Matt Kennedy: The Laws of Ecclesiastical Impossiblities
March 2, 2007

The House of Bishops is powerless, the General Convention is powerless, the Executive Council is powerless and to think otherwise only reveals your deep ignorance of the democratic polity of the Episcopal Church.

Since the release of the Dar es Salaam Communique we have been treated to a myriad of dissertations on ecclesial “polity”: statements, letters and declarations penned by bishops and hierarchs, priests and scholars to the effect that what is being asked of the House of Bishops, the House of Bishops cannot (“cannot” mind you) do. We are, as we have been told, a “democratic” church. We are not like those more primitive, virtually medieval, provinces of the Global South where pre-critically minded archbishops and bishops lord it over oppressed majorities who hunger and thirst for the freedom to have church sanctioned homosexual sex. Any decision, therefore, effecting the whole church, especially one of such significance and magnitude as complying with the Dar es Salaam Communique, lies far beyond the purview of the House of Bishops and must either be made at a specially called meeting of the General Convention or wait until the 76th General Convention in 2009. the rest at Stand Firm