Forrester Consents

Updated:

The touchy one at Stand Firm reports the following numbers on the consents to Fr. Forrester to become Bishop of Northern Michigan:

Yes, bishops - 10 (pursuant to the conversation with Tregolese on another post, SF reported 11 consents from bishops yesterday, but has lowered it to 10. Maybe they read David Virtue's tallies and corrected themselves. ed.)
Yes, Standing Committees - 3

No, Bishops - 28
No, Standing Committees - 14

From these numbers we can see that either the majority of Standing Committees have not met, or their actions have not yet been made public. Even with 33 bishops reporting the majority of bishops have not yet made public their decision on Forrester. As the touchy one points out, 50 more votes are necessary to proceed to consecration (he first reported that it would take 56. He changed it after a commenter corrected him, but perhaps he read David Virtue's thorough coverage and then revised his number). The touchy one has asked readers only to send in verifiable results. It is good to see that SF is doing less speculation; this has been one of the weak points of their coverage over the last five years.

I'm not surprised to see my former bishop Neff Powell vote for Forrester. Powell is a lovely man, but thoroughly liberal. He could argue that the diocese should have the candidate they elected. That is a harder argument to make given that he was the only candidate on the ballot. It is an even harder argument to make after the liberals voted down Mark Lawrence once, and tried to torpedo Iker and Ackerman. Of course, we've always known that there are two sets of rules, one for liberals and one used by liberals against conservatives.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a flood of consents come in late thereby reducing the possibility of any one bishop or standing committee being singled out for voting in favor of a Buddhist-Christian bishop. Do I think that Forrester will receive the necessary consents? I will not be surprised if he does.