The current public dispute over the canonical legality of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops' recent vote to depose Bishops Schofield and Cox amounts at best to a severe embarrassment to the Presiding Bishop, her advisors, and the House itself; at worst, it exposes a travesty of Christian justice and prudence. How was it possible that the process and definition of terms demanded by the canons were not openly examined, discussed, and agreed upon prior to this vote, so as to avoid the prima facie plausible accusations now being made that appropriate consents were not in fact given? Indeed, given the intrinsic seriousness of the matter - the deposition of a bishop - and the overwrought character of the moment within both TEC and the Anglican Communion and within which the deposition process has unfolded, and the general ecclesiological stakes at play within the Communion at large that are caught up in this moment, it is simply unconscionable that such preparation was not carried through. Trust in the good will and/or good sense of our leadership is no longer just frayed; it has been torn asunder.
And the result of this dispute and the failures of good order leading up to it will inevitably be the further erosion of TEC's standing in the public's eye and in the Communion's councils. Although some will take this as vindication of their hostility towards TEC, it can only bring shame to the Christian gospel as a whole, given that the name of Christ is being abused in the process.
Complaints there will be aplenty. What we wish to emphasize at this point, however, is that the present fiasco is the inevitable outcome to a destructive mistake on the part of our leadership. And that mistake is the insistence on dealing with an ecclesial challenge, one bound up with the character of the Christian faith, on the basis of limited disciplinary canons that are incapable of and not designed to address such a major issue. The canons of TEC, and usually of any church, are meant to order the common life of those who are agreed as to the fundamental truths that the church in question exists to serve; such canons cannot act to discern those truths subsequent to their deployment. But the major dispute in question, the one within which charges and depositions are being thrown about, has to do with that which define the canons themselves, not the other way around.
This point is of fundamental importance and bears repeating. The matter at issue is that our canons are being used to conclude that someone has abandoned communion. They are not being used, as they should, to take appropriate actions after a clear determination has been reached that communion has in fact already been abandoned. A use of the canons in this way amounts to a political rather than a legal act and as such serves to undermine the order not only of TEC but of the Anglican Communion. Indeed, by such an act TEC hews perilously close to a describing itself as an idiosyncratic church within a larger Communion Body, making judgments about Communion membership from its own limited perspective and so calling into question its own place within that larger fellowship.
In this case, a central clue as to what is going on was given by Bp. Schofield's March 12 Statement in response to the vote to depose him on the basis of his having "abandoned the Communion of the Church" (Canon IV.9.2): "I have not abandoned the Faith," Schofield stated; "I resigned from the American House of Bishops and have been received into the House of Bishops of the Southern Cone. Both Houses are members of the Anglican Communion. They are not - or should not be - two separate Churches." Bp. Schofield's point is straightforward: if the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone is not a "separate church" from TEC, how can he have "abandoned" the "Communion" of TEC's own ecclesial existence? Does in fact TEC "recognize" the Southern Cone as an Anglican Church with which she is in communion? In what sense, then, is "abandonment" taken?
The basic ecclesial issue, then, is one of recognizability. Yet this is just the issue that is at stake in the Anglican Communion's current struggles. Archbishop Rowan Williams himself spoke to it straightforwardly last December in his Advent Letter to the Primates. The Anglican Communion's "unity", he wrote, "depends not on a canon law that can be enforced but on the ability of each part of the family to recognise that other local churches have received the same faith from the apostles and are faithfully holding to it in loyalty to the One Lord incarnate who speaks in Scripture and bestows his grace in the sacraments. To put it in slightly different terms, local churches acknowledge the same 'constitutive elements' in one another. This means in turn that each local church receives from others and recognises in others the same good news and the same structure of ministry, and seeks to engage in mutual service for the sake of our common mission." The issue of "recognisability", of course, is more than a matter of Anglican Communion concern; it has become a central feature of ecumenical discernment. And therefore, the fact that the Presiding Bishop, her advisors, and the House of Bishops as a whole can determine that Bishops Schofield and Cox are worthy of deposition under Canon IV.9.2 would seem to indicate that they believe that both bishops and the Province of the Southern Cone do not share with TEC in the "constitutive elements" of "church" in the fundamental ways that provide "communion".
