Bishop Righter Faces Trial for Ordaining Non-celibate Gay Man in 1990
Episcopal News Service. August 31, 1995 [95-1205]
(ENS) Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning announced August 18 that "a sufficient number of consents have been received from the bishops of the church to permit the pending presentment against the Rt. Rev. Walter Righter to proceed" to trial. No date has yet been set.
The presentment against Righter was brought in January by 10 diocesan bishops who charged that Righter, retired bishop of Iowa, violated his ordination vows when he ordained an openly gay man to the diaconate five years ago. At the time he was serving as assistant bishop of Newark.
The bishops bringing the presentment assert that, by ordaining a gay man who was living in a homosexual relationship, he was violating a canon law of the church by "teaching a doctrine contrary to that held by this church."
Righter responded to the charges on May 10 by denying that he is "holding and teaching, publicly or privately, and advisedly, any doctrine contrary to that held by this church" in violation of its canon laws -- or that he was "violated his ordination vows."
"There is no doctrine in this church pertaining to the qualifications of ordinands to the diaconate or limitations on a bishop's right to ordain a canonically qualified candidate," Righter's brief said. "The presentment is based on a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Episcopal Church and the sources of such doctrine," the brief argued.
Righter's brief was mailed to all 297 bishops of the church who were asked to respond by August 15 or the charges would be dismissed. Now that at least one-fourth of them have voted to proceed to a trial, the presiding bishop has notified the nine members of the Court for the Trial of a Bishop to organize. That court is comprised of nine bishops: Frederick Borsch of Los Angeles; Donis Patterson, retired bishop of Dallas; Cabell Tennis of Delaware; Arthur Walmsley, retired bishop of Connecticut; Roger White of Milwaukee; Ted Jones of Indianapolis; Robert C. Johnson of North Carolina; Andrew Fairfield of North Dakota; and Douglas Theuner of New Hampshire.
According to a letter Browning sent to the bishops May 15, the court will "appoint one or more legal advisors to assist it, meet with the parties, and set a schedule for the hearing of evidence and reception of briefs and arguments. After trial, a decision would be rendered by majority vote, and a sentence of admonition, suspension, or deposition would be set if the decision were in favor of the presenters."
Depending on the action of the court, either side would "ordinarily have the right of appeal to the Court of Review," Browning added. If that court made a decision in favor of the presenters, and set a sentence, "no sentence could be imposed unless the court's findings were then approved by a vote of two-thirds of all the bishops" in the House of Bishops entitled to vote.
Bishop James Stanton of Dallas, one the authors of the presentment, said that "the issue is church order," an attempt to stop bishops from acting against the teachings of the church. He told the Los Angeles Times that he hoped the presentment would "restore a sense of collegiality, but collegiality has been destroyed by those who act on their own. A presentment is a canonical procedure given by the church to protect order and unity."
Righter called the prospect of a trial "shocking" and "outrageous," repeating his contention that the presentment was "harassment. It's a nuisance to the church. It's a waste of time and money." He accused his detractors of "riding the wave of Western inability to deal openly with sexuality."