TITLE: Judicial Council issues decisions
Release # 021 {2885} April 20, 1996
GENERAL CONFERENCE 1996
DENVER (UMNS) -- The Judicial Council, the highest court of the United Methodist Church, has issued decisions that concern who may serve on the committee that deals with the episcopacy and when new bishops begin receiving salary.
The Judicial Council began deliberation on several cases April 12 and will continue to meet intermittently for the two weeks General Conference is in session here.
In a case brought by the Pacific Northwest Conference seeking a declaratory decision, the council found no disciplinary provision prohibiting an otherwise qualified spouse of a bishop from serving on a jurisdictional committee on episcopacy, but the council sounded a strong cautionary note.
"However," the decision warns, "it would appear unwise for such spouse to serve on the Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy as such service could present a real or potential conflict of interest, or an appearance of impropriety."
The Jurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy has duties that include assignment of bishops to an episcopal area, reviewing their work, granting leave and terminating office.
In its analysis, the Judicial Council noted that although the Discipline is silent on the issue, this collection of church law includes a prohibition barring immediate family members of a pastor or staff member from serving on a pastor-parish committee in a local church. Likewise, the Discipline provides that
immediate family members of the staff of any annual (regional) conference agency from serving on the conference committee on episcopacy.The church's current practice of beginning salaries for new bishops on Sept. 1 is constitutional, the Judicial Council said in a declaratory decision issued at the same time.
The church's finance agency had asked for a finding on the constitutionality, meaning and effect of instruction in the denomination's Discipline having to do with the date newly elected bishops begin receiving salary from the Episcopal Fund.
The September date for newly elected bishops to begin their duties and Aug. 31 for retiring bishops to cease their activities are included in the current Discipline. Bishops are elected, and often consecrated, at jurisdictional gatherings held in mid-July at four-year intervals. Sixteen will be elected in 1996.
Central (outside the United States) Conferences have the same power to set the time and place of consecration of the bishops they elect.
The period between election and consecration and Sept. 1, the council said in its analysis, provides an opportunity for the newly elected bishops "to conclude matters at the prior
appointment and make an orderly transition to assumption of the duties of the episcopal area."The council said this process "is analogous to the way clergy members of an annual conference receive new appointments at the annual conference session but move to the new appointment at a later date."
Oral arguments in the case were presented April 13 by retired Bishop Jack Tuell for the Council of Bishops and Mary K. Logan for the Council on Finance and Administration.
A Judicial Council member, the Rev. Theodore H. Walter, recused himself and did not participate in the discussion. His name has been mentioned as a potential candidate for the
episcopacy in the Southeastern Jurisdiction.-- Joretta Purdue
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