freudig

Noises off...

2011-11-30T13:53:00.000-08:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued an Advent Letter to the Primates of the Communion, and in it made some comments about the proposed Anglican Covenant, in which he clarifies that

it outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled...It alters no Province’s constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function.

Once again we are presented with something "urgently" needed, but which ultimately creates nothing new, more, or other than a procedure for giving advice as to how to get along, or face the consequences of not getting along. One of the reasons the Archbishop offers for adopting the Covenant is the supposed greater "coherence" following these advisory processes will bring about, allowing us better to interact with other Christian bodies.

We should bear in mind that our coherence as a Communion is also a significant concern in relation to other Christian bodies – especially at a moment when the renewed dialogues with Roman Catholics and Orthodox have begun with great enthusiasm and a very constructive spirit.

But, of course, this "coherence" will only arise if and when disagreeable provinces of the Communion settle their disagreements — for which the Covenant, once again, provides only advice and the exercise of what amounts to peer pressure to conform — or those who continue to resist this pressure are edged out of being "representative" of Anglicanism towards these other supposedly more "coherent" ecclesial bodies.

The Archbishop also asks a question, and then assumes his question has no takers as he rushes back to square one.

I continue to ask what alternatives there are if we want to agree on ways of limiting damage, managing conflict and facing with honesty the actual effects of greater disunity. In the absence of such alternatives, I must continue to commend the Covenant as strongly as I can to all who are considering its future.

I can, of course, think of any number of "alternatives" to what I continue to see as a deeply flawed and, by its own self-confession, ineffectual effort at conflict management:

Reliance on the Covenant for Communion in Mission from IASCOME
Restoration of the purely consultative function to Lambeth, with a staunch refusal to adopt any resolutions at all, other than those that directly empower mission and ministry
Expansion of ministry and mission cooperation between provinces, focused not on the mechanics of the Communion or disagreements on policies, but on doing the things Jesus actually commanded
Continuing to provide forums for the sharing of views between provinces, as in the Continuing Indaba and Mutual Listening Process which is “a biblically-based and mission-focused project designed to develop and intensify relationships within the Anglican Communion by drawing on cultural models of consensus building for mutual creative action.”

That last one sounds like a particularly good alternative, doesn't it. I could go on, but I think the picture is clear. I note that two of the alternatives listed above are on the Anglican Communion website. It is not as if these things are hidden away or unavailable. Whatever role the proposed Covenant might take in the future of the Anglican Communion, it is by no means the principle player, and could well simply be put in the category of offstage sound effects.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Communion does matter.The Covenant is not the same as Communion.

2011-11-30T12:30:00.000-08:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury released his Advent Letter today and in it he extols the wonderful work he and others are doing in the Anglican Communion. (It is a public letter but it directed to the Primates and Moderators of the Anglican Communion.) He talks about the Anglican Communion as "a gift" and is dismayed that some see the Anglican Communion as "a problem." He insists that the Anglican Communion needs the Anglican Covenant now more than ever.

ACNS:

(Dr. Williams writes:) "This is why the Communion matters – why it matters for a bishop in Jerusalem facing the withdrawal of a residency permit...a congregation in Nigeria facing more interreligious violence, an island in the Pacific facing inundation because of climate change, an urban community in Britain wondering how to respond to rising social disorder as poverty and unemployment increase. The Communion is a gift not a problem to all such people and many more. Only in such a mutually supportive family, glorifying and praising God in Christ together, can we truly make known the one Christ."

The Archbishop's letter acknowledged the "numerous tensions" in the Communion, but cautioned Communion members never to say "I have no need of you" to anyone seeking to serve Jesus Christ. He also used the letter to appeal for "more careful and dispassionate discussion" on such issues as the powers of Primates' Meetings as well calling for "a sustained willingness on the part of all Provinces to understand the different ways in which each local part of the Anglican family organizes its life."

Dr Williams also commended the Anglican Communion Covenant "as strongly as I can" stressing that it would neither change the structure of the Communion nor give "some sort of absolute power of ‘excommunication’ to some undemocratic or unrepresentative body."

"It outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled," he said. "It alters no Province’s constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function."

He said the fact that the moratoria were being "increasingly ignored" was deepening mistrust "which is bad for our mission together as Anglicans, and alongside other Christians as well. The question remains: if the moratoria are ignored and the Covenant suspected, what are the means by which we maintain some theological coherence as a Communion and some personal respect and understanding as a fellowship of people seeking to serve Christ?"

The Archbishop is right in telling us that Communion is important. It is essential that Anglicans around the world work together on these and other important questions. We need to do more to encourage common mission and the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we all share.

Communion is a gift. The problem is not the Communion. The problem is the Covenant.

To make the argument, Dr. Williams begs the question: since he did all the visits and all these events happened without the Covenant in place, then is it possible to be a Communion without the Covenant? Would these connections cease if the Covenant were to not pass? Would Anglicans stop working together or would our voice be diluted in any way without the Covenant in place?

Put another way, would the voice of Anglicanism be any stronger in Zimbabwe and would it influence Mugabe any more if they had the Covenant in their back pockets? Would having the Covenant stop Polynesian islands from being any more submerged and would the urban parish be any more relevant to it's neighborhood with a fully empowered Anglican Covenant?

Once more he talks about how we must not focus on the things that divide us, while extolling a document that defines itself in terms of division, rather than reconciliation. He says we need this to make room for everyone. Dr. Williams asks for an alternative to the mechanisms outlined in Part IV. He says that no one has offered an alternative. While this point is in itself debatable, allow me instead to make a my own humble suggestion:

Instead of spending time (as Section Four posits) on throwing each other out when we disagree, how about building a communion that encourages dialogue and reconciliation?

Instead of focusing on eliminating conflict by making sure that no innovation can happen without the approval of the most conservative member of the Anglican Communion, how about creating a structure and processes that encourage members of Churches who see the implications of the Gospel differently to come together, listen to one another, pray together, share experiences of mission together, and break Eucharistic bread together?

The Covenant diminishes the Communion because it assumes that Communion only happens when we agree. The truth is that Communion is happening because we share Christ. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit that is made possible by death and resurrection of Christ. Communion is because we share the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism. A Covenant that does not help us do the hard work of living that out--that helps us pray together--despite our disagreements is not a Covenant worth having.

The Covenant certainly cannot exist without the Anglican Communion, but can the Anglican Communion exist without the Covenant? The answer is that it already does.

Inhumanity

2011-11-30T08:40:00.000-08:00

a review of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

This film has been around for a few years, but I only had the opportunity to view it last night. It contributed to troubled sleep the rest of the night.

Naturally for any film attempting to address the Holocaust, this work deals with the horrors of that surpassing act of inhumanity. But by placing the primary focus on a child, on two children, this work evokes an emotional level not reached by many other films. For behind these children’s suffering always lies the child’s unanswerable question, Why?

The film naturally addresses the reality of inhumanity, but neatly summarizes how easy it is to dehumanize others and then treat them inhumanely. When young Bruno asks his father about the people on “the Farm” (as he imagines the camp to be), he receives the halting answer, “Those people... well, they really aren't people.” That is it, in a chilling nutshell.

The film is beautifully made, with fine performances and skillful direction. It builds rather like a Mahler symphony to its inevitable and tragic end, and is profoundly moving and disturbing, perhaps most of all because that question is left hanging in the air: Why?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Just Us!

2011-11-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

When I hear about this:

A 6-year-old Grant County boy has been accused of first-degree sexual assault after playing "doctor" with two 5-year-old friends.

And then consider that we have the highest percentage of our population in prison of any country in the world, I don't think this case is simply a problem of overzealous prosecution or "freaking out" about kids.

First, because it doesn't show up in the linked article, one relevant fact about why the "inappropriate touching" occurred:

"D" is 6-year-old child who previous to the alleged criminal act in issue, had medical issues that necessitated rectal examinations by medical personnel.

"D" is the child being charged with a felony. The girl involved told authorities they were playing "butt doctor," and no penetration occurred.

There is a political aspect to this case (plenty of info on that in the petition and elsewhere); but what interests me is the idea of criminalizing the behavior of others.

The parents of "D" are outraged at a six-year old being treated like a criminal, and well they should be. But who thinks a criminal prosecution of a six-year old is appropriate under any circumstances, and why? Well, apparently, people with the power to prosecute in a country where incarceration has increased 500% over the past 30 years (roughly the same time period that wages have stagnated for 80% of the population while rising for 20% of the population. Coincidence?) We have turned to criminal prosecutions to cure a variety of ills, so it's almost no surprise we would now criminalize "playing doctor" between small children.

Does it seem extreme to link this stupid case to the problem of incarceration? Well, some of this story is of a piece with the national story about prosecutions. Prosecutors love convictions, and not just because they hate criminals. Prosecutors, as this story amply shows, are political animals (not all politicians make sensible decisions in the name of politics). And this prosecutor, like many, obviously doesn't yet want to admit this prosecution is a mistake, or that a 6 year old boy is not an adult.

[L]egal scholars looking at the issue suggest that prosecutors’ concerns about their political future and a culture that values winning over justice also come into play. “They are attached to their convictions,” Garrett says, “and they don’t want to see their work called into question.”

That's from a NYTimes story about convictions being overturned by DNA evidence, and what lengths prosecutors will go to in order to protect their records. Prosecutors are political animals, and in a culture that values not just winning, but criminalizing behavior and punishing people with prison sentences, isn't it just a matter of time until that attitude is applied to children?

This prosecution is vile, rancid, egregious, and indefensible. As the attorneys for the parents point out:

"[The experts say] a 6-year-old child is unable to intellectually and emotionally associate sexual gratification with the act that D has been accused of committing," Cooper said....

And as they note in their lawsuit, a six year old boy is simply incapable of forming the mens rea (guilty intent, basically) necessary to charge him with a felony. That is simply hornbook law: without the mens rea, the act is not criminal. This is the basis for the "insanity defense" in some crimes: if the defendant didn't have the mental capability to form a criminal intent (if, for example, in a delusional state the defendant was killing in self-defense), there is no crime. Of course, for murder suspects who are "not guilty by reason of insanity," there is treatment instead of jail time. But six-year olds are not guilty by reason of the fact they are incapable of forming criminal intent, at least as regards a crime of sexual assault. This is why children are not charged like adults, or treated criminally like adults. It is absurd to charge a child with such an offense. But is it of a piece with the society we've become in the past 30 years? Do we feel so out of control that we are mad to be in control of someone, anyone? Chris Hayes opined over the weekend that if we see a loss of the "American Dream" (the idea that we will be better off than our parents), our politics would go bonkers.

I'm still wondering why he said: "If".

Disciplinary Board Clears Charges Against Bishop Lawrence

2011-11-29T00:03:00.000-08:00

The Rt. Rev. Dorsey Henderson, President of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops, has released a statement announcing that the eighteen-person Board could not muster a majority to charge the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence of South Carolina with "abandonment of the Communion of this Church." Thus ends a clumsy attempt to take seriously the allegations of "abandonment" lodged by dissidents from Bishop Lawrence's own Diocese, who tried to turn his steadfast insistence on the central importance of Holy Scripture to the life of the Church into a case for his abandonment of it.

Bishop Henderson, stung by the vehemence with which his initial announcement of "serious charges" against Bishop Lawrence was greeted, appears to have been unable to refrain from letting loose a parting shot, even as he retreated from the fray in ignominy (my italics added):

It is also significant that Bishop Lawrence has repeatedly stated that he does not intend to lead the diocese out of The Episcopal Church—that he only seeks a safe place within the Church to live the Christian faith as that diocese perceives it. I speak for myself only at this point, that I presently take the Bishop at his word, and hope that the safety he seeks for the apparent majority in his diocese within the larger Church will become the model for safety—a “safe place”— for those under his episcopal care who do not agree with the actions of South Carolina’s convention and/or his position on some of the issues of the Church.

"Apparent majority", Bishop Henderson? Did your investigations uncover that the dissident Episcopal Forum (some of whose members must have anonymously filed the childish charges) has at best about a thousand members? (There are even fewer, if we count just those who are willing to have their names publicly associated with the group.) And did you learn that Bishop Lawrence's Diocese has more than twenty-five times that number of Episcopalians, who are choosing to remain under his pastoral care?

Just what is this talk of a "safe" place for those dissidents, Bishop Henderson? Did you intend to add to their already neurotic fears and anxieties? I will wager that they are far safer in the Diocese of South Carolina, which is led by an actual Christian bishop who believes in Jesus' command to "love one another as I have loved you", than they would be under a bishop who believes instead in the Old Testament adage of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." (I refer to certain bishops who shall go unnamed, but who have signaled their vengeful intentions with words such as: "There's a new sheriff in town.")

The real question is just this: is Bishop Lawrence truly "safe" now, Bishop Henderson -- or will you be shortly sending him notification of new charges brought against him on account of his having authorized quitclaim deeds to be delivered to every parish in his Diocese? Those deeds renounce any and all claims (such as claims of any trust interest pursuant to the Dennis Canon) to that parish's property on behalf of the Diocese, and hence all claims on behalf of the Episcopal Church itself, since the latter entity can act locally only through one of its dioceses.

There persists, among the dissidents in South Carolina, and among similar canonical ignorami scattered throughout other dioceses and the Episcopal blogosphere, a notion that the South Carolina Supreme Court did not mean what it said in its decision in the All Saints Waccamaw case. Here is one such view, chosen at random from many such offered on the Web for public consumption:

Three years ago {Ed. note: Actually, it was two years ago, but who cares about being accurate here?}, the state's Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of All Saints, Pawleys Island that seemed to suggest that the Episcopal Church -- and any other similarly structured church organization like the Presbyterians and Methodists -- does not have a legal interest in parish property held in trust by the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina. {Ed. note: How screwed up can you make things? The parish property was "held in trust by the Episcopal Church"? Didn't you mean to say that in your view, it was "held in trust for the Episcopal Church in the DSC?}

All Saint's was trying to break away from the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Province of Rwanda, which it eventually was allowed to do. {Ed. note: I'm sure the congregation of All Saints Pawley's Island must be eternally grateful that some unspecified person or body "allowed" them to join the Province of Rwanda, but that implies they had to ask someone for permission, when the Court held precisely that they did not. Their amendments to their own articles and bylaws were fully sufficient, under South Carolina law, to accomplish that result -- without anyone else's "permission."}

Legal authorities and those familiar with the Court's thinking {Ed. note: You mean that the Court thought other things than what it so plainly said in its opinion, and that one has to be "familiar with its thinking" in order to understand what it really meant? Good grief.} say that the ruling was specific to the unique nature of All Saint's case. However, the Diocese of South Carolina, under Bishop Lawrence, disagrees.

Critical to the Court's ruling in the All Saints' case was a "quitclaim" deed executed by the Diocese in 1903 relinquishing any legal interest it might have to All Saints' property.

The existence of that deed tipped the Court's view of property ownership in favor of All Saints' over that of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese.

Not so fast. That 1903 Quitclaim Deed was certainly cited in the Court's decision as one factor in the ruling confirming that the Diocese of South Carolina had released all claims to All Saints Waccamaw's property at that time, but what about the 106 years following? The only hook on which the Episcopal Church and the Diocese (then under Bishop Lawrence's predecessor, Bishop Salmon) could try to hang their claims of a trust interest was the enactment of the Dennis Canon by the national Church in 1979, and of a counterpart by the Diocese two years later.

Thus, regardless of the 1903 Quitclaim Deed, if the Dennis Canon or its diocesan counterpart had been sufficient to create a new trust interest in All Saints' property from 1979-1981 and forward, then it would have not mattered what the South Carolina Supreme Court found with regard to the 1903 Deed. Instead, however, the Court made short shrift of the national Church's and the Diocese's attempts to declare a trust interest in property which they never owned:

Furthermore, we hold that neither the 2000 Notice [of claim to a trust interest in the property, recorded by the Diocese] nor the Dennis Canon has any legal effect on title to the All Saints congregation’s property. A trust “may be created by either declaration of trust or by transfer of property….” Dreher v. Dreher, 370 S.C. 75, 80, 634 S.E.2d 646, 648 (2006). It is an axiomatic principle of law that a person or entity must hold title to property in order to declare that it is held in trust for the benefit of another or transfer legal title to one person for the benefit of another. The Diocese did not, at the time it recorded the 2000 Notice, have any interest in the congregation’s property. Therefore, the recordation of the 2000 Notice could not have created a trust over the property.

For the aforementioned reasons, we hold that title to the property at issue is held by All Saints Parish, Waccamaw, Inc., the Dennis Canons had no legal effect on the title to the congregation’s property, and the 2000 Notice should be removed from the Georgetown County records.

(Emphasis added. The Court speaks of the "Dennis Canons" in the plural, because both the Diocese and the national Church had enacted similar provisions in an attempt to create a trust interest.)

What is so hard to understand here? The 1903 Quitclaim Deed was not at all the "tipping point" which decided the case in the parish's favor; nor was it a "unique" factor which would enable a later court to distinguish the All Saints case from any other attempt to invoke the Dennis Canon (or its former diocesan equivalent). The Court's language could not have been more plain: "The Dennis Canons had no legal effect on the title to the congregation’s property . . .". "No legal effect" means "no legal effect." The two Dennis Canons, whether singly or together, were incapable of creating a legal trust interest which could be recognized by any South Carolina court, because they did not satisfy the basic requirement of having the consent of the property's owner to the creation of such a trust, evidenced by its signature on a written trust instrument spelling out its terms.

One of the things I have noticed in writing this blog is that left-leaning, liberal Episcopalians simply will not accept a rule, decision, canon or other pronouncement of law which they do not like. They will invent all sorts of reasons or rationales for evading the plain effect and language of the rule, decision, canon or other pronouncement of law, or for treating it as only a "special case," with no precedential value whatsoever.

Thus the Presiding Bishop found it "inconvenient" to allow the three senior bishops in the Church to have a "veto" over her ability to inhibit a bishop charged with "abandonment of communion", and so she simply ignored that limitation and went ahead and inhibited Bishops Cox and Duncan anyway. Or again, she found it "inconvenient" to require a written renunciation of his orders to get rid of Bishop Iker, so she treated one of his public statements as such a renunciation, and had him deposed on that basis. Likewise, it was most inconvenient to have to muster up a majority vote of "the whole number of bishops entitled to vote in the House of Bishops", since that language included retired ("resigned") bishops who also constitutionally have a vote in the House, and retired bishops hardly ever attend its meetings. So she simply declared that the inconvenient language meant something else, and got her wholly neutral and unbiased Chancellor to issue a ruling backing her up: from now on, a "majority of the whole number" meant only a majority of those who bothered to show up and vote.

The All Saints decision was most certainly a setback for the Dennis Canon in South Carolina. But Episcopalians everywhere must now face the fact: the Dennis Canon was completely ineffective to work its usual magic in that State, because that State has a Court which actually could apply the law of trusts, and of how one is properly created. Just because courts in other States have given the Episcopal Church a pass on its Dennis Canon is no reason to expect such special treatment everywhere. South Carolina, Louisiana, and (soon, I hope) Indiana are States which respect the traditional law of trust creation, and hence in which the Dennis Canon or its equivalents will have "no legal effect."

The dissident Episcopalians are thus blowing smoke when they claim that Bishop Lawrence and the Diocese did something un-Episcopalian in issuing quit-claim deeds to each and every parish. What Bishop Lawrence and his Diocese did was simply following the law as declared by South Carolina's highest State court -- and if to follow the law is un-Episcopalian, well -- there you have it, don't you? To be Episcopalian (at least, to be a member of the South Carolina Episcopalians group) is to ignore what the law plainly says, and to fault and try to drag down others for actually following it (and thereby disagreeing with you).

Accordingly, Bishop Henderson, your warning to Bishop Lawrence is utterly misguided. No one in South Carolina has anything to fear from a Diocese or its Bishop who scrupulously follows the law -- both civil and scriptural. It is precisely the ones who will not follow the law who make the place unsafe for law-abiders.

Uneasy Accommodations

2011-11-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

England is embroiled in a debate over whether any religious premises, of whatever faith or denomination, should be free to celebrate a civil partnership with religious trapping or within its walls.While some would like to see the Church of England do this, the powers that govern that church seem dead set against it. But there also seems to be pressure against allowing even the faith-groups that want to do it, i.e., Quakers, Unitarians, and Liberal Jews, from doing so. This angst seems to derive from a sort of slippery-solipsism; that what is allowed to some today will be required of all tomorrow.

And indeed that sort of clamor after uniformity is a part of the Church of England's problem, particularly under Establishment, and particularly surrounding marriage. There was a time in England when the only legal marriages were those in the C of E (and the early exceptions were made for Quakers and Jews then, too!) And unlike the US, where, for instance, an Episcopal priest is free to refuse to officiate at any marriage he or she chooses, the parochial rights of English folk to be married in church even if they have absolutely no other connection than residence remains a sticking point.

However, the legislation permitting houses of worship to provide religious services or a venue for registering civil partnerships will no more require the Church of England to do so — and the act specifically guarantees the protection — than the General Synod measure permitting women bishops (when it is adopted and effective) will require the Roman Catholic Church in England to do the same. Permission is not requirement.

If (or should I say, when) Parliament passes a law for marriage equality, then the church will have to make a decision. It might then take a cue from Roland Allen, who over a century ago resigned his cure in protest about having to baptize those he felt showed no real commitment to the baptismal promises, and the "sham marriage" tradition in English parishes -- that is, unchurched people exercising a legal right to use the church as decorative backdrop for "doing the baby" or for their nuptials. Surely that is a real problem, isn't it? And one well worth solving over a hundred years after Allen's resignation on principle.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
h/t to Thinking Anglicans

Rot from Without, Decay from Within

2011-11-28T08:26:00.000-08:00

Let me say at the outset that I began this blog in 2008 because I believed that there were things going on in my Church -- the Episcopal Church (USA), of which I had been a faithful member from baptism -- which required broader attention from those potentially most affected. Specifically, I believed that events ever since 2003 needed attention from those lay people in the Church who might not be able to interpret the legal niceties being urged in the various court and disciplinary proceedings which had been brought in the Church's name up to that time, but who could, as traditional Episcopalians, appreciate that not all of the legal positions being taken by their Church were, shall we say, "kosher".

Ever since my first post, I have focused on the constitutional and canonical violations by those at the head of the Church -- generally the steps they took to remove from the Church's ministry those with whom the leadership disagreed on matters such as same-sex marriage, and to alienate the Church from the vast majority of the Anglican Communion. If you are an Episcopalian, I ask that you put all of the hype which you may have read about the Episcopal Church (USA, that is) being "in the forefront" of the movement to recognize same-sex "marriages" into the context of what I shall now relate.

Others have sketched the history by which gay and lesbian activists gradually increased their representation in the deliberative bodies of the Church, beginning in the 1970s and increasing steadily until General Convention 2003. At that Convention, the same-sex activists achieved their first significant advance with the confirmation, in both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, of New Hampshire's election of an openly gay man, who had divorced his wife and left his children to partner with another man, as their bishop.

Yet in 2003, it still was not legal for newly elected Bishop V. Gene Robinson to "marry" his same-sex partner in the State of New Hampshire. Nor could such a "marriage" have been recognized within the Episcopal Church (USA). Its Book of Common Prayer, then as now, sets out on page 422 the rubrics for holy matrimony solemnized by the Church, which include this statement (bold emphasis added):

Christian marriage is a solemn and public covenant between a man and a woman in the presence of God. In the Episcopal Church it is required that one, at least, of the parties must be a baptized Christian; that the ceremony be attested by at least two witnesses; and that the marriage conform to the laws of the State and the canons of this Church.

In conformity to this rubric, Canon I.18.2 of the Episcopal Church (USA) has since 1972 contained language to this effect (emphasis again added):

Sec. 2. Before solemnizing a marriage the Member of the Clergy shall have ascertained:
. . .
(b) That both parties understand that Holy Matrimony is a physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman, entered into within the community of faith, by mutual consent of heart, mind, and will, and with intent that it be lifelong.

In addition, the current Canons require that every couple married in the Church sign a very specific statement beforehand, the text of which is set out as follows in Canon I.18.3, subparagraphs (e) through (g), with emphasis added as before:

Sec. 3. No Member of the Clergy of this Church shall solemnize any marriage unless the following procedures are complied with:
. . .
(d) The Member of the Clergy shall have required that the parties sign the following declaration:

(e) "We, A.B. and C.D., desiring to receive the blessing of Holy Matrimony in the Church, do solemnly declare that we hold marriage to be a lifelong union of husband and wife as it is set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.

(f) "We believe that the union of husband and wife, in heart, body, and mind, is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God's will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.

(g) "And we do engage ourselves, so far as in us lies, to make our utmost effort to establish this relationship and to seek God's help thereto."

The reports of same-sex marriage ceremonies carried out within the Episcopal Church (USA), such as those conducted by Bishop Thomas Shaw of the Diocese of Massachusetts, and by clergy at All Saints Church (Pasadena) in the Diocese of Los Angeles with the approval of Bishop J. Jon Bruno, thus make a mockery of both the foregoing canons, as well as of the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer.

The latter (rubrics), by the way, outrank the canons of the Church. General Convention can vote to amend the Canons at any single session, but it can effect an amendment to the Book of Common Prayer only in the same manner that it can amend ECUSA's Constitution -- by passage of the amendment at two successive General Conventions, with referral in the interim to each of the Church's several dioceses for their consideration and approval.

Thus, same-sex marriage ceremonies in the Church could not be approved unless and until there was an amendment approved to the Book of Common Prayer. To my knowledge, no such proposal to amend the BCP rubrics has been proposed for GC 2012 in Indianapolis -- the only proposal of which I am aware is to establish rites for the blessings of same-sex civil unions (or "marriages", if that is what the law of the particular State involved recognizes). If none is properly proposed before the applicable deadlines for such legislation, then same-sex marriage ceremonies in the Episcopal Church (USA) could not be approved at least until GC 2018.

The foregoing paragraphs describe, to the best of my ability, the current state of the canon and liturgical law of the Episcopal Church (USA) with regard to "marriage" between persons of the same sex. Such "ceremonies" are neither recognized, nor allowed to be performed, within the authorized liturgies of the Church. It is once again a measure of the lawlessness that reigns at all levels of ECUSA (with the primary example having been long since established by the Presiding Bishop's repeated defiance of the Canons) to note that neither Bishop Shaw nor Bishop Bruno has been required to account, under the more flexible disciplinary canons which took effect last July 1, for their open and flagrant violations of the BCP rubrics, and the canons of the Church, as quoted above. (One can only wonder what kind of "certificate" Bishop Shaw required Dean Ragsdale and her lesbian partner to sign, before he "married" them, that was in complete accordance with Canon I.18.3 (d) quoted above.)

Because these openly acknowledged violations have not been, and will not be, prosecuted by the appropriate Church authorities, one may conclude only that a form of decay has commenced within its venerable halls, which is eroding the very structures designed and intended to hold the Church together as a Church. And a further conclusion thereby presents itself, as an inevitable corollary to the foregoing: those who currently are (mis)leading the Church in this respect must want such decay to have its inevitable effect, in order to hasten the day when the last Scripturally based barriers to officially recognized and sanctioned same-sex relationships will have been discarded as outmoded and anachronistic, and fit only for the scrap heap.

To this dismal picture (from the point of view of Church traditionalists) I am now constrained to add another dimension, which is just as dismaying. Let me begin by filling in some background.

In 1993, the Supreme Court of Hawaii decided the case of Baehr v. Miike, which signaled that a State must have a "compelling interest" in order to deny legitimacy to same-sex marriages. Fearing that a State court's recognition of same-sex marriages might force all other States to recognize such unions under the "Full Faith and Credit" clause of the U. S. Constitution, Congress reacted by enacting, with overwhelming majorities, the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"), which President Clinton signed into law in 1996. This law, relying on the clause in the Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) which gives to Congress the ultimate power "by general Laws [to] prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings [of an individual State] shall be proved, and the Effect thereof [in another State]", defined marriage for all federal purposes as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" (Section 3), and provided that no State "shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State . . . respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State . . . , or a right or claim arising from such relationship" (Section 2).

Since its enactment in 1996, DOMA has been the subject of multiple challenges in various federal courts, which are recapitulated in detail in this article. Of particular interest to Episcopalians is the current case in Massachusetts of Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, which resulted in a judgment by the federal district court in Boston that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. This ruling is now on appeal to the federal Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, also situated in Boston.

After defending the constitutionality of Section 3 in lower courts, the Obama Justice Department, pursuant to instructions from President Obama himself, did an about-face on February 23, 2011, and notified the First Circuit Court of Appeals that it would no longer defend the constitutionality of Section 3 in the Gill v. Office of Personnel Management appeal. Since that notification, the House of Representatives (with its Republican majority) has voted to retain the counsel necessary to defend Section 3's constitutionality on appeal.

And there matters stood, while the various briefs on the appeal were being filed. But now comes word, via the public relations page of the law firm of Goodwin Procter -- the law firm of which the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor David Booth Beers is a member, along with her "Special Representative for Litigation" Mary Kostel -- that the firm, which previously acted as counsel for certain parties to the Gill case in an earlier lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Massachusetts' marriage laws, has both filed as counsel, and signed in its separate capacity as an employer in its own right, an amicus curiae ("friend of the Court") brief in Gill which argues for the unconstitutionality of the definition of marriage as embodied in Section 3 of DOMA.

To sum up the current anomalies, as presented in this post:

1. The Episcopal Church (USA) currently defines marriage, both canonically and in its rubrics, as the "physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman."

2. There is no current measure proposed in the governing bodies of the Episcopal Church (USA) which would alter or amend its definition of "marriage" so as to incorporate therein the joining in "marriage" of two persons of the same sex.

3. Notwithstanding the Episcopal Church (USA)'s Book of Common Prayer and its associated Canons, certain clergy (including diocesan bishops) have performed, or have allowed to take place within their Diocese, rites of "holy matrimony" for same-sex marriages within the Episcopal Church's liturgy.

