Over the weekend a couple of parishioners asked me about a letter to the editor they had seen in The Richmond Times-Dispatch. The letter was about changes to the canon law of the Episcopal Church which have taken effect as of the first of July. In the letter, the author makes claims that the new Title IV canons give “sweeping ‘Metropolitan’ powers” to the Presiding Bishop, that they “diminish the authority of bishops and clergy,” and that they create a situation where the Presiding Bishop can remove any bishop from any diocese if that bishop “doesn't go along with Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori's agenda.” These are disturbing statements, and the parishioners who asked me about them were understandably disturbed.
I can assure you that these statements are simply not true. While Title IV does mark a major shift in church practices regarding clergy discipline, they in no way concentrate power in the office of the Presiding Bishop, and certainly do not give the PB authority to enforce any particular “agenda.” Instead, the new Title IV sets out new procedures for assessing claims of clergy misconduct and their proper remedies.
The old Title IV was based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and basically set up procedures for clergy discipline resembling courts martial. It was an adversarial process, in which charges were made, a “prosecution” and a “defense” argued the merits of those charges, and sentences were pronounced. The new Title IV is designed to be less adversarial and more pastoral, where the process is intended to reveal the truth, to make sure all parties to a situation are able to tell their stories, and to determine a pastoral response. Instead of a list of offenses for which clergy can be charged, as in the old Title IV, the new Title IV provides a code of conduct to which clergy are expected to adhere. When a complaint is made against a bishop, priest, or deacon, panels are convened to determine whether the cleric has indeed committed the act, and whether the act constitutes a breach of the code of conduct. If the panel determines that the cleric has failed to uphold the code of conduct, the bishop may direct the cleric regarding more appropriate behavior, the bishop may restrict the cleric’s ministry or put him or her on administrative leave, or the bishop may depose the cleric, depending on the severity of the failure of conduct. The new canons direct that every complaint be taken seriously and be investigated; but it has many safeguards built in to weed out frivolous or baseless complaints. It is not true, as the Times-Dispatch letter writer claimed, that “bishops will be able to remove parish leaders on the flimsiest of charges.” Instead, the process of clergy discipline has been made much more similar to codes of ethics and professional conduct used in other professions in American society.
The new Title IV has caused some consternation in the Church, largely because clergy discipline is an issue laden with emotions and often unpleasant to think about in even the best of circumstances. In some ways it does make clergy more vulnerable, since it is arguable that living up to a code is always more difficult than avoiding particular offenses; and clergy against whom complaints are made must always tell their sides of the story, effectively meaning that clergy cannot “plead the fifth” in church complaints. But overall the new Title IV is intended to make the process of clergy discipline more transparent, more open, and more pastoral -- not to concentrate power in the top levels of hierarchy.
While it will take the Church some time to live into these new canons, and to learn the best ways to bring pastoral outcomes out of misconduct situations, I think the new Title IV is in fact a step forward, and is a better reflection of the covenant of trust our Church wishes to build up between people and their leaders.
