A.S. Haley: New Level of Repression Signaled by Charges against +Lawrence

October 18, 2012

Excerpt:
But now look at the nature of the actions which underlie the first of the charges. Bishop Lawrence is accused of (a) not ruling out of order a motion to amend the diocesan constitution, (b) not dissenting from their adoption by the convention, and (c) advocating their passage in his pastoral address to the convention. As to the second charge, Bishop Lawrence is the Chair of the convention, and as such he has no vote unless he first steps down from that position. Charging him with "failure to dissent" is thus a non-starter. And as for "not ruling the motion out of order," any deputy to the Convention could have asked for such a ruling. Does that mean that every clergy attending the 2010 and 2011 conventions is liable to charges of "abandonment" because they did not make such an objection, or dissent from the resolutions' passage? (The minutes on the diocesan website -- Exhibits C and D to the certification of abandonment -- do not record any objections as having been made to the various resolutions; they record only their passage "by majority vote.") One has to wonder, but that appears to be the position of the complainers, and of a majority of the Board.

The third component of the first charge -- delivering a pastoral address which advocated passage of the resolutions in question -- shows how the Board has erased the distinction between the individual acts of a Bishop and the corporate acts of a Diocese. The real complaint is with what the Diocese did, and not with someone who spoke in favor of the resolutions. Again, if that is to be the new standard for charges constituting "abandonment," it will have a very chilling effect on what members of the clergy feel free to say at diocesan conventions.

The second and third charges in the certification fare no better under closer scrutiny. Bishop Lawrence is charged with a statement made in an amendment to the diocesan corporate articles filed with the secretary of state after the Convention had approved the amendments to the diocesan constitution. The change merely brought the corporate articles into synch with the constitution, and was purely a ministerial and clerical act. To elevate it into grounds for charging "abandonment" is ridiculous. Had Bishop Lawrence failed to sign an amendment to the articles after the deputies acted to change their constitution, his own convention could have charged him with abandonment.

And the third charge, of course, has to do with the signing and recording of the famous quitclaim deeds, following the 2009 ruling of the South Carolina Supreme Court in the Pawley's Island case. The Court ruled in that case that ECUSA's Dennis Canon did not comply with state law requirements for creating a valid trust. Bishop Lawrence's deeds served both to recognize the binding character of that ruling on the two Episcopal dioceses in the State, as well as to calm individual parish fears about possibly losing their church property. It was a consummate pastoral act, and represented an honest assessment of the Church's obligation to comply with South Carolina state law. the rest

SC diocese finally breaks with Episcopal Church