Church Civics: TEC vs. ACNA Polity #5.2
Pre-1994: What's wrong with Title IV?
Today we continue our subseries on clergy discipline. Last time, we looked at the state of the Episcopal Church disciplinary canons (contained in Title IV) as they existed before 1994. The major thing worth saying about that system is that while there were some enforceable (yet difficult to exercise) nationwide controls on discipline for bishops, there were nearly none for priests and deacons. The pre-1994 canons left those matters almost entirely up to each individual diocese to scope and handle.
In 1994, things changed. General Convention met that year and enacted broad reform. Then in 1997, General Convention met again and followed up on items the sweeping 1994 revisions had not quite attained.
This post is something somewhat new for Detestable Enormities, which until now has aimed to present the bare-bones canonical structures so that anyone can understand them. Today, we need to take a more historical lens. Before we explain how the Title IV system changed in 1994 and again in 1997, we have to look briefly at why it changed — what did people complain about? What were they worried about? What kind of reform was needed to, as one chancellor put it, “[draw] this thing kicking and screaming into the modern era”?1
Zooming out one level more, I want to flag for ACNA-interested readers that much of ACNA’s discipline is rooted in this era of TEC canonical debate (pre-1994, 1994, and 1997). TEC undertook another major Title IV revision by 2009, which we will discuss in a future article, but ACNA was departing TEC by that time (and largely did not care for the 2009 revision). In another future article we will discuss ACNA’s Title IV explicitly. But I raise this now in the interest of reminding you that in the 1990s the factions that became current TEC and ACNA were one church, under one roof, debating these policies together and forming their own opinions about them. As the churches later diverge, we will see those opinions be turned into action in the now-separate churches’ respective Title IV processes.
One more note of housekeeping: in the last article, I explained that doctrinal offenses among bishops follow a different track than other misconduct. For now, I will leave that track to one side and focus just on the misconduct track for simplicity. (The doctrinal track is, too, worth its own article!)
Now with all that throat-clearing out of the way, let’s begin.
Getting perspective
As the Episcopal Church observed an increase in high-profile church scandals and instances of clergy abuse through the 1980s both within its own walls and among other denominations in the American religious landscape, criticism of the way the church handled misconduct grew. Several important perspectives emerged in the period beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the early 1990s.
Minnesota presses in
Although Title IV did not regulate discipline to any significant degree within the dioceses, the Diocese of Minnesota was an early self-motivated adopter of practices that aimed to end previously common patterns of quiet resignations or transfers for abusive clerics.
The Minnesota approach, which began with the establishment of a clergy health and wellness program in 1981, was holistic and pastoral.2 It placed philosophical priority on helping individual victims as well as congregations heal and regain trust after clerical misconduct, and on reconciliation and spiritual health. Its framers believed that adversarial processes (like charges, trials, and so on, which dominated Title IV to the extent it applied) caused offenders to dig in, but frank confrontations by pastoral leaders (like bishops) were more likely to lead to their fessing up, accepting consequences, making restitution, and, when possible, growing past their wrong behavior.3
A key Minnesota idea was that there was an asymmetry of power between a member of the clergy and any churchgoer, and when a victim of abuse is thrown into a poorly regulated and confusing disciplinary process, that asymmetry persists. Therefore, the church should provide an ombudsman or advocate to help counsel the victim through.
Though the Minnesota approach was “pastoral”, it would be gravely wrong to suppose that it was without teeth. One of its key architects, the Rev. Susan Moss, lobbied the state legislature together with the ecumenical Minnesota Council of Churches for laws “making clergy sexual abuse both a felony and a matter that could be subject for recovery in civil suits.”4 By 1985, those laws — some of the first of their kind in the country — were passed.5 Inside the diocese, the Rev. Margo Maris, the canon to the ordinary, worked with clergy, laity, the Minnesota Council of Churches, and a group of attorneys to develop and codify the approach, including compliance with the new state laws, into diocesan policy.6 The Diocese of Minnesota became one of the first to order background checks (even retroactively) on its clergy.7
The Minnesota group, which found support and imitation in other dioceses including Chicago and Los Angeles and which was made up in large proportion of women, minced no words about the gravity of the church failing to act in the interests of those harmed by clergy sexual abuse. Maris gave several interviews throughout this period, and this remark of hers is representative:
When a parishioner goes to a priest or pastor for spiritual counseling or direction, most likely that person is at a particularly vulnerable point in his or her life… Clergy are the ones who need to take the responsibility for keeping appropriate boundaries, for they are the ones with greater power in the pastoral situation. They are also the ones entrusted with the care and shepherding of souls — and to take advantage of that sacred trust is always wrong.
