StandFirm reports that the Archbishop Venables has welcomed Bishop Duncan into the Province of the Southern Cone. Archbishop Venables attended the Lambeth Conference and Anglican TV has a terrific interview with him here.Here's Anglican TV's interview with Bishop Bob Duncan. The interview was done on Tuesday.
Anglican Curmudgeon has the scoop on these questionable and rather bizarre proceedings in the Episcopal House of Bishops today:
1. Have they in fact legally deposed him? No. The motion in fact failed, for lack of the required number of those in favor. Counting active and retired bishops, there are approximately 300 bishops entitled to a seat and vote in the House (there were 294 as of the last meeting, in March). Given what the plain language of the Canon has always required, there needed to be at least 151 or so bishops present at the meeting and all voting "Yes" for the consent to deposition to take effect.
2. Did they even try to follow the Canon? No. The announcement of the meeting on August 20 contained no hint of any vote to consent to deposition being on the agenda. It was only on September 12---five days before the meeting began---that the plan for the vote to be held was announced. So there was no attempt, not even a pretense of going through the motions, to do what was necessary to have the required number of bishops in attendance.
3. Were the parliamentary rulings announced in advance of the meeting valid? No. The announcement that they would require only a simple majority of those present and voting was an admission of their cowardice in failing to call together the number of bishops that the Canon requires. And both that ruling, as well as the ruling that the deposition could go forward despite there having been no previous inhibition of Bishop Duncan, were based on the Chancellor's and the Parliamentarian's resolution of what were claimed to be ambiguities in the language of the Canon.
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