Monday, July 23, 2007

Sauce for the Gander?

http://cariocaconfessions.blogspot.com/2007/07/sauce-for-gander.html

[Confessions of a Carioca] 23 July 2007--When Father Mark Lawrence was elected (by an overwhelming majority on the first ballot) Bishop of South Carolina more than ten months ago, the required consents from Bishops and Standing Committees were abnormally slow in coming, for a number of reasons that are already familiar to most readers of this blog. When the deadline approached this past March, a concerted effort was made to push him over the top.

By all accounts, the effort was successful, albeit narrowly. However, the Presiding Bishop--into whose court balls of this sort are eventually thrown--determined that some of the Standing Committee consents were defective in form. Substantively, then, Fr Lawrence received the requisite number of consents. Technically, he did not. Bishop Jefferts Schori chose to be a strict constructionist in this case, abiding by the letter of the canonical law. She declared the South Carolina election null and void, allowing the technical to trump the substantive. South Carolina has been forced to call a new electing convention, in which the only nominee is, to no one's surprise, Mark Lawrence....

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