Moss was even more frank in her assessment: “Sexual involvement by clergy is tantamount to family incest”.8
The national church and the Office of Pastoral Development
In 1988, Bp. Harold Hopkins became the second-ever executive director of TEC’s Office of Pastoral Development. Established in 1969, this administrative position was intended to “provide career and crisis counseling to clergy and their spouses referred to [it] by diocesan bishops” and to assist dioceses and bishop nominees through episcopal elections.9 Hopkins set up his office in Minneapolis — which put him close to the Minnesota group.
We must surmise that almost immediately Hopkins was exposed to the Minnesota group’s concern about clergy sexual abuse, because before year’s end, Hopkins formed an ad-hoc committee to discuss the matter. Maris served on this committee and helped draft some of the Office for Pastoral Development’s first response strategies to sexual misconduct.10 A second meeting was held in Minnesota in 1990, and by this time, Hopkins was thoroughly ready to bring the powers of the OPD onboard in addressing clergy misconduct however it could. He emphasized the importance of prevention and education and deplored the church’s “looking the other way”.11 Hopkins set a new and public goal of “education at the national level, including training clergy to know how to respond when a person who has been victimized by a professional seeks help.”12
The OPD taking up the cause of the Minnesota group and the handful of dioceses who followed Minnesota’s lead marked a meaningful shift of the level of discussion. Disciplinary procedures for priests and deacons had been essentially completely left to the dioceses since Title IV was first written in 1915.13 But for the first time, uniform disciplinary response at the level of the national church was being seriously discussed.
Growing support for Maris and company’s work caused the 1991 General Convention to go on the record in a resolution:
[S]exual abuse, exploitation, coercion, and harassment of adults and minors by clergy and church employees are abuses of trust, a violation of the Baptismal Covenant, contrary to Christian Character, and are therefore wrong.
The resolution also created a Committee on Sexual Exploitation to work with the OPD
to study, educate, develop curriculum, and propose policy and standards of conduct on sexual abuse, exploitation, coercion, and harassment, and to advise the Office of Pastoral Development as resource persons.14
By May of 1992, Hopkins and the OPD had held over 20 diocesan conferences on prevention and right handling of clerical sexual misconduct. Maris, for her part, had handled around 300 cases of clergy sexual exploitation in and out of TEC in the preceding six years.15
Liability and the Church Insurance Company
Most Episcopal churches were (and are) insured by the aptly named Church Insurance Company (CIC). CIC’s first sexual misconduct claim was filed in 1983, but it did not take long for those numbers to increase and provoke concerns about financial solvency.16 Mistreated persons were becoming bolder in using the secular justice system to seek redress of grievance — most sexual misconduct claims filed in the decade since the first claim were not about new instances of abuse, but featured older allegations that victims no doubt felt were not taken seriously.17
In 1991 a Denver court found Bp. William Frey and the Diocese of Colorado liable in the case of a woman who had been pursued by a diocesan priest. Frey recommended additional psychological counseling for the woman, but agreed to move the priest to a new parish without other discipline. Damages amounted to $1.2 million, the largest single sum yet.18 This got everyone’s attention.
It is important to say that the CIC were not the first group to raise alarm bells about clergy misconduct in the Episcopal Church (and for that banal concern of money) — but money does talk. The CIC swiftly decided to drop liability coverage on claims involving sexual misconduct under its basic property and casualty policy, instead introducing a rider for those claims that came with a new set of requirements for insureds. Here are a few of note:
Eight hours of training for clergy and employees (and some volunteers) — four on child sexual abuse, four on sexual harassment and exploitation
Background checks for clergy or other employees
Distribution of a manual including definitions of sexual misconduct and procedures for investigating and disciplining offenders
Professional supervision or mandatory referral to professional counseling after six “pastoral care sessions” with an individual.19
It is evident that some of these dovetail in spirit with the reforms proposed by the Diocese of Minnesota and its following dioceses as well as those promoted across the church by the OPD. But there is one more perspective needed to fully explain how the structural wheels of Title IV could start to be reshaped by 1994.