Some may dispute whether the disciplinary canons for "abandonment of communion" are clearly designed to deal with the larger matter of impaired or broken "communion", that is, some level of non-recognizability. And the question is admittedly confused given that it is bound up with issue of the "worship and discipline" of the Episcopal Church, which itself, in other places like our Prayer Book, is linked to "constitution and canons". Perhaps all that is envisaged is the narrow world of American Episcopalian denominational polity. But it is precisely the fact that there is a dispute at all that would indicate that caution be taken in starkly applying the canon of "abandonment of communion" in the midst of context of fundamental argument. In our minds, at any rate, it seems proper that the language of "communion" ought to be directive of the interpretation of the canon in this case, given its larger meaning, both in the tradition and in the Constitution's Preamble: we are talking about recognizability among churches, not political legalities.
The issue of communion and the recognizability of churches has already surfaced as a canonical issue in 2000, with regards to the AMiA and those clergy who left TEC to go under the Provinces of Rwanda and (at the time) South-East Asia. Had these clergy "abandoned the Communion of the Church"? There was disagreement at the time, with the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor even then vigorously and sometimes angrily demanding that Title IV.9 be applied, while others (including one of the present writers) argued that, although there was a serious dispute taking place, the churches in question were indeed "one", and that the appropriate process was to issue the departing clergy Letters Dimissory. The disagreement of 8 years ago has not been resolved, we might add, on either side. For it appears that not only do the leaders of TEC not recognize some parts of the Anglican Communion as "in communion", but neither do some of these churches recognize TEC as truly a "church in communion", and for a variety of reasons, theological and disciplinary. After all, when Letters Dimissory were sent, they were never acknowledged nor formally received. Indeed, if TEC and the Province of the Southern Cone are not in fact "two separate churches", what exactly is going on from either side in this dispute? This is the territory of ecclesiological quicksand.
But given this fact, why would one wish to carry forward disciplinary proceedings on the basis of somehow having resolved the question of mutual ecclesial recognizability in one's own mind before the fact? The Presiding Bishop, her advisors, and the House of Bishops (or least a significant part of it) are plowing ahead with putative judgments about what is an Anglican Church, and who is in communion with whom and on what basis - even in the face of clear and admitted and contradictory views about this among Anglicans including American Anglicans. Do they really believe that this can do anything but add fuel to the fire? The current embarrassment or travesty, whichever it is, is proof that the attempt to cut the Gordian knot of Anglican ecclesiological ferment, disarray, and reordering - something many of us believe and pray will be a blessing and not a curse -- will lead to nothing more than further confusion and the stoking of the flames of mutual hostility.
There are already accusations that have been publicly expressed that the ongoing process leading to a vote over Bp. Duncan's deposition is fatally flawed by a failure to abide by canonical order, not to mention substantive truth. The situation in the Diocese of San Joaquin, in which the Presiding Bishop has intervened through the imposition of new oversight, in flagrant disregard of a legitimately functioning Standing Committee for that diocese, rises to the level of potential and serious canonical violation in its own right. Even if it turns out that, in both these cases as well as in the case of the latest vote for deposition, a persuasive case is eventually made that due process was followed, the failure to make that case prior to highly questionable actions displays an irresponsible lack of concern for the pastoral needs of the church and the consciences of the flock of Christ.
We have urged previously and we so urge again: that "TEC and other Anglican bishops pray for and take action so that this process of depositional discipline pauses indefinitely. They should do this for the sake of genuinely seeking discernment and resolution as to the ordering of our common life as Anglicans. There is nothing that legally demands that the process be carried through at this point and in the manner now laid out. There is every Christian reason to work for some other outcome."
As a consequence of this effort to settle things canonically when the timing is not proper or the tool the right one, we are now right where we were before: awaiting a judgment only the larger Communion can give. What now is Bishop Schofield's status? An effort to settle things has actually reopened them: a vote to accept a resignation appears deeply flawed, and so a cloud is now over the matter of ecclesiastical authority in the Diocese of San Joaquin. Either he remains that authority, or the standing committee -- and the issue is not resolved. That the Chancellor uses language like "it is our position" indicates clearly that a questionable use of a canon, and a questionable process to deploy it, has resulted only in questionable interpretation, and neither legal nor moral resolution.
Ephraim Radner, Christopher Seitz, Philip Turner
The Anglican Communion Institute
