The Houses of Bishops and Deputies will meet tomorrow morning after the Eucharist (at which Bishop Jefferts Schori is preaching!) to make a last stab at working out some fuller legislative response to the Windsor Report.
The Special Committee co-chaired by the Rev. Frank Wade, retired rector of St. Alban’s is being called back into existence to put some sort of resolution before the Convention. They may not be able to begin meeting until after 9 tonight, because the bishops just adjourned and none of them have eaten dinner yet. Meanwhile, the deputies, who are slogging through a legislative backlog have just reconvened for a night session that will last at least until 9.
Those are the time constraints on the front end. On the back end, most bishops and deputies have flights home tomorrow afternoon (I am here until Thursday and assumed I would be spending most of Wednesday reflecting in tranquility on convention developments for an article for the July issue of our diocesan newspaper. Hah!)
As perhaps you’ve guessed, I think that their only opportunity to get something passed is to adopt the language of “considerable caution.”
One thing about covering fast-breaking news events is that you get sucked into believing that what you are writing about is important. (Why would a person of your obvious significance waste time and energy on these events if they weren’t?) What I wonder tonight is whether the difference between “obliged to urge….to refriain” from and “exercise considerable caution” make any difference outside the little bubble we’ve all been living in for the last ten days here.
And the answer is, I have no idea. One thing I can say, though, after the experience this Convention has put itself through, is that if the Archbishop of Canterbury should issue an immediate response saying the compromise that our Church has worked so hard to achieve isn’t good enough for him, it would greatly increase the number of Episcopalians who thought it was no longer worth trying to please him.
Dinner anyone?