Canon lawyers
Title IV is a canonical process. It is well to have advocacy groups, executive policymakers, and insurers do what they can to create a safer and more consistent disciplinary experience, but just like in other forms of government, if you want secure and authoritative change, you must change the law. The best diocesan policies do not matter if, as often happened, bishops “describe each new allegation as ‘a special case’ and handl[e] it [themselves].”20 Unless the policies are written into law, there is little recourse when they are ignored.
In January of 1991 Bp. William Wantland (Eau Claire), himself an attorney, organized a meeting between the Church Pension Fund and all the bishops and chancellors (diocesan attorneys) of Province V (the dioceses located in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin). From this meeting issued agreement that Title IV was an unwieldy tool.21
Wantland’s group considered joining with others to produce revisions to Title IV to bring before the coming 1994 General Convention. This came to some fruition when the 1991 General Convention directed the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons (SCCC), one of the permanent interim bodies created by General Convention, to “study and review” Title IV in consultation with any such “consultants it deems appropriate.22 This was in fact the goal of the Minnesota group from the beginning: “to first build awareness, and hopefully agreement, among the grassroots,” according to the Rev. Chilton Knudsen of the Diocese of Chicago, “before attempting implementation through the canons.”23
So it was decided: Title IV would see revision in 1994.
What’s wrong with (pre-1994) Title IV?
So we’ve got individual dioceses and their related advocacy groups, national church offices like the OPD, insurers like the CIC, and canon lawyers all with opinions about clergy discipline. What precise problems did they have with Title IV as it stood?
The canon lawyers’ opinion was clear back from Wantland’s meeting in 1991:
Both the chancellors and bishops expressed frustration that dismissing, disciplining, and deposing offending clergy is difficult, costly, and time-consuming under the current canons of the church. If an offending clergy does not admit the crime when confronted, presentment must be made to an ecclesiastical court for trial. Cases can drag on for months, further damaging a congregation. Some congregations, especially larger, well-endowed parishes, many times decide it is less costly to "buy out" the offender.24
These concerns overlapped significantly with those of the Minnesota-minded in the dioceses and in the OPD. There was no clear procedure for voluntarily submitting to discipline and avoiding trial, and bad bishops could easily prosecute over- or underaggressively, run kangaroo courts, or ignore procedures altogether — all at the expense of the victim who deserves expeditious justice and healing, but who was entitled to no guidance whatsoever. It was also hard for any victim to even activate the existing process to complain against a bishop. As we saw last time, you needed to gather a small crowd of people to even file ecclesiastical charges, even for sexual offenses that by definition are unlikely to have large numbers of witnesses.
Most expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of uniformity for discipline for priests and deacons across the dioceses, realizing this created an unfair experience for lay people and clergy alike. Bishops, however, were not all of one mind about the extent of their own power in their own diocese. While some interpreted their responsibility for their clergy’s pastoral ministry as precluding the interference of the CIC or the General Convention in setting new disciplinary procedures,25 others, including Frey, believed the current canons were underpowered and ambiguous regarding the authority of the bishop to discipline. (Bishops need more explicit authority “if they are to be held responsible for the misbehavior of all clergy,” he argued; but Maris countered that “no priest can be in a bishop’s diocese without his [or her] permission” and ordination vows compel clergy to “follow the orders of their bishop”.26) This too needed clearing up.
Protecting the institution
A final comment as I write this piece on 1990s events from 2024. Often present in our discussions about clergy sexual misconduct and coverup is the phrase “protecting the institution.” A bishop who moves abusive clergy around to avoid their misconduct making the news is protecting the institution. Someone who knows about inappropriate clerical behavior but does nothing about it because it would affect donations is protecting the institution. We know what this phrase means: the church implicitly or explicitly sides with an abusive cleric to prevent its own interests from being endangered by the secular courts or the court of public opinion. The victim is hung out to dry.
But it is worth observing that in discussions dating from this period of Title IV revision, which took place under the pressure of hugely expensive civil suits, the interests of the institution and (some of) the interests of those bringing complaints against clerics ran in the same direction. Uniform adoption of new standards and zealous applications of punitive justice could superficially “solve the problem” of a cleric being accused and lessen the church’s liability. So, during this time, you actually see two groups using the phrase “protecting the institution” in a way that may seem unfamiliar to us.
