A Living Church editorial

Soon after the Episcopal Church’s General Convention adjourned in July, many bishops assured their people that two resolutions, one regarding ordained ministry and the other regarding blessings for same-sex couples, had changed nothing and were merely descriptive of the Episcopal Church’s daily reality. Bishops suggested that the test of Resolution D025 would not center on the election of another openly partnered gay or lesbian bishop, but on whether that person received sufficient consents to be made a bishop.

By the words of these bishops, then, the test begins even now, before the first paperwork arrives in the hands of bishops and standing committees regarding the election of the Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool as a suffragan bishop for the Diocese of Los Angeles. The Archbishop of Canterbury has made no secret of what he hopes those bishops and standing committees will remember.

“The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications,” he wrote within a day of the election. “The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.”

Leaders of the Episcopal Church have heard, and disregarded, such warnings before. They were warned in 2003 that their consecration of an openly partnered gay man would tear at the very fabric of the Anglican Communion, and they did it anyway. Six years later, after pleading ignorance of how much one decision could affect the rest of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church has arrived at a similar moment of decision.

What has changed in the meantime is that a slow and deliberate process has brought about an embryonic covenant, in which the provinces of the Anglican Communion would commit themselves to due consultation and mutual accountability. The Archbishop of Canterbury, primates, Lambeth Conference, and Anglican Consultative Council have all supported this covenant as the best way for Communion-minded Anglicans to make clear their commitments to one another’s well-being.

Some Anglicans have sought not merely a crib death for the covenant, but instead a late-term abortion of it.

“Demonstrating that Gene Robinson’s election was not a fluke will send the message to the Anglican Communion that our commitment to the gospel, as we understand it, is more important than indulging the prejudices of the Nigerias and Ugandas of the Communion,” blogger Lionel Deimel wrote on the same day as Canon Glasspool’s election. “Consenting to the consecration of Mary Glasspool, as we must do, will create facts on the ground that will make acceptance of a covenant like the one presented to the Anglican Consultative Council last spring impossible to accept.”

Leaders of the Episcopal Church who give the matter two moments’ thought will realize that being in spiritual communion with Nigeria and Uganda, or with Jerusalem and Indonesia, has precious little to do with indulging anyone’s prejudices. Instead, it means having our own prejudices challenged. It means giving more than mental assent to the notion that we may be wrong about something. It means treating fellow Anglicans like brothers and sisters in Christ, rather than the objects of our pity or of our vain efforts at cultural engineering. It means behaving like the Anglican Christians we claim to be. The Archbishop of Canterbury said it well in July, in the reflection he called “Communion, Covenant, and our Anglican Future”:

When a local church seeks to respond to a new question, to the challenge of possible change in its practice or discipline in the light of new facts, new pressures, or new contexts, as local churches have repeatedly sought to do, it needs some way of including in its discernment the judgment of the wider Church. Without this, it risks becoming unrecognizable to other local churches, pressing ahead with changes that render it strange to Christian sisters and brothers across the globe.

As Episcopalians we pretend to have sought the judgment of the wider Church. We assume poses of moral indignation when our fellow Anglicans say we have not, in fact, sought their judgment, or given it serious consideration. Bishops and standing committees of the Episcopal Church have a clear choice before them.

We say this with penitent hearts: Leaders who care about the future health of the Anglican Communion, and about their own place in that Communion, must withhold their consent to an election that will further tear apart an already torn fabric.

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This is a very important article.  Question:  Bp Jon Bruno of Los Angeles has said bishops and Standing Committees can’t withhold consent to the recent Episcopal election since they would be acting unconstitutionally if they cited grounds based on sexual behavior.  How can he say that, based on what Doug LeBlanc quotes in the first paragraph of the article?

Celinda:  Bishop Bruno is simply wrong.  There is no constitutional or canonical direction related to limitation of the giving or withholding of consent.

BruceR

Celinda Scott - 13 December 2009 04:28 PM

This is a very important article.  Question:  Bp Jon Bruno of Los Angeles has said bishops and Standing Committees can’t withhold consent to the recent Episcopal election since they would be acting unconstitutionally if they cited grounds based on sexual behavior.  How can he say that, based on what Doug LeBlanc quotes in the first paragraph of the article?

To be fair, Bp Bruno’s comment was open to misinterpretation. He said that withholding consent because of Canon Glasspool’s sexuality would be a violation of the canons. I took that to mean her sexual orientation and agree with that interpretation of the canons. That leaves Bishops and Standing Committees to make their own judgments about whether her manner of life is a reason to withhold consent.

Thanks—that’s a very good summary of what I’ve heard from other sources the last couple of days.

So Dan -
You get the ridiculous situation where a canon is passed and then both Schori and Anderson write letters to the effect that the canons do not mean what they say since there is still restraint etc..  This is believed by no one unless they want to pursue that kind of subterfuge.  Now we are faced with a challenge to the restraint resolution the bp. of LA wants to make it a canonical offense to deny consent on those grounds.  Anyway there is usually no reason given when denying consent, we just became accustomed to it when Forrester and Lawrence were up for consent.  It is the sovereign right of a bishop w/ jurisdiction and /or a Standing Committee to refuse consent.  No reason need be given.  Also one may simply refuse to say yes or no which counts as a no vote anyway.  Bruno is throwing his weight around and looking foolish in so doing.  For my part I believe that Glasspool will get a majority of consents.  For my part yet another nail in the coffin of TEC and sadly for the AC which was badly torn in 03.  At least to the majority in the Communion this will show clearly TEC’s intent both to walk apart and to not care less about a Covenant.

The last cleric I can recall having announced their sexuality without acting on it was Thomas Shaw, who after all was a monastic; it’s something of a distinction without a difference, in practice. In any case I don’t think it is clear from the context of Bruno’s statement that he meant give a pass to judging her on her choice of sexual partners. I think it’s only a matter of time before presentments are brought against any bishop stupid enough to specifically give active homosexuality as cause for refusing consent. Of course, as Ian says, there’s no canonical requirement to explain one’s failure to consent.