Lawless

From the blog Hills of the North:

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

--Sir Thomas More to Roper in the play (and film) A Man For All Seasons

Rule XXXI of the House of Bishops’ rules make the latest edition of Robert’s Rules of Order the governing rules for that body. It would be helpful if the members of the House, or at least the Presiding Bishop, the chancellor, and the parliamentarian had a rudimentary understanding of Robert’s, not to mention the church’s canons as well.

Apparently they don’t. They took a vote to depose Bishops Schofield and Cox, and although they had a quorum sufficient to conduct general business, they did not have sufficient votes to depose. Because they do not understand what a quorum is, however, the chancellor has now declared it is his and the parliamentarian’s “position” that the vote was sufficient for deposition simply because there was a quorum. In fact, the votes in both cases failed, meaning not only were the two bishops not deposed, their inhibitions are now lifted and they are restored fully to their position before any action was taken against them. The House of Bishops is in essence on record as declaring that these two bishops did not abandon the communion of the church.

A quorum is, very simply, the number of members of an organization required to be present in order to conduct business. That is not the same as the number of votes required for a particular matter. A quorum is usually (and under Robert’s is, by default) half of the members of an organization. A vote is usually a majority of those voting at a meeting. But a vote may also in extraordinary cases be based on a percentage of the entire membership. This is usually for matters of great importance (amendment of constitutive documents, for example) or to safeguard the rights of minorities (as in rescinding and expunging from the minutes without previous notice), or to protect the rights of individuals in serious displinary proceedings. So it's entirely possible to have a quorum sufficient for normal business, but not have sufficient numbers for a particular kind of vote.

Canon 3 recognizes the distinction between the usual case and such exceptions: “Except where the Constitution or Canons of the General Convention provide to the contrary, a quorum of any body of the General Convention consisting of several members, the whole having been duly cited to meet, shall be a majority of said members; and a majority of the quorum so convened shall be competent to act.”

In other words, a) unless the canons say otherwise a quorum is a majority of a body’s members and b) unless the canons say otherwise a majority of that quorum shall be competent to act. This makes sense, because if the canons elsewhere require more than a majority, it would be absurd for the lower requirement of a quorum to vitiate those provisions to the contrary. The higher requirement trumps the default.

In this case, the quorum was satisfied, but the competence of a majority of that quorum to act was not—since the canons in fact “say otherwise.”

We know they “say otherwise” because in a stark deviation from the canons’ usual “present and voting” requirements, the vote for a deposition of a bishop requires a super-majority. It reads, “If the House, by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote, shall give its consent . . . .” This makes perfect sense, because in something as serious as deposing a bishop without trial for abandonment of communion, one would think that more than a mere majority of half of the bishops gathered would be required. Note, too, the emphasis here added by the word “whole,” so to ensure there is no ambiguity: this is not just the number of voting-eligible bishops gathered at a House of Bishops’ meeting, it is the whole number eligible to vote.

The quorum permitted the vote to be taken, but the numbers present were insufficient to pass the motion to depose, as there were not a majority of the "whole number of Bishops entitled to vote" voting to depose. The chancellor apparently acknowledges this, as he defends his position based on quorum, not based on the numbers. And he certainly understands the mistake as well, as he has now slipped into advocate’s language by saying it is their “position”—i.e., their legal posture.

There is no "correcting" this, as there was no procedural error. There was a proper vote taken with a proper result--the motion failed. Of course the Presiding Bishop can pretend that these two bishops are deposed, and her fellow bishops can hold to that fiction if they'd like. They can even hope the Archbishop of Canterbury plays along, too. But it would be highly unlikely for any court to recognize these depositions as valid, if the issue of who is the Bishop of San Joaquin is ever litigated, as 815 seems determined it will be. She also has the option of beginning the process all over again, and bringing the abandonment charge back before the House of Bishops for another vote at a future meeting, where presumably she would bring in enough bishops to get the majority of the "whole number of Bishops entitled to vote" that canon law requires her to have.

Given the lawlessness displayed so far, however, and the abuse of the canons, it's unlikely the Presiding Bishop will deal with this in honest, much less Christian, fashion. This is about the exercise of raw power to obtain a result, with the ends justifying the means. And save for a civil court's calling this what it is, there is little to stop her from Roper-like continuing to cut down every law to obtain what she wants. Remember, even the use of this canon in the first place was an abuse, since both bishops went over to another province of the Anglican Communion with which the American church presumably viewed itself in communion. It was simply a way to avoid giving the bishops the rights they would have in a proper trial.

Update: The always-wonderful BabyBlue adds this important bit of information. She reports that at the Righter heresy trial, the same "eligible to vote" language was read in its normal and more forbidable sense, not in the tortured and de minimis way the chancellor now tries to read it.