AS Haley: In the Land of the Canon-Eaters

Anglican Curmudgeon
October 18, 2008

A few posts back, I warned that the result of TEC's piling irregularity upon irregularity would be "a murder of crows, a scold of jays, and a sneak of weasels." The unorganized group that styles itself "the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin" continues to make my point.

In the post just linked, I pointed out the charade behind the Remain Episcopal group's calling itself a "diocese" of TEC---with TEC's complicity, because it needed a plaintiff in a lawsuit to claim the property that went with the Diocese that left. The "diocese" that remains is not a proper Diocese of The Episcopal Church, because only General Convention can make it so, and General Convention does not meet until next year. As much as TEC and Remain Episcopal would like to wish it were not so, the Diocese that was a proper diocese of TEC amended its own Constitution and canons to put itself under the authority of the Province of the Southern Cone. Those amendments were perfectly proper and legal under California law, and they violated no language in TEC's own Constitution and Canons. TEC itself is a "voluntary association" of member dioceses, and members of voluntary associations are, as the name itself says, free to decide to leave at any time.

Since the only legal entity under California law which had been a TEC diocese chose lawfully to amend its governing documents, there is no legal entity left under California law in that region to fulfill the function of a diocese in TEC. Such an entity will have to be newly organized from scratch under California law, and when it has so organized and can be recognized as a legal entity, it can apply to GC 2009 to be admitted as a diocese (provided GC 2009 makes a few further canonical modifications, the details of which I have discussed here). Only then will there be a properly constituted Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin once again.

Neither TEC nor the Remain Episcopal crowd, however, gives a fig for the Constitution and Canons of TEC when they constitute an obstacle to TEC's gay-rights agenda. I shall say it again: TEC, and those who collude with it, such as Bishop Jerry Lamb and the whole Remain Episcopal crowd in San Joaquin, are no longer interested in being a church in the Anglican Communion if it means they cannot promote a gay-rights agenda. So TEC is transmuting into, as one commenter at StandFirm aptly put it, "a gay religion club." the rest image