ireland strengthen that hope. Nevertheless, hope in this case might disappoint. It is possible that the covenant will fail. If it does fail, the present disputants, because of the positions they hold, will miss the full scope of what has been lost. The great problem in the history of the church is how fidelity to the apostolic witness is to be maintained within the changes and chances of history. Anglicans have an answer to this question that the disputants in this fight have missed. It is a powerful answer, but it may indeed be lost without the disputants knowing what has actually happened.

There have been a limited number of answers given to this question. One is conciliar. This was the position of the early church, and is still the view of the Orthodox churches. However, the sort of council the Orthodox require calls for an ecumenical council. After the division of the Eastern and Western churches the chances of such a council meeting again prior to our Lord’s return are slight indeed. As a result Orthodoxy has a very difficult time addressing the changes brought by time and circumstance. They cannot get beyond the last ecumenical council, and that took place some time ago. Another response to the issue of fidelity within history has been a universal jurisdiction with claims to infallibility coupled with a theory of the “development of doctrine.” Anglicans have since the time of the Reformation rejected a universal jurisdiction. They have as well questioned the developments in doctrine that the Papacy has infallibly announced. The Roman position does address the movement of history, but it does so with a false claim that there is a failsafe point within history for adjudicating matters in dispute. Anglicans have also been leery of the sort of confessionalism characteristic of Lutheranism and Calvinism. The problems with this strategy are numerous, but chief among them is one already mentioned. It is hard to fix a point in history (other than one established by God) as definitive of all other points. In time the arguments that generated the confessions have been laid to rest and other challenges have arisen. A confession from the 16th Century is simply unable to resolve issues it was never intended to address. Finally, of course, there is the proposal of some with a progressive mindset. One charts a way through history by prophetic insight that seeks to discern new beginnings by noting their coherence with contemporary trends. As I have said elsewhere, this is like navigation by taking sightings off the bow of one’s own ship.

I believe that Anglicans have addressed this question, though unwittingly, in a different and more adequate way—largely through a Book of Common Prayer. To be sure, during the latter part of the past century differing versions of the Book of Common Prayer came into existence. Still, the churches have to date recognized in these variations the same faith and practice as their own. Anglicans have traditionally allowed for significant theological variations both within and between provinces but they have been loath to change forms of worship and moral practice until extensive (though not total) agreements have been reached. I cite the issue of divorce and the ordination of women as prime examples. As a counter example I cite also the blessing of gay unions and the ordination of people involved in such unions. Here, as was not the case with divorce and the ordination of women, changes have been made without sufficient recognition. The result has been division and confusion for which the Communion was unprepared. In taking action apart from significant consensus, The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada acted in a way that is “Un-Anglican. They jumped the gun and ran out ahead of communion consensus. Because precipitous action is for Anglicans “novel” the Communion did not have adequate means to address this departure from custom.

The proposed covenant is a way to address this issue. It relies neither upon an ecumenical council, nor upon a universal jurisdiction, nor a common confession, nor novel prophetic insight. It does, however, seek to remain faithful to the Apostolic witness in the midst of the chances and changes of history. It does so by asking forbearance when disputed issues arise. It asks for mutual accountability in love until such time as the issue of recognition can be resolved. It asks restraint when one’s action are not recognized. In the midst of dispute, it calls the churches of the Communion to patience, to restraint, and openness to instruction. It makes room for an ordered set of consequences. Finally, it provides a set of procedures within which the Communion, as a communion, can wrestle with potentially divisive issues until a common mind is found. In short, it makes room for the Communion to recognize or not recognize novelty.

If the covenant fails, Anglicans may well miss their chance to contribute what they have learned and what they have to offer to the churches. To revert to Section Two of the proposed covenant, the one that discusses “Our Anglican Vocation,” the view of communion to which the covenant gives expression is, to my mind, the great gift Anglicans have to offer the churches. Neither progressive nor traditionalist views as now expressed by the covenant’s critics can make this offering. Indeed, neither understands it. One offers only theological vacuity and the other a position that is both theologically inadequate and demonstrably impractical.
The covenant may indeed fail, but its failure, though a terrible loss, need not mean the end of Anglicanism as a catholic and evangelical expression of Christian belief and practice. Though it may take time, there are other ways to achieve this end. However, even if the covenant does fail it nonetheless charts the way Anglicans must take if the gift they have to offer is to be preserved. For Anglicanism to remain Anglicanism, some way must be found for mutual accountability and recognition to govern relations between self-governing provinces. The architects of the proposed covenant are right about that. If, as the proposed covenant implies, a way to communion based upon mutual accountability and common recognition is not found, Anglicanism will indeed have become something it has never been. Should such an eventuality occur, Anglicans would never offer the gift it is theirs to give.