StandFirm: Katharine Jefferts Schori's Video Deposition Now Online

Here are some highlights from the depo as seen in court that concluded the Virginia churches case regarding the Virginia Statute 57-9 . You can see the entire video depo that was shown as part of the November trial in Virginia here at StandFirm.



This is the part that was very troubling regarding the Primates Dar es Salaam Communique. This is particularly important because, as we learned from the Primate of the West Indies and chair of the Covenant Draft Committee for the Anglican Communion, everyone in the room at Dar es Salaam was asked specifically by the Archbishop of Canterbury if they agreed to the Communique and everyone in the room said yes. You can read more about that here. In this commentary, the Canon Gary L'Hommedieu writes of a meeting with Archbishop Drexel Gomez at a clergy conference in the Diocese of Central Florida:

His next illustration was the real shock. He explained that at the recent Primates' Meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the Archbishop of Canterbury had broken the usual precedent of decision by consensus and required each of the Primates to stand and declare whether or not he (or she) agreed to the text of a Communique that contained the Primates' shared commitments for the future. Each of the 34 Primates said "yes" to the Communique. The American Primate, The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, said "Yes, but I'll have trouble selling it" to her fellow American bishops.

The point is, as Archbishop Gomez stressed, she said "Yes." She could have, but did not, issue a minority report. When she returned, and when the House of Bishops Convened in March, Jefferts Schori claimed she had only consented to present the text of the Communique to her bishops. She took no responsibility for agreeing to it. One of the conference participants recalled she had claimed that "she never signed it." Archbishop Gomez cut in: "None of the Primates signed it." The Primates' Communiques are never signed. Their verbal responses are taken at face value. The Presiding Bishop's public statement that she hadn't signed it would appear to be a deliberate misrepresentation of the process.

One of the diocesan clergy stood in stunned amazement, and fluttering with emotion said he didn't realize the extent to which we had been lied to. Bishop Howe stood, and with equal emotion insisted that the Presiding Bishop may very well have believed that she was agreeing to deliver the message and not that she was agreeing to the content itself, and that we should be very careful not to infer that she was lying.

Archbishop Gomez interrupted the Bishop: "Sir, that was not the question she was asked by the Archbishop." Presumably the lady Primate had been quite convincing, so that the members of her house had the same picture as the rest of us as to how agreements were expressed in Dar es Salaam.

The clergy of Central Florida reacted as if they had heard about the Primates' Meeting for the first time. This tiny detail made the prior accounts of the Meeting seem like hearsay. A fog had lifted. The Archbishop's message about a breakdown of trust was not simply a political tactic, used to weaken the position of an adversary. It was shockingly real. It was not a "tasty morsel", the kind which titillates gossipers. The response was shock and grief.

Here is what the Presiding Bishop says in her video deposition under oath - though it took a while:



You can see more of the Schori Deposition here at StandFirm.