The Windsor-related resolutions coming out of General Convention today require, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has noted, some time for study before their significance and import can properly be evaluated. Such study, furthermore, must be done in the context of the wider Communion, and not simply from the limited perspective of our individual circumstances. However, a few initial observations can be made.
How General Convention practically engaged the “Windsor Process”:
It was discouraging to watch as one of the most important decisions the Episcopal Church has had to face was telescoped into a final 24 hours of frantic parliamentary conflict and maneuvering. No one can claim that the issues were not well examined, diversely engaged, and publicly articulated over the course of the past 3 years. This therefore raises a series of questions:
· Why were last minute clarifications - from Windsor Commission members and representatives from elsewhere in the Communion - required before engaging the inadequacy of the language proposed by our own Special Commission, as if obvious comparisons between the two had never been made before[EAG1] ?
· How is it that such inadequate language emerged in the first place?
· Why is it that so much time was spent on 2-minute ventilations instead of careful consultation with appropriate representatives from the Communion and our own leadership?
· How is it that our own Presiding Bishop waited, after three years of controversy, until the very last day of Convention to speak with direction about the demands of the Windsor “process” with respect to resolutions?
· How is it that our House of Bishops, after having insisted over several years that only the full General Convention had the authority to respond to Windsor, ended up having to bend the rules of Convention itself to squeeze out a whimpered reaction?
· How is it that, after all the clarifications of the past week - not to mention three years - no clearly responsive communion resolutions came to the floor for vote?
· How is it that the final resolution that passed, B033, in its second resolve actually contradicts the lop-sided vote in favor of the new Presiding Bishop Elect, not to mention other actions of the Convention?
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