Lack of Conviction and Passionate Intensity: a Fatal Blend

And now, look for a moment at an entirely different style of governance, which could be said to represent the opposite end of the spectrum. I refer to the governance of ECUSA by its Primate, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori. By all accounts, hers is an autocratic style of control: she brooks no insubordination to her decisions, unilaterally decides when it is appropriate to intervene in the internal affairs of dioceses, when to file suits against those who have left the Church, and to whom a diocese may not sell church properties, bends the Canons to suit her objectives and overrules any objections to her interpretations of them, and is soon to assume the mantle of a metropolitan -- General Convention having obligingly conferred upon her those powers while being wholly ignorant and uninformed of what they were doing. (Though I have made inquiries of those who drafted the changes to Title IV, to date not one of them has come forward to defend the intentionality of their expansion of the Presiding Bishop's powers in the face of the Constitution.)

The Presiding Bishop's response to the remarks by informed observers that the powers conferred upon her are unconstitutional is all too typical: she simply ignores them. She does not claim to agree or to disagree; she simply will not engage in a dialogue, except to refer all queries to her Chancellor. No one else in authority in the Church will dare to speak until she has spoken. The result is a stalemate, and starting next July, no bishop or diocese can be comfortable about their status.

Let the Presiding Bishop begin to exercise metropolitical powers next July, however, and I predict a fracture of the Episcopal Church (USA) -- in much the same way that the fracture in the Communion is occurring. The fracture is being caused by unilateral assertions of authority for which there is no consensus that the assertions are justified. ECUSA is thus far on its own in conferring episcopal orders upon individuals living openly in relationships which are outside of the Church's traditional sacrament of marriage, and both ECUSA and the ACoC are alone in their move to provide liturgical blessings for such relationships.

In just the same manner, the Presiding Bishop will be acting on her own in assuming the mantle of a metropolitan, with absolute authority over her fellow bishops. The Canons purporting to confer such powers are a nullity, because they contravene the powers given to the Presiding Bishop by the Constitution. They thus cannot be the source of any such claimed powers; the Presiding Bishop, if she so acts, will simply have assumed them by force of her will.

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