Ecclesiastical Statecraft

Off to an easygoing start, the 55th triennial convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church warmed up to a lively boil. In Philadelphia last week the subject in the 150-man House of Bishops was Divorce. In the 700-man* House of Deputies it was Union. The Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, had come from England to watch the proceedings. Presiding over the House of Bishops was the Episcopal Church's nearest equivalent (it was not very near) to the Primate of All England: the Most Rev. Henry St. George Tucker, Presiding Bishop of the Church since 1937, due to retire in December.

Divorce. The present Episcopalian canon on divorce is based on Christ's saying, But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. --Matthew 5:32. The only divorced person who may ever be remarried with the Church's blessing is the innocent party in a divorce granted on grounds of adultery. The Convention's 17-man Joint Commission on Holy Matrimony recommended that bishops should be allowed discretion to permit church marriages of persons divorced at least a year.

Leader of the attack on the proposed canon was round-faced Rt. Rev. Wallace E. Conkling, Bishop of Chicago. Cried he: "We must recognize human nature but not yield to it ..." The bishops, seeming to agree with Chicago's Conkling, voted 65-to-44 to scrap the report. But that night a special five-man committee worked until 2 a.m. on a new proposal.

Impediments to Marriage. Provisions of the proposed canon: bishops may withdraw Episcopal recognition of a previous marriage, remarry divorced persons after one year, by referring their decision to "impediments," in the presence of which the Church considers the previous marriage no true marriage. The impediments: consanguinity; mistaken identity; mental deficiency "sufficient to prevent the exercise of intelligent choice"; insanity; failure of either party to have reached the age of puberty; impotence; perversion or venereal disease undisclosed to the other party; bigamy; a concurrent contract inconsistent with canonical marriage (such as a "companionate marriage" agreement); fraud; coercion; duress "or such defects of the personality as to make competent or free consent impossible."

Under the new rule, conservative bishops may interpret the impediments strictly, while liberals may use them so as to admit many persons hitherto barred from the sacraments of the Church. The revised canon passed the House of Bishops unanimously, was sent to the House of Deputies, where its chances of passage were excellent.

Union. Meanwhile the deputies sent the bishops a weasel on the hottest question of the convention--unity with the Presbyterians. The weasel: another three-years' study of merger plans.

*And one woman: Mrs. Randolph H. (Betsy) Dyer, from the diocese of Missouri, first woman deputy ever elected to the General Convention. To the House of Deputies each diocese sends four clergymen, four laymen; each missionary district sends two clergymen, two laymen.

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