ECUSA to consider letting bishops take action against laity
By John H. Adams
The Layman Online
Thursday, May 25, 2006

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church (USA) will be asked to radically change its disciplinary policies by abandoning the denomination's historic rule that prohibits dioceses and bishops from disciplining or excommunicating lay members.

"Bluntly put, these proposed disciplinary canons are a disaster," says Raymond Dague, a New York lawyer and the target of a bishop's ire because of a column he once wrote. "This is church discipline from hell. They are the product of a siege mentality by an institution which seeks to stomp out opposition to the agenda of the higher-ups by removing any laity who stand in their way. The very threat of this process will make all but the most stout-hearted soul acquiesce."

Lay members are subject to discipline and excommunication, but not by bishops or dioceses. That safeguard was adopted in Colonial times when the American church was "as nervous of the arbitrary power of bishops as it was of the arbitrary power of the British king," Dague says. "Since its founding in the days before the United States Constitution was written, no bishop or diocese of the Episcopal Church can discipline any layman. Only clergy are subject to a bishop's discipline."

Dague is a Syracuse lawyer and the assistant chancellor of the bishop of the Diocese of Albany. He is a member of St. Andrew's in the Valley of Syracuse. the rest

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