Electing the Bishop of Llandaff: Propriety and Privacy
by Philip Jones, Ecclesiastical Law:
The informative Thinking Anglicans website has drawn attention to a potential legal dispute concerning the election of the new Bishop of Llandaff, in the Church in Wales.
Legal objections to the election of bishops are raised from time to time, of course (though they invariably fail). But the novelty of the Llandaff case is that an objection has been made even though no bishop has been elected. The objection concerns the conduct of the Electoral College that failed to elect one.
The Constitution of the Church in Wales provides that
‘If, at the close of the [Electoral College], which shall not extend beyond 3 consecutive days, no person shall have received two-thirds of the votes of those present and voting, the right to fill the vacancy shall pass to the Bench of Bishops, unless and until the Governing Body shall have otherwise determined’ (Chapter 5, Reg 23).
It is not disputed that the Llandaff Electoral College met for 3 days, nor that it failed to elect a candidate by a two-thirds majority. However, the objectors claim that the proceedings of the College during those 3 days were conducted so improperly as to render them invalid.
The invalidating impropriety consisted of ‘the raising … of the matter of sexuality or civil partnership status, in direct contravention of the Church in Wales’s own policy that sexuality or civil partnership status is not a bar to appointment as a Bishop’. (It is thought that raising this matter at the Electoral College meeting deterred some electors from voting for an openly gay candidate, and thereby caused him to fall short of the required two-thirds majority.)
There are difficulties with this objection. If accepted, it would render decisions of the Electoral College very vulnerable to external challenge in the future. It might take only 1 elector to raise an ‘inappropriate and prejudicial’ matter to invalidate the entire proceeding.
The assertion of the Church’s ‘policy’ is also questionable. Chapter 5 of the Constitution regulates ‘The Archbishop and the Diocesan Bishops’, and the Electoral College procedure. There is nothing in Chapter 5 to the effect that sexuality and civil partnership are not a bar to election as a bishop. A policy made only by means of a collective statement from the Bishops is not part of the Constitution, and therefore cannot bind the Electoral College.
(And even if sexuality etc is not a ‘bar’ to election as a bishop, that does not mean that it is irrelevant, or that any discussion is forbidden.)
Read also: Second complaint over ‘abusive and derogatory’ comments against gay cleric as pressure builds on Church in Wales by Harry Farley, Christian Today
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