Episcopal Life Online

Group suggests new procedures for disciplining lay leaders, dealing with impaired clergy

By Mary Frances Schjonberg, February 07, 2008

[Episcopal News Service] Building on work done before and during the 75th General Convention in 2006, a task force has released a second proposed revision of the Episcopal Church's rules on ecclesiastical discipline.

The Title IV Task Force II has proposed a complete revision of Title IV, the main clergy-discipline canons. The group also proposes adding to Canon 17 of Title I a process for disciplining lay leaders and a procedure for dealing with impaired clergy to the Title III ministry canons.

The release of the documents opens a comment period that runs until the end of June.

The task force's proposed revision is available here.

The current version of Title IV is available here.

The proposed revision of Canon I.17.8 to set up a process for disciplining lay leaders is available here.

The proposal to add a new canon concerning impairment of clergy to Title III is available here.

Each document includes instructions on how to file comments on the drafts.

"We want to be as fully out there to the wider church as we can get with opportunity for people to read all three documents, to respond to us with their comments, concerns, criticisms, suggestions," said Steve Hutchinson, who chairs the current task force.

Hutchinson, chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah who was a member of the first task force, said the current task force will meet in September to synthesize the responses into a proposal to include in its Blue Book report for the 76th General Convention.

Hutchinson said the current task force's work continues the desire of the first group "to move away from a criminal-justice model and to recognize that a reconciliation model is more consistent with our theology and that's more like other professional-misconduct models."

He described the latter models as "not so much punitive but protecting the public while at the same time not having an allegation of misconduct necessarily be a career-ending event."

The task force is proposing changes which overall aim for "truth-telling, transparency, healing, repentance, forgiveness, restitution, justice, amendment of life and reconciliation," he said.

Those concepts, Hutchinson said, are about "how we try to live in community with each other and try to work through problems" while respecting the dignity of all involved.

He said the task force thinks the standards and procedures it proposes are "more like what we thought a church ought to be about instead of being a punitive thing, as if you crossed this line, you no longer matter to us, never darken our doorstep again, which didn't do anything to benefit the victims either."

Noting that there is "virtually nothing explicit" in the current Title IV about how the church should reach out to victims, their families, the families of respondents, or the congregations where misconduct has happened, Hutchinson said "we wanted to be much more affirming of the efforts to look at the large picture of who all is impacted with this incident or these behaviors, and what's the expectation of how the church as a community in this body of faith should respond and can respond effectively."

There is "an emphasis on pastoral resolution" at all stages, Hutchinson said, yet there is also a requirement that any pastoral resolution between a bishop and priest or deacon be reviewed and approved "so that there's not the appearance of fair or unfair allegations or sweetheart deals."

"We just feel like it's probably supportive of the priest and the bishop if there's another look at it," he said.

Major changes
The current draft revisions contain five major changes from the 2006 proposal, Hutchinson explained.

Title IV's list of offenses in this version are a combination of the existing title's list and the way those offenses were portrayed in the 2006 version.

The new Title IV proposal restores a "little more traditional approach" to the concept of a statute of limitations provision than did the 2006 version, Hutchinson said.

It also restores the canon on abandonment of the communion of the church. The 2006 proposal had included abandonment of communion as one of the listed offenses but "people didn’t like that approach," Hutchinson noted.

The 2006 proposal's plan to subject certain lay leaders to ecclesiastical discipline was controversial but, Hutchinson said the current task force continues to believe some such mechanism is needed. Thus the members now propose to amend the section of Title I that sets out regulations for the participation of the laity in the life and work of the church.

The proposal, Hutchinson said, "would provide a fair mechanism for addressing problems of lay people in leadership positions who are involved with misconduct because right now there is not a canonical process for removing them."

"It's not a full-blown sort of trial," he added.

The task force was also concerned about the implications of placing the rules governing impaired clergy in the canons for clergy discipline, Hutchinson said.

"They considered it to be more of a matter of pastoral oversight of ministry," he said, adding that the group didn't want to send the message that "you're not only impaired with mental illness or physical impairment or substance abuse but, you’ve also done something terrible and ought to be deposed."

Related to the issue of moving towards a professional-misconduct model, Hutchinson said that the proposal does not give the respondent protection against self-incrimination or the presumption of innocence.

He noted that other professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants "don’t have the right to just not answer."

While the case against an accused clergy person would still have to be proven, Hutchinson said the proposed revisions are meant to be "about truth-finding and reconciliation for the benefit of all" with a "little more even-handed balancing of facts and evidence."

The proposed set of standards of conduct is what Hutchinson called an "aspirational definition" rather than a proscriptive one.

Along with the proposal's definitions section, Hutchinson said, the intent is to have a different mindset that sets out "what our conduct ought to be and that failure to comport one's conduct to those minimum standards of conduct is the basis for an investigation and a charge, rather than a criminal-justice approach which is to say: you cross this line, we'll get you."

The new proposal changes the canon abandonment of the communion of the church by a bishop slightly, including the addition of the words "or in any other way" to the current list of three behaviors and calling the initial action on the part of the Presiding Bishop a "restriction on the exercise of ministry" rather than an inhibition of the accused bishop.

Title IV revision history
The proposal to revise Title IV came from a task force created by General Convention in 2003. Hutchinson said the rules governing clergy discipline were last revised in 1994, an effort in which he was also involved. It, too, was a "difficult, difficult" process, he said.

The group involved in the 1994 effort tried, he said, "to soften what was the impact this improvised version of the military code of justice and those attempts came from advocates for victims as well as, I'd said, advocates for clergy."

Yet, when the 2006 proposal to revise the 12-year-old rules was released, Hutchinson said, some people reacted as if "Title IV in its current form had always been the tradition of the church instead just having arrived in '94."

After hearing significant concern about the 2006 proposal, particularly about subjecting laity to ecclesiastical discipline, the legislative committee attempted to rewrite the 30-page resolution to clarify issues. However, it quickly became apparent to committee members the revision could not be accomplished in time for the 75th General Convention to act.

Instead, the convention referred the proposal to a second task force, asking to make another attempt for the 76th General Convention in 2009. The referral resolution (Resolution A153) made note of the change in philosophy sought by the first task force, which was to move away from an adversarial model to one that encourages pastoral intervention as early as possible in the process. It also included a set of "critical goals, concerns and values" to:

reflect of the values and theology and ecclesiology of the church;
move Title IV toward a reconciliation model for all appropriate circumstances;
encourage the prompt resolution of conflicts in the Church, and the reconciliation of all persons involved in those conflicts, at the earliest appropriate and the most conducive level of the Church;
consider the possible inclusion of certain lay persons in Title IV where their office or other leadership role makes inclusion appropriate, provided the treatment of their accountability and discipline is commensurate with their lay status, responsibility and commitments;
maintain the historic canonical pastoral role and authority of bishops; and
respect the roles, rights and integrity of those subject to the title; and of injured persons, parishes, missions and congregations and the church.

The original Title IV Task Force's Blue Book report for the 75th General Convention, which contained the proposed revision of Title IV, is available here.

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