4. The resulting spectacle of lawlessness is undermining the Church from within.

5. Now comes word that the law firm of the Presiding Bishop's own Chancellor, and of her Special Assistant for Church Property Litigation, has gone on record as opposing the Church's own definition of marriage in the BCP and in its Canons.

6. Notwithstanding #5, the Episcopal Church continues to employ both Goodwin Procter, the Chancellor, and the Special Assistant to the Presiding Bishop, as its counsel to litigate against departed parishes and dioceses who are opposed to the Church's apostasy, among other things, concerning Christian marriage.

This is both, as my title indicates, "rot from without and decay from within." The Church is actively subsidizing and promoting the former, while taking no steps to prevent the latter.

In consequence of the foregoing, we have a Church which is speaking with a forked tongue, or out of both sides of its mouth. A Church cannot uphold traditional teachings with regard to Christian marriage, on the one hand, and then work actively to undermine those same teachings in the secular arena, on the other hand. Still less can it employ as counsel those who are hopelessly conflicted with regard to the Church's traditional teachings, and who actively deny in the secular arena that those teachings have any social, legal, or moral validity.

Your Curmudgeon is an eager student of Church history, and is quite familiar with the various histories of Christ's universal Catholic Church, and of the Protestant Episcopal Church (USA) in particular. But for the life of him, he cannot identify any point in the larger Church's trajectory, or in that of the Protestant Episcopal Church (USA), at which one could say that it was more conflicted between its sacred and secular stances than it is this very day. A Church so divided against itself cannot stand, and will not continue to stand, because as such it is a contradiction of itself, and of God's holy Word.

Those who are pushing the agenda of same-sex marriages within the Church are set upon overthrowing (in just the Episcopal Church, and in just a very few years) five hundred and fifty years of documented tradition and rubrics -- in the name of -- what? "Social justice and equality"? Give me a break. Whose "justice", and whose "equality"? Has the Holy Spirit, anywhere or at any time, bestowed an unambiguous and unqualified blessing (using objectively measurable criteria such as increased membership), upon any "Church" which has officially sanctioned and blessed same-sex unions? Are we not, instead, witnessing a re-enactment of the now stereotyped "resistance" against a perceived "unjust denial" of what are regarded as "civil (or equal) rights"? But who is denying whom some "right" which is spiritually theirs to claim from God? Since when has Scripture needed to bend to the force of civil law?

This once-noble Church is being transformed, at the hands of single-minded activists, into a secular cult which will reflect only its lack of all Scripture-based grounding and tradition, and (in their place) will embody only the sacrifice to Caesar of those things which are properly God's. Nothing will then distinguish such a "Church" from its pagan predecessors. As a consequence, nothing about it will any longer have any claim to loyalty or adherence on the part of its traditional members.

First Sunday of Advent 2011

2011-11-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 64:1-9
64:1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--

64:2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

64:3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.

64:4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.

64:5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

64:6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

64:7 There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.

64:9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

80:1 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth

80:2 before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us!

80:3 Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

80:4 O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers?

80:5 You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure.

80:6 You make us the scorn of our neighbors; our enemies laugh among themselves.

80:7 Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

80:17 But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.

80:18 Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name.

80:19 Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

1 Corinthians 1:3-9
1:3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

1:4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus,

1:5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind--

1:6 just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you--

1:7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1:8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1:9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Mark 13:24-37
13:24 "But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,

13:25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

13:26 Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory.

13:27 Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

13:28 "From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.

13:29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.

13:30 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.

13:31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

13:32 "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

13:33 Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.

13:34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.

13:35 Therefore, keep awake--for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn,

13:36 or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.

13:37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."

"Advent" means "arrival," and every year the arrival of the new church year begins with the end of all things. Which is also about as close as the church allows itself to get anymore to talk about God's judgment. It's a curious way to begin things, to say the least.

Speaking of curious, take a moment to consider these words of Isaiah:

But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

Not the usual "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" description of sin we are used to. This is not a God who pushed the sinners away because they were unclean; they became unclean, says Isaiah, because God pushed them away. It's a curious thing about the descriptions of God in the Hebrew Scriptures: it's almost always a description of a relationship, rather than of a judgmental almost-unmoved Mover who responds only to failure. God's anger, says Isaiah, caused Israel to sin; God's absence caused Israel to do wrong.

Why don't we think of God that way? Where did we get this Christian idea that God only exists to judge us, and we are only saved from judgment because of Jesus? And our only relationship to God is to stand before God in judgment, a judgment which is hidden from us until the end of time?

It's an odd thing; we Christians insist God is "Father," but we then treat God like an absent, quasi-abusive, almost adoptive, father. We ask for things from God. What we don't look for is a relationship with God; except as God is going to make us happier and happier. Which means: what?

Well, consider the psalm, too:

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth

before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us!

Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers?

You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure.

You make us the scorn of our neighbors; our enemies laugh among themselves.

Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.

Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name.

Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

This is a plea. But it's not a plea for a new job, or a good bargain on Black Friday, or even better weather or a mended economy. It's a plea for relationship. It's a plea for God to come and join us and restore us and return to us. God's return would mend Israel. God's return would restore Israel. God's relationship with Israel is what matters most to Israel.

We are not Israel. What would God's return mean to us? What would God's advent mean to us?

"Advent" means "Arrival." It's the moment we all dread, when family shows up for Thanksgiving or for Christmas, and they threaten to stay longer than we can bear to put up with them. And then they arrive, and maybe it's not so bad after all; and then maybe it is, and when are they going to leave again? We don't expect family to make us happy. But we don't want them to make us miserable, either. We expect family to be related to us, and we expect to have a relationship with them, even if it's one we don't really want. The absence of family makes us sad; and perhaps even strange. It makes us lonely, and cut off. It makes us feel abandoned, even if we never knew a good family. Advent means arrival. It is the moment we are all waiting for, even if we are not waiting for it.

What would it be like to have a relationship with God, instead of to simply expect things from God? Who would God be then?

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind--just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you--so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

The adventus always seems to speak in apocalyptic tones: fire burning wood and mighty warriors coming to save the people. Always a final proof, a final redemption, an end to suffering and doubt. Paul instead speaks of grace and peace that come from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. "Our Father." Do grace and peace come from our Father? Do they come from God? Or do comfort and benefits and all the good things we value more and more and more in this American life? What would grace and peace be? Where would we sell them in the marketplace? Or are they not commodities, gifts given to us, but the results of a relationship, of knowing God as Father? In every way, says Paul, we are enriched in Christ Jesus: in speech and knowledge; and we are not lacking in any spiritual gift as we wait for the advent, the revealing of Christ as Lord. What do we do with these enrichments, these gifts? Do we even recognize them? Did we realize they were ours, already here, already given, no need for a Black Friday sale or a last-minute shopping frenzy on Christmas Eve? Did we even realize we were called into fellowship, the fellowship of Jesus Christ our Lord?

Do we know what that means?

Advent always begins with apocalypse, but we misunderstand that, too. "Apocalypse" is the Greek word, but it doesn't mean "disastrous end to all things" and "dreadful final judgment from which there is no appeal." It just means "revelation." "Lord, when did we see you?" is the apocalypse of the sheep and the goats, the moment just before the revelation when they realize someone was there and they didn't recognize them. Apocalypse is not when all things end in disaster; apocalypse is when you finally know the truth. But if the truth is that God has always been there, and you haven't been looking....?

Chris Hayes said this morning that if the American expectation that the next generation will do better than the prior generation comes to an end, it will mean a major revolution in our politics. What he meant was, it would create a crisis which would end in a completely unexpected outcome. The headline from Black Friday was that retail sales set a record. The other headlines were the assaults on shoppers by other shoppers, by thieves, and by store security; as well as the story of the man who collapsed to the floor with a heart attack, while other shoppers stepped around or over him, intent on getting the bargains they came for. The fact is, in the past 30 years the expectation that this generation would live better than the last has proven to be false. Statistics make it clear the next generations cannot possible live as well as their parents and grandparents, despite the ubiquity of iPads and cell phones. The decline has begun, we are already living in it, our society and our politics are already reflecting the crisis. This is what that crisis looks like, but if we cannot recognize it, how can we even know that summer is near? How do we know it's summer at all without a calendar and someone to tell us? Do we even read the signs of the times, or do we just expect it all to be explained to us by someone at sometime and in the meantime we are busy with living, or blogging, or watching TV, or keeping up with our families?

This is not a Christian nation, and this is not an argument for a Christian society. Reinhold Niebuhr and Soren Kierkegaard marked "paid" to both those concepts some time ago. The call is not for the nation to return to Christ but rather, like the Desert Fathers, perhaps to consider the wisdom of a tactical retreat, of abandonment as salvation, or at least as fleeing the sinking ship for the few available lifeboats. It is a call to consider radical alternatives.

What life have we if we have not life together? But what life have we if we don't even understand what "living" means? What life have we without relationships, but we do even understand what relationships are? Do we have a relationship with God? Or do we just expect something from God? In a relationship, the absence of someone from it means we are missing something, perhaps something that will keep us whole. If we just expect something, absence just means we haven't gotten anything lately; and surely we deserve another gift! But if we have a relationship with God, if we truly want God around simply because God is God, then we are always waiting for God to show up again. And what would that waiting look like? What would that kind of living look like? And what would happen if we recognized, not that God was going to show up someday and really up end things, but that God was already here? How would that challenge things as we know them? And do we even want it to?

An Advent Primer

2011-11-26T09:45:00.000-08:00

Lies and Consequences

2011-11-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

a review of J.Edgar

Clint Eastwood’s latest film is a biopic in the more or less classic/modern mode, telling the story of the long and tortured life of a short and troubled man, J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio). Although there are some fine performances, the film doesn’t click at the level of morality tale that one suspects Eastwood was reaching for, and falls short of the grand tragedy it might have been. The most effective elements are the touching interpersonal and domestic tragedies of Hoover’s relationship with Tolson (Armie Hammer), and the insidious relationship Hoover had with his mother — and let me say Dame Judi Dench is riveting as a twisted and twisting mother out of some private Hell.

But the larger tragic theme never quite seems to click: how a man supposedly so devoted to truth and justice could remain so blind not only to the lies he told himself but the lies he told others, and how by setting himself up as private arbiter of justice committed great injustices against the country he loved. The theme almost clicks in the late scenes in which Hoover (perhaps) recognizes in Nixon some of his own foibles and failings, but the connection fails to link with a satisfying chunk of dramatic inevitability.

Perhaps I’m asking too much — but it seems to me that here was a story of possibly Shakespearian proportions, complete with subplots and levels of resonance. Yet the personal and public levels of the story fail to align in this dramaturgical dance, and remain as clumsy as Hoover’s own first efforts at terpsichore.

The film could have been a morality play for our time: when the well-meaning and self-righteous commit crimes in the cause of justice, and promote real falsehood in support of some abstract truth. Perhaps in retrospect the film will be seen in that light, but for the present it fails to make the connections.

There is much to admire in the technical aspects of the film, in terms of decor, costume and sense of period, but the make-up imposed upon Hoover and Tolson in an effort to age the actors has to be the worst I’ve seen in decades. The high-resolution camera is a harsher critic than I will ever be; but it is astounding to me that the make up on the men is so poor (you can practically see the seams) while Naomi Watts’ is so subtle and convincing. (Different make-up artists were involved, and it is easy to see who has the knack and who doesn't) A minor point, to be sure, but a distraction in engaging with the characters, who, to the actors’ credit, do manage to move and engage.

So this remains an actors’ film rather than a director’s. See it for the performances, and perhaps with a goal to find among the remnants some hint of what it might have been.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

R I P Wally Coberg

2011-11-26T06:59:00.000-08:00

The Internet is a funny thing. Particularly given the emergence of social media. I've found myself connecting with folks I've not seen or been in touch with for thirty or forty years. A case in point is Wally Coberg, whom I first met in the early seventies when I was part of The Electric Shakespeare Company performing outdoors in the Baltimore summer at Towson State College. We reconnected via Facebook last summer, and had planned to get together on my next trip to Baltimore, but then early this week I received word from another old colleague, director Paul Berman, that Wally had died. Today his obituary appeared in the good old Baltimre Sun.

The Electric Shakespeare Company performed two plays that summer, with the same company on the same set — which was Wally's design. Both plays were of a post-apocalyptic sort, about the collapse of society: Troilus and Cressida and Lear: A Rock Musical. Yes, you heard that correctly. I played Thersites in the first, which was set in a sort of pre–Mad Max world of motorcycle gangs — the Greeks — and cobbled together sports and military equipment — the Trojans: Priam looked like Alec Guinness in River Kwai. In Lear, I was one-half of the Fool (look, it's complicated: there was a young Fool and an old Fool). In any case, Wally's set was marvelous, especially in the outdoor setting of the natural amphitheater of Towson's "Glen." It resembled a half destroyed relic of the Globe theater, with many levels suitable for Thersites to clamber about on — which made the famous "spy scene" in T&C especially effective as there were literally three levels of action and commentary going on. The photo herewith is a picture which I didn't have, but which Wally sent me last fall, from that production, which I hope gives a tiny glimpse of his wonderful set. That's me on the left and the late Dennis O'Keefe (as Pandarus) on the right, in the closing scene of this dark comedy.

Wally's career had taken off in new directions recently, including work on Edgar Allan Poe, who used to live right around the corner from where I now abide. Small world. And smaller, in many ways, for Wally leaving it, though he did much to enlarge it with his art. God bless him.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

MINE!! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!

2011-11-25T13:46:00.000-08:00

The unofficial slogan of Black Friday. Why? Because:

A woman trying to improve her chance to buy cheap electronics at a Walmart in a wealthy suburb spewed pepper spray on a crowd of shoppers and 20 people suffered minor injuries, police said Friday.

The attack took place about 10:20 p.m. Thursday shortly after doors opened for the sale at the Walmart in Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley.

The store had brought out a crate of discounted Xbox video game players, and a crowd had formed to wait for the unwrapping, when the woman began spraying people "in order to get an advantage," police Sgt. Jose Valle said.

I live across the freeway from a "wealthty suburb." People from "that side" come over to the grocery store I shop at. I'm not surprised this happened where it did, and I imagine the person with the pepper spray made her getaway in a very expensive car. Whether she could still afford it or not, I can't say; but I'm guessing she lived nearby.

I understand at least one person was shot in the parking lot of another Wal-Mart, presumably a robbery attempt. Robberies I almost understand; at least they seem normal next to a customer taking out the competition with chemical weapons.

In Little Rock, Arkansas, close to the home of Wal-Mart, a riot over $2 waffle irons prompted Gawker to write that incident represented everything "awesome" about America, including the: "horrible economy, aggressive consumerism, mindless violence and a complete lack of concern for one's fellow human beings."

Jeremiah springs to mind in response to a day like this: "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" Or Isaiah; surely the people are grass. But those are both too big, too sweeping, too grand for this occasion. The prophets were responding to events of life and death, of exile and loss; this is just the death of spirit. This seems more like Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple; except Wal-Mart is no temple, and neither are the cities of America.

I was prompted to think, today, about what religions teach, and two fundamental teachings came to mind: that if there is a meaning to life, it is to enjoy life, although how it is enjoyed is the teachings of that religion. The other is to care for your neighbor, your fellow man. Neither is on display here, although ostensibly the reason for the purchases and the midnight sales is a religious one.

Well, not really; never has been. But can we at least get Thanksgiving back?

Role Model

2011-11-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Mary, with your human nature
God himself was pleased to dwell.
Every priest should imitate your
Hosting thus Emmanuel.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thanksgiving and our Role

2011-11-24T10:02:00.000-08:00

While preaching my extempore sermon for Thanksgiving Day, just prior to feeding the hungry in our parish hall, I realized I'd picked the Gospel for Year B insead of Year A (I'm already thinking next Sunday!) Perhaps this was a serendipity, though, for it struck me how well this Gospel about not worrying about what you will eat, drink, or wear fits in with this past Sunday's Gospel of judgment upon those precisely who failed to provide food, drink and clothing to the least among the king's family. God provides most of us with so much. Yet others have nothing. Isn't it then, through us, that "God provides" them with food, drink and clothing?

It is a scandal that today — this very night — people will starve to death while others scrape wasted food from their plates that they are unable to eat for surfeit and satiation.

Lord, have mercy. Even in thanks, remember. And more than remember, act!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

"We're all forgiven at Thanksgiving, and everybody's welcome at the feast."--Garrison Keillor

PRAISE AND HARVEST

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, from whom cometh every good and pefect gift, we call to remembrance thy loving-kindness and the tender mercies which have been ever of old, and with grateful hearts we would lift up to thee the voice of our thanksgiving,

For all the gifts which thou hast bestowed upon us; for the life thou hast given us, and the world in which we live,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the work we are enabled to do, and the truth we are permitted to learn; for whatever of good there has been in our past lives, and for all the hopes and aspirations which lead us on toward better things,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the order and constancy of nature; for the beauty and bounty of the world; for day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest; for the varied gifts of loveliness and use which every season brings,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For all the comforts and gladness of life; for our homes and all our home-blessings; for our friends and all pure pleasure; for the love, sympathy, and good will of men,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For all the blessings of civilization, wise government and legislation; for education, and all the privileges we enjoy through literature, science, and art; for the help and counsel of those who are wiser and better than ourselves,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For all true knowledge of thee and the world in which we live, and the life of truth and righteousness and divine communion to which thou hast called us; for prophets and apostles, and all earnest seekers after truth; for all lovers and helpers of mankind, and all godly and gifted men and women,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the gift of thy Son Jesus Christ, and all the helps and hopes which are ours as his disciples; for the presence and inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, for all the ministries of thy truth and grace,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For communion with thee, the Father of our spirits; for the light and peace that are gained through trust and obedience, and the darkness and disquietude which befall us when we disobey thy laws and follow our lower desires and selfish passions,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the desire and power to help others; for every opportunity of serving our generation according to thy will, and manifesting the grace of Christ to men,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For all the discipline of life; for the tasks and trials by which we are trained to patience, self-knowledge and self-conquest, and brought into closer sympathy with our suffering brethren; for troubles which have lifted us nearer to thee and drawn us into deeper fellowship with Jesus Christ,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the sacred and tender ties which bind us to the unseen world; for the faith which dispels the shadows of earth, and fills the saddest and the last moments of life with the light of an immortal hope.
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

God of all grace and love, we have praised thee with our lips; grant that we may praise thee also in consecrated and faithful lives. And may the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.
AMEN.

THANKSGIVING

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift, we call to remembrance they loving-kindness and they tender mercies which have ever been od old, and with grateful hearts we would lift up to the the voice of our thanksgiving.

For all the gifts which thou has bestowed upon us; for the life that thou hast given us, and the world in which we life,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the work we are enabled to do, and the truth we are permitted to learn; for whatever of good there has been in our past lives, and for all the hopes and aspirations which lead us on to better things,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the order and constancy of nature; for the beauty and bounty of the world; for day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest; for the varied gifts of loveliness and use which every season brings,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For all the comforts and gladness of life; for our homes and all our home-blessings; for our friends and all pure pleasure; for the love, sympathy, and good will of men,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For all the blessings of civilization, wise government and legislation; for education, and all the privileges we enjoy through literature, science, and art; for the help and counsel oj those who are wiser and better than ourselves,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For all true knowledge of thee and the world in which we live, and the life of truth and righteousness and divine communion to which thou hast called us; for prophets and apostles, and all earnest seekers after truth; for all lovers and helpers of mankind, and all godly and gifted men and women,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the gift of thy Son Jesus Christ, and all the helps and hopes which are ours as his disciples; for the presence and inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, for all the ministries of thy truth and grace,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For communion with thee, the Father of our spirits; for the light and peace that are gained through trust and obedience, and the darkness and disquietude which befall us when we disobey thy laws and follow our lower desires and selfish passions,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the desire and power to help others; for every opportunity of serving our generation according to thy will, and manifesting the face of Christ to men,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For all the discipline of life; for the tasks and trials by which we are ained to patience, self-knowledge and self-conquest, and brought into closer sympathy with our suffering brethren; for troubles which have lifted us nearer to thee and drawn us into deeper fellowship with Jesus Christ,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

For the sacred and tender ties which bind us to the unseen world; for the faith which dispels the shadows of earth, and fills the saddest and the last moments of life with the light of an immortal hope,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD.

God all all grace and love, we have praised thee with our lips; grant that we may praise thee with also in consecrated and faithful lives. And may the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.

AMEN.

Analyzing the Georgia Decisions (I): the Dissenters Have the Better Arguments

2011-11-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

[Note: in this opening post on the recent Georgia cases, I begin with the case involving the Presbyterian Church (Timberridge), because it is the pivot on which the Court's decision in the Christ Church Savannah case turns. I will have more to say about the latter decision in a subsequent post.]

The majority opinion of the Georgia Supreme Court in the recent Christ Church Savannah case offers a study in judicial dynamics. The author of the opinion is Justice David E. Nahmias; he also wrote the opinion for the 4-3 majority in the case of Timberridge Presbyterian Church, which the Court decided the same day. [UPDATE 11/24/2011: I have been given some information which I find simply amazing. I am informed that Justice Nahmias is a prominent member of an Episcopal congregation in Atlanta, while the Presiding Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, the Hon. George H. Carley, is an equally prominent member of a church that has joined the Anglican Province of America. The latter saw enough of a potential conflict in the Christ Church case to recuse himself from participation in it, while Justice Nahmias not only did not see fit to recuse himself, but authored the majority opinions in both cases! It's pretty good when you find yourself in a position to be able to take a decisive stance in favor of your own Church, while purporting to decide the case on purely secular grounds.]

In the Timberridge case, the dissenters included Presiding Justice George H. Carley, who had recused himself from the Christ Church Savannah case (perhaps because he is a prominent Episcopalian); he was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein (I am not certain about the distinction in Georgia between the "Chief Justice" and the "Presiding Justice", but there seems to be one). The third dissenting vote came from a lower court judge, the Hon. Deborah C. Benefield, sitting in the place of Justice P. Harris Hines, who did not participate because he serves as an Elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Marietta.

In contrast, there was but a single dissenter in the Christ Church Savannah case: another lower court judge sitting in the place of the recused Presiding Justice Carley: the Hon. S. Phillip Brown. (Judge Benefield was not on that panel.) Taking the two cases together, we then find the following alignments:

For implied trusts in favor of the national Church in both cases:

Nahmias, J.

Benham, J.

Thomas, J.

Melton, J.

For an implied trust in the Christ Church case, but not in the Timberridge case:

Hunstein, C.J.

For an implied trust in the Christ Church case (did not participate in Timberridge):

Hines, J.

Against any implied trust in the Christ Church case (did not participate in Timberridge):

S. Phillip Brown (sitting by designation in place of Curley, P.J.)

Against any implied trust in the Timberridge case (did not participate in Christ Church):

Curley, P.J.

Deborah C. Benefield (sitting by designation in place of Hines, J.)

From this lineup, it may be seen how the core majority (Nahmias, Benham, Thomas and Melton) decided, in effect, both cases. The majority opinion in Christ Church heavily relies upon the majority opinion in Timberridge to bolster its decision. (One wonders how Chief Justice Hunstein could join in an opinion [Christ Church] which derives most of its rationale from an opinion [Timberridge] which she refused to join. Since she did not express her views in either case, however, we are left to speculate.) In effect, the following passage from the dissent of Judge Benefield in Timberridge sums up the core majority's slender rationale for finding an implied trust based on the local church's "participation in", and "benefits received from", its membership in the national Church:

There are church property cases decided solely on the national church’s documents demonstrating the grantor’s intent by looking at the beneficiary’s impression of a trust, apparently due to the alleged grantor’s “affiliation” with the national church and the purported “benefits” enjoyed by the grantor thereby. Kemp, supra, at 328-329; Crumbley v. Solomon, 243 Ga. 343, 344-345 (254 SE2d 330) (1979); Carnes, supra. Affiliation with the national church, and purported benefits of it, have not been articulated as a neutral principle of law. Inasmuch as this “affiliation” is not a deed, statute or church document and it is being relied on to demonstrate intent, perhaps it creates a genuine issue of material fact assuming opposing affidavits to the contrary as in this case. . . . Conversely, it is perhaps a judicial acknowledgment that it is insufficient to decide these critical cases on deeds, statutes and church documents alone.

Often the deeds (or land grant) do not establish a trust holding the property for the greater church. See Carnes; Christ Church; Kemp and Crumbley, supra. In determining intent, this is viewed as irrelevant, “neutral”, or in some roundabout way proof of the grantor’s intent. As the majority opinion notes, “[i]t is true that [the deeds do not] show an intent by the grantors to create a trust.” Maj. Op. at 12. When in truth, it was either created or it was not and a review of the deed would quickly demonstrate which was true. The majority continues “[b]ut [the deeds] also do not expressly preclude the creation of one. Given [the provision in the national church’s constitution] Timberridge would have no reason to believe that its deeds needed to recite a trust in favor of the general church...” Id.; see also Christ Church, supra, at 89-90. It would seem just as easily to follow that Timberridge had no intention of creating a trust since they did not provide one in the deeds as they easily could have. What would be the purpose of including language “this instrument does not create a trust” in a deed?

Precisely the question to ask, Judge Benefield -- why would anyone put such language in a deed? And the answer is: "Given the majority's inclination to conclude, from the lack of any such language, that the parties did not positively preclude the imposition of a trust by other means, one is almost forced to recite such nonsense -- if that is what it will take to keep the courts from leaping to a contrary conclusion."

Because the hook by which the majority finds an "implied trust" on parish property is such a slender reed, and is grounded on no writings whatsoever (that is, no writings of the landowner whose property is impressed with a trust by implication), the finding of an implied trust based on evidence of long-standing affiliation (and the presumed "benefits" received therefrom) takes the doctrine of "neutral principles" into uncharted territory, where there are no firm guideposts by which to assess the evidence. And that evidence, as Judge Benefield also notes, is often disputed, and so should preclude these decisions by summary judgment -- where the judges decide the cases alone, without the benefit of fact-finding first by a jury.

Thus the Christ Church decision relies mainly on Timberridge, and the latter relies on -- but what, exactly, does it rely on? Let's listen to Presiding Judge Curley, as he struggles to understand the basis for the majority's decision in Timberridge:

The majority has contrived an opinion which purports to make a thorough examination of the documents relevant to the “neutral principles of law” doctrine and to find the existence of a trust pursuant thereto even though it virtually ignores a necessary element of trusts. That element is the intent of the settlor, which must be ascertained with reasonable certainty for an express trust to exist. [Citation omitted.] Alternatively, it must be “implied from the
circumstances” for an implied trust to exist. [Citation omitted.] Furthermore, even assuming that the majority has appropriately declined to apply Georgia’s generic express or implied trust statutes, the same requirement of the settlor’s intent nevertheless is found in the neutral principles approach, as articulated in Jones v. Wolf, 443 U. S. 595, 603-606 (III) (99 SC 3020, 61 LE2d 775) (1979):
[T]he neutral-principles analysis shares the peculiar genius of private-law systems in general – flexibility in ordering private rights and obligations to reflect the intentions of the parties. . . . [A] religious organization can ensure that a dispute over the ownership of church property will be resolved in accord with the desires of the members. . . . The neutral-principles method, at least as it has evolved in Georgia, requires a civil court to examine certain religious documents, such as a church constitution, for language of trust in favor of the general church. In undertaking such an examination, a civil court must take special care to scrutinize the document in purely secular terms, and not to rely on religious precepts in determining whether the document indicates that the parties have intended to create a trust. . . . Under the neutral-principles approach, the outcome of a church property dispute is not foreordained. At any time before the dispute erupts, the parties can ensure, if they so desire, that the faction loyal to the hierarchical church will retain the church property. . . . And the civil courts will be bound to give effect to the result indicated by the parties, provided it is embodied in some legally cognizable form.
(Emphasis supplied.)

Thus the whole purpose of the "neutral principles" approach, as the Presiding Justice reminds us, is to ascertain what both parties intended in their arrangement, based on the written evidence which documents that arrangement. Justice Carley then addresses his most withering criticism to the way in which the majority analyzes those documents in Timberridge (with my emphasis added to his words):

The intention of Timberridge Presbyterian Church (Timberridge), as the local church, cannot be discerned by consideration of either the 1982 amendment to the Book of Church Order (BOCO) or the 1983 Book of Order (BOO). To limit judicial consideration in this manner would effectively constitute an inappropriate deference to church doctrine and reliance on religious precepts, or even an attempted return to the unconstitutional “departure from doctrine” approach. [Citation omitted.] Although the majority does consider relevant documents other than BOCO or BOO, it does not articulate what it should be looking for. Where, as here, there is neither a dispositive statute nor any deed with clear trust language, a court must look in other documentation or circumstances for the local church’s intention to create a trust or to consent to trust provisions in national church documents. . . .

The Articles of Incorporation for Timberridge Presbyterian Church, Inc. (TPC Inc.) are a remarkably slender reed on which to hang the weight of the majority opinion. The majority relies upon the Articles’ reference to the definition of “active member” in the Book of Order but fails to quote the whole definition, which reads as follows:
An active member of a particular church is a person who has made a profession of faith in Christ, has been baptized, has been received into membership of the church, has voluntarily submitted to the government of this church, and participates in the church’s work
and worship.
BOO § G-5.0202. This provision is “located outside the property section of the Book of Order.” [Citation omitted.] Like the overall intent of the Book of Order, the purpose of that definition clearly is spiritual. The portion on which the majority relies is that an active member has “voluntary submitted to the government of” the general church. This provision strongly implies in the context that the member has submitted to the authority of the general church only in spiritual matters. [Citation omitted.] See also BOO G-9.0102 (ascribing to the governing bodies of the general church “only ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the purpose of serving Jesus Christ and declaring and obeying his will in relation to truth and service, order and discipline”). Moreover, the definition of “active member” relates only to individual members, and not to local churches or their relationship with the general church. Thus, judicial inquiry into and application of that definition is both irrelevant and constitutionally foreclosed. [Citation omitted.]

