Parliamentary procedure is at its core about democracy at its best:
achieving in decent and orderly fa****on the will of the majority while
fully respecting and protecting the minority (or as one writer put it,
"to give the minority a fighting chance.") There is a reason that
every democratic voting organization uses a form of parliamentary
procedure (in this country, usually Robert's Rules of Order Newly
Revised), whether it be church, or city council, or stockholders'
meeting, or legislature. Those who object to parliamentary procedure,
or who abuse it, are almost inevitably those who have no patience for
democracy or dissent, or those who simply do not like the result that
would be forthcoming when the ayes and nos aren't to their liking.
In our church we have two recent and regrettable examples of antipathy
toward parliamentary procedure. The first, of course, is the Presiding
Bishop, who has lawlessly decided to ignore the very basics of
Robert's and the canons themselves in a whole range of actions where
she can't be bothered to follow the rules, or where she worries she
might not get the votes necessary to do what she wants. She has, in
essence, with the apparent acquiescence of a majority of bishops,
turned parliamentary procedure into a sham--something no more
meaningful to them than, say, a Book of Common Prayer liturgy. This
certainly reflects her anger at, disrespect for, and, some say, hatred
of the minority orthodox, who after all have the temerity to do what
minorities generally do--object and disagree and attempt to obstruct
the majority. And in a sense her suspension of parliamentary procedure
(for that is what she has done) is evidence of her own weakness, her
inability to reason with those with whom she disagrees, and her
intolerance of those who do not see the world exactly as she does. It
is a rejection of democracy, since the rules came about by democratic
vote, not by fiat. And it is with her, as with Mugabe in Zimbabwe and
every other tinhorn dictator who cannot accept the norms of democratic
procedure, an unequivocal admission of defeat.
But the Presiding Bishop is not alone. Now comes the sharia-loving
Archbishop of Canterbury himself, writing from that cradle of
parliamentary democracy, Great Britain. He says that Lambeth will
avoid parliamentary procedure. "We have listened carefully to those
who have expressed their difficulties with Western and parliamentary
styles of meeting," he writes, before announcing he is chucking
parliamentary procedure for "indaba" meetings--groups that are
preselected and designed to preclude any decisions from being made. In
short, he is taking from Lambeth any semblance of democracy, because
the result might be inconvenient. He wants consensus instead of the
bother and unpleasantness of true democratic debate. But as Michael
Crichton wrote, "the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of
scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is
already settled."
Note that the Archbishop doesn't say who are those who have expressed
these difficulties. Almost certainly they are not the Majority World
bishops, many of whom are from Commonwealth countries that cherish the
parliamentary tradition they received from Britain. Rather, the
objections undoubtedly come from the same crowd that so loathes
parliamentary procedure across the Pond: the Americans and Canadians
and their pals. (After all, who loathes things "Western" more than
self-loathing Western elites?). The reason they would be pleased with
this ditching of parliamentary procedure is because were a vote
actually permitted and taken, the Americans would find themselves
bounced out of the Communion on their keisters, the Communion's
overwhelming opposition to the innovations of the American church
reinforced, and a reaffirmation of the Gospel as it is given to us in
Holy Scripture. We can't have that now, can we? Little wonder so many
orthodox are refusing to play this game.
The left has always found democracy inconvenient (strangely, even when
they win), and so by reflex warms to and seeks control by way of
inherently non-democratic mechanisms (the courts, international
organizations, NGOs, etc.) They are the ones who were apologists for
Mussolini and Mao and Stalin, and who today fawn over Iranian mullahs
and celebrate Castro and Chavez. That's because deep down they wish
they could like their heroes achieve what they want to achieve without
the bother of obstreperous "dissenters," as they define anyone who
can't see things exactly as they do. After all, they have great and
prophetic things to do, and their trains simply must run on time.
The tra****ng of parliamentary procedure in our church has served to
frustrate both purposes of parliamentary law. The Presiding Bishop
does it here so to dispatch with her troublesome orthodox minority.
And the Archbishop of Canterbury does it in Lambeth so to preclude the
majority achieving its ends. In both cases it reflects a profoundly
undemocratic instinct that we should all lament, and an abandonment of
law that will ultimately hasten the end of both the Episcopal Church
and the Anglican Communion.
http://hillsofthenorth.blogspot.com/
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