Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Judicial Committee Reasoning Published

My attention has been drawn to this link on our local Anglican Life website.

There you can read about the decision of the Judicial Committee of our church re an application made to it in respect of a clause of Motion 30.

There are also links to key PDFs, a submission by the Vice Chancellor of our Diocese, Jeremy Johnson, and the decision and reasoning of the Judicial Committee.

We can sorta say that the decision was to not make a decision!

While I have neither time nor expertise to go into the details of the legal arguments, I do think - standing back from these arguments and looking at the big picture of the status of Motion 30 in the life of the church - that the Judicial Committee is correct, at least in this sense,

- that the General Synod has power to make resolutions which do not purport to change doctrine illegally,
- that Motion 30 is one such resolution because its acceptance of 'recognition' is not purporting to change doctrine.

4 comments:

Father Ron Smith said...

I wonder why, Peter, the opponents to Motion 30 did not guess the outcome of the challenge? Were they poorly advised?

My other question is; who paid for their legal submission/ The Church? If so; what a waste of money, time and effort! On the other hand; if the would-be litigants paid the legal bills; it serves them right.

Anonymous said...

You're SUCH a warm, caring and loving Christian Ron, that my heart is nearly set alight!

Rosemary Behan

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Ron
Knowing (as it happens) some of those involved in the legal challenge, I would be most surprised if they were poorly advised. I should think that they thought they had a viable challenge and gave it their best shot.

I don't know about costs but I imagine on both sides (i.e. of the specific legal issue) that people who love our church and are faithful to it gave willingly and generously of their time.

Rosemary has a point: this is not a particularly 'warm' approach to these matters when we talk about "it serves them right."

We are facing important issues and it is worth testing out various matters along the way so that we, hopefully, 'get it right' in the end.

Father Ron Smith said...

Thank you, Rosemary. Don't go overboard though, I'm not always as friendly.