Justice Carley then notes the utter lack of factual evidence to indicate an intention on the part of the local Presbyterian congregation to submit to an implied trust on their property. First, their joinder in the union of the national churches was not something under their control:

In the face of the exceedingly weak or non-existent documentary evidence of Timberridge’s intent to hold all of its property in trust for the general church, other relevant documentation and circumstances overwhelmingly prove the absence of any such intent. Timberridge operated for more than 150 years, including over 100 years as a member of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), without any property trust provision. . . . It cannot be said that Timberridge voluntarily affiliated with the general church in 1983. The Articles of Agreement providing for the 1983 reunion of the PCUS with the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA) mandates that “[e]ach and every congregation of the [PCUS] and of The [UPCUSA] shall be a congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” Article 1.4. Thus, instead of being required to “opt in,” each local church was automatically part of the new general church and was given eight years to petition for dismissal or to seek an exemption from the provisions of the property chapter of the Book of Order.

Next, the evidence showed that Timberridge did all that it could to avail itself of a provision in the agreement of union which allowed it to "opt out" of the property trust clause in the Book of Order:

Timberridge did not wait eight years, but rather acted in four years. In fact, Timberridge acted just two weeks after the last individual owner conveyed her interest in the land to Timberridge, and the Presbytery was promptly notified as required. More important, Timberridge broadly took “the ‘property exemption’ as provided in the Book of Order (G-8.0700)” and did not limit that notice to a single provision of the property chapter. Most important of all, Timberridge’s notice, regardless of the precise application of that chapter’s language thereto, constituted Timberridge’s only expression of intent with respect to the recently enacted property trust provisions in national church documents. In that prompt notice, Timberridge unmistakably rejected any consent to hold its property in trust for the general church. It is irrelevant that 20 years elapsed thereafter during which Timberridge continued its relationship with the general church until a dispute arose and Timberridge brought suit asserting control of its property. Those circumstances are wholly consistent with the fact that Timberridge, which never expressed any intent to create a trust, was relying on its prompt notice of exemption from property trust provisions as its expression of intent not to create a trust. [Citations omitted.]

Judge Carley goes on to contrast Timberridge's conduct in this regard to that of Christ Church Savannah, which supposedly allowed 30 years to pass without making any objection to the adoption of the Dennis Canon. This is unfair, and shows a lack of appreciation for the inability of the national Episcopal Church to adopt canons which bind individual parishes and dioceses without their consent. General Convention is not the "supreme legislative authority" in the Episcopal Church (USA) -- language which would have made it just that was expressly voted down by the dioceses meeting in General Convention in 1895.

Without any kind of supremacy clause in its Constitution, General Convention can only adopt resolutions and canons which it asks the dioceses and parishes to honor in their day-to-day operations. It takes local bylaws and local canons to implement those requests from General Convention, and implementing them attests to the mutual consent of both parties to the arrangement. But the Dennis Canon was not implemented by any rule or bylaw adopted at the parish level, and the Diocese's own canons contained a provision that preserved the "vested rights" of property owners which pre-existed the adoption of canons.

Thus, in the same way as the dissenters in Timberridge criticize the majority for implying a parish's assent from its long-continued silence in regard to a unilateral proposal by the national church to establish a trust on their property, so the same criticism could be made of the majority's similar finding in the Christ Church case.

In consequence of these two decisions by a four-person core majority on the Supreme Court of Georgia, the law of implied trusts on church property has now come unmoored from any grounding in statute or legal precedent. We are back full circle, to the days when an "implied trust" not to depart from doctrine was the only basis for the courts' decisions -- until the United States Supreme Court banished all such theories of implied trust in the (Georgia!) case of Presbyterian Church v. Mary E. B. Hull Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S. 440 (1969).

The ground for banishing the implied trust doctrine then was that its application entangled the courts in religious doctrine to a degree that was impermissible under the First Amendment. Under it, the courts had to examine which faction in a divided church had kept more closely to the original purposes for which the property on which its building stood had been donated.

But under the present doctrine, the courts are drawn into all sorts of improper speculation about the significance to attach to a member church's "subjecting itself" to the "governance" of a national church -- including to the point, apparently, of conceding to that national church the power to impose unilaterally a trust on the member's property! In order to find such an extraordinary cessation of power, one would think that the evidence of the parish's intent would have to be extremely conclusive. As Judge Benefield points out in her dissent, however, that is not the case under the standard applied by the majority (with my emphasis added):

Despite this, the majority in the case sub judice states their decision is “based ... on the sort of legal materials ‘familiar to lawyers and judges,’ embodied in a ‘legally cognizable form,’ and having nothing to do with the church’s religious doctrine,” quoting Jones v. Wolf. . . . In what non-church property case is the grantor’s intent found solely in a self-serving document created by the grantee determined to be a “legally cognizable form”?

Calvin Massey’s quote in the Kemp dissent goes on to provide:
This is ... the ... extraordinary power to seize property by divesting others of their beneficial interests in the property ... Donors of property to local churches are not necessarily members of the hierarchical church. Such donors have no assurance that their intent to transfer property in trust for the exclusive benefit of the local church, and not the hierarchical church, will be honored. All the general church would need to do is alter its own internal governing instruments to nullify the explicit intentions of donors.

Precisely again, Judge Benefield -- you have touched upon the central nerve of this entire problem. For if national churches can unilaterally, through their so-called "democratic" processes, cancel the intent of individual donors that their gifts stay with the local parish, then those donors will simply stop giving anything to their local parishes. I have yet to see a single Episcopal Church (USA) case in which the dissenters wanting to stay in ECUSA formed the majority -- in every published case, they were the minority. And in practically every such case to date, as well, the minority is simply too small to maintain, pay for and sustain "their" church property. As a consequence, the Diocese has to step in and subsidize the parish's operations, or else leave the church building vacant, or put it on the market for purchase by anyone except the majority who was forced to leave it.

This doctrine makes absolutely no sense to any generous-minded donor, and in the long run, it will seal the fate of the Episcopal Church (USA). No new churches will be built with donated funds, and those churches that remain will have fewer and fewer members over time, since nothing they can do locally will assure them that the building in which they worship is truly theirs. That is why the Dennis Canon is ECUSA's Trojan Horse, and why the next General Convention should abolish it -- if it genuinely wants the Church to grow, rather than shrink.

Anglicans Down Under

2011-11-23T07:57:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of the Anglican Communion is being able to share conversation and reflection with folks from literally the other side of the world, either virtually or in person. One of my favorite interlocutors is Jenny Plane Te Paa — seen here with me at the recent conference in South Africa. She and I enjoyed Bible study together, and lively conversation about Communion affairs, and the life of the church in her own New Zealand / Aotearoa. (Photo by Jon Richardson)

Another New Zealander with whom I've had some good conversation is Peter Carrell, although he represents a view very different to mine or Jenny's. I commend a recent long and winding discussion that while it strays off-topic from time to time has, I think, some definite virtues. There are times I would rather I could chat with Peter over a pint than via comment-boxes, and perhaps that may one day happen.

I'm also fond of the writing and postings of Ron Smith, who blogs at KiwiAnglo. And let's not forget Bosco Peters for all things liturgical. All in all, the connections with the Southern Hemisphere are a vibrant part of my own warm feelings towards our Anglican Communion.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Quiet Tribulations of a Christian Candidate for President

2011-11-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

I am far from choosing a favorite candidate for president. Yet I could not help but be struck by the series of videos shown below, which I never would have seen had my source for Presidential campaign news been the usual (mainstream) media.

Please do not mistake my purpose in showing these videos. I am not pushing a particular candidate (yet) for President. What I would like you to learn from these videos is exactly how encouraging and refreshing a Christian worldview can be in the very midst of secular politics. It is a view that never flinches from telling the unvarnished truth -- whether about oneself, or about others who are getting all the attention.

With those caveats firmly in mind, you should now watch this perfectly articulated response to the entire "Occupy ____ " movement (fill in the blank with a location near you):

And having delivered that resonant message, the candidate next allowed himself some Christian candor, as you will experience about three to four minutes into following video:

The candidate was also asked why the current secular media so attacks and persecutes any public figure who dares to confess his religious faith as a part of a campaign for office. In response, he unassumingly instructed his questioner by drawing on his time spent in the classroom, as a professor of history:

Now, before all the partisans pile on with their comments, I would like to be permitted this one observation. Newt Gingrich is decidedly a sinner, no better and no worse (a sinner, that is!) than most of us. His track record still makes a lot of people very angry. To the extent, however, that anger about Gingrich's past doings spills over into one's judgment about the current crop of presidential candidates, I would urge a good deal of careful, and measured, response to those inclinations. "Judge not, lest ye be judged"; or perhaps, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

I see very few in the race who are as willing as Newt Gingrich now is to speak to an election-year audience the plain, Christian truth about any topic. Rather than admit their faith-based perspective, most candidates dance around their religion, or shy away from any probing inquiry, because of legitimate fears for how any honest response will be treated in the secular media. But those candidates, I suggest, are the ones who are truly uncomfortable with their faith, who are in need of assistance to be able to integrate their religion with their public life, and who therefore, in my view, are not yet ready for high public office.

I would rather have, any day, an avowed and repentant Christian for a political leader than I would someone who still thinks they can do it all on their own -- with (of course) what they estimate will be sufficient (but even so, only secular and human) help.

As I say, the race is still young, and doubtless there are many surprises ahead. At this stage, I am simply expressing a word of appreciation for a candidate who can sincerely articulate, unabashedly and in public, his faith and the confidence it gives him, while knowing that there are many who have yet to forgive him his past transgressions. The proper response in that situation is a sincere Christian humility, and I think Newt Gingrich in his latest appearances is exhibiting such a response. And for that, I can be thankful -- no fellow Christian should wish for anything less.

Are there no workhouses?

2011-11-21T14:38:00.000-08:00

At least Ebenezer Scrooge was a fictional character; and Jonathan Swift was using satire to make a point.

I don't think Newt has an excuse:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich called child labor laws "stupid" Friday in an appearance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

"It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid," said the former House speaker, according to CNN. "Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."

"You're going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America," he added.

You'll note the burden should fall on poor children, which puts Newt in league with Swift's narrator and Dicken's most famous character. Because what he actually says is that child labor laws should be means tested; the rich need not worry about putting their children to work. They are redeemed by the labor of their ancestors, no matter how many generations back it was. And along the way, Newt twists the word "tragic" into such a pretzel it literally no longer has any meaning. And "extraordinarily radical" apparently means the positions that made 19th century England such a shining example of compassion and enlightenment for centuries thereafter.

Shame still works, but not on our public figures. I'm not sure why that is.

Axios!

2011-11-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, the Convention of the Diocese of New York elected the Rev Canon Andrew M L Dietsche as Bishop Coadjutor, by a very large majority on the third ballot. Shortly after the election, members of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory who were present for the election managed to recruit Alito Orsini of the diocesan staff to snap this picture next to the great pulpit — with its representation of Gregory the Great at the left. In the photo are (l to r) James Mahoney, Tobias Stanislas Haller, Thomas Mark Liotta, Bishop-elect Dietsche, James Teets and Millard Cook.

Andy has been Canon Pastor in the diocese, and has been a support and friend to many of those who serve in the parishes of a complex region. God grant him many years of service in his new capacity.

Open your window and shout....

2011-11-21T09:50:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that the anger and animosity about the police response to the Occupy movement is misplaced; or at least, it should be. If the Dept of Homeland Security and the FBI are "conspiring" with mayors across the country to restore order to their cities, it means Occupy is doing it right. If Occupy members get arrested, it means Occupy is doing it right. If 84 year old women get pepper sprayed, it means they are doing it right.

The question is, does anybody know that?

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs.On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Police Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

The Rev. Dr. King, yet again. It isn't simple, yet it is important. The idea of protests is either to disrupt; or it is to create "a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth." The latter, obviously, is more productive. The former, though, seems to have become the goal of the Occupy movement.

So, the choice is create a situation that opens the door to negotiation, or march, annoy people, and get arrested; alot. Which will just annoy people; alot. Martin Luther King started in December, 1955 with a bus boycott that lasted 382 days. It was 1964 before the Civil Rights Act was passed, 1965 before the Voting Rights Act was passed, and when King died he was leading marches for economic justice. But re-read the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and you'll see King's focus never really shifted in 13 years of leading the movement. 13 years. And the Occupy movement expects to change things because they are pissed off at a few mayors and a federal government that is willing to help the mayors do what governments do: maintain public order?

I'm starting to lose interest in what the children are doing. David Graeber seems to think an anarchist vision that closely resembles a pure democracy will win the day. More and more I am not so sure. I don't seek a unifying vision so much as I seek a rational purpose. Disruption is not a purpose; it's a temper tantrum.

If there is no more purpose to the Occupy movement than that, then Charles Pierce is right, and this is the way the movement ends. Not with a bang, but with a shout: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

And we all know how far that movement went.

Georgia Supreme Court Awards Christ Church to Diocese on Implied Trust Theory

2011-11-21T05:26:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court of Georgia, in a 45-page decision which no doubt was lengthened by having to respond to a 96-page dissent, has decided the appeal of Christ Church, Savannah against the majority which voted to leave ECUSA and the Diocese of Georgia in 2007, and to award the property (four parcels, the first and principal one of which was granted to the local parish by the colonial authorities in 1758) to the minority who chose to remain in ECUSA.

The majority opinion goes to great lengths to justify its finding that the property of Christ Church was impressed with an implied trust in favor of the Diocese and the national Church through the parish's acquiescence in the national Church's Constitution and Canons over the years, as exhibited by their reaffirmation of those documents in 1981, when they received a new State charter. The dissent offers a treatise on why that cannot be the case, especially given that the national Church did not express its trust on church properties via an amendment to its Constitution, as Jones v. Wolf held (in dictum) it could do, but through a simple amendment to its Canons.

At the same time, and in a 4-3 split, the same Court, in an opinion authored by the same Justice (Nahmias), reversed the decision by the Georgia Court of Appeals that the Timberridge Presbyterian Church had successfully prevented, by its resistance to, and "opting out" of, its national Church's trust provision, the imposition of a trust on its property. (I had criticized the inconsistency between the two opinions of the Court of Appeals in this earlier post.)

With hundreds of pages of legal opinions to digest, I cannot present more than these brief observations at this point. In due course, I will put up a longer treatment of these two important decisions.

Trojan Horse Sent Packing from South Carolina

2011-11-19T13:31:00.000-08:00

As I have remarked on many occasions, the Dennis Canon, probably (but not definitely) enacted at General Convention 1979, is the Episcopal Church (USA)'s Trojan Horse. Sneaked in under everyone's radar at the last possible minute, it lay dormant for over twenty years before suddenly unleashing its hidden forces to go out and attack unsuspecting parishes. Unable to accomplish anything by itself, it needed the assistance of various State courts and legislatures to achieve its results. And in the process, it has cost the Episcopal Church alone over Twenty-Five Million Dollars, and tens of thousands of lost parishioners, hundreds of parishes, and four entire dioceses. A Trojan Horse, indeed!

Now comes word that the ugly beast has been definitively and decisively banished from the Church's Diocese of South Carolina. After receiving a crippling wound last September from that state's Supreme Court, the creature was sent finally packing by the Diocese and its bishop, when last week they mailed out quitclaim deeds to every single one of their incorporated parishes. The legal effect of such deeds was that the Diocese gave up and released any and all claims ("quit its claim" -- hence "quitclaim deed") it may have had, from whatever source or reason, and however long ago acquired, in those parish properties. Chancellor Wade Logan explained:

For 190 years (1789-1979) there had never been any idea that somehow the parishes did not completely and fully own their property. Our Supreme Court has now said that the attempt to change that in 1979 by the General Convention was not binding on the parish of All Saints, Pawley's Island, SC. In recognition of that ruling, and in continued pursuit of our historic unity based on common vision rather than legal coercion, the Diocesan Convention removed the relevant section from our canons in October 2010. The issuance of these quitclaim deeds lays to rest any lingering issue that may exist for some parishes when they seek to obtain title insurance or secure bank financing for parish projects. Parishes may choose to file them or not based on their individual needs. We trust this action will enable parishes to freely exercise their rights and responsibility to oversee that which God, through the faithfulness of prior generations, has bequeathed to them.

The usual suspects are muttering imprecations against Bishop Lawrence as a result of this brave deed. They of course have to see it as betraying the Episcopal Church (USA), instead of strengthening it. Incredibly, they also see Bishop Lawrence as having made a multi-million-dollar "gift" to the parishes of their own properties! (Apparently they considered that "they" -- the Diocese and the Episcopal Church, and by projection the group of dissenters who is doing all the complaining -- as good as owned them. Well if that was the case, why didn't "they" contribute a single penny to their upkeep? Hypocrites never change, because they are incapable of seeing what everyone else can see.)

"Wait -- how did giving up all its Dennis Canon claims strengthen the Church?" you ask. "Didn't that act make it easier for parishes to leave the Diocese? And won't the Diocese (and the Church) be that much weaker when the Dioceses leave?"

The answer is simple, but first let me switch my metaphors for a moment. Think of the Dennis Canon as a set of chains which ties parishes to their Diocese. In most Dioceses, parishes know that if they try to cut those chains, their Diocese will go after them in court, and try to get the court to award them everything the parish has -- its buildings, altar cloths, bank accounts, candlesticks and anything else that can be itemized as belonging to that parish. In that way, the Dioceses try to make the penalties for breaking the chains too severe for the parishes even to contemplate such an act.

Now think about that image for a moment. What kind of church needs to be held together by chains? Remember that fine old prayer which used to be recited every Sunday? We prayed:

. . . More especially we pray for thy holy Church universal; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life.

That's right -- a church is held together by unity of spirit and the bond of peace. It emphatically cannot be kept together by chains and shackles. Thus, by removing the shackles of the Dennis Canon in the Diocese of South Carolina, the Episcopal Church in that Diocese is now strengthened by its parishes being allowed to come together, not because they are compelled to, but because they are free to come together, to be "led into the way of truth, [to] hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life."

As for parishes who wish to leave, nothing the Diocese did or did not do could stop them, after the Supreme Court's decision in the All Saints case. They have been free to leave ever since last September, yet none has done so. The only thing that would have reinstated the chains and shackles after that ruling would have been to force each parish to sign a deed of its property putting it into a trust for the benefit of the Diocese and ECUSA. And if the Diocese could have managed that feat, then the Church never needed to pass the Dennis Canon in the first place.

You see, that is why the Dennis Canon was sneaked through as a last-minute and little-noticed change to the canons: it could take effect immediately, without anyone's being aware of it (except the Rt. Rev. Walter Dennis himself). Had they tried to make it a change to ECUSA's Constitution, it would have had to undergo a three-year vetting process in each and every Diocese, and then come back to General Convention for another vote.

Those who shuffled the Canon under the noses of the deputies at the last minute knew exactly what they were doing: they knew they could never have gotten the parishes' voluntary consent to such a drastic provision if they had to wait three years to ask each and every one of them. So they changed the Canons instead, which required only a quick voice vote (the records of which are now permanently lost from the Archives).

There are those in the Church today, however, who still prefer using the threat of force, and chains and shackles, to keep the parishes so firmly tied to the ecclesiastical structure that they could never think of trying to leave. For them, their abstraction of a Church is a thing in itself, which demands unswerving allegiance by all who call themselves Episcopalians. It also demands all of their Church property, forever.

Remember the oral argument of the Episcopal Church Cases in the California Supreme Court? Justice Baxter asked ECUSA's attorney, Heather Anderson, to imagine a parish which was considering joining the Episcopal Church, but which wanted to be certain it could keep its valuable property in the event the arrangement did not work out. What could such a parish do, he asked, if it wanted to avoid the Dennis Canon but still belong to the Episcopal Church?

Her answer came after an awkward pause, but then it was firm and clear: "The only option would be for that parish not to join the Episcopal Church." And in those fourteen words you will learn all you need to know about the collectivist philosophy of those want to uphold the Dennis Canon: "Join our Church, and everything you have will become ours forever."

As this feature of today's ECUSA becomes more and more known, there will be fewer and fewer new churches established and built within ECUSA, because what donor wants to see the fruits of his or her donation taken over by some bishop and sold, perhaps, to become a mosque? Or, just as worse, sit around empty and forlorn, when those who built it and kept it up could still be using it? It is no wonder that ECUSA's numbers are steadily dwindling -- one reason is that there are not very many new churches being built, thanks again to the Dennis Canon, and the parishes which already belong to a Diocese are getting smaller, instead of larger. Take away the congregation's impression that they own the buildings which they pay so much to maintain, and you find them not so eager to contribute any more.

The Diocese of South Carolina is one of the few mainland dioceses which is actually growing, and not shrinking, so it must be doing something right. Confirming to its parishes that they won their property free and clear is one of those things. (The Diocese of Upper South Carolina was also freed of the chains of the Dennis Canon by the South Carolina Supreme Court's decision, as well. In 2003 they entertained a resolution which would have abolished the Canon, but did not pass it. They might want to reconsider.)

This next Monday, at 8:30 a.m., the Georgia Supreme Court will post its much-awaited decision in the Christ Church Savannah case. We will then learn if the Dennis Canon trumps even the magnificent heritage of Georgia's Mother Church, which predates the founding of ECUSA itself by half a century. If the petty tyrants prevail, watch out for the chains to tighten, and for the forces of intimidation and fear to revel in their grip.

But if the Georgia Supreme Court follows South Carolina's lead, there will be another entire State's Episcopal parishes set free from their bondage, with the ability to breathe once again, and concentrate on their mission, rather than live in fear of losing their properties.

Sideways

2011-11-18T14:58:00.000-08:00

Contrary to Graham Kings' repeated assertion (scroll down to the first long comment here, the Proposed Anglican Communion Covenant is not "the only way forward." It is one of many ways sideways.

The Proposed Anglican Covenant (Part 4) attempts to manage disagreements by assigning a supervisory task to the Standing Committee of the Communion, and the power to make recommendations not terribly unlike what can now be done without a recommendation, but simply by each province on its own to refuse to have to do with innovations elsewhere that it doesn't like.

Surely this is not the only way to manage disagreements, nor even the best. The simplest way, Gamaliel's laissez faire and provinces ignoring what they don't like in other provinces (as they are free to do, and have done) seems much more likely both to keep some relative peace and lead to eventual reform or reception.

There is no need to manage disagreement. People can be quite disagreeable on their own.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Xmas Time is here (already?)

2011-11-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

"Look, Charlie, let's face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know."

Kelly Groehler, a BestBuy spokeswoman, noted that CEO Brian Dunn, once a store employee himself, "fully appreciates" the feelings of Melaragni and others, adding that Dunn will miss much of the holiday himself as he helps stores in Minnesota gear up for Black Friday. In a statement on the matter, the company said, "This year, customers have told us -- and our competitors -- that they plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day, and earlier than ever on Black Friday. We therefore made the difficult decision to move our opening Black Friday to midnight. We know this decision changes Thanksgiving plans for some of our employees, and we empathize with those who are affected."

Frankly, I'm surprised we aren't hearing arguments about how opening at midnight on "Black Friday" will create jobs, or how eliminating holidays and weekends will "create jobs."

Seriously.

Apparently the stores could open at noon on Thanksgiving and people would still be lined up from closing time on Wednesday night. This phenomenon seems only to apply to malls and "big box" stores, though. I worked retail for years, and "Black Friday" at the small store I clerked for was always a quiet day. It seems everyone took family to the mall on Friday, to get them out of the house (thus do we entertain ourselves in America). Our regular customers came by on Saturday, or in December. But I've seen the earnest faces of people jamming stores to get "bargains" the moment the stores resumes sales after the Thanksgiving turkey is devoured, people who don't seem to have an extended family they want to get out of the house. I really don't understand it.

Why this isn't all seen as a War on Christmas, or even a War on Thanksgiving*, is beyond me. Best I can figure, we need to put the "Christ" back in Xmas because it's better marketing for everybody. The slogan alone is still good for billboards and bumper stickers, and those things don't grow on trees.

And yes, this year Christmas seemed to obliterate Thanksgiving entirely (the decorations are already up, the carols are already caroming from the speakers in the stores; that's been true for a week now. I even passed a house yesterday already festooned with Christmas lights and yard figurines and fake Xmas trees), and Hallowe'en became the new unofficial gateway to Xmas excess. Thanksgiving vanished in the rush to sleigh bells and fake snow and ceramic "villages." Do we really love Xmas this much? Or are the stores just desperate to balance their books before New Year's?

Since Christmas Day falls on a Sunday this year, I'm every curious to see what the most heavily marketed churches will do about Sunday being a "family holiday." If the past is any guide....

*which apparently has been going on for years. I had no idea.

Then v. Now

2011-11-17T14:12:00.000-08:00

Now:

Cops are dragging kids away by the hair. They're whacking people around and then preventing medical personnel from responding to treat their wounds. The whole world is, indeed, watching. And it's trying to make up its minds.

It's easy for all of us to say that. We didn't get our heads cracked. We didn't get our belongings trashed. We didn't have our free library tossed gleefully into dumpsters. (An action which, to call it philistine, is to insult the cause for which Goliath gave his life.) We don't have the anger rising in us, except by proxy. Nevertheless, it can't end in images of bleeding cops and tossed barricades, and a CNN spokesmodel named Alison Kosik telling all of here at Gate 29 about how the brave brokers of her acquaintence have accepted these inconveniences as "business as usual." CNN is posing the members of the financial-services industry as the last gunners at Fort Zinderneuf. This is not good.

What I know is that John Lewis nearly got killed at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and he never threw a punch back in anger. I empathize with the feelings of the people who have been subject to the ludicrous reaction of hyped-up cops with new military weaponry, and then subject to the contempt and condescension of a greasy little plutocrat like Michael Bloomberg. But this cannot be the way it ends. A few days of ghastly videos — and photos like those below — and out comes a new narrative that in a dozen different ways excuses the bloodletting and then minimizes it, while strangers wait for airplanes, silent applause in their eyes.

Then:

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Written to:

"This response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the Reverend George M. Murray, the Reverend Edward V. Ramage and the Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed under somewhat constricting circumstances. Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me. Although the text remains in substance unaltered, I have indulged in the author's prerogative of polishing it for publication."

There is a difference between then and now. But until people started seeing scenes of passive marches being rolled down the street by water cannons, being mauled by dogs, being beaten bloody by policemen, they didn't start to sympathize with Dr. King and the Movement. Dr. King understood this. Consider how he begins his famous letter:

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine goodwill and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

Then think again about where he is when he is writing it.

I've used King's letter to teach rhetoric, to teach Aristotle's elements of argument, which are: ethos; logos; pathos; and kairos. Before you can even begin, Aristotle understood, the speaker must have a good ethos, a good ethic. A pedophile may make a perfectly sound argument, but who will give a pedophile the benefit of the doubt to listen? Dr. King understood this, which is why he downplays the fact that he's writing from jail. Today we canonize him; in 1963, he was considered a criminal and an "outside agitator."

Like Charles Pierce, I hope the Occupy movement doesn't end this way, but I'm afraid it will. The effort to be non-violent in the face of violence is a very deliberate effort. It is a religiously grounded effort, from Gandhi to King. Religion may not be a necessary concomitant of morality, but it can profoundly affect the morality people live by.

People will judge on what they see and what they think they understand. It's unfortunate if the Occupy movement doesn't better understand that.

Can You Just Imagine the Headlines?

2011-11-16T22:39:00.000-08:00

The following is a real, live quote from a person running for President of the United States in 2012, at a recent fundraiser:

"Don't compare me with the Almighty; compare me to the alternative."

???

??????

Really? The "alternative" to the Almighty Himself?

Now, if you haven't seen any front-page stories or headlines about this statement, that should be a clue to the identity of the person who actually said it -- you guessed it:

Barack Obama.

He said it at a recent fundraiser in affluent Woodside, California, for which the minimum entry fee was $35,800. (Scroll down to the very end of the story to get the quote, which is repeated without the slightest sense of sarcasm or irony, or even awareness of the implications, because this is the New York Times, reporting an Obama fundraiser.)

But can you imagine the headlines had Governor Rick Perry, or -- heaven forbid -- if Herman Cain had said something like this at a fundraiser?

"Satanic Candidate Finally Admits His Connection"

"Freudian Slip Tells Us All We Need to Know about Cain"

And so on, and so on . . . but all we get in the official state news organs is silence. (Try Googling the quotation on Google's News site.)

Now let me give you one more recent sample of the mainstream media's double standard. Take a look at this recent quote, and see if you can guess who said it (hint: it's a television newscaster).

"[W]e thought we'd bring you up to date on those protesters, the Occupy Wall Street movement. As of tonight, it has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries, every continent except Antarctica . . ."

Really, again? "More than a thousand countries" on every continent except Antarctica?

The United Nations started out with 51 members in 1945; as of 2011, its membership had grown to 193. Even if you try to count Palestine and Taiwan, you still could not break 200, let alone a thousand.

So who made that fatuous statement on network TV? Was it Sarah Palin on the Fox News Channel, perchance?

Decidedly not. If so, one could just imagine the next day's headlines and TV commentaries:

"In her latest gaffe in front of national news cameras, Governor Palin once again demonstrated her unreadiness to serve in national office, with an appalling lack of knowledge about the number of countries in the world . . ."

Or once more, if it had been Herman Cain?

"Cain Again Demonstrates His Ignorance of Foreign Affairs"

Well, since you didn't see anything like those stories or headlines, just who was it who demonstrated such monumental ignorance in front of the news cameras -- and got away with it?

Are you ready?

Here's the video:

No, there's absolutely no bias in the national news media.

None whatsoever.

