No Syllabus - No Decision
This is the first time in my recollection (a dangerous statement for anyone to make!) that the Council stated that a bishop's failure to send a rationale (syllabus) was grounds for not accepting a decision of law but remanding it.
Whether or not this is a first, it is a good action by the Council to put bishops on notice not to be careless about making rulings. There are a number of reasons a bishop could fail to do the background work, all the way from arrogance to forgetfulness to busyness. There is no question the Western Jurisdiction in July of 2016 had many dynamics which needed attention. This technical question did not seem to rate any serious priority at the time.
If I read the bishop's ruling correctly (another dangerous presumption!), I see that he provides a rationale for disobeying the Discipline when he said, "The Jurisdictional Conference has adopted rules for this Conference which do not exercise that authority."
That sounds a lot to me like "We have made up rules that we do not have to do what the Discipline says." But I could be wrong (understatement of the day!).
It will be interesting to see if the bishop persists in that line of argument in his preparation of his rationale and what the Council says about it in their next session.
In any case, we now know what a "syllabus" is (a rationale for the decision) and that this Council takes it seriously.
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