1. Reports of Committees and Commissions shall be received without motion to receive them, and it shall be understood that all special committees are discharged upon making their Reports, unless the Convention recommits matters to them for their future consideration, or unless they report their work unfinished.
2. No member shall speak more than once in the same debate, without leave of the House.
3. When a debatable motion is before the Convention, those who wish to speak in support of, or against, the motion shall identify themselves as being “Pro” or “Con.” After the mover has spoken to the motion, the Chair shall recognize a speaker in opposition, then a speaker in favor, and so on in like order.
4. Except by the vote of a majority of Convention, no resolution shall be debated longer than twenty (20) minutes.
5. Each individual speaker to a resolution is limited to three (3) minutes.
6. The microphone will be turned off at the end of each speaker’s time, after a ten-second warning.
7. A question being once determined shall stand as the judgment of the House, and shall not again be drawn into debate during the same meeting of the Convention, unless with the consent of two-thirds of the House.
8. No motion shall be considered as before the House unless it be seconded and reduced to writing when required.
9. The question on a motion for adjournment shall be taken before any other and without debate.
10. If a motion to lay on the table an amendment or a substitute be carried, the matter before the House shall be proceeded with as if no such amendment or substitute had been offered.
11. When the question is upon the passage of a debatable resolution, amendments or substitute, the mover thereof may in all cases be allowed one five (5) minutes’ time in which to close the debate.
12. When a motion to lay upon the table is made and seconded, the mover of the original motion shall have such time as the presiding officer may permit to present reasons why the motion to lay upon the table should not prevail.
13. The doctrines of Parliamentary Law, as set forth in the treatise of Robert on Parliamentary Law, are adopted as authoritative expositions of parliamentary practice as far as applicable to the conditions of the meetings of the Diocesan Convention.
14. These rules of order may be suspended or permanently changed by a two-thirds vote, and not otherwise.
