Exo 18:21-23 KJV
Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear
God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers
of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of
tens: (22) And let them judge the people at all seasons:
and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every
small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they
shall bear the burden with thee.
(23) If thou shalt do this thing,
and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people
shall also go to their place in peace.
A:( - Anglican subsidiarity
Episcopal Church USA Governance
Jethro proposed a judicial system for Israel under Moses that conforms
to the principle of subsidiarity. A great and knowledgeable web logger has
proposed ecclesiastical governance following the same principle for the
denomination whose woes he has ably chronicled.
Subsidiarity regards higher levels of responsibility as subsidiary to
lower levels. When authority over those created in the image of God is
necessary, it is, for the most part, best exercised by those closest and most
familiar. Exercise of authority at higher levels is exceptional.
A Modest Proposal to Reform ECUSA (I)
http://bit.ly/1jRzZfJ
Anglican
Curmudgeon: Curmudgeonly comments
on the current trials and tribulations of being in the Episcopal Church (USA)
and the Anglican Communion at the same time---with some leavening for good
measure.
TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014 | A
Modest Proposal to Reform ECUSA (I)
The Task Force to Reimagine the Episcopal Church (TREC) has been busy
reporting on the ideas it is considering to restructure how ECUSA works, and
its proposals have been garnering both positive and negative comments. The most
recent split seems to be between those who view ECUSA as their personal vehicle
for "social justice", and those who would like to make General Convention
"more efficient."
Briefly, TREC has proposed to limit the kind of resolutions that
General Convention may consider -- only those which would amend the
Constitution, Canons, or Book of Common Prayer, or which fulfill election
duties entrusted to it. Gone would be
the hordes of special interest resolutions -- and presumably also, the
innumerable Agencies, Boards, Committees and Commissions which generate
them.
It is a good proposal, as far as it goes, but it comes too late in the
day. As a body, General Convention has grown too large -- but for a New
Hampshire Town Meeting, the Chinese National Peoples' Congress, and the British
Parliament, it is the largest legislative body in the world. For a national
Church, that is ridiculous -- General Convention is far too unwieldy, far too
expensive, and far too ineffective for all the money that is spent upon it.
Limiting its competence will not make it more competent. What is needed
is a major downsizing.
But to downsize General Convention means we first have to downsize the
Church it represents -- i.e., the number of dioceses, and consequently, the
number of bishops, needs to be greatly reduced.
Make the Church structure a workable one, and General Convention will
take care of itself.
Fortunately, your Curmudgeon has been a student of ECUSA's polity for
all of his adult life. And though the powers at 815 did not see fit to accept
my offer to work on the Task Force, I can still (through this blog) put forward
my Modest Proposal for the Church's thoughtful consideration.
A bit of background, first. There is a huge gap between ECUSA as 815
and their lawyers think of it, and ECUSA in reality. For 815, the standard
mantra is that the Church is a "hierarchy" of three tiers: General
Convention is at the top, the 110 dioceses are subordinate to General
Convention, and the 7.000+ congregations are subordinate to the dioceses.
Viewed in that way, ECUSA is only an abstraction of the intellect (and
a meme in the courts that have blindly bought into 815's abstraction, because
they never see or experience the reality). In real life such a tiered structure
is unworkable, principally for the reason that General Convention is like the Village
of Brigadoon -- it comes together for a brief moment in the present, and then
vanishes into the mist, never to be experienced by the same people in the same
way, ever again.
Imagine if the U.S. Congress completely reconstituted itself every
other week -- and then agreed to meet only every 156th week. Do you see what I
mean?
After the required three years pass, a new General Convention springs
into being -- unable and incapable of maintaining any continuity with all of
its predecessors, and once again existing for just the few moments of its
delusional triumphs. The Convention disbands, and without anyone left to
sustain them, the triumphs of the moment quickly turn into wilted flowers and
rotten fruit.
How can a Church be run by a body so ephemeral? It can't -- and that is
one key to my Modest Proposal.
