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Lawyers and priests are both vested in their office by a licensing authority and take oaths to obey the law, whether civil or ecclesiastical, that governs. Within these similar settings, the appropriate authority may need to judge disobedience by the lawyer or priest. If obedience is not enforced, respect for the law will decline and lawlessness ensues. In the Episcopal Church, it is black-letter law that only the baptised may receive communion. Notwithstanding the law, priests in ever-increasing numbers are inviting all to the table. Against what standard is such conduct to be judged? The Constitution and Canons are silent. Is the standard therefore to be merely the fact that the priest thinks he or she is following the dictates of the Holy Spirit? Or is there a real standard for judgment? Perhaps the gloss around civil disobedience and the rules of professional responsibility of lawyers may provide a more objective guide. This article discusses the debate over open table and the current black-letter law, and considers ecclesiastical disobedience under the guidance of the standards for legitimate civil disobedience. In addition, it considers the apparent desire of the bishops for the best of all possible worlds – having a law that the greater Church will appreciate, but then not enforcing it. The result may be more table fellowship but also anarchy.

The objective of this investigation was to study experimentally the elastic behavior of horizontally oriented, stiff cylinders buried at shallow depths in dense, dry sand and subjected to static surface overpressures. Static tests were conducted on nine different cylinders in the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station's Small (4-foot-diameter) Blast Load Generator (SBLG). The cylinders were fabricated from steel mechanical tubing having a 6- inch outside diameter and a specially isolated 12-inch-long test section. The nine test specimens comprised three groups of cylinders with wall thicknesses of 1/8, 1/4, and 3/8 inch that corresponded to stiffnesses (EI/R3) of 170, 1,644, and 5,926 psi, respectively. In order to study the effects of burial depth, the first, second, and third cylinders of each group were tested at depths of 3, 6, and 9 inches, respectively. A total of 14 static tests were conducted, 9 on virgin soil samples and 5 on samples that had been previously loaded. The peak surface overpressure attained for all tests was approximately 1,000 psi. Measurements were made of cylinder hoop strain, vertical diameter change, soil stress, and surface overpressure.