TEC Exec. Council Unanimously Rejects PV Plan of Dar es Salaam and Rebuffs Several Orthodox Dioceses

The Executive Council of the national Episcopal church, which governs the national church between General Conventions, has unamimously rejected the Primatial Vicar scheme worked out at the Dar es Salaam primates's meeting earlier this year. “We agree with the bishops’ assessment including the conclusion that to participate in the scheme would violate our Constitution and Canons. We thus decline to participate in the pastoral scheme, and respectfully ask our Presiding Bishop not to take any of the actions asked of her by this scheme." (emphasis added)

In light of the House of Bishops' resolutions of two months ago and PB Schori's subsequent remarks on the topic, there is now no chance at all that anything compliant with the Communique will be done with respect to "alternative primatial oversight" before September 30th.

In addition, The Living Church reports (emphasis added) that: council approved a resolution declaring “null and void” attempts by a number of dioceses to revise their constitution to qualify their accession to the Constitution and Canons of the General Convention.“Any amendment to a diocesan constitution that purports in any way to limit or lessen an unqualified accession to the constitution of The Episcopal Church is null and void, and be it further resolved that the amendments passed to the constitutions of the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Quincy and San Joaquin, which purport to limit or lessen the unqualified accession to the constitution of The Episcopal Church are accordingly null and void and the constitutions of those dioceses shall be as they were as if such amendments had not been passed,” council stated in Resolution NAC-023.

After the resolution was approved, the Rt. Rev. Stacy Sauls, Bishop of Lexington, said Episcopalians had all agreed to live by certain principles and rules and that council believed it would be “helpful to have an authoritative statement [on the matter] with respect to any litigation that might occur in the future.”