Episcopal News Service Wednesday, June 21, 2006
From Columbus: Convention responds to Windsor Report's call for
moratorium
[ENS] The 75th General Convention June 21 approved a resolution that calls on bishops and Standing Committees to "exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion."
Resolution B033 came to the convention on the morning of June 21, the final legislative day, during an extraordinary joint session of the Houses of Bishops and Deputies. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold relayed the text of the resolution that was proposed by Bishop Dorsey F. Henderson of Upper South Carolina, the bishop chair of the Special Legislative committee on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
Bishops Peter Lee of Virginia, Edward S. Little II of Northern Indiana, Robert J. O'Neill of Colorado and Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island endorsed the resolution.
"What I believe we actually yearn for has not been adequately reflected through the workings of our legislative processes," Griswold said, in presenting the resolution. "Our conversations in both Houses reveal a much greater complexity. We must now act with generosity and imagination so that our actions are a clearer reflection of the willingness of the majority of us to relinquish something in order to serve a larger purpose."
The Joint Session adjourned, and the two Houses met separately to debate the resolution. The bishops debated two proposed amendments, until Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori urged support for the original resolution.
She compared further strain on the relationship between the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion as similar to separating conjoined twins.
"Ethically, one cannot proceed to separate two conjoined twins until one is reasonably certain both can survive on their own and live full lives.
"I don't think we're certain that the two offspring are capable of living separately and healthily," she said.
"My sense is that the original resolution is the best that we're going to do today," she added. "But I can only support it if we understand that it's not slamming the door. It has to leave the door open for further conversation and consideration in the very near future."
Jefferts Schori later came speak to the deputies. "I am fully committed to the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in this church," she said. "I certainly don't understand adopting this resolution as slamming the door. I think if you do pass this resolution you have to be willing to keep working with all your might at finding a common mind in this church. I don't find this an easy thing to say to you, but I think that is the best we are going to manage at this point in our church's history."
Griswold called the joint session after the House of Deputies rejected resolution A161, one of the General Convention resolutions responding to the Windsor Report. The resolution would have urged bishops and dioceses to refrain from electing bishops "whose manner of life presents a wider challenge to the wider church." Resolution A161 also would have directed the church not to develop rites for blessing same-sex unions. It affirmed the need to provide pastoral care for gay and lesbian Episcopalians - and at the same time apologized to gays and lesbians for those decisions.
The Windsor Report invited the Episcopal Church "to effect a moratorium on the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same-gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges" (Windsor Report, paragraph 134).
A special commission was established to produce resolutions for consideration by Convention as the church's response to the Windsor Report.
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