News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
5/30/2008
The Bishop of Lexington, Stacy Sauls, has written a memorandum attempting to
justify the Presiding Bishop's failure to obtain the required consents to depose
Bishops William Cox and John-David Schofield.
Faced with growing criticism from a number of orthodox dioceses that Presiding
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and David Booth Beers have indiscriminately
used the "abandonment of communion" canon to depose both men, the bishops and
Standing Committees of five diocese called the actions of the PB an abuse of
power with canonical actions that did not hold up under close scrutiny.
In his memorandum, Sauls, who is a licensed attorney and chairs the "Task Force
on Property Disputes", said the actions of Jefferts Schori were "procedurally
appropriate" in consenting to the depositions of the two bishops. The House's
Parliamentarian rules were followed, he said.
Sauls cites the evolution of the canon in his 12-page brief saying the HOB
followed fair and lawful procedure.
He said that the 1904 General Convention approved an amendment to the canons on
abandonment of communion by a bishop. At issue in the disputed depositions is
language that states that for a deposition to be valid, it requires a majority
of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote.
Sauls argues that plain reading of the text means that the whole numbers
entitled to vote were present at that meeting. Therefore, the voice vote, in
March by a majority of members present, consented to the depositions of bishops
Schofield and Cox.
Sauls said the House of Bishops took similar action regarding two other bishops,
Donald Davies of Ft. Worth in 1993 and Neptali Larrea of Ecuador Central, in
2004. In both cases, the exact same procedure, with respect to Schofield and
Cox, was followed. No objections were raised.
The memorandum says accused bishops are provided with a number of procedural
safeguards, including the right to request a hearing.
"In the present cases, all the procedural safeguards were followed." Sauls says
that neither bishop disputed abandoning the communion as certified by Title IV
Review committee and did not "deny the actions in any way, request a further
hearing, make any rebuttal or issued any defense, or contested the allegations."
Sauls concluded that a fair and lawful procedure was followed under the Canon,
and that the decision canonically stands as the legitimate judgment of the
House.
Wicks Stephens, Chancellor of the Anglican Communion Network disputes Sauls'
findings.
He wrote to VOL saying he was intrigued that a group of bishops, assigned the
task of finding ways to keep property from leaving TEC, would be called upon to
add their voices to the thus-far futile attempts of the Presiding Bishop to
justify the failure to obtain the required consents to depose Bishops Cox and
Schofield.
"The Memo is a regrettable effort to justify the unjustifiable. No right
thinking person will be taken in by it. Perhaps the Task Force could redeem its
work, however, by turning the Memo into a polemic for the amendment at General
Convention 2009 of Canon IV.9.2 to require only a mere majority of those present
and voting to consent to the deposition of a Bishop of TEC."
Stephens blasts the memo saying it was just another example of how TEC attempts
to justify actions that follow neither the canons nor approved rules for
canonical interpretation. "In short, this is simply another group in power in
TEC saying: 'It's so because I say it's so.'"
Wicks says that neither the Memo nor the Presiding Bishop has attempted to argue
that the consent requirements of the Canon were met. Instead, each invokes a
"line of reasoning" designed to support the argument that what happened was, and
should be, enough to validate the consent even though it was not "a majority of
the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote."
A mere majority of those present and voting is most assuredly not the same as a
majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote. Article I.2 of TEC's
Constitution says that the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote are: "Each
Bishop of this Church having jurisdiction, every Bishop Coadjutor, every
Suffragan Bishop, every Assisting Bishop, and every Bishop who by reason of
advanced age or bodily infirmity ... has resigned a jurisdiction, shall have a
seat and a vote in the House of Bishops."
Since there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 290 Bishops who qualify under
Article I.2 for a seat and vote in the HoB, a majority of those would be at
least 146 Bishops. Rumor has it that fewer than that number were present and
voting at the time the vote of consent was taken. And of those voting, according
to the Memo, there were dissenting votes, as well as abstentions. Thus, there is
no way the canonical requirement for consent was met.
"If real safeguards of fairness and justice are what are desired, then simply
apply the plain language of the canon, rather than an interpretation of that
language which is concocted to support a different agenda. When the canon says
'a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote,' don't try to get
away with a lesser consent. When the canons define the term 'All the Members' to
mean 'the total number of the body provided for by Constitution or Canon without
regard to absences, excused members, abstentions or vacancies,' honor its plain
meaning," he concluded.
John H. Lewis Jr.,attorney for Bishop Robert Duncan, stated: "they got caught
violating the canons and it took them two months to come up with an excuse that
makes no sense. There are 12 pages,but not one word on the difference in the
canons between consenting to resignation of a bishop ("a majority of those
present") and consenting to the deposition of a bishop (" a majority of the
whole number of bishops entitled to vote"). Instead,the "task force",certainly
not an independent group of canon law scholars, has decided to unilaterally
amend the abandonment of communion canon by inserting the words "at that
meeting" after "majority of the whole number of bishops entitled to vote". This
group has as much respect for the canons as they do for scripture."
The long and short of it all is that Jefferts Schori and Beers were caught
violating the canons and it took them two months to come up with a phony
explanation. It is ironic that it came from the "task force on property
disputes" and not an independent group of canon law scholars.
The canonical requirement for consenting to a resignation of a bishop is the
whole number of bishops entitled to vote. That was clearly not the case. The
depositions of these two bishops do not hold up and should be publicly declared
null and void.
END
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