Anglican Disunion: The Issues Behind “the Issue”

2011-11-15T06:50:00.000-08:00

A talk to the Albany Via Media Annual Meeting
St George’s Church, Schenectady, November 12, 2011
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Introduction

I’m delighted to be here, and the first thing I want to do is bring you greetings from “your sister who is in Pittsburgh” — the Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, that is. Lionel Deimel asked me to bring that greeting, and I’m very happy to do so. You are not alone in this great church of ours, in being in a minority in a situation where patience and endurance, just as in the opening chapters of Revelation, is called for.

My plan is to speak somewhat formally at first and then break into a more informal discussion. My theme is Anglican Disunion: the Issues behind “the Issue.”

And I want to begin, as an historian, to ask, Was there ever union? What do we mean by unity as opposed to uniformity? I do believe we have a very deep union in the church, and I’ll be getting to that in my talk. But there is clearly a good deal of disunion on the surface of Anglicanism.

So let me start by asking, What is this thing called “Anglicanism”? Is there such a thing as “the Anglican Church”? What do we have in common with the other parts of the Anglican Communion? The old joke was, “The BCP and Wippell’s.” But there is no more common Book of “Common” Prayer throughout the communion, and Almy’s competes with Wippell’s...

We have the bonds of affection — but just how affectionate have they been in recent years?

So what do we have in common besides our genetic heritage as descendants of the Church of England (and let’s not forget our godmother, the Scottish Episcopal Church), with other siblings and our own offspring around the world? (While we’re not forgetting, let’s not forget that it was The Episcopal Church that is responsible for founding most of the Anglican provinces in Central and South America and much of the Pacific, and even Liberia in Africa). A number of these are now independent Provinces of the Anglican Communion, such as the Philippines, Brazil, and Mexico; but others are still part of TEC — Haiti still being part of our own Province II!

Let me first say a word or two about where I don’t think we find our identity. And that, ironically, is in the very “Instruments of Communion” which the Proposed Anglican Covenant appears to wish to install at the center of our ecclesiastical life.

The Windsor Report called them “instruments of unity,” which is not a little blasphemous since our unity is in Christ. But those instruments don’t in any case seem to have had the effect of improving unity. The four are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting. These are all relatively recent entities not only in Christianity but even among Anglicans.

Obviously the Archbishop of Canterbury has been around since the late sixth century, But the office only began to function as anything like a voice in a “communion” with the beginnings of that “communion” when the Episcopal Church became an independent entity in 1785-89. Canterbury’s role at the time was to offer an unenthusiastic critique of movements in the formation of the American church (and I don’t mean just tinkering with liturgy but dropping two out of three Creeds and editing the third)— and the suggestions Canterbury made were not entirely accepted. (The Athanasian Creed didn’t make it back into our BCP until 1979!) Nonetheless, Canterbury, York, and Bath and Wells obtained the guarded permission of Parliament to extend the episcopate to us former rebels, only on the condition that neither the first bishops they ordained (White and Provoost), nor anyone they ordained (nor anyone ordained by anyone ordained by them) would ever minister within His Majesty’s dominions. So much for Canterbury being “in communion” with the nascent Episcopal Church. As Bishop Pierre Whalon points out in an excellent article in the ATR, for the first 80 years of TEC’s life, we were treated with benign neglect by Canterbury.

It was not until 1867 that the first Lambeth Conference was called, largely to deal with problems in the by then much more widely dispersed collection of provinces in the Anglican family. It was a full century after that, in 1968, that the Anglican Consultative Council, a representative body including for the first time laity and clergy as well as bishops, was created. Ten years later, in 1978, the Primates of the Communion gathered for the first time as a separate body.

Obviously these entities can hardly be held to be either “foundational” or “essential” or “definitional” of what it means to be the Anglican Communion, which appears to have gotten on well enough without them for much of its life. Yet since the Windsor Report they have loomed rather larger in the picture. And the pressure towards a single unified body has taken form in the Proposed Anglican Covenant.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the Covenant discussion — though I’d be happy to make it part of our open discussion. What I’d rather do is attempt to focus on some of the things that I do underlie what unites the Anglican Communion and our identity as Anglicans.

I’m sure you are familiar with the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral: the statement of four doctrinal and ecclesiological principles that chart out the boundaries for dialogue between churches wishing to join in closer common purpose and mission. The Quadrilateral thus describes the essentials, from an Anglican perspective, for church union or reunion.

I would like to suggest that alongside the familiar Quadrilateral we consider another structure that for want of a better term I’ve called the Anglican Triad (with apologies to those who use this term for what is often known, incorrectly, as “Hooker’s Three-Legged Stool.”) This Triad consists of three elements which I think are particularly characteristic of Anglicanism — not necessarily unique to it, but together constituting a unity which I fear is at present very much under assault.

For shorthand I will call these three elements Humility, Provinciality, and Variety. They stand in the via media between Humiliation, Provincialism, and Chaos at one extreme, and Pride, Centralism and Uniformity at the other. All three are well attested in foundational documents of the “Anglican Way.” (The Articles of Religion, the Prefaces to the English and American Books of Common Prayer) and in the work of those who first focused the Anglican vision, such as Richard Hooker. I’ll limit my citations to the Articles of Religion. (They are in the BCP, and I’ve always thought it good of the church to provide us with something to peruse during a boring sermon, if only to remind us that there are things more boring than sermons!)

1. Humility

“The church... hath erred.”(19, 21)

The admission that the church makes mistakes is profoundly revealing of the nature of the church we understand ourselves to be part of. It reflects the Pauline judgment that “our knowledge is partial” — that we “see as in a glass, darkly”; and it asserts an attitude of faith and hope — and one hopes, love — rather than of certainty and judgment. This admission of uncertainty renders all but the most fundamental dogmatic matters to some extent provisional. Understood in this way, Humility is not a weakness, but a strength. It stands midway between abject humiliation and overweening pride.

This acknowledgment that the church makes mistakes is followed by a corollary: mistakes can (and should) be corrected. The church is not trapped within an immutable legal structure such as that attributed to the Medes and Persians. This is why Anglicanism can embrace and advance the development of doctrine and moral theology. We are not stuck, because we can admit that we’ve gotten it wrong, and move on. This does not mean that every development will necessarily be correct — as the principle notes, the church makes mistakes, even as it changes. But the ability to admit to mistakes is the first step in correcting them. (Those familiar with 12-Step programs will at this point I hope recognize a resonance with the Serenity Prayer.) It is very easy for the church to become addicted to the need to control, the need to have a final answer, especially to control others through the claim of unassailable infallibility of judgment — to which Humility is a counterpoise and corrective.)

Humility stands as a meek (which does not mean “weak”) witness against domination by so-called consensus. As the Articles (21) testify, since individual human beings may err, there is no guarantee that an assembly of such errant beings will not also err. Humility points out that even an overwhelming consensus can be quite profoundly mistaken — Galileo can testify to that! So consensus in itself cannot form a term in an argument when a given proposition is being reexamined: to suggest that something must be true either because “we’ve always believed this to be true” or because“everyone says so” is simply a form of logical fallacy — for the truth of a proposition is established neither by being long held or popular: the church can err.

Consensus, after all, means a “common mind with little or no opposition” — so the moment opposition — a new questioning, a new challenge — appears, consensus ceases to exist, and the new proposal must be examined on its own merits against the possible errancy of the formerly unchallenged position. (This is, by the way, why Hooker rejected tradition as an authority in and of itself. He was wise to know that many errors have long lives.)

Anglicanism thus humbly rejects concepts of inerrancy and infallibility; for itself as well as for others. Even the Scripture is not held to either such standard, but is “sufficient” for the end for which it was intended: salvation (6). Human understanding, even of the Scripture, is likely to be fallible as well. And so our human understanding of the sacred texts is subject to a constant review, constant reexamination, as the church bears its responsibility as the “keeper of Holy Writ.”(19)

Humility also stands as a warning against the tendency to adopt unanimous statements for the purpose of apparent unity, in spite of real disagreement with one or more parts of the adopted document. This sort of curate’s-eggery produces the appearance of agreement that cloaks with a light whitewash the underlying division. Better humbly to acknowledge the division of opinion, as the collect for the feast of Richard Hooker puts it, seeking “comprehension for the sake of truth” rather than “compromise for the sake of peace.” For as solutions such as Lambeth 1998.1.10 and the Primates’ Communiqué from Dromantine showed us, such peace will be no peace, as different people then go off with their own interpretations of what was said or meant, but which in theory all agreed to. It may well be that the current Proposed Anglican Covenant is simply the latest in half-baked or watered-down solutions on offer — solutions for problems that don’t exist.

2. Provinciality

“The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.” (37)

Few things could be clearer than that the Church of England reasserted its ecclesiastical independence from Rome at the Reformation. It thought itself free and competent to do this, and believed it was returning to an ancient principle that had been more successfully preserved among the Eastern churches than it had in the West: the basic unit of the church is the national church or province.

It is sometimes said — it may be said in Albany; I don’t know... You will have to tell me! — that the diocese is the basic unit of the church. However, a diocese cannot be self-sustaining in terms of the essential thing that makes it a diocese, the requisite episcopate; it requires the participation of at least two bishops from other dioceses in order to continue to be a diocese with a bishop, in order to maintain its existence even at the basic level of ordination. In TEC polity even more is required: no diocese can obtain a bishop without the express approval of the majority of those already diocesan bishops, and of the lay and clergy leadership of a majority of all of the other dioceses, either acting through their standing committees or at General Convention. Can you imagine the outcry in our civil government if it were to be required that the governors and legislatures of a majority of all of the other states had to approve the election of a governor in any given state? So much for the claims that the polity of The Episcopal Church resembles Federal polity of the United States! No, the diocese is not the basic unit of the church. It is an organ in the body of the province, and cannot subsist on its own; it depends upon the province for its continued existence as a diocese.)

Some have lately taken to claiming that the idea of a “national church” is somehow novel. However, this understanding of the structure of church governance goes back to the earliest days of Christendom: to whom, after all, were those letters written in the opening chapters of Revelation: to Ephesus, Sardis, and Philadelphia and so on. True, these were city-states, rather than nations in our modern sense — but in the post-Apostolic era it was into national churches that they evolved, and so remained in the East, while in the West things took a different course, as the church fell under a too close alliance with the faded glory that was Rome. Even at that, the myth of Roman supremacy was largely that — a myth — and even in Italy the church of Milan maintained much independence for many years, to say nothing of the churches in Northern Europe and England, where the debates over who was in charge had raged for centuries prior to the tempests raised by Henry VIII’s dynastic dilemma.

In any case, from the days of the declaration of English liberation from the Roman yoke, Anglicanism became marked by this characteristic notion of national churchdom. On our shores this understanding was so well ingrained in our collective psyches that, as the preface to the 1789 Book of Common Prayer puts it “When… these American states became independent with respect to civil government, their ecclesiastical independence was necessarily included.” This attitude carried over to the time of the Civil War, when the leaders in the South felt that they had to form the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, while in the North those who supported the Union had to pretend that no such thing had happened, and kept calling the role and listing the bishops and deputies merely as absent from sessions of General Convention. And at the end of the war, everything was neatly folded back, and everyone acted as if nothing had happened. The one bishop elected in the Confederate States was simply welcomed into the House of Bishops, no questions asked.

So much for the historical background to this concept of a national church. In practice, Anglican Provinciality is expressed through the concept of provincial autonomy. A significant element of our state of “disunion” is brought about because of this. We are now a very large collection of autonomous provinces, with independent churches now part of nations with very different histories, and very different cultures — as I’ll get to in our informal discussion. The world, and the communion, is very different to what it was in the mid-19th century, when every face at Lambeth was white. The world and the communion have fundamentally changed, and all of those cultural differences that were subsumed by colonial or missionary dioceses, are now finding their voice in independent churches — and this comes to a head when the bishops gather at Lambeth or any other setting. They bring their nationhood with them.

Now, autonomy has gotten a bad name in some circles recently. Autonomy should be understood not in terms of not wanting to have anything to do with anyone else, but rather in terms of the rights, powers and responsibilities exercised within and for a national church in terms of its ability to govern itself. It relates to the concept of subsidiarity: things should be done at a higher or more central level only when they cannot be accomplished more locally. Thus priests are ordained by the diocese for the parish; bishops by the province for the diocese; all governed at a national level by canons which leave a good deal in the particulars to the local structures.

Above all, autonomy, properly understood and exercised, is not the enemy of fellowship. It is, I believe, its precondition: for only the mature and independent can choose voluntarily to enter into truly adult relationships of interdependence and truly mutual submission. You have to be truly confident in yourself in order to have a deep relationship with other selves. You need a clear sense of who you are if you are to give yourself to someone else. Otherwise we get into dependence or codependency, or at its worst, tyranny or lordship of one over another, or many over a few.

Provincial autonomy is tempered by Humility, in that while each province asserts that it is fully the church, yet it does not assert itself as the only church. Rather than a “Branch” theory, this represents a more holographic understanding of the nature of the church’s fullness: the church is complete within each province, as Christ is fully present in every Eucharistic celebration, and in each fragment of the broken Bread — and yet there are not many Christs, but one. The external divisions between Christian churches insofar as they may lead to mutual non-recognition, constitute a scandal in that they impede the mission and work of Christ, and a failure to recognize that we do indeed share one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; but it is not necessary that there be single world-church institutional structure take the place of a fellowship of independent and self-governing provinces. Instead of a human-instituted system of authoritative government, the provinces are called to a work of service and mission, together, in the recognition that the church is already “One” through its faithful response to the dominical command to baptize all nations. It is to be hoped that Christians may one day recognize this baptismal unity, and remove the various obstacles they have set in place that prevent our sharing in the one Bread at one Table. This unity in the two dominical Sacraments forms an essential element of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. If we could find unity in those, any institutional church structure would be for the purpose of mission, not identity.

Humility and Provinciality taken together reveal the process by which development in doctrine is both possible and limited within the Anglican Communion. This is both a possibility for change and a safeguard against error. Cardinal Newman came to believe that development of doctrine could only take place under the watchful eye of the Bishop of Rome. Anglicanism broadens the scope for the source of innovation and correction to the whole communion, the various national churches themselves being the determiners of what and how things are to change or remain the same: each determining for itself those matters that concern it. If I can offer an analogy: the RC Magisterium is like a boarding house where you eat what is set before you or go hungry; any change in the menu is purely up to the kitchen. The Anglican approach is more like a restaurant with a finite but various menu from which to choose; and the fact that I like mushrooms and you like asparagus should not keep us from eating at the same table.

An even better analogy might be to say that Anglicanism is like the parish pot luck supper in which each brings a dish in which all can share — but I can politely avoid the Jell-O mold you brought while you can forego my oxtail stew. Yet all are fed in one fellowship.

Provinciality means that changes and developments may be made within a province and need have no effect upon the governance of any other province. One example of this was the decision of the Episcopal Church to move forward with the ordination of women to the episcopate. No other province was forced to recognize or approve this decision, and it had no impact on the governance, rights, privileges, or responsibilities of any other province. As time passed, other provinces chose to adopt — or not adopt — this innovation: this is the process of reception, and it is not complete even now: there is at present no Anglican consensus on the rightness (or the wrongness) of the ordination of women to the episcopate. In the meantime any difficulties that may arise — such as the inability to license a visiting woman bishop to function as such in a province that does not [yet] ordain women to the episcopate (such as England), or to license or transfer clergy ordained by a woman bishop — are readily dealt with by the canonical provisions already in place within each of the provinces; it is a matter of record keeping that need engender any ill will or severance of communion, even if in the particular case it may mean our Presiding Bishop not being allowed to wear a miter in one or another church.

The principle, What touches all shall be decided by all, comes to play under the rubric of Provinciality. The Windsor report misapplies this concept, so I want to say a word on it. “Touches” does not mean, “having an opinion about” or “creating a situation which might lead to difficulties with a third party.” “Touches” means having a direct effect upon ones rights and privileges. The legal principle, Quod omens tanget, as the 16th century political philosopher Johannes Althusius clarified in early modern terms, is about rights, privileges and authorities of each province that can only be restricted by each province’s individual consent to the restriction. Thus, Lambeth 1998.1.10.e would have overstepped its bounds if it were anything more than the advisory recommendation that it is — a fact we tend to forget, since people treat it as if it were a rule laid down — since it would place a restriction on the right of provinces to ordain and bless whom they choose — and these are rights pertaining to each province that must be explicitly foregone by each, and which cannot be taken away even by all of the other provinces combined. All, save even one, is not all, and what touches all must be decided by all.

Provinciality thus provides a balance and a means to implement development in conjunction with Humility: it allows innovations to be tested locally before anyone else considers implementing them in their own locale; and there is no provision for them being globally mandated until all agree — at which point, of course, no mandate is needed as agreement has been arrived at by an organic process of reception. This is, of course, how the church has generally functioned through the ages. One could note, for example, that the adoption of vernacular liturgy by various national churches at the Reformation finally after several centuries had impact upon the very Roman Catholic Church that so bitterly opposed the development.

Going further back in history, the emergence of the Gentile church began in isolated communities, and it took some while — even after the conference of the Apostles in Jerusalem — for the church more widely to accept this innovation that non-Jews could be saved through Baptism. “What about circumcision? Scripture says you have to be circumcised!” There were some who held to that, until they became a tiny minority that faded away, as the church moved on.

After the collapse of an old consensus due to the action of the church in one place or a few places, a significant period of reception will be necessary before a new consensus is established. Ultimately, this movement from particular to universal is reflective of the Incarnation itself. Jesus was born in a particular place, at a particular time — he entered into human history in one spot, and yet that birth echoes to the edge of the cosmos and has filled the whole world. Things happen someplace before they can happen in every place.

3. Variety

“Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority.”
(36)

This is where we confront the issue of disunity most directly. It must be admitted that Anglicanism has always experienced tension between uniformity and variety. However, as another example of the importance of Provinciality, this citation from the Articles demonstrates (and a reading of the Preface to the 1549 BCP will support) that the concern is for uniformity within a national church, and permits variety between or among them. Everyone in a church is to use its BCP, but the BCP in America — extensively modified when we became an independent church, even to the extent of modifying the Creed (and those of you old enough to remember the 1928 BCP will recall that little rubric that allows different wording for “he descended into hell” — that was one of the bones of contention with Canterbury back in the 1780s.)

It has also to be acknowledged that among the “issues” currently causing distress in the communion there loom two that concern rites and ceremonies: in particular ordination and marriage, neither of which, as the Articles say, “have any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God” (25), and so appear to fall within the rubric of permitted change. (This is an edgy argument, but I stand by it.) It will quickly be pointed out, however, that the limit on Variety in this regard is set by “God’s Word written”(20, 36).Some contend that the present innovations have crossed that boundary.

The question though is, Who is to make that determination if not the national church? If the rites and ceremonies in question concern only a given province and its governance — for under Provinciality, any other province is free to reject or refuse these rites and ceremonies, in principle or in the persons of those who take part in them — as indeed they do — then as with all such matters the error is limited to the province which has erred in the opinion of the others. No one else need by “touched” by these errors. Are rites and ceremonies — even if errant — matters over which to break communion — as a number of provinces have done, not just with the individuals immediately representing the innovations, but with any who even approve of them? It was no big surprise, after all, that Gene Robinson was not invited to Lambeth. But need the churches divide over this issue? If he is the problem, don’t invite him to the party. He understands; he is a grown-up who knows he is a controversial figure, and he won’t crash the party and grab a seat. In fact, he knows he scores more points being outside!)

Are these matters over which to shun Christ’s table, as some have done, when the Primates gathered and some would not share with Frank Griswold because of what he represented for having ordained Gene Robinson? How many degrees of separation do you have to have from the “error” in order to be “clean.” I believe these are not things to be divided about — not here, not at this Table. I hope that there is yet time for those who have walked apart from Christ’s open embrace and invitation to “take and eat” with their fellow Christians, to reconsider their breach of communion.

Ironically, even the Windsor Report — which has given rise to so much talk of “restraint” — suggests this very openness to Variety, to variation. It did this in part by bidding a moratorium on the ordination of bishops who live in same-sex unions until a greater consensus on the appropriateness of such a manner of life can be reached, and also in part by asking for further exploration of how this might be consistent with the traditional understanding of bishops as moral exemplars to the flock of Christ.

This leaves the door open for such developments — it did not say, “no how, no way, you’re wrong, go away” — it said, “could you please hold off on this while we discuss it further.” That leaves the door open for development; after all, a moratorium is by its own standards a temporary restraint rather than an outright prohibition — Windsor thus reveals that this is not a matter of fixed and immutable doctrine. One could scarcely imagine the church issuing a document calling for further study of the Incarnation while we waited to see how things come out, for example. Windsor therefore revealed that the “issues” of same-sex blessings and the ordination of bishops in such relationships, while in its view inadvisable, is not a matter of final doctrine: the old consensus is no more, even if a new one has not yet emerged. (143)

The difficulty with the moratoria is that they require a de facto acceptance of an “as if” — as if a consensus actually exists, but which in fact no longer exists, and submission to an authority that has yet to establish either its legitimacy or its trustworthiness.

For instance, the Windsor Report stated (127) that the “Communion has made its collective position clear” when actually only Lambeth and the Primates and the bishops of a number of Provinces had spoken. The “communion” had not made its position clear, because the “communion” has no means to do so. This set up an illegitimate and arrogant (in the strictest sense of the word) assertion. It is, after all, one thing for a club to enforce rules that all its members have actually agreed to; but it is quite another for gatherings of bishops meeting in bodies which specifically and historically state they have no power to legislate on matters of doctrine suddenly to begin to do exactly that, calling for obedience to a constitution that does not now and never has existed. This is not consensus.

When we more closely review the history of Lambeth’s positions on sexual morality, a clear pattern emerges. Three such issues have come before Lambeth over the years (marriage after divorce, birth-control, and polygamy), and on all three Lambeth first upheld but later reversed or radically amended its recommendations as the consensus changed. I invite you sometime to look up the 1908 Lambeth resolution on birth control, and the report prepared by the committee studying it, to see how adamantly opposed the bishops were to any suggestion that this practice of what the report called “preventative abortion” should be permitted. This position was modified in 1930 and by 1950 Lambeth not only said the pope was wrong but that birth control was good and should be used in some circumstances.

So for the present, one might ask, is this Lambeth walk really necessary? Do we trust that the bus-driver knows where we are going? Who hired this bus-driver? Is there even a bus? Isn’t it rather pointless and divisive to continue to draw line after line in the sand that time and tide will only wash away? Why not just allow the organic process to work rather than freezing a moment in time that incarnates the very things that divide us, that perpetuates our disagreements as permanently disagreeable?

Ultimately the burden of proof (as the Articles of Religion require) lies upon those who wish to make strict adherence to this one aspect of traditional sexual morality a matter of salvation. Although they may have at least one strand of the tradition on their side, those same Articles point out, as I noted, that tradition is often in error. At the same time, contemporary biblical scholarship is clearly tending towards limiting the scope of the negative judgments on same-sex acts to the same range of relationships and circumstances as mixed-sex acts: infidelity, abuse, rape and idolatry. The “reasserters”(as they call themselves) deny this. But they must do more than simply reassert, they have to address the arguments, and to date they have been unable to make their case— and it is the responsibility of the “prosecution” to do so. The “defense” need only demonstrate a reasonable doubt and show, as Windsor put it, that “...what is now proposed not only accords with but actually enhances the central core of the Church’s faith.” (WR 60) As I have argued in my own work on the subject, fidelity is a moral value, gender is not.

When it comes to offering an explanation in defense of this manner of life, since there are an unknown but real number of Anglican bishops living in same-sex relationships (all but less than a handful of them surreptitiously), and they are all serving (or retired from having served) as exemplars to the flock of Christ, isn’t that sufficient evidence of the rightness of their lives and a better proof than further merely theological debate on an issue which seems to have precious little theology to back it up? Do not the gifts of the Spirit count for anything? Do not actions speak louder than words? They were enough to convince Peter, and through him the church, that Gentiles were worthy of salvation.

And when John’s disciples sent to know if Christ was the expected One, he did not offer them a reasoned point-by-point from scripture, but rather he offered them himself and his acts — the acts of liberation from blindness, brokenness, and death. He ended with those telling words, “Blessed are those who take no offense in me!” (Luke 7:19-23)

I have, as you know from my bio, done a good bit of study on the subject of same-sexuality (the “issue” behind the issues, and over and under and beside the issues) — in particular as it relates to ordination and marriage — and how it can be addressed within a biblical, reasonable, and traditional framework; that it need not be seen as an unscriptural and unbearable innovation.

But matters are proceeding apace. The world is changing. The Global South objected to the consecration of a gay bishop with a partner, but Gene Robinson is no longer alone in that category even in the US House of Bishops (If he ever really was...). They objected to the idea of bestowing a blessing on a same-sex couple, and yet now in many states of this Union, including our own, the church is not only bestowing its blessing, but either seriously considering or already solemnizing the civil status of marriage.

In short, the process of organic development is afoot, it is not going to stop, and reception is or isn’t happening as I speak. In the meantime, the mainstream via media of the Episcopal Church is steadily reasserting our understanding of our authority to vary— to live out the variety of rites in our own context, which is very different from that in much of the Global South. As I learned intimately and personally at the conversation I attended in South Africa just a few weeks ago. The people in those places represented at that conference are free to maintain their various rules and traditions, suitable as they are for their contexts. I will say more in the open discussion about the extent to which the friction between the North and South has been exacerbated by misunderstanding and misinformation. But it is my sincere hope that corrections to those misunderstandings, and better information, through the mandated listening process and the Continuing Indaba — in both of which I have been involved — will assist to lessen the friction and perhaps even help calm the storms that have swept through our beloved Anglican Communion — not just the issue, but the issues behind the issues of Anglican disunion.

Some of this talk is based on an earlier blog post “The Anglican Triad.” I consider this the more informative and complete exposition.

"A Call to the Light": The Case for Inhibiting the Presiding Bishop

2011-11-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

With the extremely disturbing news about the long-standing cover-up that went on over sexual abuse of young men by an assistant coach at Penn State University, it is very instructive to compare the reaction of the University after the story came out to that of the House of Bishops concerning the revelations, on numerous blogs (Catholic and Episcopalian), concerning the Presiding Bishop's own cover-up of her actions while serving as the Bishop of Nevada.

Let me be perfectly clear: the two situations are not precisely parallel, because the sexual abuse of young men went on under the noses of the responsible officials at Penn State University, who studiously ignored bringing the abuser to account, or reporting him to the police. In contrast, and at least as far as we now know, Father Bede Parry did not commit any sexual abuse of minors under the nose of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

But there -- with one big exception, which is the point of this post -- the dissimilarities between the two cases end. For it is now undisputed that Bishop Jefferts Schori learned early on, from Bede Parry's own former Abbot, that he was a multiple-count abuser who could not continue to function as a Catholic priest (or monk) because he had "a proclivity to reoffend with minors." And she learned of this fact before she decided to receive him into her Diocese as an Episcopal priest.

[UPDATE 11/18/2008: At long last, and far too late to stem the damage, the Presiding Bishop has decided to favor us with a statement explaining her version of the facts. As others have already observed, the statement appears to have been carefully vetted by the Presiding Bishop's personal attorneys (both in-house and outside counsel -- but the latter her personal Chancellor) to avoid any inadvertent admissions of those matters which no one yet can prove, and of which she herself would be the most knowledgeable. She also indicates that this will be her one and only statement on the matter, since she refers all further inquiries to the current diocesan of Nevada, the Rt. Rev. Dan Edwards.

From this Curmudgeon's point of view, her statement just adds more fuel to the fire, because it conceals more than it answers -- as I shall demonstrate in detail in a future post. For now, the main thing to note is that it puts her against the current accounts of both former Father Parry, who admittedly is a confirmed liar (now trying his best, one assumes, to repent of his past and make amends for his sins), and his former abbot. The latter -- who had no reason whatsoever in 2002-2003 to hide or to distort the truth, and who has even less of a reason to do so now -- has strongly affirmed that he informed Bishop Jefferts Schori of the fact that Bede Parry had been found to have "a proclivity to reoffend."

That particular phrase redounds, because it echoes the wording of the specific conclusion of the Roman Catholic Church's psychological evaluation in 2000 of Fr. Bede Parry -- a conclusion which sealed his fate, as concerns his being allowed to remain a priest (or even a monk) in the RCC. For Abbot Polan to say (as he did just last May, in the presence of three witnesses) that he told Bishop Jefferts Schori in those very words of that conclusion, is to put his testimony squarely at odds with the Presiding Bishop's latest (and only) statement on the matter, linked above.

For the present, therefore, we have two directly contrary reports of what actually happened when Bishop Jefferts Schori made background inquiries into Fr. Bede Parry's trajectory as a Roman Catholic priest. What that contradiction necessarily entails, however, is that one of the two of them (Bishop Jefferts Schori, or Abbot Polan) is now lying. I leave it to the intelligent reader to conclude who has at this point the greater motivation to prevaricate under these circumstances. The only significant question remaining, in my view, is whether or not this incident will finally provide the impetus for a full and thorough investigation into the reception of Father Parry by Bishop Jefferts Schori.]

Therein lies the chief similarity between the two cases: Both the officials at Penn State University and at the Diocese of Nevada (including its Standing Committee at the time, and its Commission on Ministry, as well as its Bishop) made an apparent decision to ignore the offender's history, and to place (or leave) him in a position where he would be free to continue his abuses, if he was so inclined (notwithstanding supposed "restrictions" on his ministry, which were soon forgotten altogether).

The chief dissimilarity between the two cases, however, lies in seeing how the two institutions reacted to the news of this decision to hire (or to retain) a self-convicted pederast, once the news of that decision became public. The University fired not only the offender, but also his supervising head coach, an 84-year-old figure otherwise beloved in college football for his record number of winning seasons. And the University's President, to whom the charges had also been reported, but who had chosen not to take them to the police, was fired as well.

But as for the Episcopal Church (USA)? The former Bishop of Nevada, who now serves as the Church's Presiding Bishop, has had not one public word to say about her decision to receive Bede Parry as an Episcopal priest. The Diocese of Nevada, in its turn, has published a statement assuring everyone that the canons were "meticulously followed", but which ended up raising more questions than it actually answered.

