Attorney for the Defense

Before he became a priest of the Episcopal Church, San Francisco's Bishop James A. Pike was a lawyer. Last week, at a meeting of the House of Bishops in East Glacier, Mont., Pike showed that he still has his old court room skill. The 142 assembled prelates considered two issues in which he was attorney for the defense. Pike won one case and established significant precedents in the other.

The most dramatic question before the bishops was whether to take up a proposal by 13 Arizona clergymen that Pike be tried for heresy. They charged that he has denied such tenets of the faith as the virgin birth and the triune nature of God. Although Pike has plenty of critics among the hierarchy, they boggled at the thought of anything so drastic and medieval as a heresy trial. Nonetheless, the bishops' theological committee initially drafted a sharp reprimand that cleared Pike of heresy but deplored his habit of expressing controversial doctrinal views in public. When Pike threatened to make a public defense of his orthodoxy, the bishops on the committee had second thoughts and started to work out a compromise. What they wrote was a formal statement aimed at Pike that wasn't quite a reprimand; this was followed by a reply from him that wasn't quite an apology.

Always Responsible. The committee's revised statement expressed satisfaction with the sincerity of Pike's faith and acknowledged the right of individuals to seek new formulations of the Episcopal faith--but warned that only the church as a body has the right to define that faith. In response, Pike avowed his loyalty to the church, disclaimed that he ever had any intention of damaging the brotherhood, and promised: "I shall try always to be responsible in the written and spoken word."

The other major issue before the House of Bishops was Pike's authorizing a deaconess to distribute previously consecrated elements at a Communion service (TIME, April 30). This radical departure from church tradition, Pike told the bishops, was based on an ambiguously worded canon on deaconesses approved by last year's general convention, which implied, to him, that women were "ordered" to the diaconate just as men are. To close this loophole, a committee proposed a new resolution enumerating the "chief duties" of deaconesses that excluded distribution of Communion. Ex-Lawyer Pike quickly spied the flaw: distributing Communion could be deemed a "minor function" of deaconesses and thus permissible. Finally the committee brought in a no-nonsense substitute resolution that flatly stated: "Deaconesses may not be permitted to administer the elements of the Holy Communion."

Indelible Orders. "I expected this form to be the result of your reconsideration," said Pike gracefully, and he agreed to abide by the rules. But he felt that he had won a significant clarification of the role of women in the church. In response to his arguments, the House passed another resolution that formally acknowledged deaconesses as a "fourth order" of the ministry (along with deacons, priests and bishops), whose status, like that of men, is permanent and indelible.

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