I'd be opposed to term limits or any other way of removing bishops, except for cause. The election of a bishop is a means for discerning God's will. This does not imply that they are elected officials. Even in secular politics, term limits are a bad idea. The solution to problems like Pennsylvania is strengthening the disciplinary canons and closing loopholes. I don't think there is ever a reason for a statute of limitations on conduct unbecoming. To prevent it from being politicized, we could require the sentence to be confirmed by two-thirds of the bishops with jurisdiction.

Term limits strike at the heart of Catholic order and plays into an employer-employee mentality alreadey too prevalent among Episcopalian. We all want to avoid abuses, but we ought not to adopt an overkill measure inconsistent with our understandeing of bishops.

There is certainly something to be said for the idea of making a bishop’s term less absolute. The Diocese of Pennsylvania has reasons to be rid of Charles Bennison that have nothing to do with his actions relative to his brother.

I cannot think of an exact secular analogy to a bishop’s tenure. Federal judges serve for life, but bishops have a date by which they must retire. Term limits may indeed be a bad idea—I have mixed feelings about them—but legislators do have to stand for re-election from time to time. In Pennsylvania, sitting judges are periodically required to undergo a vote to retain them or not. How many bishops would fail such a vote after, say, five years? Any argument that the Holy Spirit always leads the Church to choose the right person as bishop is hard to sustain with historical evidence.

I am generally skeptical about arguments against departures from “Catholic order.” The role of the bishop is much different now from what it was in the second (or even fourth) century. Transmitting (or preserving) the faith is a much smaller part of the bishop’s job. The bishop’s role as pastor and administrator is much more important.

Of course, I must offer a disclaimer here. From my view from Pittsburgh, bishops more often seem like the problem, rather than the solution.

You're not serious with that headline, are you?

I'm not sure that research based on the Roman Catholic Church is all that applicable to TEC. The polities, in particular the scope of authority for clergy and bishops, is different, as are the power dynamics. In particular, in reference to term limits, the retirement ages for RCC clergy and bishop is higher and unless I'm mistaken, most RCC clergy are ordained younger -- so there is a much longer time-frame both for service and misconduct.

I think the issue of term-limits is worth exploring, but I think it best separated from the hot-button sex abuse question. I agree with Bill that it is a significant departure, but, of course, so is retirement, except for grave illness.

In a fixed retirement age, we do have something of a term limit. Perhaps a different approach would be to set the limit at the other end, by raising the age of eligibility for election as a bishop. When few people lived past 50 years, an age of 35 was reasonable, and perhaps even necessary. Now that most of us, even with our bad American health habits, live well past that perhaps we should consider raising the age of election, say to 45 or even 50. That would change few elections, I think, but would make a statement about the maturity and experience expected (yes, I know: that can mean experience outside the church as well as inside, as our beloved Bishop Kathryn exemplifies).

Marshall Scott

I agree with Tobias that child sex abuse in TEC has little to do with the tenure of bishops, but there are, as I suggested, other reasons to limit the tenure of bishops, either generally or in specific cases. As Tobias says, the matter is worth exploring.

I like the Lutheran model - elect for a term with eligibility for another term. They can still be bishops - but just not diocesans. Maybe 8 years with an additional 6 years. Seems like as 10 years approach many retire in place - leaving dioceses adrift with power vacuums filled by non-elected persons.

Being a Bishop includes both spiritual and executive roles. Perhaps it is time to consider some way of making the executive role less permanent (although I'm not sure that term limits are the answer). Here in Pittsburgh we are about to start the process of selecting our next Diocesan (the first since our "troubles"). In recent conversations I have heard concerns that the way we select Bishops in TEC tends to bring forward persons who want too much to be Bishops rather than to serve as Bishops. And sometimes once such a person becomes Bishop they find that their vision of life as Bishop was more fantasy than reality. Then there are the occasions where someone turns out to be totally unsuited to the office, but the same personality traits that make him or her unsuited also make him or her unable or unwilling to acknowledge the situation.

There are of course many fine Bishops in The Episcopal Church--we have had the good fortune to have two of them serve us as Assistant or Provisional Bishop in Pittsburgh over the last couple of years--but I don't think that anyone could seriously claim that the "Peter principle" (and I'm not talking about the Apostle here) never applies to the church hierarchy. I don't know what is the best way to improve the situation, but I don't think we should assume that what we have is the best we can do.

What about term limits with a diocese? After ten years, time to move to another diocese? One of the reservations we had about voting for our bishop, Sean Rowe, was the prospect of having him with us for 40 years. Nothing personal. Just cautious.

Pittsburghers seem interested in this thread!

The idea of narrowing the age range of episcopacy is an interesting one. There have been a number of brilliant and very effective young bishops--our neighbor +Sean Rowe I think being one of them--but on the whole I'm not sure we would be ill-served by a requirement of even of age 55 or above, and continuing with the age 72 mandatory resignation of cure. I agree with Lionel that the bishop's role has changed over time as dioceses have become more bureaucratic in their organization and programmatic in their common life, but I guess I disagree when I would say that good stewardship of the faith once delivered continues to be the primary responsibility of the bishop. Seems to me it's mainly when they lose sight of that that we get into trouble . . . .

Bruce Robison

Why do we even want bishops to do it all? Spiritual care within the Church and holy trouble making outside the Church would seem to be job enough for anyone. Are there "diocesan administrator" (surely Episcopalians would have a better title than that!) positions separate from the episcopacy? The Romans seem to have something like that, if I'm not mistaken.

A not necessarily perfectly representative sample using Louie Crew's data gives an average age at consecration of about 51. The vast majority of new bishops are between 46 to 56 years old, with peaks coming at 49 and 54, but otherwise the spread is pretty even through the range. (All of these ages are +/- a year or two because of simplifications in my calculations and limitations in the data.) Only about 22% of bishops were over 55 at consecration, and only about 11% were 45 or younger. Not accounting for resignation before retirement, the average bishop is serving for around 19 years, but I suspect resignations do pull that down quite a lot.

Everyone seems to be missing the point. It is not "term limits" per se. First, take away the political aspects of the office. Bishops are first and foremost pastoral to the clergy. Let the Standing Committee and the Diocesan Councils handle all the affairs of the diocese. Bishop should be an office not unlike canon or monsignor or whatever in that it is for a period of time to take care of the "flock". Please do not tell me that God determines once and for all eternity that someone is to be a bishop, or that any ordinary person would not have second thoughts about becoming a bishop (David Anderson, et al excepted) I have posted a full set of changes to the church order that should help secure our Episcopal Church for some time to come. See Real Anglicans for the full set. A teaser, the House of Bishops should be disbanded in favor of a single house of Deputies to include some bishops.