In short, it is the University which has acted in a more open and Christian manner than one of the chief Christian churches in the United States. The University chose to "walk in the light", as St. John put it in his first-century letter to other early Christians (highlighted so appropriately by the Rev. Canon Philip Ashey in the introductory video), and to let the chips fall where they might -- even if it meant the dismissal of one of its very best football coaches ever. The Episcopal Church (USA), in contrast, continues to stonewall further investigation or questioning, and decidedly has not chosen to "walk in the light."

In this post, I want to call out my own Church, so that it may choose to walk in the light on this topic rather than opt for continued darkness, and so that it, likewise, will let the chips fall where they may.

The Church, acting through its own disciplinary bodies, should inhibit its Presiding Bishop from further exercise of her office and functions until she has made a clean breast of all the factors surrounding her decision to receive Bede Parry, a confessed sexual offender and demonstrable liar to her face, as a priest in her Diocese. Although the Diocese's Commission on Ministry, and Standing Committee, each had specific roles to play at specific times in the reception process, it remains a fact that in the final analysis, the decision to receive him as a priest was hers, and her decision alone.

Those of us looking at that decision in light of what has since been uncovered, however, have to ask: What evidence possibly could have amounted, in the view of Bishop Jefferts Schori, to a convincing documentation of his "godly and moral character", or have shown that "[his] departure . . . from the Communion to which [he previously] belonged has not arisen from any circumstance unfavorable to moral or religious character"? (I am quoting from the 2003 version of Canon III.11, which ostensibly applied to Bishop Jefferts Schori's decision at the time.)

And if those obvious discrepancies between canon and deed in 2004 were not enough, we have now learned from Bede Parry himself that he had voluntarily cooperated in his dismissal from the Catholic priesthood before he was received as a priest by Bishop Jefferts Schori! Don't even try to think how a former Catholic priest, defrocked for sexually abusing young men, could begin to qualify for reception as a functioning priest in the Episcopal Church. Instead, take a look at the constitutional and canonical provisions to which both he and Bishop Jefferts Schori were subject at the time. Canon III.11.1 (a)(2) required that Fr. Parry supply "[e]vidence of previous Ministry and that all other credentials are valid and authentic" (emphasis added). Yet he confesses that in 2002 he was being dismissed from his orders, and would not have been allowed to remain as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church -- he was not even a suitable candidate to be a monk in a monastery.

"Evidence of previous Ministry" would have been no problem -- Fr. Parry would have to produce only his ordination papers in the Roman Catholic Church, which would have shown that he had been validly ordained as a priest in 1982.

The "other credentials" of which the Canon speaks are not defined. Taking the words in a canonical sense, however, they would be something akin to "letters dimissory" --- credentials from a bishop given to a priest when he leaves that bishop's jurisdiction, and certifying that he served in good standing, and is not departing for any reasons having to do with his moral character. If one thing is certain in this mess, it is that no Catholic bishop or abbot would have given Bede Parry such credentials on his departure from the Catholic Church. Given that fact, what could he have used to prove his prior "good standing" in the Catholic Church when he applied to Bishop Jefferts Schori for reception into the Episcopal Church? She and her Standing Committee must have seen some sort of evidence on that point; otherwise, they could not properly have given him the preliminary certificates of acceptance required by Canon III.11.3, since he went on and was finally received in 2004. How, then, could he have even qualified for such acceptance under Canon III.11.3 in the first place?

Here is a list (in italics) of all the things which that Canon required in 2003 that Bede Parry submit to Bishop Jefferts Schori, as a prerequisite for his even being considered for Episcopal priesthood (my comments and observations are in square brackets):

(1) Evidence that the person is a confirmed adult communicant in good standing in a Congregation of this Church [he would have supplied evidence from his employers at All Saints in Las Vegas];

(2) Evidence of previous Ministry and that all other credentials are valid and authentic [as noted, he easily could have produced proof that he was validly ordained by the Catholic Church in 1982, but that is all; as argued above, he certainly would not have had any kind of certificate or credentials attesting that his departure from the Church had not been for any reasons touching upon his moral character];

(3) Evidence of moral and godly character; and that the person is free from any vows or other engagements inconsistent with the exercise of Holy Orders in this Church [after his dismissal from the Roman Catholic Church, he certainly would have been "free from any (such) vows or engagements," but evidence of the reasons for his dismissal would at the same time have negated any previous submissions of his "moral and godly character" making him fit to be a priest];

(4) Transcripts of all relevant academic and theological studies [this would have required him to submit a transcript from St. John's College of Theology in Minnesota, where he had been briefly suspended for sexual misconduct, and required, as a condition of graduation, to take sexual abuse counseling];

(5) A certificate from at least two Presbyters of this Church stating that, from personal examination or from satisfactory evidence presented to them, they believe that the departure of the person from the Communion to which the person has belonged has not arisen from any circumstance unfavorable to moral or religious character, or on account of which it may not be expedient to admit the person to Holy Orders in this Church [again, such a certificate must have come from his employers at All Saints in Las Vegas -- but if it had been submitted, it would serve only as evidence that he had lied to them about his background in order to be hired, because it was contradicted by Abbot Polan when he talked to Bishop Jefferts Schori];

(6) Certificates in the forms provided in Canon III.8.6 and III.8.7 from the Rector or Member of the Clergy in charge and Vestry of a Parish of this Church [these would again have come from All Saints in Las Vegas, showing their support for his application]; and

(7) A statement of the reasons for seeking to enter Holy Orders in this Church [such a statement would have focused on the need for additional clergy at All Saints, but probably said nothing about the reasons Bede Parry had been ousted from priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church].

And those requirements assume, as we have seen, that Bede Parry had been serving for at least five years as a Minister "in good repute" in the Roman Catholic Church, and so would have no trouble in supplying all the evidences required of his "godly and moral character." Canon III.11, however, is for receiving, as its title states, "Priests and Deacons Ordained in Churches in the Historic Succession but Not in Communion with This Church." It emphatically cannot apply to priests or deacons who have been defrocked by that other church on grounds of immorality, and who hence could not ever establish their "godly and moral character."

Yet all the evidence is that Bishop Jefferts Schori proceeded to issue to him a certificate of his acceptability, and then, after more than a year, to receive him formally under Canon III.11 as a priest in good standing in her Diocese. How could this possibly amount to what the current Bishop of Nevada (the Rt. Rev. Dan Edwards) has described as "meticulously follow[ing] the applicable canons"? Bishop Edwards expressly references Canon III.11 as the one which Bishop Jefferts Schori "meticulously followed" -- but as we just saw, that Canon applies only to persons who, at the time of their application to be admitted to Episcopal orders, had "with success" practiced their previous Ministry "for at least five years with good repute", and thus had good credentials to present at the time of their application.

If Bishop Jefferts Schori received Bede Parry under the provisions of Canon III.11, as Bishop Edwards says she did, then she was either grossly negligent, or mightily deceived -- but she could have continued in that state only until she talked with Fr. Parry's former Abbot. That conversation alone, confirmed by Abbot Polan himself, should have raised enough red flags to require a complete reappraisal of Bede Parry's application -- with a resulting determination that he could not be received under Canon III.11, since he could not, with his background, satisfy its requirements. (Being caught lying about one's background in an application, and on such a material matter, should have negated any prior submitted proofs of "godly and moral character" on the spot.)

It is high time, therefore, for charges to be brought against Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori for violating the Constitution and Canons of her Church in the matter of Bede Parry, while she was the Bishop of Nevada. (The current disciplinary canons cover offenses committed up to ten years ago, provided that they were offenses so punishable at the time they were committed. Article VIII of ECUSA's Constitution read the same in 2003-2004 as it does now, so the "same offense" requirement is easily satisfied. See the further note on the statute of limitations below.)

Under Article VIII of ECUSA's Constitution, as in effect both in 2003 and now, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, as the diocesan bishop and Ecclesiastical Authority in the Diocese of Nevada, was required to see that

No person shall be ordered Priest or Deacon to minister in this Church until the person shall have been examined by the Bishop and two Priests and shall have exhibited such testimonials and other requisites as the Canons in that case provided may direct.

As we now see from his public admissions on the record, there is simply no possible way that Bede Parry could ever have validly "exhibited the testimonials and other requisites as the Canons . . . may direct" -- including valid and authentic credentials of having been a Catholic priest in good standing, whose departure from that Church was not due to any "circumstance unfavorable to [his] moral or religious character . . .". Another part of the Canon (section 2) also required Parry to supply evidence that he had "exercised a ministry in his previous Church with good repute and success for at least five years . . .". Once again, it would be highly revealing to see what the evidence of "good repute" was which convinced Bishop Jefferts Schori -- especially after she had spoken with Bede Parry's former Abbot, and he had warned her of Fr. Parry's prior offenses and his "proclivity to reoffend with minors."

Just in case the Constitutional prohibition against receiving someone like Bede Parry as an Episcopal priest was not clear enough at the time, there was another paragraph (the fourth) in that same Article VIII which should be brought to bear here. It declares, in relevant part (with emphasis added):

If any Bishop . . . confers ordination as Priest or Deacon upon a Christian minister who has not received Episcopal ordination, the Bishop shall do so only in accordance with such provisions as shall be set forth in the Canons of this Church.

Bede Parry had not "received Episcopal ordination" when Bishop Jefferts Schori welcomed him as a priest into her Diocese at its annual convention in the fall of 2004. By doing so, however, she effectively allowed him to function as a priest canonically resident in her Diocese, just as though she had ordained him -- without requiring that he first satisfy all the canonical requirements to be ordained an Episcopal priest. In other words, even if Bede Parry had come to her initially as a candidate for the priesthood, she never could have begun his ordination process lawfully under the Canons, given his previous record of abusing young males. Her licensing of him, despite his disqualification to be ordained, and especially despite his having lied to her, was thus a second violation of Article VIII, as quoted above.

And we are not done yet. For Article VIII goes on to provide, in its next and fifth paragraph:

No person ordained by a foreign Bishop, or by a Bishop not in communion with this Church, shall be permitted to officiate as a Minister of this Church until the person shall have complied with the Canon or Canons in that case provided . . . .

Once again, this provision applied equally well to the case of Bede Parry, who had been previously ordained "by a Bishop not in communion with this Church." Despite his lying to her in his application, and despite all of his other disqualifying conduct, as cited above, she nevertheless "permitted [him] to officiate as a Minister of this Church" without first complying with all of the applicable canons, in direct violation of ECUSA's Constitution. This violation is the most blatant and direct of the three, because it focuses on just the licensing of Bede Parry in the Diocese of Nevada.

There are thus three Constitutional violations which can be laid at the feet of the Presiding Bishop over her conduct in the Bede Parry case:

1. In violation of the first sentence of Article VIII, Bishop Jefferts Schori gave Episcopal recognition to, and revived in the Episcopal Church, the priestly orders of Bede Parry when the evidence and testimonials he gave to her, and to the diocesan Standing Commission, must have been false. At best, he must have concealed from them the most important facts about his prior abuses -- about which Bishop Jefferts Schori had specifically been advised and warned -- and the consequent reasons for his having been forced out of the Roman Catholic Church in disgrace.

2. In violation of the fourth paragraph of Article VIII, Bishop Jefferts Schori recognized Bede Parry's priestly orders without having complied with the canons for ordaining someone who had not previously been ordained in the Episcopal Church.

3. In violation of the fifth paragraph of Article VIII, Bishop Jefferts Schori licensed Bede Parry to function as a minister in her Diocese without requiring him to comply honestly with all the provisions of Canon III.11 as then in effect.

The new Title IV imposes a two-year statute of limitations on any proceedings for "knowingly violating or attempting to violate" the Church's Constitution and Canons. However, we have it on Bishop Edwards' word that the above offenses were not willful offenses, because every attempt was made to "follow the canons meticulously." Instead, the violations described above -- consisting either of gross negligence or reckless disregard -- would come under the following language of new Canon IV.4.1:

1. (a) . . . [A] Member of the Clergy shall:
. . .
(g) exercise his or her ministry in accordance with applicable provisions of the Constitution and Canons of the Church and of the Diocese, ecclesiastical licensure or commission and Community rule or bylaws . . . .

For violations of this section, the statute of limitations under Canon IV.19.4 (a) is ten years, and so the period will not expire until October 2014. Under Canon IV.3.3, any such violation "must be material and substantial or of clear and weighty importance to the ministry of this Church." Given the substantial emphasis on screenings for sexual abusers in 2003, however, as I detailed in this earlier post -- and given the role which Bishop Jefferts Schori herself played in promulgating new standards for her Diocese in that same year -- she could hardly assert now that her handling of Bede Parry's application was not "material", or of "clear and weighty importance to the ministry of this Church." In effect, she was substantially involved in seeing comprehensive standards for such screening put into place, and then promptly turned around and ignored those standards in order to receive Bede Parry as a priest.

Another noteworthy addition to the catalog of offenses under the new disciplinary Canons is this section of Canon IV.1:

1. (a) . . . [A] Member of the Clergy shall:
. . .
(f) report to the Intake Officer all matters which may constitute an Offense as defined in Canon IV.2 meeting the standards of Canon IV.3.3, except for matters disclosed to the Member of Clergy as confessor within the Rite of Reconciliation of a Penitent;

Under this new provision, therefore, any bishop, priest or deacon in the Episcopal Church (USA) who becomes aware of these facts constituting a probable violation of Canon IV.4.1 (g) by another bishop must report them to the appropriate Intake Officer for disciplinary matters concerning bishops -- and if they do not, they will have committed a violation of the Canons of their own! In this case, the Intake Officer for bishops is the Rt. Rev. F. Clayton Matthews, of the Church's Office of Pastoral Development, in North Carolina. (His physical address and "800" telephone number are at the link just given.)

Under the new Title IV, Bishop Matthews must conduct an inquiry into the charges, and must make a report to the Reference Panel of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops, which in the Presiding Bishop's case, consists of Bishop Matthews, Bishop Dorsey Henderson (the President of the Disciplinary Board), and Bishop Dean Elliott Wolfe, who, as Vice President of the House of Bishops, is designated by Canon to function in the place of the Presiding Bishop when she herself is the subject of disciplinary charges. The charges against her cannot be dismissed in the first instance, unless Bishop Wolfe agrees with Bishop Matthews to dismiss them, and the complainant is notified of that fact (so that he or she may appeal to Bishop Dorsey Henderson, the President of the Disciplinary Board).

If it appears to a majority of the Reference Panel that the charges need to be investigated further, they may refer the case to their appointed Investigator to look into the matter and deliver a full report. Based on that report, the Reference Panel then votes how to proceed further -- to dismiss the charges, to issue a "pastoral directive" to the Presiding Bishop, or to refer the charges to a Conference Panel, as I discussed in detail in this earlier post. But the main thing which Bishop Wolfe (and only Bishop Wolfe can make this call) can do is this, according to Canon IV.7.3:

If at any time the Bishop Diocesan [in this special instance, referring to Bishop Wolfe] determines that a Member of the Clergy may have committed any Offense, or that the good order, welfare or safety of the Church or any person or Community may be threatened by that member of the Clergy, the Bishop Diocesan may, without prior notice or hearing, (a) place restrictions upon the exercise of the ministry of such Member of the Clergy or (b) place such Member of the Clergy on Administrative Leave.

If Bishop Wolfe, therefore, cannot convince the Presiding Bishop privately that she should make a full and fair public statement accounting for her actions in the Bede Parry case, such that everyone could judge whether or not she followed the 2003 Constitution and Canons "meticulously", then he should proceed to inhibit her from acting as Presiding Bishop until she does so, and until the Conference or Hearing Panels of the Disciplinary Board reach a decision as to how to proceed in her case.

Much will depend on how the Presiding Bishop answers these charges against her. She has it in her power to give a full and public explanation, to make an appropriate apology, and to state just what went wrong and to accept responsibility. But unless and until she does so, she is not fit to be sitting in judgment of other bishops' alleged violations of the Constitution and Canons of ECUSA.

Common Sense Has Died; No Services Scheduled (Too Few Mourners)

2011-11-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

[Note: This piece appeared a while back in our local paper. Since it is a very good read, I am posting it for your entertainment while I work on some weightier posts to come. ;>) ]

Someone sent me a little missive out of London mourning the death of Common Sense.

It was sad to hear, as citizens and government leaders today debate issues whose solutions would be obvious if Common Sense still had a pulse. It didn't say exactly when Common Sense kicked the bucket, or get into much detail on the cause of death. I'm guessing he died from loneliness and that his death was excruciatingly painful. We all need social interaction to help feed our spirit and nobody seemed to be paying much attention to Common Sense.

We need look no further than Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to see evidence of neglect and abuse of Common Sense.

In his absence, our government leaders have felt compelled to pass laws that would otherwise be obvious if Common Sense were still around. He would know without being told, for example, that you shouldn't stand on an oven door to reach for a box of cereal, or that it would be a great idea to wear a helmet if you drive a motorcycle 100 miles an hour in a forest.

I'm guessing he'd also suggest that you shouldn't text the passenger in the back seat while driving on the Coastal Highway, or across the Bay Bridge in fog. And he'd remind us that before the invention of soy milk there were actually cows, with udders that squirted milk if you gave them a proper tug. Many people — called farmers, according to history books — actually drank that milk and grew strong enough to change a wagon wheel with their bare hands.

He'd also have probably reminded us that a home we built for $300,000 in 2001 could not possibly have been worth $700,000 four years later, or that we shouldn't sign paperwork without reading it, no matter what size the print is.

There's a great chance he would have whispered in the president's ear that there is a thousand years of history that tells us you can't win a war in Iraq, or Afghanistan, and that you should never spend more money than you make. Common Sense would have shaken his head at the notion of giving an Afghan tribal chief a bag of cash while closing schools and senior citizen centers back home.

And he might have even ended the immigration debate by simply saying, “You can come here, but not on our dime. We really need to take care of our own citizens first and we don't have enough money to even do that very well. So when you sneak into our country, bring some cash with you to cover your own education and medical bills. Or ... file the proper paperwork and come in the front door. The sign on that door, by the way, is in English.”

He might also be wondering how, with 14 million people collecting unemployment benefits in this country, there can still be jobs “no American wants.” If there are still jobs no American wants, perhaps we should reconsider our unemployment benefit policies. I know ... the horror of it. “You want me to pick what?”

And if the Chinese can make a solar panel for $10 while it costs $1,000 to make a similar solar panel in California, Common Sense would have raised a red flag on any proposal to loan the California solar company $500 million of taxpayer money. Then — since the executives of that failed solar company won't tell us what happened to the $500 million government “loan” — Common Sense would find out why it costs $1,000 to make a solar panel in California in the first place and how we are supposed to compete with the Chinese for any manufacturing jobs.

If Common Sense wasn't dead by then, I'm sure that decision finally put him out of his misery. It likewise would have driven him over the edge to stand by while a Chinese sculptor was contracted to build a monument to the late Martin Luther King, Jr. Common Sense might have wondered why they couldn't find a black sculptor to chisel a monument to that Civil Rights hero, or why anyone would have a monument like that built in a country that has no respect for basic human rights, even if they did save $8 million (they argued that's how much less it cost to build the monument in China and have it shipped here). Common Sense would have wondered about the process that went into that decision.
. . .

It would be obvious to Common Sense that the best way for us to get out of this recession is to keep government as far away from Main Street as possible. Common Sense knew that government was never qualified, nor designed to create jobs. Most politicians know nothing about jobs because they've never actually had one. And ... no ... spending taxpayer money is not a job, it's a hobby for some and an addiction for others.

“Government,” Common Sense would always say, “never injected a single penny into the economy that it didn't first take out of the economy.” There are many in government today who think money comes from the Tooth Fairy.

According to his obituary, Common Sense was survived by several step-brothers: I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim.

There was no mention of an actual Big Brother, but I'm pretty sure Common Sense left one of those behind as well.

--Jeff Ackerman

Armistice Day 2011

2011-11-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

It's funny how conservative you get over time. I've come to prefer "Armistice" to "Veteran's" to label the day, maybe because "Memorial Day" has been taken over as another day to have a spasm of declaring ourselves free because we resemble Rome (with its standing army) more than we resemble Athens (with its citizen soldiers called to battle only when the need arose).

Paths of Glory is the story for today. The story of a French general ordering a suicide charge by his own troops, and then issuing a order to shell his own troops to get them out their trenches and into the fusillade of machine gun fire that would surely cut them down like so many blades of grass.

That's the movie for today. "A voice says, 'Cry!" And I say: "What shall I cry? All flesh is grass...."

Which is the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Call the names. Call the names. Call the names.

Et in Albania Ego

2011-11-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

I will be in the Diocese of Albany this weekend, speaking at the Annual Meeting of Albany Via Media on Saturday afternoon and celebrating the eucharist and preaching on Sunday (9 and 11:15 am): all events to take place at the historic St. George’s Church, Schenectady.

The talk will be about “Anglican Disunion” — which is to say, about the realities of Anglicanism, and how to live with them! I hope friends in the area of upstate NY might make it to one or more of the events.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Elegy for a Past that Never Was

2011-11-09T08:23:00.000-08:00

a short review of Never Let Me Go, a film based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro

I came across this little film last night while scrolling through the offerings on HBO and thought it sounded interesting. It was more than that — it was riveting and disturbing and moving. Some have apparently found the formal element of its being “alternative reality” — or science fiction set not in the future but the past — confusing, but it added to its haunting quality. It would make an interesting double feature with the more spectacular Children of Men.

Some have wondered how people could treat other people in the manner they are treated in this film, but I think the evidence from the not so distant past is overwhelming, and the evidence from the somewhat more distant past (say the antebellum era in the American South) conclusive. People can and do treat other people as if they were not people. Q.E.D.

However, it would be a mistake simply to see it as a story about medical ethics or even the larger issue of how society “commodifies” everything. Rather, the situation and the story provide a matrix for a meditation on impermanence and what the poets call “intimations of mortality.” The title, ironically, says it all: ultimately letting go is part of the human condition. As the film's last line observes, using its own peculiar jargon, "We all complete."

This is a relatively “quiet” film — its emotional impact is cumulative rather than sharply punctuated. Like the author’s earlier Remains of the Day this film dwells in the subtle, muted world of restrained emotions and conformity to values and structures that seem irrational and oppressive, and yet which people seem willingly to embrace. And that is its terror.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

ps An interview with the author on some of the themes in his work. Thanks to Paul Halsall for the link.

Statement by Bede Parry Posted: Jefferts Schori Was Informed about His Past

2011-11-07T10:23:00.000-08:00

The Website of Patrick Marker which delves into sexual misconduct (and murder!) at Conception Abbey in Missouri has posted a .pdf copy of a two-page statement signed by former priest Bede Parry on May 7 of this year. The statement sets forth a full chronology of Bede Parry's sexual misconduct with young male students at both Conception Abbey and St. John's, in Minnesota, while he was a student there.

Of particular interest to Episcopalians, and in light of the previous posts I have put up on this topic (here, here and here), Bede Parry's statement contains this unequivocal declaration about what was communicated to the Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, when she was the Bishop of Nevada:

"Also in 2000, I considered joining the Prince of Peace monastery in Riverside, California. Prince of Peace had me undergo a series of psychological tests. After the testing, Prince of Peace’s Abbot Charles Wright informed me I was no longer a candidate. The psychological evaluation had determined that I had a proclivity to reoffend with minors. Abbot Wright called Conception Abbey’s Abbot Gregory Polan with this information."

"Abbot Polan would later share the information with Robert Stoeckig from the Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas, Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the human resources department at Mercy Ambulance in Las Vegas. Bishop Daniel Walsh, Monsignor Ben Franzinelli, Bishop Joseph Pepe, Archbishop Robert Sanchez and Rev. Bob Nelson were also made aware of my previous misconduct."

When compared with his earlier statements to the Kansas City Star at the time the Missouri lawsuit against Conception Abbey became public (and subsequently confirmed by his attorney), this statement provides further proof that Bede Parry had lied to Bishop Jefferts Schori about the extent of his previous abuse when he applied to her for reception as an Episcopal priest in 2002, and that she must have discovered the lie when she was fully informed by Abbot Polan of the findings with regard to Bede Parry. It is inconceivable that any Episcopal bishop at that point would not have called for the fullest background check of Bede Parry, if not have shown him the door right then and there.

Canon III.11 of the Episcopal Church at the time required that before he could be received into the Church, Bede Parry had to furnish proofs of his "godly and moral character", and that his departure from the Roman Catholic Church had not been on account of "any circumstance unfavorable to moral or religious character . . .". Again, it is inconceivable that the full information made available to Bishop Jefferts Schori could have satisfied either of these requirements before she agreed to receive him in the fall of 2004.

[UPDATE 11/07/2011: An alert reader points out that Bede Parry also says this in his statement (emphasis added):

In 2002, I pursued a cooperative dismissal from the Catholic Church. Fr. Dan Ward, a canon lawyer from Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, prepared the documents.

So Father Parry appears to have no longer been a priest in the Catholic Church (even one on suspension) at the time of his reception into the Episcopal Church in 2004, but had agreed earlier to being dismissed from his orders. While sacred orders in the Catholic Church, once validly received, never become invalid, the dismissal of a member of the clergy entails the loss of any ability to exercise the powers of his order. This new wrinkle raises the question: was Bishop Jefferts Schori made aware of Parry's cooperative dismissal from his orders in the Catholic Church? And if his prior offenses were grounds enough for his dismissal from orders, why were they not likewise grounds for refusing to receive him as a priest in the Episcopal Church?

Canon III.11.1(a)(2) in effect in 2003 required that Fr. Parry supply "[e]vidence of previous Ministry and that all other credentials are valid and authentic" (emphasis added). How could he have met this requirement if his credentials had been declared invalid by the Catholic Church -- with his cooperation and consent?? The questions for Bishop Jefferts Schori just get curiouser and curiouser. . . .]

It must be remembered, in considering all of this evidence, that 2003 was a year of intense examination in the Episcopal Church concerning its standards to prevent sexual abuse of minors and children. First, General Convention in summer 2003 enacted Resolution B008, "Protection of Children and Youth from Abuse." This recommended that dioceses obtain "a written application, public records check, an interview and reference checks" for every applicant who would "regularly work with children." (Bede Parry had been functioning as the organist, and assisting with the choir, at All Saints Las Vegas before applying to be received as a priest.) Next, the Episcopal House of Bishops, of which Jefferts Schori was a member, met in August 2003 and promulgated a pastoral letter addressed as follows:

To be read or cause to be distributed in every parish, mission, preaching station, and church-related institution which works with children and youth

The letter went on to state, in part:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We your bishops are steadfastly committed to seeing that the Episcopal Church is a community of safety and health for all people. The Body of Christ, the Church, must be a place where adults, children, and young people find the love and blessing of God, and where no one might be hurt and where their hurts may be healed.

We are all aware of the reports in the media, during the past year and more, of incidents of sexual misconduct in churches. Many of these tragedies have involved children and young people. While the Roman Catholic Church has most often been mentioned in news reports and accusations, the rest of the Church and many secular agencies have also been caught up in trying to address the damage done to our children by sexual predators. The Episcopal Church is not immune to this scourge in our society and we must respond to it honestly and forthrightly. . . .
. . .
Because of these mandates of love, respect, service, and justice, we have acknowledged our obligation to articulate clear standards about sexual harassment and misconduct, and to ensure that all our work and ministry is guided by them. We have been committed to sexual conduct training and abuse prevention for all our clergy and lay leaders. We have been clear that exploitation and abusiveness are always unacceptable in our common life. We have made efforts to become aware of the spiritual and emotional damage that is done by sexual misconduct, and to do our best to guarantee that none who come to us will suffer such harm. In spite of our best efforts, it is sad when we discover that we have not done enough.

As if these statements were not enough to raise the red flag in the Diocese of Nevada, the Pastoral Letter from the House of Bishops went on to discuss the kind of abuse with which Bede Parry had been most prominently involved (bold emphasis added):

While we were in conference together at Kanuga, North Carolina in the spring, many of us had the opportunity to learn more about pedophilia, a form of predatory sexual behavior that has caused untold harm in our society and in the Body of Christ. It is especially important that we as a church focus on understanding and preventing pedophilia.

While we need to be aware that pedophilia is a reality in our society, which can be manifest in the church, we must be very clear about the nature of this tragic problem. Pedophilia is pervasive; one in eight males and one in four females will be molested before they reach the age of eighteen. Of reported cases in the general population, sixty percent (60%) of abusers are known to their victims, thirty percent (30%) are family members or relatives, and ten percent (10%) are strangers. We must be aware that the Church is a community which offers predators the opportunity to become known and trusted by parents and their children.

We also know that offenders are predominantly male and heterosexual. We must take great care not to equate pedophilia with homosexuality in our minds or our conversation, and we must never assume that only men molest children in this way.

What we have learned most recently about the repetitive nature of pedophilia makes it imperative that we take very clear steps together to do the screening necessary to ensure that our children encounter God’s love among us, and that we do all in our power to protect them from the distorted perceptions of love offered by predators.

The Bishops went on to emphasize the specific measures that had been listed in Resolution B008, and then advised the Church that in conjunction with the Church Insurance Group and the Church Pension Group, a set of model expectations and standards would be promulgated regarding the protection of children and youth from predators and sexual abuse. Remarkably in light of later developments, the Pastoral Letter concluded in part with these words:

. . . In the case of pedophilia, our consistency in carefully screening, choosing and training all who work with children and youth will serve to allay any concerns about favoritism or carelessness, prohibiting those who have harmed children from ministries involving children, while providing the ability to firmly guide those who might harm children into other areas of ministry which serve the Church and contribute to our mission.

Following this letter, exactly as stated, (a) the Diocese of Nevada under Bishop Jefferts Schori adopted in October 2003 its own Manual of Policies and Procedures Concerning Sexual Misconduct, and then (b) the Church Pension Group promulgated a nationwide set of model standards for dioceses and parishes to follow. Those standards required a full application which included the inquiry: "Have you ever been accused of physically, sexually or emotionally abusing a child or an adult?" It also required a background check, including a check of references.

