Full Legislative History
Resolution Number: 1997-A053
Title: Implement Mandatory Rights of Women Clergy under Canon Law
Legislative Action Taken: Concurred As Amended
Final Text:

Resolved, That

  1. no member of this Church shall be denied access to the ordination process, postulancy, candidacy, ordination, license to officiate in a Diocese, a call to a cure in a Diocese or Letters Dimissory on account of their sex or their theological views on the ordination of women;
  2. no member of this Church shall be denied a place in the life and governance of this Church on account of their sex or their theological views on the ordination of women;
  3. it is the mind of this Convention that, notwithstanding the legislative history surrounding the passage of those Title III canons relating to the ordination of women, and notwithstanding subsequent actions of the House of Bishops not in General Convention assembled, the provisions of the canons of the General Convention, insofar as they may relate to the ordination of women and the licensing and deployment of women clergy, are mandatory; and
  4. during the next triennium each Diocese where women do not have full access to ordination and where ordained women are not permitted to carry out their full ministries shall develop and implement a process to implement fully Canons III.8.1, III.16.1(d), III.16.2, and III.17.3 and that status reports on these Diocesan processes be reported to the interim House of Bishops meeting in 1999, the Executive Council in 1999, and the 73rd General Convention through the Executive Council.
Citation: General Convention, Journal of the General Convention of...The Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, 1997 (New York: General Convention, 1998), p. 112.