First is the Minnesota group and the subsequent Committee on Sexual Exploitation, who will express some level of regret as revisions get underway that legal and insurance interests are represented to the level they are and that some discussion becomes punitive rather than pastoral. Maris felt that “[m]ost of the energy and resources the church has applied to clergy misconduct have focused on protecting the institution and punishing the offender, and not on healing the victim.”27
Second is clergy as an interest group themselves, who were already displeased with bishops’ ability to act as unique and arbitrary prosecutors under the current Title IV. Many who were doing nothing but upright work resented being suddenly treated as a liability, especially if they got on the wrong side of a bishop or other official looking for an excuse to can them. The National Network of Episcopal Clergy Associations worried about a coming erosion of rights for accused clergy, reporting a perception that Title IV would be “more about institutional damage control than… about justice” and “a shield for bishops and dioceses, and only secondarily [a] tool for protecting victims and clergy.”28
A massive set of canonical amendments attempting to address all these issues and more was adopted overwhelmingly by the General Convention in 1994. We’ll look at those, back with our regularly scheduled diagrams, next week.
In the meantime — which of these groups do you think had a point? Which ones overplayed their hand? How would you modify the system to address the problems they point out? Take some time to think or comment, and next time we will see if you would have voted with the General Convention or not.
David Skidmore, “Episcopal Church Adopts New Church Laws Standardizing Rules on Clergy Misconduct,” Episcopal News Service, September 7, 1994.
David Skidmore, “General Convention Will Respond to Shock Waves Sent by Cases of Sexual Misconduct,” Episcopal News Service, June 15, 1994.
Robert Pritchard, A History of the Episcopal Church (Morehouse Publishing, 1999), 302-303.
Pritchard, 302.
Jill Hodges, “Case raises question: When are clerics being therapists?,” Star Tribune, December 8, 1989.
Pritchard, 302.
Clark Morphew, “Flood of lawsuits prompts background checks on clergy,” News Journal, June 8, 1991.
Lindsay J. Hardin, “Conference in Minnesota Discusses the Legal and Moral Ramifications of Sexual Misconduct by Clergy,” Episcopal News Service, February 8, 1990.
David Skidmore, “Hopkins to Take Pastoral Office,” Episcopal News Service, March 31, 1988.
Skidmore, “General Convention Will Respond.”
Hardin, “Conference in Minnesota.”
Hardin, “Conference in Minnesota.”
Skidmore, “Episcopal Church Adopts New Church Laws.”
General Convention, Journal of the General Convention of...The Episcopal Church, Phoenix, 1991 (New York: General Convention, 1992), p. 783.
Beth Rhea, “Out of Bounds: The Church Faces Clergy Sexual Misconduct,” Episcopal News Service, May 29, 1992.
David Skidmore, “Church Insurance Company to Revise Sexual Misconduct Coverage,” Episcopal News Service, February 2, 1993.
Skidmore, “General Convention Will Respond.”
“Denver Jury Awards $1.2 Million in Clergy Misconduct Trial,” Episcopal News Service, September 17, 1991.
David Skidmore, “Strong Medicine Prescribed in Fight Against Sexual Misconduct,” Episcopal News Service, November 23, 1993.
Michael Barwell, “Court Cases May Force Church to Reform Policy Toward Sexual Offenders and Their Victims,” Episcopal News Service, January 25, 1991.
General Convention, Journal of the General Convention of...The Episcopal Church, Phoenix, 1991 (New York: General Convention, 1992), p. 626.
Skidmore, “General Convention Will Respond.”
Barwell, “Court Cases May Force.”
David Skidmore, “Convention to Consider Complex New Canons to Simplify Response to Sexual Misconduct,” Episcopal News Service, June 15, 1994.
Rhea, “Out of Bounds.”
David Skidmore, “Sweeping Revisions in Clergy Discipline Canons Prompt Mixed Reactions,” Episcopal News Service, February 8, 1996.
David Skidmore, “Committee Fine Tunes Revisions to Clergy Discipline Canons,” Episcopal News Service, February 8, 1996.