Bishop Dan Edwards, the current Bishop of Nevada, says that a review of Bede Parry's file shows that Bishop Jefferts Schori placed a restriction on his ability to work with children -- which shows that she had been made aware of his tendency to prey upon young males. But an interview with his most recent employers at All Saints in Las Vegas disclosed that they had been unaware of any such restrictions.

There is also no showing made in the records disclosed thus far that Father Parry ever fully confessed to his offenses with Bishop Jefferts Schori. At the time she received him in 2004, it does not appear that he had apologized, or been required to apologize, to his previous victims, or to acknowledge his injuries to them in any way. Amazingly, Bishop Jefferts Schori appears to have allowed him to wipe his slate clean and proceed to function as a priest in her Diocese without further concern or ado.

Given the stringent standards adopted by both the Diocese and the national Church, and given Bishop Jefferts Schori's specific participation in their promulgation, she has quite a bit of explaining to do. Hindsight does not equal foresight, and the Church needs to hear why, in light of all that she learned from Abbot Polan about Bede Parry's prior misconduct, and his proclivity to repeat it, she did not follow her own pastoral direction, and "take very clear steps together to do the screening necessary to ensure that our children encounter God’s love among us, and that we do all in our power to protect them from the distorted perceptions of love offered by predators."

The Wedding Banquet

2011-11-07T08:45:00.000-08:00

Saint James Fordham • All Saints Sunday 2011
a sermon by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The angel said to me, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

There is an old tradition that on the night before a marriage, the future bride and groom are separately wined and dined by their friends at bachelor or bachelorette parties — with perhaps more emphasis on the wining than the dining! Well, All Saints Day is the day on which the church celebrates the marriage supper of the Lamb. And since the marriage supper is yet to begin — we’ve received the invitation but it isn’t dated; we’ve just been told to be ready and alert — in one sense the church’s whole vigil here on earth is like a long bachelor or bachelorette party as we anticipate the great day to come. We who have yet to cross over to the life of the world to come, we in what is called the Church Militant (as opposed to the Church Triumphant), we who feebly struggle while they in glory shine, we, Christ’s body still at work, remember and give thanks for those who rest from their labors.

+ + +

Now one of the things about the parties surrounding weddings, is that the guests usually bring gifts for the new bride and groom. But what can we possibly bring as a gift for someone who has everything already! For the wedding we are talking about is the wedding of Christ and the Church, the wedding supper of the Lamb! And if anyone ever deserved the title The Man Who Has Everything, it is Jesus Christ, the one who draws the whole world to himself.

The answer is that Jesus wants one other gift, one thing we possess but which we can hold back if we will, or choose to let go of and give to him. And that is ourselves. We can choose to keep to ourselves, or we can choose to give ourselves to the one who gave us everything; we can give our selves, our souls and bodies, as a reasonable and holy sacrifice.

The Saints in glory, both the big famous saints with churches named after them, whose likenesses are enshrined in stained glass and icons, (or on the wall outside the parish office!), and the less well-known saints with likenesses preserved on our own little remembrance board there under the altar, the saints are those who gave themselves to God. And their example can help us to be as generous with ourselves as they were with themselves. The wonderful thing about the communion of saints — and I mean all of the saints, living and dead, including us here as much as the saints in glory — the wonderful thing about the communion of saints is that we help each other become gifts to God. We bear each other up when we are tempted to slide back and away from our best efforts to serve our Lord.

Ultimately all of us come to the wedding banquet carrying some of our brothers and sisters and being carried by others of them. No one gets in empty-handed! We are called and invited to the wedding, and we are to come bearing love for one another, which ofttimes means literally bearing each other up. The only wedding invitation we will have to show at the door to heaven is each other. No one gets in unaccompanied.

Remember the stern question that God asked the first murderer, and his cavalier response: Where is your brother? and Am I my brother’s keeper? Think of the sadness that pierced the heart of God when he heard those words in answer to the question, and left unsaid the response, “Of course you are." We are responsible to and for each other, connected through the bond of our common humanity. That bond is stronger than mere nationality or culture, and is fundamental and basic to our very being as human beings.

The weight of each other, as we bear each other and each other’s burden — as indeed Christ bears us — is the gentle and easy yoke of Christ. All of us are brothers and sisters in him, because it is through him that we become children of God.

What form that family will take, what we will become when we arrive, remains to be seen — it is not yet revealed. All of the blessedness that Jesus describes in the beatitudes is sometimes only perceived in that retrospective glance. In the present, most of those things are not pleasant while they are being endured! The road of sainthood is hard, no doubt about it. Being persecuted for righteousness sake is no bed of roses. It is only once we have arrived at the goal of the heavenly call — only when we look back to see our lives laid out in testimony, that we will see what a journey we have taken.

And more importantly, who has been with us and bearing us up along the way. What unknown hands lift burdens from our backs? What unknown saints walk at our sides and help us over obstacles of which we may not even be aware? Only when we’ve reached the goal will we be able to look back and see.

And what we will see will be worthy of the vision of Saint John the Divine. All the church through time and space, all the prophets and apostles and martyrs, all the saints in their festal company, and all the holy people of God will be displayed as a huge inverted wedge of souls and saints carrying and being carried by one another, an inverted pyramid that focuses its sharp, heavy point on a man nailed to a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem — who bears it all, with arms outstretched.

Though that weight pushed him down to the very depths when he descended to the dead, yet the power of God working in him raised him up again, and the power of God working through him can and will push that whole great pyramid of charity right on up and out of time and space and into eternity. And the first shall be last: the first fruits of the resurrection, Jesus the Bridegroom, is behind us urging us on, bearing us forward, ushering us into the banqueting hall.

+ + +

God is full of surprises. We thought we were coming to the wedding banquet as servants, then found we were no longer servants, but friends. Then we were surprised to find that the bridegroom would act as usher. But a far greater surprise awaits us. We had just settled into the notion that we were to be guests at the banquet, friends of the bridegroom. But it turns out that we are much more even than wedding guests. All this blessed company — ironically blessed in poverty, meekness, thirst for righteousness, hunger for mercy and peace, and even under persecution — all this company of blessedness will gather at the banquet, as more than guests: we are the Bride herself.

We, in company with all those who have gone before, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, all the holy people of God, the blessed company of all faithful people, the saints militant and triumphant are the Bride!

This is the mystery we celebrate today. We and all our beloved ones, together with the unnumbered saints who have gone before us, participate in God’s great saving act in Jesus Christ our Lord. We as the Church in the communion of saints are eternally united to him by his gracious gift of himself once offered for us all — for what God has joined together shall never be put asunder. And so, to our Lord and God — and loving Spouse — let us with grateful hearts ascribe all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forevermore.+

Litigation - the Diocese of Connecticut

2011-11-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

[N.B.: The post below will become my index page for current and future posts dealing with litigation involving parishes in the Diocese of Connecticut, as part of my "Litigation and the Episcopal Church (USA)" page. In attempt to provide comprehensive coverage of all such litigation, I plan future pages for ongoing litigation in the Dioceses of Ohio and Nebraska, in addition to all the ones which are already featured at the link. Because the recent developments in Connecticut might be of interest, I am publishing this as a current blog post, as well. Be sure to watch the latest edition of Anglican Unscripted for more reporting on the latest Connecticut developments, as well.]

As it did in so many other instances, trouble in the Diocese of Connecticut began with the support given by its diocesan, the Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith, for the election and consecration of V. Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. The forces of dissent coalesced around a group of six Connecticut clergy: the Rev. Mark Hansen of St. John's, Bristol; the Rev. Ronald Gauss, of Bishop Seabury Church, Groton; the Rev. Allyn Benedict of Christ Church, Watertown; the Rev. Donald Helmandollar of Trinity Church, Bristol; the Rev. Gilbert Wilkes, of Christ & the Epiphany Church, East Haven; and the Rev. Christopher Leighton, of St. Paul's Church, in Darien. These came to be known in Episcopal and Anglican news stories as "the Connecticut Six."

They first stopped forwarding their parish assessments to the Diocese, and asked to be released from their ordination vows of obedience to Bishop Smith. He refused, and proposed to place them under the alternative oversight of a conservative bishop for two years. But they demanded more permanent arrangements, including the right to have their parishes and the alternative bishop choose their successors. Again Bishop Smith refused. After an unsuccessful attempt to mediate the standstill, and with the consent of his Standing Committee, Bishop Smith in August 2005 inhibited the Rev. Mark Hansen on the pretext he had taken an unauthorized sabbatical. He sent in a diocesan task force to seize the premises of St. John's, change the locks, and oust the dissidents. Eventually he installed a new vestry, as the former congregation became "St. John's in Exile."

In September 2005, the six parishes, their vestries, and five of the six priests filed a lawsuit against Bishop Smith in the federal District Court of Connecticut. They named the Diocese and ECUSA's Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, as co-defendants, along with Connecticut's Attorney General, and claimed that the defendants had conspired to deprive them of their civil rights. The lawsuit also claimed that the State of Connecticut, through its statutes, gave unconstitutional preferences to the Episcopal Church (USA). The filing of the lawsuit caused the Archbishop of Canterbury to withdraw his earlier reference of the dispute to the Panel of Reference which he had created following Bishop Robinson's consecration to mediate ensuing disputes between bishops and their clergy.

The federal District Judge dismissed the civil rights lawsuit in August 2006, after ruling that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction over the plaintiffs' claims. The dismissal was without prejudice, which left the plaintiffs free to pursue their remedies in State court. Meanwhile, nineteen lay leaders and priests from the Diocese had brought charges against Bishop Smith for his misuse of the Abandonment Canon, originally intended to provide an expedited process to remove (depose) clergy who had left the Episcopal Church for another denomination, in order to deal with disobedient clergy in his own Diocese. They were later supported by thirteen bishops from the Anglican Communion Network. The Church's Title IV Review Committee released a written decision in April 2007 finding that Bishop Smith had not violated any canons except possibly one, but that that violation was not "intentional."

After the decision in April 2007 clearing him of charges, Bishop Smith moved to depose four of the five remaining clergy who had opposed him -- all except the Rev. Leighton of St. Paul's in Darien, one of the largest parishes in the Diocese. Fr. Ronald Gauss and his vestry of Bishop Seabury parish in Groton refused to vacate their premises, and brought suit against the Diocese and its bishop in a local court. On March 15, 2010, that court issued an opinion granting the latter parties' motion for summary judgment, and awarding them possession of the church and its bank accounts. Fr. Gauss and his vestry appealed, and the case was transferred to the Connecticut Supreme Court. The latter Court issued its final decisions in the case in September 2011, in opinions which are linked and discussed in the first post below. It affirmed the ruling of the trial court, but on different grounds, which explicitly upheld the Diocese's claim to the real and personal property based on the 1979 Dennis Canon.

Most recently came word that St. Paul's was the site of an ACNA ordination ceremony on October 30, 2011, where one priest and two deacons were ordained by the Rt. Rev. William Murdoch, bishop of the Anglican Diocese of New England. The ceremony took place at the invitation of the Rev. Leighton, who gave notice of it to Connecticut's current Episcopal Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Ian Douglas. Amazingly, the latter granted his permission, and said it was given as a gesture of "episcopal hospitality."

Nevertheless, a recent news item from Darien recounts that St. Paul's is the plaintiff in a new lawsuit against the Diocese of Connecticut and ECUSA, seeking a declaratory judgment that it owns its property free and clear of any trust interest in favor of the Episcopal Church (USA) or the Diocese. Bishop Douglas had sent the parish a letter asserting the primacy of the Church's Dennis Canon, and this lawsuit will test the validity of that claim. The wrinkle is that, unlike all of the previous Connecticut cases, including the latest one discussed in the link below, St. Paul's has not voted to leave the Diocese or the Episcopal Church (USA). The Dennis Canon, by its own terms, has no application "so long as the particular Parish, Mission or Congregation remains a part of, and subject to, this Church and its Constitution and Canons."

There is thus presented for the Connecticut courts an interesting paradox which should penetrate to the heart of the flaws in the Dennis Canon. If the Canon says the trust "shall in no way limit the power and authority of the Parish . . . otherwise existing over [its] property" while it remains in ECUSA, then how does that constitute a "legally cognizable" trust at law (to use the words of Justice Blackmun's obiter dictum in Jones v. Wolf)? Trusts that spring into existence for the first time on a future contingency have long been disfavored in the law -- they are called "shifting uses." They were invalid at common law until the Statute of Uses, which enabled them only if the land was presently conveyed to a trustee, such as "to X, in trust for A and his heirs, but if B returns from Rome, then in trust to B and his heirs." A conveyance directly "to A and his heirs, but if B returns from Rome, then to X, in trust for B and his heirs" was invalid, and gave A a fee simple outright.

The Dennis Canon, however, involves no conveyance to a present trustee. Its declaration of a "shifting use" on the happening of a contingent event would be invalid if tried by anyone at common law. The novel question thus presented by St. Paul's lawsuit is: how can the Connecticut Supreme Court grant to the Diocese and to the Episcopal Church (USA) a special privilege to do what no one else has ever been allowed to do at law -- to create a shifting use that comes into being without there being any conveyance to an existing trustee?

Future posts linked at this page will address how the Connecticut courts proceed with this question.

Connecticut Supreme Court Enforces Dennis Canon

With You Anon.

2011-11-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

I saw Anonymous on my day off, in an almost empty but palatial new movie theater in Yonkers.

Let me say from the start I am no fan of the “WS didn’t write the plays” theories. My major objection is to the Main Premise, with which the film starts off in its Prologue (and with which it doesn’t advance much further): the poorly educated son of a middle-class suburban glove-maker could not have had the mental or experiential bounty to bring forth the richness of these plays and poems. This accusation, reeking as it does of Good Old English Classism, reminds me of the thesis that the Egyptians couldn’t have built the pyramids because such backward people were incapable of doing so; it must have been aliens.

I utterly reject this premise because I was, in my former career, an actor. Actors with whom I have worked are among the most well-rounded and culturally well-informed people I know, as are not a few of the directors and playwrights. The upper-class English twits I’ve encountered over the years couldn’t hold a literary candle to some of my actor friends. I’ve sat backstage in dressing rooms with actors wiling away their off-stage moments doing the London Times crossword, or working on a monumental thesis on Finnegans Wake. In my undergraduate school, actors were treated to a superb course on “Theater in the Humanities” where faculty from across the college were brought in to lecture on the history, culture, science, literature, art and religion of the various eras in which plays were written and set — producing an enviably well-rounded liberal arts education that would put the specialists in other of those fields to shame. So don’t get me started on the impossibilist assertion in re WS’s capacity for brilliance. Oxford himself gives the verdict, of course, when he tells Jonson, “People like me don’t write plays.” Aristocrats are often the most boring and ill-informed people.

What about the film as film? Well, the underpinning “theory” and the attendant revisionist history aside, it was diverting and beautifully produced. Someone got the “secretary’s hand” down pat, and the costumes and CGI scenery were impressive. The use of the theatrical Prologue in the manner of Larry O’s Henry V was clever. The snippets of the Bard’s own words are inspiring and rather well spoken (Henry more than Hamlet, but I digress...). Vanessa Redgrave is as quirky and brilliant as ever, and there are other creditable performances.

But it is in how the film failed to make use of the ample possibilities of WS’s architectonic genius that it was most profoundly disappointing. One of the things WS was so brilliant at was the layering of multiple stories in parallel and counterpoint. Here we had two stories, both reflecting the issue of anonymity, running side by side: the authorship of the plays, and the “authorship” of the progeny of ER I. Yet this rich material just sits there, never truly woven together in the delightful way that WS could do, so that the great “A ha!” moment of revelation is more of a “Huh? Oh...” The things that ought to have clicked into place didn’t. There is little or no humor in the film, none of that brilliant interplay of “conceptual rhyme and rhythm” that carries you through scene upon scene. The time-shifting was not well handled (again, providing the audience with too few of the kinds of visual and verbal cues that would enable them immediately to know when was when and what, what — the very thing the Prologue of Henry V knows must take place in the viewers’ minds — and of course this lack is fatal to the story as the author intended it to be understood.

In short, it goes to show that not everyone can write with the genius of a Shakespeare — or perhaps even be aware of the technical aspects of what make Shakespeare’s plays so enduring: it isn’t just the stories, for goodness’ sake, or even the poetry, but the resonances and braided layers of a highly refined narrative art.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Europe Unraveling -- but Is That All?

2011-11-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

The news from Europe is uniformly disturbing. The trouble that started in Greece has received only a band-aid, and now the Greeks themselves are not even certain that they wish to put it on. Meanwhile, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are teetering on the brink, as well. Even the incoherent "protesters" who wanted to shut down the London Stock Exchange managed only to shut down St. Paul's Cathedral instead. Can't anyone in Europe do anything right? (The word "ineptocracy" has been coined to describe the phenomenon, which is, in my own phrasing: "A system where those least capable of leading are elected by those least capable of producing. The former then bungle through as long as they can, by taking from those who are producing, until everyone may enjoy being as impoverished as those who are not producing.")

We may finally be witnessing the inevitable consequences of a global system built upon exclusively fiat currencies -- money that consists only of paper promises. When an economy's medium of exchange is transformed from gold into paper, a certain convenience is achieved, to be sure -- but the convenience comes at a huge hidden cost. As I explained in my previous series on money, paper money is based entirely on debt -- on promises to pay in the future. But pay with what? You guessed it -- more paper money, or more promises to pay. An endless and spiraling cycle of debt is the driver of a fiat money economy.

When money is based on gold and silver coins, no debt is involved. The coin itself is both money, and a thing of intrinsic value, because it is relatively scarce and cannot be counterfeited (although it can be debased). New gold is produced only by mining it. The miner brings his raw gold and silver to the mint, and receives already minted gold and silver coins in exchange. So long as debasement does not occur, there is no addition to the money supply without its being backed by the physical gold and silver that is minted.

But when paper money is printed, there is nothing to back it except the promises of the central bank to print more paper money as needed. (Originally, paper notes were promises to pay in specie; now, they are promises only to pay in more paper.) And since it costs the central bank only the value of the paper, ink and labor consumed to print the money, there is theoretically no built-in limitation on the quantity that it can print. Instead the amount in circulation is left to the discretion of the central banks.

Central banks exist to regulate the supply of money in an economy. Without a gold and silver backing for the paper money, someone has to decide how much money there should be in circulation. Because they have to be able to increase the supply when deflation rears its ugly head, central banks have the unique ability to "create" money, with simply (in today's electronic world) a single stroke on a computer keyboard. Then they get to lend that instant money, created at virtually no cost, to governments and other borrowers at interest. It is a crazy system, but one which makes sense to the central bankers and their cronies, who never have to worry about running out of money.

Over the long term, however, printing electronic money is a recipe for the disaster which we now see unfolding in Europe. The unification of Europe under the Euro stopped the currency devaluation wars which had theretofore been that region's hallmark. (A devaluation war occurs when one country declares that it will exchange more of its currency for the currency of a country with whom it trades. The result is to make the prices of goods in that home country appear cheaper to foreign buyers in terms of their own currency, in the hope that they will be motivated to buy even more goods, and boost the home country's economy. But the increased outflow of the foreign country's currency which results causes that country to lower its exchange rate, as well, and a devaluation war ensues.) With Europe's unification under a single currency, no country could devalue its own versus that of others.

(It is therefore significant that some economists are urging Greece to pull out of the EuroZone, and to start printing its own currency [drachmas] again. The reason? So that Greece can devalue its currency against the Euro, and attract trade and tourists because of the resulting cheaper prices in terms of other currencies. There is truly nothing new under the sun.)

Although unification put a stop to individual devaluation wars in Europe, it could not, and did not, change the spending or savings habits of the individual cultures which make up that region. In the north, Germans continued to work six days a week, to save a high proportion of what they earned, and to produce quality goods much desired by other countries. In the south, the Greeks (for instance) cut their workweek to less than five full days, joined the public payroll in record numbers and voted themselves pensions and benefits which could start as early as age 45, and produced goods of inferior quality (due to the more lackadaisical work force). Meanwhile, Greeks used their earnings to purchase Germany's superior goods, instead of putting them into savings. (What's the point of saving much when you've got a "guaranteed" pension of 100%+ of your salary that can start when you are 50 -- and even earlier, if you are a woman?)

But all of the money changing hands in these transactions was paper money (Euros). As a result of the trade imbalances, Germany acquired more Euros from other EZ countries than they acquired from Germany (by selling their goods to Germany). Without a way to earn enough currency and make it flow into its economy, Greece would eventually run out of paper money, because it was producing less (more people retiring on full pay) and spending more. The Greek government could no longer issue paper money of its own to fill the gap, or devalue its currency to make its goods more attractive to foreigners (see the link above). So it borrowed money from European banks, in exchange for bonds (more promises to pay). This money was used to keep Greek spending and pension benefits flowing. Is it any wonder that the Greeks came to like this new arrangement, while it lasted?

Even the European banks, however, could see that it was not wise to keep lending Greece money without any prospect of their being repaid. The European Central Bank stepped in, and used its ability to print money to stave off a Greek default (i.e., buy Greek bonds and lend it more money to keep functioning) for a while, but that process, too, had its limits. The Euro was still a world currency, and if the European Central Bank inflated the Euro too much, Germany would see the value of its savings dwindle, and its cost of living rise -- despite all its citizens' hard work. As the biggest economic partner in the European Union, Germany carried the biggest clout with the Central Bank. So, nix on printing more money to save the profligate Greeks.

Instead, the EU rulers and bureaucrats persuaded the European lenders to Greece that they would have to take a "haircut." They would write off some of their Greek bond holdings -- at first 20% was proposed, but then the figure quickly became 50%. At that point, the European central bureaucrats became alarmed that such a massive reduction in the banks' holdings would jeopardize their stability, so they imposed requirements on the banks to bring in new capital.

But the only capital which the banks can bring in is -- you guessed it -- more paper money! And to obtain it, they have to induce investors with promises of return which are better than those which the investors can obtain elsewhere. Tell me: would you invest your savings in the stock of a European bank which stood to take a huge hit from its faulty lending practices? What would it take to make you do so? So now the bureaucrats are considering a scheme to fund the needed infusions of capital by having the Central Bank buy the worthless bonds from the lenders. To do so, however, the Central Bank will have to come up with more money without "printing" it -- a neat trick.

The current financial crisis boils down to this. Too many promises to pay have been made in the past. In this declining economy, with so many out of work, with so little new loans being made because there are so few creditworthy borrowers willing to borrow on the basis of dim future prospects, there is no way for all those past promises to be paid out of current earnings -- without robbing Peter to pay Paul. Because Paul is a spendthrift, however, the process of robbing Peter to finance Paul's profligacy simply leaves everyone a bit more impoverished than before, and is no recipe for economic recovery.

And hence, because the whole system is built on paper promises, the only solution the bankers, economists and politicians can see is for the ultimate banker of last resort -- the Federal Reserve -- to use its power to print more dollars. (In that way, the Fed could end up with the worthless Greek bonds on its balance sheet.) This would be a short-term fix which could last only so long as the rest of the world is willing to take increasingly worthless dollars in exchange for their own currencies, goods and services.

In the longer run, however, anyone can see that this is a recipe for unbridled inflation -- which seems to be what happens every time the physical backing of money is exchanged for debt, a mere promise to pay. Promises are cheap, but gold is not. Think of that as you watch what happens to the price of gold in the coming years.

Thought for 11.04.11

2011-11-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

One problem with the Anglican Covenant Process is not so much that it is a case of closing the barn doors after the horses have bolted. Rather, it is like proposing to engage in a process to consider building a barn after the horses have bolted.

We have never had a barn. We don't need a barn. We have the field and hills before us, ripe for the galloping mission of God.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

The World is Too Much With Us

2011-11-03T06:49:00.000-07:00

I have not been following the controversy over St. Paul's Cathedral in London as I should (Wounded Bird has been doing it admirably), and unfortunately as much of what I know is from BBC World Service (where I can never find links to what I hear, so I can't directly quote it here), but last night as I went to bed BBC was interviewing Simon Jenkins(?), who pointed out the Cathedral was a monument to power, not at all the kind of place Jesus would have wanted built, and it had an obligation to the poor. He mentioned that before the current Christopher Wren structure replaced it, the old St. Paul's had a special pulpit precisely for people to preach from or make speeches from, and that people gathered and argued and riots even broke out there, all in the name of free speech and democracy and airing grievances. So, he meant, there is a long tradition of the Church of England supporting the right of the common man to speak, and it was high time they returned to their senses and to that tradition, and paid attention to the poor rather than the powerful.

That, at least, is what I remember this morning.

Now the Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken:

Dr Rowan Williams said that the Church of England had a “proper interest in the ethics of the financial world” and warned that there had been “little visible change in banking practices” following the recession.

He urged David Cameron and George Osborne to drop their opposition to a European-wide tax on financial transactions, which is expected to be formally proposed by France and Germany at the G20 summit of world leaders starting tomorrow.

“The demands of the protesters have been vague. Many people are frustrated beyond measure at what they see as the disastrous effects of global capitalism; but it isn’t easy to say what we should do differently. It is time we tried to be more specific,” Dr Williams said.

On that last point I would say that perhaps we need, not more specifics within the context of the old discussion (a discussion which hasn't done so well for us in the past 30 years), not, in other words, to simply refine the old structures of inequality and unequal distribution, but to consider new styles of architecture, a change of heart. St. Paul's, as the guest (I'm still not certain of his name) said on BBC last night, is a structure designed to make you feel totally insignificant in the presence of God. At the same time, it's a building built by people with money, as an expression of their power. I doubt the building humbled them as much as it confirmed their exalted status and sense of their own self-worth (after all, to be able to command such a thing into being! It's almost a god-like power....). Maybe we need, Dr. Rowan, to consider the words of Mary when she heard her cousin's greeting; maybe we need to revive the concept of the Jubilee from the Law of Moses; or maybe we just need to dust off the savagely rejected and frequently savaged concepts of the liberation theologians. Maybe, in other words, we need to shift the discussion away from the awesome power of human society and how it is justly distributed, and towards a discussion simply about justice. At least for starters.

Or maybe it's just time to be a little more in the world, but a great deal less of the world:

First, the story. When the camp was originally pitched, over a fortnight ago, concerns were expressed about apparently critical issues of health and safety for staff and visitors to St Paul’s. The cathedral was precipitately closed for the first time since the Second World War. Mistake number one. When the health and safety report arrived after the first weekend, the Dean realised the issues were trivial and easily remedied with co-operative protesters.

Why the knee-jerk reaction? There was no one around the chapter table, other than the estimable Canon Giles Fraser, who would shortly fall on his sword, warning of the liabilities of embarking on particular policies. This would never happen in any other commercial or institutional organisation. So, mistake number two.

Mistake number three was down to naivety rather than indolence: St Paul’s allowed the City of London Corporation to call the shots. It moved into the common consciousness that to talk to the protesters would be to compromise the cathedral’s position. There was an unaired alternative view and it is this: no, it wouldn’t. The evidence for that is clear. Since those early days, the Church’s senior command has spoken regularly and publicly with the protesters, to productive effect.

The Rev. Pitcher lends a great deal of insight to this matter, but that is the internal affairs of the Church of England, and not being of that body, I leave the matter to them without further comment. I'm interested in the larger issue of the church in society, which this story points to. We have no equivalent to St. Paul's Cathedral in Jeffersonian America, nothing remotely approaching the Church of England in our history (the Pilgrims came here as castaways from that Church, if that tells you anything). In America, we get this:

Clergy emphasize they are participants in the aggressively leaderless movement, not people trying to co-opt it. Plus, in a movement that purports to represent the "99 percent" in society, the prominent religious groups are overwhelmingly liberal.

Religion might not fit into the movement seamlessly, but activist Dan Sieradski, who's helped organize Jewish services and events at Occupy Wall Street, said it must fit somewhere.

"We're a country full of religious people," he said. "Faith communities do need to be present and need to be welcomed in order for this to be an all-encompassing movement that embraces all sectors of society."

Part of the problem is the problem of evangelism:

She said some protesters are wary because they don't recognize the authority of institutions, including religious ones, and are generally looking for clergy to be "ministering but not proselytizing." She recalled a conversation with an Occupy Santa Cruz protester while a man in a clerical collar picked up trash.

"(The protester) said, 'That dude's here with us. He's not handing out pamphlets and trying to save me. He's picking up trash,'" Drescher said.

But part of the problem is the problem of "liberal" v. "conservative" churches:

Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an advocacy group for conservative mainline Protestants, said while Occupy Wall Street has succeeded in getting attention, it's limited because it's only attracting religious support from the left.

A call for government redistribution of wealth and reliance on street activism doesn't appeal to the swath of suburban churchgoers with conservative political and religious leanings, he said.

"It doesn't seem they put a lot of thought into expanding their support base beyond those who identify with 1960s-era protest action," he said.

Think Progress points out that this is: "one aspect of the 99 Percent Movement that has yet to be acknowledged by the mainstream media’s narrative: the growing support the protests are receiving from various faith groups and leaders around the country." And when they do point it out, our media can't help but frame it in the "horse race" narrative of politics. I don't think our clergy can't talk like Anglican clergy can; I think it's that they aren't allowed to in the national discourse. I mean, clearly American clergy can speak about the Gospels and justice:

One-sixth of all the words Jesus spoke, and one-third of all the parables, are about the dangers of wealth and possessions. It is something that we hear from the prophets — particularly of the Old Testament, and of course that’s what Jesus was steeped in, those were his scriptures — that any culture, but certainly one that claims to be Godly, is to be judged on how well the most vulnerable are treated.

It’s more than about numbers, and it’s more than about disparity of income. It’s really about our sense of community. And indeed, do the wealthy have a responsibility to the larger community? Are we really going to live in an “every man, woman and child for themselves” world, or are we going to be a community in which the greater good, the common good, is also a value that we hold?

