6.2 The Standing Committee shall consist of four Clergymen canonically resident in the diocese and four Lay communicant members of the diocese, elected by a concurrent vote of a majority of the delegates from each order at Synod. Not more than one member shall be from any one Parish or Mission.also,
6.4 The terms of all members of the Standing Committee shall be four years, except that one members [sic] from the Clerical order and one member from the Lay order each may be elected to serve a one, two, three or four year term, to insure that the terms of only one clerical and one lay delegate expire each year. Mid-term vacancies shall be filled by vote of a majority of the Committee's members. The election of members of the Standing Committee elected by the Committee's members to fill mid-term vacancies shall be ratified at the next meeting of Synod in accordance with Canon 6.2.A clerical observer has pointed out with some distress that Mrs Marilyn Bush appears as a lay member of the ACA Diocese of the West Standing Committee as of December 2012, with a term that theoretically expires in 2014. Mrs. Bush has previously appeared on this blog as a member of the angry dissident core at St Mary of the Angels, who revealed her loyalty to this faction only following her election to the St Mary's vestry in February 2012. She was designated "senior warden" after other, elected members of the vestry were uncanonically removed (as acknowledged by "Bishop" Strawn in an e-mail to the late "Canon" Morello) following the ACA's seizure of the parish.
I assume that Mrs Bush was elected to fill a vacancy in the Standing Committee after the 2012 Diocese of the West Synod. To anyone's knowledge, no representative, either clergy or lay, from St Mary of the Angels attended the 2012 diocesan synod, since the status of St Mary's as an ACA parish was in dispute, and the ACA House of Bishops by its January 2012 resolution (following the 2011 opinion of all its diocesan chancellors) had ruled that parishes in the Patrimony of the Primate were in fact no longer in the ACA.
Mrs Bush is the widow of Irving Bush, a noted trumpet player from the big-band era who later played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who passed away in 2009. My understanding, based on her own account, is that her husband was against all religion, and she did not attend church during their marriage. She began attending St Mary of the Angels Hollywood in early 2011, at about the same time as my wife and me. She would have qualified as a member in good standing of the parish, at least on the basis of attendance for a year, in early 2012, just in time to be elected to the vestry at the February annual meeting that year.
There was no confirmation class during 2011 and no episcopal visit for confirmation during 2012, which leaves open the question of whether Mrs Bush was ever confirmed by an Episcopal bishop, since the ACA and other "continuing Anglican" denominations did not exist prior to her marriage to Bush. I've been informed that members of the angry core group of dissidents were actively opposed to my wife and me joining the parish from our arrival in early 2011 (at the same time as Mrs Bush), and vociferously insisted that Fr Kelley obtain all applicable documentation on our confirmation as Episcopalians and our membership in prior Episcopal parishes, even though we'd been active churchgoers throughout our marriage.
I'm not aware of an equivalent effort regarding Mrs Bush, who by her own account had not attended church for 40 years prior to coming to St Mary's. I know nothing of her religious life prior to her marriage. However, since the angry core group of dissidents had been punctilious in wishing to verify my wife's and my eligibility for membership, I would assume there would be that much more reason to want to investigate whether Mrs Bush had ever even been an Episcopalian, much less confirmed in the denomination.
Mrs Bush is an octogenarian, and many people feel she's been manipulated by the angry core. However, she is also a Hollywood social fixture due to her marriage to Irving Bush. It seems likely that she was placed on the Standing Committee by a vote between synods at the urging of the late "Canon" Morello and is there because she will ratify without question any action taken at the behest of "Bishop" Marsh.
Several questions remain. She was presumably named to a two-year term by vote of the Standing Committee, between diocesan synods. Why the two-year term? Did she replace a member of the Standing Committe who had resigned? Which one resigned? Will the 2013 diocesan synod ratify this election? Will it take into consideration Mrs Bush's minimal association with the parish, the diocese, the denomination, and religion in general? What if the ACA loses in the appeal process over the St Mary of the Angels seizure?
I would find it difficult to be associated with the ACA or the Diocese of the West. As I've said many times, it's a tiny, corrupt organization. It appears that the Standing Committee has been in the pockets of Morello, Strawn, and Marsh and is complicit in this corruption. Ladies and gentlemen, you now have a chance to turn around and make things right.
