A.S. Haley: On Serving Two Masters: Part VII of "The Runaway Train"

"No servant can serve two masters."
--Luke 16:13 (from Sunday's Gospel reading)

In the introduction to this series, I sketched the background of the question it would be addressing, by reviewing the rules of legal ethics which govern an attorney who represents dual clients. The rules require that both clients give their "informed consent" to such dual representation, or else the attorney is disbarred from representing either. Such informed consent entails that the clients understand the kind of conflicts that could arise from having the same attorney represent their individual, but varying, interests which are at stake. When the interests or goals of the individual clients clash with one another, or each demand priority, then once again, the ethical rules command that the attorney withdraw from the dual representation. And because of the confidentiality gained from representing both clients together, the attorney is thereafter precluded from representing either client further. An attorney may serve two masters, but only for as long as those two masters are in complete agreement, and have an identity of interests.

The current Presiding Bishop's Chancellor, Mr. David Booth Beers, began by representing the Presiding Bishop (originally, Bishop Griswold, and now Bishop Jefferts Schori). That original representation had to do exclusively with clergy disciplinary matters under Title IV of the Church Canons, and with the role of the Presiding Bishop in the House of Bishops and at General Convention.

Beginning in 2001 (and perhaps earlier -- but certainly in 2001, and continuously thereafter), however, the representation began to expand into litigation involving the whole Church. The unincorporated association of dioceses which constitutes the Episcopal Church (USA) was at first named as a defendant in the All Saints Waccamaw litigation in South Carolina, but soon thereafter it began appearing as a plaintiff, the instigator of a lawsuit. However, none of the lawsuits so instituted by "the Episcopal Church" was ever approved by all, or even a majority, of the Church's member dioceses -- they were simply filed at the direction of the Presiding Bishop.

This might not have become an issue if it had remained a matter of just one or two lawsuits. But as we have seen in the preceding posts in this series, the lawsuits have multiplied in number until the Church is now a plaintiff in more than two dozen of them across the country. Their total cost to the Church is in the tens of millions of dollars. the rest image

"I would submit that no organization can long continue in its mission once it has been so hijacked from its purpose, and bent toward satisfying the personal agenda of just one of its leaders. The failure to insist on accountability, unfortunately, is like a pernicious disease: the less accountability there is, the more the structure is weakened, and the less likely that any accountability will be exercised until it is far too late."