But that's Bishop Gene Robinson at Think Progress, not Gene Robinson being interviewed by NPR. It's funny that people like Bill Maher, who really don't know very much, are allowed to inveigh against the hypocrisy of an American culture that claims to be godly; but American clergy can't get enough attention to point out what a "godly culture" should actually look like. Think Progress provides a host of links to stories about churches and clergy supporting the Occupy movement. Have you heard about it aside from stumbling across it on the Web? At least in England there is a public discussion going on about the responsibilities of the community to its members, to the least as well as the most powerful. At least in England, there are public resignations and public recantations of positions, and public reviews of attitudes, and religious leaders who take a “proper interest in the ethics of the financial world”. Judging by that NPR report, I suspect the "conservative" religious leaders in America would find such in interest an improper interference with "The Market." American religious leaders who do take such an interest are pretty much ignored.

The British are not a terribly religious people, and they aren't especially known for the spirituality of their culture. But it is clear that while they are so much like us in so many ways, good and bad, and while we are linked with them in our devotion to the "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism that the French and the European nations either deride or veer away from, our British cousins still have a thing or two to teach us about valuing people and examining our society and the ends we, as members of it, ought to pursue. I'm trying to imagine a secular entity in America which would be compelled to act because of the decisions of a major church building in America; and I just can't do it.

"Death is the only experience that is not lived through."--Wittgenstein

2011-11-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

It will seem silly to consider this in terms of the life of a cat; but it's the only lesson I have right now.

On Hallowe'en a cat that had been with us for 16 years, finally died. I say "finally" because, looking back, it is obvious the cat was in distress for a year or more. As he aged his personality changed, but it didn't really change until the last year. Before that, he was still a kitten, still as playful and anxious to play as he had ever been. He never grew old gracefully or settled into the role of alpha male among our three unrelated cats. He ruled them, but he remained the amiable kitten and most sociable feline I'd ever seen. Anyone who came to the house was greeted by him, and he insisted on having their attention; but he returned their attention with his affections, not his demands. That much slowly changed in the last 6 months of his life, or what turned out to be the last. He also gradually lost eyesight, from a cause we never determined. In the last weeks, he would walk into things, wander in circles, feel along walls with his whiskers and blunder into blind alleys made by walls and furniture, and seem bewildered.

His blood panels and physical exams showed everything was working normally; but in the last month of his life, he decayed so sharply it was clear something was going badly wrong. The first response was steroids and antibiotics, a course of treatment new to us though we have had cats for over thirty years now. The first two died without major medical intervention, both in old age (almost two decades ago, now). The first died of kidney failure, a sudden collapse that made euthanasia the only humane response. The second, his litter mate, died when he failed to get out of the way as I drove the car into the driveway (I still feel guilty about that). It was just as well, as we were moving and couldn't take them with us, and they were too old to be separated from us. The third died of a stroke, screaming in such sudden distress that euthanasia was again a relief. This spring we euthanized a fourth cat, with a tumor almost the size of his abdomen. The last died on the couch in his sleep on Hallowe'en. He was a black cat; somehow the date was fitting.

One week earlier, we'd taken him to the vet because he was in obvious distress; barely eating, barely drinking, and listless. Antibiotics and steroids were tried, a new course of treatment for us. He responded, and by the sixth day seemed almost back to his old self; not the kitten self he'd always been, but the old cat he'd recently become. On the seventh day, he'd collapsed again. On Hallowe'en, I came home at mid-day to find him in such distress I thought sure the only recourse was the needle.

But it was steroids, again; another try, another brave attempt. His heart and lungs were good, the blood panel had shown no problems. The cause was a mystery, but a mystery that could be solved with treatment. I took him home, and he lay on his side, mewing hoarsely and kicking his front legs. His back legs refused to move. He released is bladder and I cleaned it up, and then he slowly quieted. I decided to try the steroid pill, the high dosage wonder that was going to tell us if it was a brain tumor or brain inflammation he suffered from (a good response to this meant the latter, no response would mean the former). He wouldn't even swallow; he simply closed his eyes. I thought I'd killed him, but he opened his eyes which could barely see (he'd seem myopic to me, in his last days; able to see on that which was very close to him), and he sagged into sleep. He breathed raspingly, and we put him on the couch. Shortly, without even noticing it, he stopped breathing.

I have seen people die, and animals die. They do it the same way, sometimes with consciousness of what seems to be happening (yes, animals too), sometimes without. This death was a shock, because modern medicine had convinced me another injection would stave it off, would have an effect, would be enough this time. It wasn't, but who could know? Who could be sure? He seemed to rally at the vet's office, to show a strength I otherwise thought he had lost. But it was just the distress of being in a strange place; not even the blush on the cheek of the dying, it was the last energy he had.

"What if" haunts these situations. Once, when I still served a church, I was called to the hospital just down the street from the parsonage. I'd heard the ambulance, and with the phone call I knew it was one of "mine". In the emergency room I talked to the wife while her husband, having had a heart attack, was attended nearby. Then the doctor came in and told her there was undoubtedly extensive brain damage due to oxygen deprivation (he'd stopped breathing for a time), that his chances of recovery were slim, so: should they take him upstairs, or disconnect him now?

She turned to me (I can still see her), and asked: "What should I do?"

How to answer such a question? How to know?

In the end, she decided to send him upstairs. He died in the elevator, relieving us all of responsibility. I buried him a few days later, in a small town far from the church, where my memory is the funeral director greeting me with "Oh, you're one of those" when I pulled my robe bag from the trunk of the car.

But responsibility for the living, for not letting them join the silent majority of the dead; or responsibility for sending them along, whether we let them go or force their passage (there is really little difference): that is the issue where we gaze into the future even after the event is past, and wonder: "What if?"

For the cat, there was nothing we could do; but should we have tried? Should we have eschewed another set of pointless injections, an attempt at forcing pills down his throat? Should we have known better, perhaps just left him at home to die in familiar surroundings and such comfort as we could offer, rather than the terror and pain of moving him across town to the vet's office, and back again? He was silent with fear on the way there, mewing with pain and misery on the way back. Was it worth it? Was it wise? Was it the foolish desire for someone to confirm or confute what we thought we knew? Was it a desire for someone to know, someone who pretended to know, but really could only guess, as we could? When he finally died, we had to fight the feeling that he was just sleeping so deeply we couldn't be sure he wasn't breathing. We wanted the vet to confirm our diagnosis one last time. Had it been earlier in the day, we might have; but we had to wait until morning. By early night it was clear the body was growing cold, and finally stiff. There was no mistake then.

There was plenty of time for mistakes before that; but no need to worry about them after that.

This is, finally, what death is. Finality; the point where no more mistakes can be made, where no more uncertainty is faced. Death is the end of the future, of possibilities, of questions. The question of the dead is what to do with the body, but there are no more questions about what happens next for the loved one. There is nothing next for them. Now it is up to you. Now a new story begins, one that is without them.

It's not the same for a pet as it is for a person. For a person, the question can be: did we do enough? For a pet, the question can be: should we have stopped sooner? In the end, it doesn't matter. It is hard, however, to accept that.

Death is a finality, in a world where nothing is final. You will say to me "But you are a Christian, a pastor! How can you believe death is the end?" Because it is. It is as final as it was for the disciples at the tomb. What came next was not the logical extension of death, was not the mere slipping off the mortal coil to reveal the butterfly soul that could fly to heaven. It was something else altogether. I believe in the resurrection; perhaps even for pets. But the resurrection is not the next stage of dying; it is not the room to which death is the doorway. Death is a finality; but only for the one dying. For the rest of us, it is a hole which the world closes over, but which we, one way or another, do not. Even the resurrection will not fill that hole; only, in hope of the resurrection of the dead, unbreak it.

Hidden in (Not So) Plain Sight

2011-11-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

One of the more interesting discussions at the recent conference I attended in South Africa concerned the nature of homosexuality in those parts of Africa where its presence is most vehemently denied or persecuted. Several of the lay and clergy leaders from those areas indicated that “homosexuality” was widely seen as some kind of alien import. They allowed, however, that as long as a man was married and had children, a concurrent sexual relationship with another man could — while still being viewed with opprobrium — likely be given a pass. Such a man would not be labeled as “homosexual.”

This reminds me, of course, of the situation in many communities even in the United States — thinking in particular of some Latino and African-American communities — based on their cultural construction of homosexuality. That is, a “man who sleeps with men” might well not be seen as “homosexual,” while an effeminate man or sissy-boy might be described as such even if he is a virgin and completely heterosexual in his orientation.

This is in part due to the confusion of the many variable axes that combine in human personality to define one’s identity. It isn’t just a matter of male and female (biological sex, and allowing for the reality of intersexuality), but of feminine and masculine (cultural or societal gender), attracted to one’s own sex or the other (sexual orientation), and so on. The simple fact, put simply, is that many gay men are not effeminate, and many effeminate men are not gay.

More importantly, the African situation reminds me of how it is that David and Jonathan’s relationship (with the emphasis on Jonathan’s attraction and attachment to David) can also be covered from perception as a same-sex relationship (which it no doubt is, regardless of whether acted upon erotically). The fact that both are “manly men” and warriors, both married (in David’s case we have quite a bit of evidence along that line), shields them — in cultures that cannot distinguish sexual orientation from notions of gender — from any suggestion of being what C.S. Lewis so revealingly called pansies. (The Four Loves, 62) While it is questionable to attempt to craft a psychological profile at such a remove, it is fair to say that David’s relationships with women all seem to be based either on the desire to possess and control or some kind of political or dynastic interest (as indeed may be true of his relationship with Jonathan in taking advantage of the latter’s attraction to him), while the relationship of Jonathan to David appears to be one of deep and lasting love. At least that is the language of the text. “Pansies”? No. Oriented towards a romantic relationship towards each other?” Very likely yes. At least David is not reported to have shed any tears over his female partners, and Jonathan’s testimony of complete dedication and what the text reveals as “love at first sight” is amply clear.

The role of choice

The question, “Is homosexuality natural or a choice?” also came up at the Conference in South Africa. The implication is that if it is a choice, it is a wrong choice, or at the least a choice that need not have been made, or could have been made otherwise. In earlier times it was assumed that the choice was a conscious act to choose wrongly — a perversity: doing deliberately and willfully what is known to be wrong.

Most gay and lesbian persons do not feel their orientation to be a choice, but something about which they become aware at some point in their life — just as do heterosexual persons of their sexual orientation. Most people, it seems, do not have much of a conscious awareness of sexual attraction in very early childhood, and begin to become aware of sexual attraction later in childhood or in early adolescence.

At this point the question of choice arises: do I choose to accept my inclinations? to act on them? to suppress them? Some people choose celibacy, while others choose relationship.

This leads me to reflect on the question, “Is choice a bad thing?” Aren’t we blessed to be chosen by the one who chooses us for life? The language of choosing and taking to oneself is intimately (!) connected with both salvation history and the life of human relationships; so much so that marriage is held to be an image of God’s relation to God’s Chosen.

Can this apply to same-sex relationships? Let me take another look at the relationship from Scripture that is often held up (and at the same time denied) as being homosexual, to which I alluded above: the story of the love of David and Jonathan. This is clearly a relationship between two men, but some do not see it as sexual in nature. It is true that sexual acts are not clearly recorded (though in a few places suggested) in the text — but this is true in large part of the Scriptural attitude towards descriptions of sex, which are usually veiled in metaphor or euphemism.

But let me start with a strongly negative view of the relationship between David and Jonathan from the text of Scripture itself. Jonathan’s father Saul verbally assails his son, when he says, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your confusion, and the confusion of your mother’s nakedness.” (1 Samuel 20:30) Jonathan’s choice, is of course a choice, but it does not come from perversity. He has no wish to see the kingdom of his father fall to confusion, and to see the swift end of that dynasty. But Jonathan knows that he had little power not to chose the one whom he has chosen; the one to whom he knew his whole being to be bound when he first laid eyes on him, the one whom he loved as his own soul. (1 Samuel 18:1) This covenanted love (1 Samuel 18:3; 20:8,16,41-42; 23:18) was the greatest love he would ever know, the love for which he would eventually risk everything (1 Samuel 20:33) and lose his life; this wonderful love surpassing the love of women. (2 Samuel 1:26)

Was Jonathan wrong so to choose? I don’t think so.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

Two Thoughts for 11.01.11

2011-11-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Due to travel and the press of other work, blogging has been light. There will follow a series of relatively short posts about things that have been on my mind. Here is the first.

The May 2011 issue of Scientific American (yes, my magazine reading is backlogged, too) had two interesting articles. The first was a short piece on Bayes’ Rule by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, author of a book on the subject, The Theory That Would Not Die. The rule (or theorem) has a more complicated definition in probability theory, having to do with linking the uncertainty concerning the likelihood of an event prior to collecting evidence with the uncertainty after trial evidence has been collected. As McGrayne puts it in plain English, “the formula is a simple one-liner: Initial Beliefs + Recent Objective Data = A New and Improved Belief.”

It struck me that this is the way all systems of human knowledge should work, but that in the real world objective data often seems not to have much impact on people’s beliefs.

The second and more interesting article, “The Hidden Organ In Our Eyes,” by Ignacio Provencio, dealt with the discovery that certain special neurons in the eye are responsible for sensing light — not for the purpose of vision but in relation to the circadian cycle — the internal clock by which we adjust to day and night. Thus the eye serves two purposes. This reminded me of something I cited in my Reasonable and Holy (7):

The difficulties with ends-based natural law arguments in this regard, which are advanced against birth control as much as against same-sexuality, in particular those that focus narrowly on the mechanics of sexual intercourse, are well summarized by Gerard J. Hughes in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics.
It is one thing to say that the natural function of the eye is to see. But even bodily organs can and do serve several functions. And if one asks of the body as a whole what its function is, the answer is much less clear. Even less clear is the answer to questions such as “What is the function of a human life?” or “What is the function of sexuality in a human life?” The way one might try to answer these questions seems quite unlike the way one might try to answer questions about the function(s) of the endocrine glands or the heart in the human body. The notion of “function” at this point becomes much more a matter of moral assessment than a scientific inquiry. (“Natural Law,” 413)

I reflected on this issue in parabolic fashion with the short fable, On the Island of Silence. I am fascinated by the extent to which some people insist that anatomy — or their understanding of the nature of anatomy and biology — must be determinative of moral values. Fidelity is a moral value. Gender isn’t. Those who insist that only heterosexual relationships are capable of moral value are in fact insisting that there is a moral value to “male and female,” and ultimately, therefore, to the Y chromosome.

The fact is that we are more than our bodies. What we do with them is important, but just as the eye is not only for seeing, so too the body is not only for reproduction. Morality does not lie in our chromosomes, but in how we treat each other as complete human beings.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

All Saint's Day 2011

2011-11-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

Revelation 7:9-17
7:9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

7:10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

7:11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,

7:12 singing, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."

7:13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?"

7:14 I said to him, "Sir, you are the one that knows." Then he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

7:15 For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

7:16 They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat;

7:17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

Psalm 34:1-10, 22
34:1 I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

34:2 My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad.

34:3 O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.

34:4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.

34:5 Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed.

34:6 This poor soul cried, and was heard by the LORD, and was saved from every trouble.

34:7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.

34:8 O taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

34:9 O fear the LORD, you his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want.

34:10 The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

34:22 The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

1 John 3:1-3
3:1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

3:2 Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

3:3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Matthew 5:1-12
5:1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

5:2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

5:4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

5:5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

5:6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

5:7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

5:9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

5:10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

5:11 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

5:12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

In the German E&R church calendar, this would come not the day after Hallowe'en, but the Last Sunday of Pentecost, and they would observe it as Tötenfest.

Almighty and everlasting God, before whom stand the spirits of the living and the dead; Light of lights, Fountain of wisdom and goodness, who livest in all pure and humble and gracious souls.

For all who witnessed a good confession for thy glory and the welfare of the world; for patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; for the wise of every land and nation, and all teachers of mankind,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the martyrs of our holy faith, the faithful witnesses of Christ of whome the world was not worthy, and for all who have resisted falsehood and wrong unto suffering or death,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For all who have labored and suffered for freedom, good government, just laws, and they sanctity of the home; and for all who have given their lives for their country,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For all who have sought to bless men by their service and life, and to lighten the dark places of the earth,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For those who have been tender and true and brave in all times and places, and for all who have been one with thee in the communion of Christ's spirit and in the strength of his love,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the dear friends and kindred, ministering in the spiritual world, whose faces we see no more, but whose love is with us for ever,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the teachers and companions of our childhood and yough, and for the members of our household of faith who worship thee in heaven,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the grace which was given to all these, and for the trust and hope in which they lived and died,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

And that we may hold them in continual remembrance, that the sanctity of their wisdom and goodness may rest upon our earthly days, and that we may prepare ourselves to follow them in their upward way,

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

That we may ever think of them as with thee, and be sure that where they are, there we may be also,

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

That we may have a hope beyond this world for all they children, even for wanderers who must be sought and brought home; that we may be comforted and sustained by the promise of a time when none shall be a stranger and an exile from thy kingdom and household;

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

In the communion of the Holy Spirit, with the faithful and the saints in heaven, with the redeemed in all ages, with our beloved who dwell in thy presence and peace, we, who still serve and suffer on earth, unite in ascribing:

THANKSGIVING, GLORY, HONOR, AND POWER UNTO THEE, O LORD OUR GOD.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE, WORLD WITHOUT END. AMEN.

The Bede Parry Case in a Nutshell

2011-10-31T16:36:00.000-07:00

Since there is such a raft of material on the Web about the Bede Parry case (for an introduction and links, see my earlier posts here and here), I thought I would boil the concerns down into an easily readable form. At the end of this post is a link to my straight-line chronology of the affair, which puts all of the various sources together into a single timeline. (Make sure you download the latest version, updated and corrected with more information as of 10:28 a.m. on 1 November 2011.) By perusing that chronology, a reader should be able to see that the following account sums up the matter in a nutshell (the account assumes you are familiar with the facts in the chronology):

Father Parry told the Kansas City Star on June 23, 2011: "I told [Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori] at the time [I applied to her for reception into ECUSA] that there was an incident of sexual misconduct at Conception Abbey in '87. The Episcopal Church doesn't have a 'one strike and you're out' policy, so it didn't seem like I was any particular threat [emphasis added]. She said she'd have to check the canons, and she did."

But Father Parry had been suspended, and then barred from returning to his monastery, not just for that single offense (or "one strike"), but because it was repeated conduct (i.e., multiple strikes), after his Abbot had warned him and required he undergo psychological treatment for his propensities.

When he applied to be received as an Episcopal priest, however, Fr. Parry admits he told Bishop Jefferts Schori only about the single incident in 1987 which got him suspended, and not any of the earlier ones. He said, again to the reporter from the Star, "that he did not tell her about the incidents of abuse before 1987 at Conception Abbey." (Emphasis added; he also did not tell her about the earlier molestation incident at St. John's in Minnesota, which led to his warning and subsequent treatment.)

The Abbot of Conception Monastery, however, did speak to Bishop Jefferts Schori on at least one occasion while she was considering the priest for reception into the Episcopal Church. (The canonical procedure required that she check with his prior superior; and Abbot Polan says that he talked to her.) From the simple fact that neither the Diocese of Nevada nor Abbot Polan denies that there was any contact between them at the time, we may conclude that they spoke. And that makes all the difference.

There would be absolutely no reason for Abbot Polan to have withheld from Bishop Jefferts Schori all he knew about Father Parry: that because of his "proclivity to reoffend" (as found in a written evaluation in 2000 which resulted in his being rejected for membership in another monastery), he was not employable wherever there would be access to boys or young men -- such as in monasteries, or with church choirs.

This, then, is the nub of the matter: Fr. Parry now admits that he lied about his background to Bishop Jefferts Schori. She spoke to his former employer, and either must have learned about his lie then, or must have been so careless as to discount what she learned and/or read. But she went ahead and received him into her Diocese as a priest anyway, so that he could preach and continue assisting with the music and choir at All Saints, Las Vegas. So the simple question for the Presiding Bishop to answer is: Why?

And why, as Episcopalians on both sides of the aisle are asking, will she make no public response to these valid -- and genuine -- concerns? If one is maintaining impartiality, one does not presume that she is trying to hide anything. But the longer she maintains her silence on a crucial subject which only she can fully explain, the more it looks as though she is the one who is trying to hide something.

Appendix: Chronology of Bede Parry, with References

[UPDATE 11/03/2011: The new edition of Anglican Unsctripted (Week 16) is now published, having been delayed by the massive snowstorm that cut power to much of Connecticut, and in it, Kevin Kallsen interviews (toward the end) your Curmudgeon about the Parry affair. At the time of the interview, I was under the misimpression that the Diocese of Nevada had not obtained an updated psychological profile in 2003 on Fr. Parry, and my chronology above also stated as much. An alert reader kindly pointed out that in his July 6 statement, Bishop Edwards affirms that the Diocese did indeed conduct an "independent psychological evaluation" of Parry, but claims, with regard to the 2000 report on Fr. Parry done by the Catholic Church, that "[n]o such report was sent" to them. (How he can know this to be a fact he does not say.) I was able to correct the chronology, but not the Anglican TV interview, so I am publishing this correction here.]

Trick or treat!

2011-10-31T06:04:00.000-07:00

I came across this at Wounded Bird (what better place?):

I've been pondering this whilst following the events outside St Paul's. There has been much criticism of the Occupy movement for not having 'clear goals' (on which see this great cartoon. That is immediately to try and force the rebellion to conform to the dominant discourse, to be co-opted into the patterns that pose no threat to the establishment. Specific claims will, I do not doubt, follow in due course. For now, however, it is enough for there to be the protest, the rebellion - the saying 'No' to manifest injustice, arrogance, ignorance and greed.

I really don't like making the kind of comparison I'm about to make, because it raises the object compared to grandiose heights. But the truth is, for about the first four centuries one of the complaints with the "Chrestians" was that they didn't have "clear goals." It took a several hundred years of hard work by a lot of good people for Christianity to "make sense," and even then, many think it "sold out" with Constantine's conversion. That's too simplistic, too, but then, this isn't a scholarly forum for debating Church history.

The point is, Christianity started as, and was seen as, rebellion. Why do you think all those early Christian martyrs were martyrs? And there were still, and still are, efforts to keep Christianity out of "the patterns that pose no threat to the establishment," even as the Church became the Establishment.

"What keeps you from giving now? Isn't the poor person there? Aren't your own warehouses full? Isn't the reward promised? The command is clear: the hungry person is dying now, the naked person is freezing now, the person in debt is beaten now-and you want to wait until tomorrow? "I'm not doing any harm," you say. "I just want to keep what I own, that's all." You own! You are like someone who sits down in a theater and keeps everyone else away, saying that what is there for everyone's use is your own. . . . If everyone took only what they needed and gave the rest to those in need, there would be no such thing as rich and poor. After all, didn't you come into life naked, and won't you return naked to the earth?

"The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry person; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the person who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the person with no shoes; the money which you put in the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to help."

Basil
4th Century

"The large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold crowds--and also big enough to shut out the voices of the poor....There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering."

Ambrose
4th Century

And yes, Constantine did convert to Christianity in the early 4th century. History reeks with irony. And no, Occupy Wall Street is not a religious movement, although religion is responding rather poorly to it, at least in the case of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The Occupy movement is, by and large, a pro-democracy movement. And that's where the historical comparison becomes very dodgy. Romans had reason to wonder about the Christians; what they advocated was radical because it was so new. But we really shouldn't have to work it all out this time. That we are puzzled about a demand for true democracy, that we are nonplussed by a display, world-wide, of true democracy, says something about us; something about what we should know, but apparently can no longer even recognize. I'm not sure the cartoon is right; I'm not sure it requires the fearful voice of the Powers that Be to distract us from what the Occupy movement is advocating.

We seem to have lost our way ourselves. Maybe, on this eve of All Saint's Day, one of the last Christian holidays we haven't completely commercialized (who connects Hallowe'en with All Hallow's Eve anymore?), that's what we should reflect on.

New Charges of Cover-up against Presiding Bishop

2011-10-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

Disturbing new charges have surfaced about a cover-up concerning just how much Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, when she was the diocesan of Nevada, knew about the past sexual abuses committed by Father Bede Parry, a former Catholic priest whom she canonically received into her diocese as a priest in 2004.

The allegations stem from telephone conversations and emails exchanged between Abbot Gregory Polan, the current ordinary of Conception Abbey in Missouri, where Father Parry was only a novice when his sexual abuses of young men originally came to light in the 1970s, and a certain Patrick J. Marker. Until recently, Mr. Marker had remained anonymous as another victim of sexual abuse, who had been molested by a different Catholic priest, while a student at a preparatory school operated by a different Catholic abbey in Minnesota (St. John's).

Bede Parry, before being ordained at Conception Abbey, had taken courses from 1979-1982 at the School of Theology also run by St. John's in Minnesota, and had admitted to his then Abbot in Missouri that he had engaged in sexual misconduct with a teen-aged student there. The Abbot required him to undergo "psychological treatment", but kept him on as a priest. Notwithstanding his treatment, Fr. Parry continued to molest young men in contact with him at the Abbey, and who had been enlisted to sing in its choir. It was during a summer camp for that choir in 1987 that Fr. Parry made the sexual advances which resulted in the current lawsuit on file in Missouri, and which the Circuit Court just ruled could proceed, over objections by the Abbey that the offenses alleged were outside the statute of limitations.

Patrick Marker, as a victim with ties to St. John's, where there were already a number of lawsuits pending on account of apparently widespread sexual abuse of minors there, became aware of the allegations concerning the molestations which Fr. Parry now admits he committed while at St. John's. As a result, Mr. Marker began investigating alleged abuses by the monks of Conception Abbey, and found credible charges concerning at least three of its members -- including Father Parry. He contacted Abbot Polan, as noted, and attempted to persuade him to approach the prior choristers and students at the Abbey who could still be found, in an effort to allow the ones who were willing to come forward to reach closure with regard to sexual abuses which they had suffered there so long ago.

After Abbot Polan, on his attorneys' advice, declined to try to make contact between the Abbey and other potential victims of its predator monks, Mr. Marker opened up a Website for the purpose of creating a point of contact for other victims of abuse at Conception Abbey. Frustrated by his inability to get anywhere with Abbot Polan, Mr. Marker put up a post on his Website last month which reproduced detailed contemporary notes of his conversations with the Abbot, both singly and in the presence of others, in order to document his efforts.

This post remained unnoticed in the world of ECUSA until earlier today, when VirtueOnline linked to it and reproduced it in its entirety. What should disturb Episcopalians in particular are the following extracts from Mr. Marker's contacts with Abbot Polan which concern the case of Father Parry and his subsequent reception into the Episcopal Church. Please note especially the remarks which Mr. Marker recorded the Abbot as having made last April 28 concerning Bishop Jefferts Schori's knowledge of Father Parry's prior sexual abuses before she agreed to receive him -- remarks made in the presence of two other priests taking part in the conversation:

July 19, 2011
Abbot Gregory Polan
Conception Abbey
[Address omitted]

Abbot Gregory,

Attached please find an exchange of emails with a subject line of “Being Proactive” that we exchanged in April and May of this year. The exchange begins with my email to you on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 wherein I reference to our telephone conversation of Monday, April 25, 2011, and ends on May 3, 2011 with an email relating your telephone conversation with Bishop Dan Edwards.

In addition to the emails we exchanged, below please find notes from four of our phone conversations.

*** During our first telephone conversation, on Monday, April 25, 2011, you shared the following information:

1) You heard something about Bede’s 1981 misconduct at St. John’s “at the time of the incident”.

2) You were aware of an incident involving Bede Parry with a member of the abbey’s choir in the summer of 1987.

3) Bede Parry was sent to New Mexico soon after the 1987 incident.

4) When Bede Parry tried to enter another monastery, he took psychological tests that showed a “proclivity toward sexual misconduct with minors.”

5) You called Parry’s boss at an ambulance company and a woman bishop with the Episcopal Church with the information.

6) You identified the woman bishop as Katharine Jefferts Schori.

7) You told Katharine Jefferts Schori not only about the allegations [plural] against Bede, but also of Bede’s attempt to join another monastery, the psychological testing and his “proclivity”.

8 ) That Katharine Jefferts Schori, despite your revelations, “allowed him to continue to work.”

. . .

*** During an April 28, 2011, telephone conversation you shared or confirmed (with Fr. Patrick Caveglia and Fr.Daniel Petsche in your office and all on speakerphone) the following information:

1) You agreed that Katherine Jefferts Schori had known about Bede’s “propensity to reoffend” for nine years.

2) Bede Parry is a sick man.

3) No one is monitoring Bede Parry.

. . .

6) Bede’s return to Conception Abbey would never be possible.

7) You will call the new Episcopal bishop in Nevada, Dan Edwards.

. . .

In our last conversation, you said that you had to trust your conscience. I find it hard to believe that your conscience is telling you to stonewall.

My conscience has led me toward numerous phone conversations and email exchanges with parents, choir members, former monks, and seminary students. I have learned a great deal about the history of misconduct at Conception Abbey.

I respectfully request that you make a public statement regarding misconduct by the members of your community. Those who offended must be held accountable — and publicly named. Those who protected the offenders must also be held accountable.

I know of at least twelve victims who would have benefitted from such accountability years ago. . . .

I also request that you end all speculation regarding your conversations with Katharine Jefferts Schori and Dan Edwards. They ignored your warnings and are rewriting history to serve their own agendas. Please do not fall victim to that trap.

The entire Conception Abbey community deserves the truth. The victims deserve no less.

Bishop Jefferts Schori, it is time for you to come out of your cocoon of silence on this topic, as well. The entire Episcopal Church (USA) deserves the truth as to why you regarded a Catholic priest with such a prior record -- known to you after being "warned" by his Abbot -- as morally fit for reception as a priest into your own Diocese.

