To Encourage Others

http://wvparson.blogspot.com/2008/03/to-encourage-others.html

[Fr. Tony Clavier] 17 Mar 2008--There has been some controversy lately about the use of Canon Law, or its absence to manage the matter of the schism in the Diocese of San Joachim, the status of the members of its Standing Committee and the appointment of a temporary bishop for the rump TEC diocese. Certainly TEC has never encountered this sort of thing before. When congregations and groups left in the past, as in the Reformed Episcopal Church or the African Orthodox Church secessions, those leaving, aggrieved Evangelicals on the one hand and disenfranchised Black Episcopalians in the second case, departed without diocesan structure.

In perilous times many otherwise sane and liberally minded people are often seduced into surrendering their liberties in the name of corporate peril. Those charged with protecting the endangered body fudge the law, or break it, and get away with it all because the times dictate the measures. Situation ethics triumph.

My older son reminded me that there was a time, as in the English Civil War period when, to destroy an enemy, justice might be side-stepped by getting Parliament to adopt a Bill of Attainder. By so doing a trial was avoided and the wretched business of having to produce evidence or granting the accused their constitutional rights obviated. A majority might vote and then "off with his head".

May one ever assume that a body empowered to prosecute may be permitted to interpret the law by which an offender or a group of offenders are dealt with? Who interprets the law?