At a minimum, under the Book of Order rules, commissioners must be given at least 60-days notice; 120 days if a constitutional interpretation is involved. Sixty days from March 17 — the day on which the trial begins — would put the recalled Assembly within a week, at most, of the convening of the 215th General Assembly. If it did happen, the timing would be very tight.
The commission’s ruling was released to the public on Tuesday, March 4, and the moderator’s office issued a statement the same day saying, “The Moderator and his counsel are considering the decision and will cooperate fully.”
One of the key questions the judicial commission will consider is whether Abu-Akel acted properly when he and Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC (USA)’s stated clerk, initiated a process of “verifying” the signatures on a petition recalling the Assembly — whether they were just trying to determine whether the signatures were accurate and properly submitted, or whether they overstepped their bounds and actually were attempting to change the outcome.
Alex Metherell, the elder from Laguna Beach, Calif., who led the effort to reconvene the Assembly, has argued that once he got enough signatures on a petition — a petition he presented to Abu-Akel in January — the moderator had no choice but to issue a call for the commissioners to the 214th General Assembly to come back and meet again. Instead, Abu-Akel, who last fall had sent commissioners a letter telling them he opposed recalling the Assembly, sent them another letter, imploring them “in the name of Christ and for the good of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to reconsider your decision.”
Judy L. Woods, a lawyer from Indianapolis representing Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick, argued to the judicial commission last week that Kirkpatrick’s office had received unsolicited communications from several commissioners whose names were on the petition, indicating that they did not agree with the drive to recall the Assembly — and that the moderator and stated clerk then had no choice but to determine whether the signatures they’d been presented with did accurately represent the views of those commissioners.
The judicial commission held a hearing Feb. 28 in Kansas City to decide whether to allow the compliant, filed by Westminster church, Canton, Ohio, accusing Kirkpatrick and Abu-Akel of a “delinquency” in failing to reconvene the Assembly, to go to trial. In its ruling, the commission said it will consider several issues at the trial. They are:
• Whether Abu-Akel, in his official capacity as moderator, was required to call the meeting once Metherell had produced a petition with 57 commissioners’ signatures (under the rules he needed 50 names, 25 ministers and 25 elders from at least 15 presbyteries and at least 5 synods).
• Whether the Office of the Moderator is allowed to ask commissioners to reconsider their request for or concurrence with the call for a special meeting.
• Whether it was appropriate for Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick to try to “verify” the commissioners’ signatures; and if it was, how that should have been done. The lawyer representing the Westminster session, Paul Rolf Jensen, has argued that that process — by the end of which Abu-Akel said there were only the signatures of 20 ministers and 24 elders left, not enough — essentially amounted to a re-vote.
• Whether the issues Metherell said he wanted the Assembly to address — which involved somehow addressing defiance of the standards in the PC(USA)’s Constitution requiring candidates for ordination to practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single — would have required a “constitutional interpretation.” Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick have argued that they did, and that as a result commissioners would have had to be given a 120-day notice before the start of the recalled Assembly. Metherell and Jensen have said only a 60-day notice was required.
• Whether commissioners signatures could have been added to or removed from the petition; and if so, when that permissibly could be done.
• Whether the issues Metherell said he wanted the Assembly to address — which involved somehow addressing defiance of the standards in the PC(USA)’s Constitution requiring candidates for ordination to practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single — would have required a “constitutional interpretation.” Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick have argued that they did, and that as a result commissioners would have had to be given a 120-day notice before the start of the recalled Assembly. Metherell and Jensen have said only a 60-day notice was required.
In its ruling the judicial commission ruled, as Jensen has contended, that it does have jurisdiction over the Office of the Moderator as an entity of the General Assembly. However, it dismissed charges of conspiracy and interference against Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick as individuals because the relief requested “would be disciplinary, not remedial,” and that a remedial case “may not be used to prosecute a disciplinary case.”
The PJC also decided that the complaint “states a claim upon which relief can be granted against only one of these respondents” — the Office of the Moderator. In explanation of its dismissal of the case against Kirkpatrick, the PJC said in its ruling: “The complaint contains no allegation that the Moderator was unable to act. Rather, the allegation was that the Moderator refused to act. The Stated Clerk of the General Assembly may only call a special session … ‘should the Moderator be unable to act.'”
Commission member James J. McClure Jr. filed a dissent, arguing that neither the moderator nor the stated clerk is an “entity” of the General Assembly, and that his preference would have been to affirm the PJC’s executive committee’s decision, issued in February, to dismiss the case altogether.
