Today is Tuesday. We adjourn Friday. The House of Deputies finally made it out of Legislative Calendar Day 4 and into Day 5. If you’re keeping track, we’re now (just) beginning to work on legislation that was scheduled for Sunday. That is not unusual for General Convention – with over eight hundred deputies and a bunch of bishops.
Folks are getting a bit testy.
President of the House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson, said the chair is getting tired of time-wasting activities like points of inquiry about things that a deputy could find out about from a senior deputy (or reading the constitution, canons or rules of order — or just thinking), points of order, points of personal privilege et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Body parts are beginning to complain. The pedal extremities are loudest at the moment. Gluteus maximus is not far behind (pun intended). And the list goes on.
What’s happening? Yesterday, the House of Deputies passed and sent to the House of Bishops a resolution crafted by Deputies Rebecca Snow (Alaska) and Ruth Myers (Chicago). The resolution goes by the moniker “D025″ (the “D” stands for a resolution proposed by a Deputy). The resolution is widely touted as being the answer to the last minute action in 2006 in Columbus known as B033. (At the end of this post, I’ll list some web addresses where you can look up the texts of current and past resolutions. The current session’s resolutions are actually updated – almost in real time – as they are acted upon.)
The House of Bishops amended resolution D025 and sent it back to the House of Deputies. The House of Deputies concurred with the amended resolution on a vote by orders. (It only takes three deputations – say Michigan, Northern Michgan and Eastern Michigan – agreeing to force a vote by orders.) That means that the four lay deputies and the four clergy deputies in each deputation vote separately (full disclosure: some dioceses – particularly off shore dioceses – do not send all eight deputeis, so numbers vary). It takes one more than half the votes votes in an order to reach a decision; otherwise it is a divided vote. Divided votes count as negative votes. Consequently it is significantly more difficult to pass a resolution under a vote by orders.
On D025, the vote in the lay order was 77 yes, 21 no and 9 divided. The motion passed in the lay order by 72 percent. In the clergy order the vote was 77 yes, 19 no, and 11 divided. The motion also passed in the clergy order by 72 percent. For those who have been waiting for some recognition that all God’s baptized children deserve access to all the sacraments (even, if elected, consecration as a bishop) this was a momentous step forward.
Holy Women and Holy Men, a trial liturgy that includes a big bunch of new saints, is making its way through the legislative process. Those resolutions started in the House of Bishops and are just now making it to the House of Deputies. For the most part they are moving along fairly smoothly. One resolution on propers was amended so it has to go back to the House of Bishops, but it is reasonably likely it will be fast-tracked in order to make it back through the House of Deputies by the end of business, Friday.
So, I promised you some links. Here‘s the link to this General Convention’s legislation. Here‘s a place you can search for past legislative acts taken by general convention. To find B033, enter “2006-B033″ in the search box.
This is my final post in this forum, but you can follow my personal blog here.
Peace,
Pete Ross, Lay Deputy Number 4, Diocese of Michigan
Good work on D025. I hope it will serve to keep the discussion alive while honoring what it is clear we must do.