Particularly, your Church deserves to know how you reconciled the version of the facts which Father Parry admits he gave you, which was incomplete and admitted only one prior offense in 1987, with the version you heard from his Abbot -- and then decided to receive him despite his lies to you.

More particularly, we need to have your own word on the record as to whether or not you received and read the psychological report on Father Parry which Abbot Polan had in his possession and which ended, as Abbot Polan apparently admitted he told you, with a conclusion to the effect that Bede Parry had a propensity to offend again. (This is the same report which the lawsuit filed by one of Fr. Parry's adolescent victims alleges was sent to you for your information, even though Bishop Edwards of Nevada now denies that it is in the files he has on Fr. Parry.)

More particularly still, given that Bishop Edwards claims that you gave instructions, following his reception, that Fr. Parry be kept from all contact with minors, we need to hear from you as to why his employers at All Saints Las Vegas stated in 2011 that they had never been aware of any such instructions.

Finally -- and not least of all, but far more serious -- one would like to know just what evidence you had before you in 2004 of Fr. Parry's moral and godly character (to quote Canon III.11 as then in effect [and continued unchanged today as Canon III.10.3 (a) (3)]), which was substantial enough and sufficient, in your view, to override all the testimony you then had to the contrary, so that he qualified for reception into your Diocese as one of your priests.

Failing your open, full and honest response on all these weighty matters, one waits to see whether you will self-report your offenses against the Canons in this case to your own Intake Officer, Bishop Matthews, for investigation by the same Disciplinary Board for Bishops whose report you are awaiting in the case against Bishop Lawrence of South Carolina. And the longer the period during which you refuse to speak openly to this matter, then perhaps the more might you subject yourself, mutatis mutandis, to charges that you have likewise "abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church."

Adios, Mofo

2011-10-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

I simply cannot resist, especially since the observation by Charles Pierce is so perfect:

Added Rick Perry Bonus: I was watching the Frontline documentary on the appalling case of Cameron Todd Willingham, whom Perry put to death for murder by arson based on trash science not far removed from bleeding people with leeches. Apparently, toward the end, Willingham believed his wife had sold him out and, while in the death chamber, he told her that he fucking hoped she'd rot in hell, or something to that effect. Confronted with the fact that the best scientific evidence exonerated Willingham of the crime, and that he'd rigged an investigation into the case by firing some people and installing his cronies, Perry says to a gaggle of reporters that Willingham was a "bad man" because, at the end, he directed at his wife "an obscenity-laced triad."

A triad.

Inches from actual English.

This is why we make fun of Aggies in Texas. They give us so much material to work with.

DIscordance

2011-10-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

A thing that bemuses me about Communion without Baptism [CWOB] is that it is often favored by some who make the most fuss about the Baptismal Covenant. It is deeply ironic to me that some who advance the slogan "All the sacraments for all the baptized" don't seem to realize the implication of that slogan for CWOB. One of the reasons I do not favor CWOB is my strong support for the Baptismal Covenant and all it requires, including the promise to remain faithful in "the breaking of the bread." Yes, all the sacraments for all the baptized.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

freudig

2011-10-26T23:21:00.001-07:00

hello, welcome fellow friends from around the world.

And Now for Something Different

2011-10-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Note: A friend recently forwarded to me the following travelogue and pictures. A brief search on the Internet shows that they have been around since at least 2005; I can find no challenge to their authenticity. Even if the signature at the end is not valid, the pictures of San Francisco in 1940, about 18 months before we joined World War II, are wonderful. Take a breather and enjoy them.

Dear Friend,

Arrived in Oakland a few hours ago and finally we're on our way to San Francisco.

We paid 25 cents at the Toll Plaza to enter this wonderful bridge that was opened four years ago. It took me awhile to get used to the traffic.

The Oakland Bay Bridge

The bridge has two decks. The top deck is for automobiles and the bottom deck for trucks and electric trains. You can see the tracks at left. The trains are run by the Key System and Southern Pacific. They can take you all over the East Bay to wonderful places like Neptune Beach in Alameda.

The Yerba Buena Tunnel

We have just passed through the Yerba Buena Tunnel and can finally see San Francisco in the distance. Notice that the traffic has thinned out. Many of the cars got off the bridge at the island to go to the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island . The fair opened last year and will close for good later in 1940. I'm going to try and go there. Right now we're heading for the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill for cocktails. It's a great place to see San Francisco.

Top Of The Mark

Isn't this a great view of San Francisco ? We're at the lounge called the Top of the Mark. The Mark Hopkins Hotel is one of the city's great hotels. The Russ Building , by the bridge tower, is the biggest office building on the Pacific Coast . It's 31stories high. Near the Ferry Building is the Produce District made up of small beautiful, old brick buildings. You can go there early in the morning and watch the grocers come in to pick out all kinds of vegetables.

Chinatown

After leaving the Mark we walked down California to Grant Avenue . Here is San Francisco 's world famous Chinatown. There are wonderful shops and the best Chinese food anywhere... and so reasonable. You can get a large bowl of pork noodles for 35 cents. Do you see the Shriner’s Flags at the top of the picture? They are having a convention in San Francisco . There is a Shriner’s Hospitals for Crippled Children on Nineteenth Avenue . It provides treatment for many children ever year without charge. Every New Years Day the famous Shrine East West football game is held in Kezar Stadium.

Flower Stands on Powell

After leaving Chinatown we walked down to Powell Street . Around Geary Street there are wonderful flower stands. San Francisco is sure a different place.

The Cable Cars

We're at Powell and Market where the cable cars get turned around to go to Fisherman's Wharf. There is a great cafeteria just a few feet from the turntable. It's called Clinton 's and I hear the food is great! but we plan to have dinner at Fisherman's Wharf and that's where we are heading.

Fisherman's Wharf

We walked along the docks to look at hundreds of fishing boats. The one coming in here is a crab-fisher. They are all painted wonderful colors and the fishermen are all Italian. They are very friendly, and we watched them sitting on the docks mending their nets and singing.

Dinner at Fisherman's Wharf

Fisherman's Wharf has to be one of my favorite places in San Francisco . The men who do the fishing bring them back to the restaurants and outdoor stalls. People can pick out a crab and it's cooked right there for you to take home. One night we went to a great restaurant a man told me about. It's called San Remo 's, near Fisherman's Wharf. You can get a wonderful Italian dinner for $1.00 from soup to dessert. Another dollar gets a bottle of house wine. You go into the bar to pick it up. Our waiter was very friendly. I think he had been sampling the house wine.

Playland at the Beach

San Franciscans love the beach. The water is too cold to swim in but Playland at the Beach has everything else; a wonderful roller coaster, the Fun House, Shoot the Chutes, and great food. A favorite is Topsy's Roost for delicious fried chicken and dancing. If you're eating on the balcony you go down to the dance floor on a slide! My favorite was the Pie Shop... the best chicken and beef turnovers imaginable… fantastic crust and wonderful gravy. San Franciscans take them home for dinner.

The Golden Gate Bridge

We left Playland and drove through the Presidio to the Golden Gate Bridge . The Presidio is still an important Army Base and has been on active duty since Spain built a fort there in 1776.

The Golden Gate is my favorite bridge. We parked the car near the Toll Plaza and walked across the bridge for 25 cents. You can't walk on the Bay Bridge. Our trip to San Francisco is over too soon. I hate to say goodbye to this beautiful city. The people who live here are sure lucky.

Hope you enjoyed my letter and the photographs.
Say hello to everybody.

~ Henry Ford

The Paranoid Episcopal Church: Afraid to Covenant

2011-10-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

The only thing remarkable about the reports from the latest meeting of ECUSA's Executive Council in Salt Lake City is that they managed to put out a narrative which discloses what they failed to accomplish: they do not represent the whole Episcopal Church (USA), but they act as if they do.

Thus, the Executive Council had called for submissions from each of the Church's supposed 110 Dioceses (actually, only 106 -- but then, who's counting?) regarding their positions on the proposed Anglican Covenant. The report which they published shows that they received responses from a grand total of just twenty-nine of its claimed 110 dioceses.

And even of that pitiful total, they have to reject all the Dioceses which voted in favor of the Covenant. The reason? "None of the dioceses who were reported in the press to have approved the covenant communicated this action to Executive Council." Oh, really? Perhaps these Dioceses recognized that the Executive Council would have taken their positive responses amiss, and so communicated them directly to the Anglican Communion Secretariat? At any rate, the Council -- predictably -- could not even be troubled to list these approving Dioceses, according to the "press reports" which they acknowledge reading.

And based on that resounding "response" from a little over 25% of its Dioceses, the Executive Council recommends to General Convention a Resolution that "The Episcopal Church [sic] is unable to adopt the AnglicanCovenant in its present form."

"The Episcopal Church"? Give me a break. The body which made this announcement is neither "Episcopal" ("bishop-led"), nor a Church. Instead, as can be seen from the conclusions of its "Executive Council" based on submissions by just over a quarter of the dioceses claiming to "belong" to this "Church", what we have is rule by the privileged few, or what Aristotle termed an oligarchy. It should be renamed "The Exclusive Church."

The defining characteristic of an oligarchy is that it rejects the views of the many as having any significance whatsoever. Indeed, it believes that the many, or what Aristotle calls the hoi polloi, are the equivalent of those who currently are "occupying" some parks in various cities across the land: they are unwashed, illiterate, wholly ignorant, and unworthy of serious attention.

Now the Executive Council of "the Exclusive Church" thinks that it, of course, is "Inclusive", and thus actually embraces the hoi polloi whom it in reality despises. The proof of this is that it can rely on the conclusion of a "Task Force" -- acting on the responses from just 29 dioceses -- to make its recommendation to the General Convention in 2012 that they vote to reject the Anglican Covenant.

Of course, this is no surprise; it is a typical "dog bites man" story. Rarely, however, is one given such clear documentation of the proof that those who govern "The Episcopal Church" could care less for what those believe who occupy its pews every Sunday.

A more honest Resolution would have stated:

Despite our best efforts, we have received responses from only 29 of 110 Dioceses. The Executive Council, therefore, recommends that General Convention redouble the efforts in this Church to give the proposed Covenant a full and fair consideration in each and every one of its Dioceses.

But welcome to "The Episcopal Church" -- which "welcomes" you, by the way -- but only if you are interested in placidly allowing them to continue as they always have, and do not rock their boat. This is a group so paranoid about their current disagreements with the rest of the Anglican Communion that they conclude that even the Introduction to the Covenant might obligate them to do things which they simply could not agree to do, under any circumstances:

Paragraph 1 of the Introduction speaks of the biblical treatment of the “communion in Jesus Christ.” It includes the “Communion of the life of the Church,” as the basis for the existence and “ordering of the Church.” A fair interpretation of this text is that our “Communion in Jesus Christ” coexists with our Communion as constituent members of the Anglican Communion. The implication may be that the continuation of our communion in Jesus Christ requires accession to the particular ordering of the church described in the draft Covenant . . .

No, we cannot let any crazy notion of a "communion in Jesus Christ" govern what it is to which we are committing ourselves if we were to sign this Covenant. Far better to retain our "autonomy", while mouthing platitudes about how we "respect" the Communion, and wish to remain "in dialogue" with it.

This is what your tithes are paying for: "The Episcopal Church" at work. Much like the famous old sign:

"We Make Things Go"

2011-10-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

I am left watching this new debate and wondering "but what is 'violence' and what is 'intelligence'?" Which leads me to first wonder how much the decline in battlefield deaths is due to intelligence that avoids war, and how much is due to intelligence that repairs the wounded, so they aren't the dead. Which are two very different kinds of intelligence, indeed.

I have a vague memory of this discussion occurring earlier, with the Crimean War being a touchstone because it was the last big war prior to modern medicine. The death tolls were high, largely because so many died of their wounds. The death toll in Iraq has been low, comparatively, because so many soldiers don't die of their wounds. Head traumas alone, which would have guaranteed death in earlier wars (and which are only possible because of modern technology which can produce IED's), are now wounds, not fatalities. The number killed in wars has declined as much because of battlefield medical treatment as because we are "less violent." Perhaps. Inquiring minds, at least, would like to know.

As for these numbers:

_ Murder in European countries has steadily fallen from near 100 per 100,000 people in the 14th and 15th centuries to about 1 per 100,000 people now.

_ Murder within families. The U.S. rate of husbands being killed by their wives has dropped from 1.2 per 100,000 in 1976 to just 0.2. For wives killed by their husbands, the rate has slipped from 1.4 to 0.8 over the same time period.

_ Rape in the United States is down 80 percent since 1973. Lynchings, which used to occur at a rate of 150 a year, have disappeared.

_ Discrimination against blacks and gays is down, as is capital punishment, the spanking of children, and child abuse.

I'm not sure all discrimination counts as violence, but perhaps that's too much of a quibble. I do wonder what the murder rate is in America, Russia, Asia, Africa, Australia. Or are we going back to Europe as the pinnacle of humanity and the apex of education? As for murder within American marriages, I'd point out that divorce is now quite common, and it may be not that husbands and wives are better educated or simply smarter (Pinker's thesis), but that they get divorced before they get violent. Murder was probably once seen as the only way out of a bad marriage, in other words. I don't know that, of course; but bald statistic don't tell you anything; it's the interpretation that reaches the conclusion, and what is that interpretation based on? Pinker wants to see it as signs of rising intelligence; if I see it simply as a sign of changing social strictures (divorce is no longer taboo), which of us is right?

Yes, rape is down, and lynchings are down. But the latter were a public spectacle much more than a private crime (they were finally relegated to anonymity), and American society has never had the stomach for public violence that the English once did (one of Pinker's widely related examples is Pepys attending a public execution. To this day the British laugh at physical horrors that most Americans blanch at, and I don't mean that as a slight on the British. But only Englishmen could come up with the Black Knight in Monty Python's "Holy Grail" movie, and there is a greater tolerance in British culture for violence as humor than there is in American culture. We love our violence, but we don't like to laugh at it. We take it too seriously; it's a moral punishment. But that's another topic, for another time.). If rape is down, is it because we are smarter? I don't know; I don't see a connection between intelligence and the desire to rape someone. And while we don't engage in public executions, they are still a thriving business in many states in the Union. The violence of them (hanging, shooting, electrocution) has certainly diminished, but the desire for them has not. And is this because we are more intelligent? Or because we are becoming more moral?

And no, I don't think the two are joined at the hip.

I've made a purely personal observation that of the European countries with violence in their histories, the Scandinavian countries with their Viking heritage seem the most consistently peaceful today. Is this because of education, or because of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? One answer works as well as the other. If this is a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces seem to be identical: either fits. But is it a jigsaw? Is this cut out of a pre-determined mold, and it is simply up to us to assemble it correctly? Of that I'm not so sure.

The question, then, is: how do we measure violence? Battlefield deaths? But we can't measure that without measuring technology, especially medical technology. Maslow's hierarchy could answer just as well, if we decide that what keeps mankind alive is food, clothing, and shelter, and once those are assured there is less reason to go to war and seek new resources. That was the popular argument a few decades back, when the idea began that democracies never go to war against each other, and countries with trade relations have no reason to fight each other (an assumption that ignores history and even literature. Homer's warriors before the walls of Troy battle individually all day long, and find out they are practically family, that their grandfathers were great friends and when this war ends, if they are alive, they will re-establish the old ties.) Perhaps violence is down statistically, but is that because we are less violent, or because the non-warrior class now outnumbers the warrior class, and markets work better than military oppression? Rome survived on its military might first; it had virtually no market economy at all. It's social stability derived from patronage, and whenever that stability was threatened the soldiers turned on the Roman citizens or those they were supposed to protect, and no one thought it cruel and unfair. One reason NATO intervened in Libya was because Gadaffi was "attacking his own people." Are we more intelligent than Rome? Or simply operating under different standards because there are more of us on the planet, and a power like Rome's is now impossible?

If we measure violence by rapes, what about assaults and gun deaths, or violent deaths in general? Are those down, up, the same? Perhaps Pinker addresses this in his book, but even if he does, how do we know why this is, or what it means, or even if it means anything? I don't have an answer, I just have questions. This is a fantastically complex issue, and to rest it on matters like "IQ" (which Stephen Jay Gould, among others, has shown to be a chimera. Identify "intelligence" for me, and then tell me how you measure it the same way you can measure length or weight or height, or even velocity. The notion of comparing "IQ" levels is laughable. You might as well compare the length of unicorn horns over the centuries.) I have also known very intelligent people who were very compassionate; as well as very intelligent people with no compassion or concern for others at all. Intelligence is not inextricably linked to behavior, and can't be assumed to be the weight that tips the scales in favor of the outcome we'd all like to see.

There's also the simple fact that violence is the favored form of entertainment, at least in America. Now, of course, we're back to defining "violence". Is it the antics of the Three Stooges? My mother thought so, when I was young and watching them poke each other in the eye, or strike each other with hammers. Is it the violence of a slasher film or a horror movie? Is it the violence of an "action film," or the highly choreographed fights of the new "Three Musketeers" movie, or the Robert Downey, Jr. versions of Sherlock Holmes? The comic book violence of The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man? Dalton Trumbo remarked, in his preface to his book Johnny Got his Gun, that during the Vietnam War we read daily "body count" statistics in the newspapers, and instead of thinking of the pile of arms and legs and torsos that number represented, and throwing up at the horror of it, we reached for our coffee cups. Does anyone even pay attention to the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan anymore, or know why we continue it? War we can still always pay for, but people? Surely if we were more intelligent, Johnson's Great Society and RFK's compassion for the poor wouldn't have been erased from public discourse quite so rapidly.

And here, perhaps, I do the argument a disservice; but then, what is the argument? That according to numbers, we don't kill quite as many of our fellow humans as we used to? Well, perhaps not. But we certainly employ a great many people in endeavors directly related to violence, either real or imaginary; and we certainly have many industries devoted to the production of violence, again either real or imaginary. And we continue to do daily violence to the poor, the marginalized, the invisible, the oppressed, the neglected, the forgotten, the dispossessed, the ignored.

But to the extent we don't, is that because we are better educated, more intelligent? Or is it because we are more compassionate (and yes, education could increase that, too. Education is not merely the method by which intelligence is increased, although Mr. Pinker seems to think so.)?

I suppose it's all a matter of how narrowly, or broadly, you define "violence." Or maybe it's a question of how we define "intelligence." And also of how much "intelligence" is really worth in human history. I can guess Stephen Pinker's answer on that issue. I can also guess I would think him quite wrong.*

Concluding Unscientific Postscript:

One other point, which may or may not undermine the argument that violence is down because compassion is up (I'm not sure it is, I just think morality is as valid a cause for this perceived effect as intelligence is, and probably a more comprehensive answer. Anyway....): the focus on violence as an indicator of the "angels of our better nature" is an interesting one, since violence is always a personal problem, i.e., a problem of personal security. Violence is always about what is done to me and mine, not about what I can, or should, do for others.

Violence is bad, but it's worse when it's done against me. Nothing motivates a country like being attacked (violence against us); witness America's reaction to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. But who is poverty done against? It's always done against another, and it's easy to blame the victim for the problem. Even when we don't, what motivates a country to care for the helpless, the hungry, the marginalized and dispossessed? Apparently not intelligence, which should at least tell us their interests are our interests, their hunger and poverty will be ours if we are not more equitable. Yet is there a rise in compassion for the poor comparable to the alleged fall in violence? Has anybody thought to ask? And isn't it really a more important issue? Yes, violence is bad; but I would argue poverty is infinitely worse, especially since the measures of violence seem to be death and single acts (like rape). Poverty, unlike death, is actually lived through. But poverty requires an action on my part; violence requires a lack of action on my part.

Small wonder one seems more important than the other, more a reflection of our "better angels" than the other. It's a small thing, but the more I think about it, the more it bothers me. Are we really better off, as a species, because violence is down, because the physical threat against any one of us is arguably lower now than at any time in history? Is that really good news for the poor? Does this debate promise healing for the brokenhearted, preach deliverance for captives, mean recovery of sight for the blind? Because it seems to me that, until it does, it's just rearranging the first-class deck chairs on the Titanic.

"Borking." Again with the "Borking."

2011-10-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

Joe Nocera, alas, has fallen into the trap of assuming the conservative founding grudge story is true:

The Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics. For years afterward, conservatives seethed at the “systematic demonization” of Bork, recalls Clint Bolick, a longtime conservative legal activist. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution coined the angry verb “to bork,” which meant to destroy a nominee by whatever means necessary. When Republicans borked the Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright less than two years later, there wasn’t a trace of remorse, not after what the Democrats had done to Bork. The anger between Democrats and Republicans, the unwillingness to work together, the profound mistrust — the line from Bork to today’s ugly politics is a straight one.

The argument rests on two premises, both fundamentally false. The first is that Bork's rejection by the Senate marked an escalation of the political warfare over the judiciary. The seconds, as Nocera writes, is that "[n]or was Bork himself an extremist. He was a strongly opinionated, somewhat pugnacious, deeply conservative judge," and that, under the pre-existing mores of the Senate, he was entitled to confirmation. Both premises are so demonstrably false as to draw into question Nocera's competence.

First, the rejection of Bork's nomination took place 17 years after the far more dramatic effort on the part of the House Republicans to impeach sitting Justice a William O. Douglas over his off the bench writings (an article on folk music, and a book, Points of Rebellion, urging reform as the best means to avert social crisis, and another article, inoffensive in itself, but published in a risqué magazine), his votes in favor of free speech, and his personal life--Douglas was married to a much younger woman, and had been married three earlier times. (The source linked here--from Wikipedia--is unfortunately the best of a bad lot of online sources about WOD, and, if anything, is far too charitable to then-Rep. Gerald Ford's leadership of this attempt, which most accounts acknowledge was a political effort to break the liberal bloc of the Court). As my old law professor Henry Monaghan--a Bork supporter who testified on his behalf--acknowledged in a 1988 article in the Harvard Law Review "all the relevant historical and textual sources support the Senate's power when and if it sees fit to assert its vision of the public good against that of the President." By contrast, a federal judge is to be impeached only for "high crimes and misdemeanors," a problem Ford elided by redefining the constitutional text to mean nothing; as he said on the House floor, "[t]he only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers to be at a given moment in history."

To say that the Bork rejection began the hostilities is, to put it mildly, facetious.

As to whether or not Bork was entitled to a seat on the Court, Monaghan's article is clear that the Senate had plenary power to reject him; as to the question whether it correctly deemed him to be too extreme, let me quote an older post:

Bork was rejected--to my mind quite rightly--because of his philosophy. Not because he was conservative--William H. Rehnquist had just been elevated to Chief Justice, after all--but because his conservatism led him to discard whole sections of the Constitution based on his personal ideological committments.

So, for example, Judge Bork contended that the Ninth Amendment, reading that the "enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" could not be a source of rights which were enforceable, and that only those explicitly enumerated in the text could be. He described its meaning in The Tempting of America, as indeterminate as an "ink blot", and claimed that the judiciary should simply ignore the Amendment, which would give [no] effect to the intention of the Framers. As Bork himself said, "the only recourse for a judge is to refrain from inventing meanings and ignore the provision, as was the practice until recently." (“Interpretation of the Constitution,” 1984 Justice Lester W. Roth Lecture, University of So. California, October 25, 1984).

However, the Framers had originally not included a Bill of Rights because, as recounted in The Federalist Papers, the enumeration of rights might be used as a means to claim that those not named did not exist. Federalist No. 84. Madison addressed this issue in explaining his addition of the text that became the Ninth Amendment:

It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution." (3 Annals of America at 354-363).

So the text of the Constitution, and Bork's own claimed ultimate goal of interpretation--effecting the actual original intent of the framers--both demonstrably preclude his reading of the Ninth Amendment out of the Constitution. nevertheless, for his own policy-based reasons, Bork argues for such a reading-out. As an equation, if T means text, for Bork T=0, absent any reference to original intent, structure, or any other ground.

Similarly, with the First Amendment, Bork argued that the scope of speech protected by the First Amendment should be limited to purely political speech, despite the text of the Amendment which carries no such limitation, providing only that "Congress shall make no law ....abridging the freedom of speech." (Bork's article, "Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems" is published at 47 Indiana L.J. 1 (1971)). Again, Bork's resort to the intention of the Framers over the text was unconvincing to the say the least. Because of the lateness of the addition to the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, there are very limited legislative history materials to use in interpreting the text, but neither Madison's notes, nor those of the other members of the Constitutional Convention support Bork's reading of the Amendment. Nor does the early practice; the Supreme Court in Permoli v. First Municipality, City of New Orleans, 44 U.S. 589 (1844) and United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875) twice held that the effect of the First Amendment was to completely disable Congress in dealing with regulation of speech and religion. (For more detail, see my First Amendment, First Principles at pp. 20-23).

Bork also described the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as enacting a "principle of unsurpassed ugliness" in forcing white operators of public accommodation to serve African Americans. "Civil Rights—A Challenge," The New Republic, August 31, 1963. The emotive language used by Bork was deemed by many on the left to justify Senator Kennedy's assertion that segregation at lunch counters would be a feature of "Robert Bork's America." All of these issues, and Bork's role in the "Saturday Night Massacre" in which he was the third occupant of the office of Attorney General because he alone was willing to back then-President Nixon's position on executive privilege, cost him support. Bork's 1987 claim that he construed the law and the Constitution in each of these areas and did not argue his personal beliefs is belied by his use of emotive language and in many areas his subsequent insistence that his views are not merely constitutionally imperative but morally so. See Slouching Toward Gomorrah (1996) and his contributions to A Country I Do Not Recognize: The Legal Assault On American Values (2005).

I point all of these out because the notion that Robert Bork fell because of his conservatism distorts the history in a manner that suggests that mere political disagreement is enough to torpedo a judicial nomination. In fact, Judge Bork's interpretations of the Constitution were not merely substantively "out of the mainstream"; they were not supported by the very values that he claimed mandated them, and they would erase centuries of constitutional law in favor of a broad power to the Government over what Americans thought and did in their private lives, in the name of morality.

I stand by that analysis; I think the Senate did its job in 1987, and that Nocera failed to do his this week

The Curse of St. Custard's

2011-10-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

So, according to a new biography, Steve Jobs told President Obama:

"Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.

I won't comment on the teacher's unions issue, as there aren't any in Texas (right to work state), so I have no experience with them. Suffice to say, on that subject, that not all school districts are created that equally. Hold on to that proposition, it will play into this analysis in a moment.

Matt Yglesias thinks longer school days are fine idea, which only tells me Matt Yglesias knows nothing about school days now. It is true the most practical problem is costs, but the other problem is: who said school is over at 3 p.m.?

My information is anecdotal on this point, but where I live, elementary schools start the day at 7:30, which means teachers are there at least an hour before (some teachers, some staff). Granted, the day ends, for the students, at 2:30. But the teachers don't chase the students out of the parking lot. And if you are going to mandate school keep students in class until 6 p.m., you're asking teachers to work a 12 hour day plus grade papers, prepare for classes, deal with parent/student issues, etc., on a day when they probably will get a one hour break and lunch with the students (which is not a break at all). In other words, you not only need to raise their pay, you need to bring in a swing shift for the afternoon work. That, or work your teachers into burnout in very short order.

Don't even get me started on what pedagogical nonsense this is. By this argument, my community college students should be in class 12 hours a day, too, instead of the 2-4 hours they probably average now. What is the point of keeping students in a classroom for most of their waking hours? They will learn by osmosis, by exposure to books and chalkboards and teachers? Only people who've never taught in a public high school could imagine that more time is better time, or that a a 12 hour day would be as easy for teachers as the 12 hour day a lawyer or doctor might put in (and are we going to pay our teachers as much as we pay lawyers and doctors? I think not, hem hem.*). Teaching is, in no small part, baby-sitting. I don't say this to slight teachers, I say it because it is the truth. Young children through high school students, individually, tend to have far more energy than the average adult (especially the average middle-aged adult, who has experience that is very valuable in the classroom). That energy is multiplied almost geometrically (at least absolutely arithmetically) when you combine 20-30 such persons in one room, and then have school buildings full of them for 12 hours a day. The effort to control them, contain them, educate them, and be responsible for their physical and emotional safety, is a tremendous burden, and Steve Jobs (and Yglesias) want to increase that to half-again what it is now, and extend the teacher's working day after school finally ends, well into the wee hours of the next day?

Is anybody thinking of the children? Or of the teachers, for that matter?

As for the 11 months a year idea, good luck with that. Texas moved the start of school back into early August, a move done by the state Legislature, not any one school principal. The howls of indignation and outrage at disrupted vacation plans, not to mention from vacation providers who saw their season ending far too soon, brought that experiment to an end after one year. There have been discussions about going to a year-round school calendar since I was in elementary school (at least), and we've come no closer to it know than we were then. For better or worse, the 9 month school year is so deeply engrained in American culture you might as well try to get rid of Mom and apple pie first. I'm not opposed to year-round school; in fact, I'd champion it. But I've tried to change culture before, on a very local level, and I have the bruises to show for it. I may think the change is a good idea, but I won't soon try again to even seek to implement such a change.

As for the 12 hour+ work day, I can only say: if you want to drive even more teachers out of teaching, be my guest: implement a 12 hour day, even if you can get the tax revenues to pay for it. But I suspect it will be about as popular with parents as the 11 month school year. The most influential families today, on a local if not a national level, have children in many extra-curricular activities that keep them out of school but also away from home for several hours past 6 p.m. already. Tell those parents all those activities are going to end and their little darlings are going to be in a classroom for 12+ hours a day, and see what happens. Let's just say I won't be in the room when the unfortunate soul announces that plan to the wrong group of parents.

Contrary to what Matt Yglesias says, "The problem a mayor or school chancellor seeking to implement this idea would have is" not "a budget problem." The problem would be long before that, with simply trying to get parents to accept it. You know, we've really got to learn to start taking people into account in these public policy discussions. Steve Jobs may have been able to control the last details of every Apple store on the planet, but his reach ended right about there. Funny how people like Matt Yglesias don't get that, either.

*nigel molesworth, very posh.