 Constitutional process is not working, complainant says By John H. Adams The Layman Online Thursday, October 17, 2002 Complaints filed in church courts have been brushed aside and judicial rules have been ignored, says Paul Rolf Jensen, a Virginia lawyer who has accused Presbyterian officers of violating the oaths of their offices by publicly defying the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Jensen registered those charges in a letter to the commissioners to the 214th General Assembly – his response to COGA's Oct. 11 letter to the commissioners. COGA is trying to derail a petition campaign to get 50 commissioners to call for a historic called meeting of the General Assembly. Contending that the PCUSA has a constitutional crisis, 25 commissioners have signed a petition asking Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel to call a meeting of the General Assembly to deal with constitutional issues, says Alex Metherell of Laguna Beach, Calif., the leader of the petition campaign. The petition needs 25 more signatures to meet constitutional requirements for a called meeting of the General Assembly. Metherell acquired the first 25 signatures from an e-mail list of 68 commissioners. He says he will contact the other 488 commissioners by regular mail through a letter he will send out this week. Since October 2001, Jensen has filed complaints against 19 ministers and one elder, all of whom, he said, have publicly declared that they have not and will not abide by the constitution's "fidelity/chastity" ordination standard or the denomination's prohibition against "marrying" same-gender couples. Jensen said he filed the complaints with the expectation "that each would be fairly conducted according to the Book of Order, which provides in D-10.0201 that: 'An inquiry shall be made by an investigating committee designated by the governing body having jurisdiction over the member to determine whether charges should be filed. ... The investigating committee shall ... ascertain all available witnesses and inquire of them.'" Jensen said he was sending his letter to the commissioners because COGA showed no awareness of actions by presbyteries that have scuttled some of his cases without meeting reasonable expectations of fair review – including not calling on him to offer testimony. In some cases, investigating committees have summarily dismissed cases even though accused officers made public declarations of their defiance of the constitution. In an interview with The Layman Online, Jensen says he was troubled that the courts seemed unwilling to allow disciplinary actions to go forward. And he expressed concern that the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly had weighed in without addressing the status of complaints he has filed. "[S]ince the COGA is not in the loop in any disciplinary case, they would have utterly no way of knowing any of the facts concerning these matters," Jensen said in his letter to commissioners. "It is lamentable that they chose to write you without access to the facts." In another development, the directors of Presbyterians For Renewal have announced their opposition to a called meeting of the General Assembly. "Does this counsel against a called Assembly mean that Presbyterians for Renewal does not believe the disciplinary problem is serious?," PFR's statement asked. "Not at all. The perversion or failure of church discipline at any level is definitely a critical concern. However, we first want to see if the ordinary procedures prescribed by the Constitution for the resolution of such defiance will succeed." Following is the text of Jensen's letter to the commissioners: October 16, 2002 Dear Commissioner to the 214th General Assembly: It is with a heavy heart that I address you on subject of urgent concern to our denomination: the complete breakdown of due process in the disciplinary system, and repeated refusal by one presbytery after another to employ the procedures mandated in the Book of Order for disciplinary cases. Before yesterday, I would never have presumed to write you, but upon reading a copy of the letter sent to you by the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly, I feel constrained to let you know that its authors are not well informed, and thus reach conclusions which are directly contrary to the facts--which as I say, are in the aggregate known only to me. You see, I am the person who has filed (to my knowledge all of) the disciplinary accusations against those who are publicly defying our constitution, and in particular their ordination vows to be governed by our church's polity (G-14.0405 (b) (5)). Since I filed the first of these accusations a year ago, other than to answer questions from the news media, this is the first time I have spoken out directly about the cases. At no time have I been contacted by any of those who signed the COGA letter to you. Since events in some of the cases I have filed have been rapidly occurring, and since the COGA is not in the loop in any disciplinary case, they would have utterly no way of knowing any of the facts concerning these matters. It is lamentable that they chose to write you with erroneous assumptions. Without any knowledge of the facts, they nevertheless conclude in their letter that "The constitutional process is working. ... We are confident...the constitution will be upheld in content and process. When processes do not move as some would prefer, or decisions are made that do not match particular expectations, it does not mean that the system is faulty or broken". Because of their ignorance of the facts, their confidence is misplaced, and their conclusion begs the question of what the expectations are. Moreover, the opposite conclusion is equally valid in the abstract: when reasonable expectations are not met, then the system may be faulty or broken. Consider that many people still shake their heads at a secular judicial system that found O.J. Simpson free from criminal guilt but then civilly liable for the murders of his ex-wife and her friend. My point is simply that in order to reach an informed conclusion, one must know (a) what the expectations are, and (b) what the facts are. The COGA letter's authors had to guess, and inevitably, guessed wrong. Here are the facts, so you can judge for yourself. After learning that each of the following people had publicly declared his or her intention to defy the constitution--or announced their actual acts of defiance--and were thus violating their ordination vow to be bound by the polity of our church, I personally filed accusations in the indicated presbyteries, against: Jon Walton (New York); Susan De George, Joseph Gilmore, Jean Holmes and Jack Miller (Hudson River); Don Stroud (Baltimore); Katie Morrison, Brian Tippen, Chandler Stokes, Mary Wright Gillespie, Carolyn Osborne, Yvette Flunder, and Barbara Rowe (Redwoods); Eric Scott Winnette (National Capitol); Tammy Lindahl (Twin Cities Area); Ann Petker (Pacific); Paul Peterson and Teresa Peterson (Yellowstone); Steve Van Kuiken and Hal Porter (Cincinnati) and Elder Steve Morrison (Pasadena, CA Presbyterian Church). The Book of Order requires a presbytery, upon being notified that a disciplinary accusation has been received, to appoint an Investigating Committee to convene to, well, investigate. I had one, and only one, expectation with regard to the outcome of those investigations: that each would be fairly conducted according to the Book of Order, which provides in D-10.0201 that:
These are the undeniable facts, which the COGA could not have mentioned in their letter to you because they were unknown to the COGA. Now they are before you, and you can judge for yourself if the system has broken down. Respectfully yours, PAUL ROLF JENSEN |
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