The next tier down -- the dioceses -- is likewise, if one considers it
a monolithic structure, an intellectual abstraction. You can't get 110 dioceses
(let alone 7,000+ parishes) to agree on anything, not even eternal salvation
through Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Face it: ECUSA is an unwieldy and unworkable agglomeration of
individual units that cannot, and never will, work together toward one common
goal. It is more akin to a 110-ring circus, with individual acts succeeding one
another in gloriously haphazard fashion, as the culture and the times dictate
to each ringmaster.
The only glue that even begins to hold it together is money. The
dioceses feed off the ingrained habit of individuals' contributions and pledges
to their parishes, and 815 feeds off the dioceses. General Convention, with funding from all
three sources, feeds off everything in the Church, and (since its inherent
ephemerality means it can never be held accountable) wastes millions and
millions of dollars for its follies.
The other factor that holds together a part of the Church -- and only a
very small part -- is the social activism of many who get involved at the
diocesan and national levels. But it is this very activism that puts the
leadership (such as it is) at such odds with the masses who fill (to a lesser
and lesser degree) the pews Sunday after Sunday.
The leadership pretends it must be doing something right, because the
"quality" of Episcopalians is improving generation after generation,
even though their numbers are declining severely with each generation.
Translation: "We like ever more and more the activists who are
floating up to join us at our level -- they are kindred spirits. You can ignore
the slaves in the galley -- they are there just to fuel the engines, and there
are still plenty enough of them for our purposes. Plus, all their fathers and
grandfathers had the foresight to entrust us with their hard-earned wages for
future purchases of engine fuel, so we won't be running out any time
soon."
What a picture, eh? In need of reform? You bet!
But how to reform such a monstrosity, that has gone so far off course
from its original moorings?
Break it down into its component parts, that's how. Come, reason with me --
Herewith my Modest Proposal:
All the existing parishes and missions remain intact as they are,
because they are the physical reality of "The Episcopal Church". All
else is administration or abstraction.
Parishes elect their own vestries, just as before. And parishes call
their own rectors, again just as before -- though so do the missions, if they
are functioning (a change from before, where a bishop chooses the priest/vicar
for a mission). But the screening process is more rigorous -- meaning there are
more hoops to jump through. Every new rector, for example, must serve a
probationary period for one year, and then the parish or mission votes whether or not to retain
that rector, or to start the process to find another. No bishop can ever force
a rector on a functioning parish or mission.
The number of dioceses is reduced from 110 to 10, modeled on the
existing ten provinces. The 110 "diocesan" bishops become vicars of
their respective regions, which are mostly the former dioceses, but now purely
geographical, rather than administrative, units. The former dioceses are broken down further
as needed to provide continuing employment for current suffragans and
assistants. All such vicars have chiefly pastoral -- and very, very little
administrative -- duties. That is, they make parish visitations, baptize and
confirm, and ordain new priests and see to their training, but they do not have
a budget of their own. Instead, they are all salaried, on a scale that goes up
with experience and pastoral merit, as voted by the parishes in the vicar's
jurisdiction every five years. The parishes don't think their vicar is doing
his job? No raise for another five years.
The vicars are not called "bishop", and they do not get to go
to Lambeth, or to anything called a "House of Bishops." They are
pastoral representatives of the true episcopal authority of the Church (read
on). Although they can certainly hire
more staff out of their own pockets, they are each authorized to have only one
paid staff member, and an office rent allowance for the cost of five hundred
square feet, at going local rates (which they can locate in their own
residences, if they wish).
The idea is to keep the regional vicars close to the parishes they can
pastor within a given year, and to foster their identification with a
manageable number of parishes. As I say, suffragan and assistant bishops will
likewise become vicars of their own regions, so that no one vicar has to
supervise more than is practicable. Visits once a year mean a maximum of fifty
congregations -- and even that would be higher than the ideal, of thirty to
forty (say). 7000 (congregations) divided by 35 (average number of
congregations per vicar) equals 200 vicars needed to cover them all, which is
well within the number of bishops ECUSA has already. A limit of 35 or so
congregations per vicar also ensures that no one region will be too large to
administer.
A regional vicar is elected by the parishes of that vicar's region,
from among the rectors in that region. (No more pastoral surprises from
outside.) If a region ceases to have enough parishes to keep a vicar busy, it
is merged into a neighboring region by the Church's Administrative Office (see
next post). Rectors, on the other hand, are welcome from other regions -- but
only after going through the rigorous vetting process to ensure that they will
be good pastors to their congregations.
Face it -- this reform means that ECUSA can no longer serve as a
welfare organization for incompetent and misguided priests. If they cannot
preach and practice the faith so as to make their parishes want to keep them,
then they are out, and if they cannot find another parish that wants them --
well, it is time to look into another career. The former bishops (now vicars)
will have no patronage privileges, and no ability to protect unwanted priests
from unemployment.
The ten dioceses will each be headed up by a true bishop, so ECUSA will
have in all just ten bishops, who rotate annually through the post of Presiding
Bishop. Thus every bishop will serve as Presiding Bishop for one year out of
every ten. But the only duties of the Presiding Bishop are to chair the regular
quarterly meetings of the ten bishops -- now called the "Council of
Guardians", to emphasize their true role in the Church. As one of ten
diocesan bishops, the Presiding Bishop will have primary responsibility for the
pastoral operation of his own diocese, and will specifically (by canon) have no
other role as a spokesperson for the national Church.
The ten individual bishops will have the primary duty to guard the
faith and the traditions of the Church, as the same have been handed down from
the saints. They shall be chosen from
among the vicars in each diocese, and confirmed by a vote of two-thirds of the
Council (seven out of nine -- because there will be a vacancy), before being
consecrated by the traditional laying on of hands by the members of the
Council. They are required to meet with the assembled vicars in their
respective dioceses twice a year, in order to discuss and go over diocesan
issues, amendments proposed to the BCP and Canons, hold diocesan court
sessions, and similar functions. Additionally, they have full archiepiscopal
powers within their diocese to issue pastoral directives, disciplinary
sentences and the like with respect to the vicars and rectors in that diocese.
To the Council is entrusted the responsibility to publish the Church
Canons, as well as to oversee and maintain the Book of Common Prayer in the
tradition handed down from the saints.
Unlike the current model, the Canons which the Council has the power to
publish will be limited to just standards for clergy discipline administered by
diocesan courts and bishops. Liturgical matters will be covered by the rubrics
of the BCP. No individual bishop will any longer have the power to
"supplement" or "grant dispensations from" the liturgy of
the BCP. If it's not in the BCP, it's not part of the Church's liturgy, period.
If the Council wants to propose a revision to the BCP, they first must
pass such a revision at two successive meetings a year apart, and the proposal
is circulated to each diocese for distribution to each and every parish in that
diocese in the intervening twelve months, so that they may provide feedback as
they choose to the Council.
Once a proposal to amend the BCP has passed the Council by two votes a
year apart, it then officially circulates, first to all the vicars, and then to
the rectors for discussion with their vestries and congregations. For the
proposal to be finally adopted and effective, it will need to receive a
favorable vote from two-thirds of the parishes at their annual meetings in each
and every region, plus the approval of two-thirds of the vicars in any given
diocese. Only then does it come back for a final vote in the Council of
Guardians, where it requires a minimum of eight out of ten votes to become
finally effective.
This process will guarantee a stable BCP, and prevent any faction from
ruining it with the fads of the age. And
with that, we have taken care of the main missional and pastoral functions of
the Church. The rest is just administration -- oh, and allowing venting for
"social justice."
I will cover those aspects in my next post.
Related Notes [Retained from Clearly / Evernote augmented copy of web post]
Anglican Curmudgeon Saturday, September 21, 2013 Taking up the Fiddle
While Rome Burns ECUSA's House of Bishops scheduled its fall meeting in
Nashville, Tennessee, starting this Thursday, with a theme...
Anglican Curmudgeon: Bandit Bishop Running Outlaw Gang in South
Carolina
Bandit Bishop Running Outlaw Gang in South Carolina KJS: She's head of
the Church of England. If she can do it, why can't I? Bandit Bishop Katharine
Jefferts Schori, known far and wide in ECUSA for h...
I2C 140305a aa Exo 18v21to23 Anglican
subsidiarity / I2C / 140305 1244 / Exodus 18:21-23 A:( - Anglican subsidiarity / Episcopal Church USA
Governance
