Flash back a few years and you may remember all of those big headlines about the controversial decision by Pope Benedict XVI to park Vatican tanks on the lawn of Canterbury Cathedral and, thus, begin an ecclesiastical invasion of England….

In reality, Benedict had responded to more than a decade of appeals for help from many, not all, of the long-suffering Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England and elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. The idea of a large group of Anglicans swimming the Tiber has been around for a long time…and everyone involved knew that, other than most of the mainstream journalists who covered the story….

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In the fall of 2009, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apostolic constitution called “Anglicanorum coetibus” to provide a means for entire Anglican parishes or groups to become Catholic while retaining some of their Anglican heritage and liturgical practice.

That document “opened up a door that had previously been closed,” said the Rev. Mark Lewis, rector of St. Luke Episcopal Parish in Bladensburg. At that same time, he had been studying a book on Catholicism and Anglicanism.

After a long period of discernment, the Maryland congregation announced June 6 that it would seek entry into the Catholic Church.

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After a period of deep discernment, the rector and parishioners of St. Luke’s Episcopal parish in Bladensburg, Maryland have decided to seek entry into the Roman Catholic Church through a new structure approved by Pope Benedict XVI called an ordinariate. Saint Luke’s is the first church in the Washington metropolitan area to take this step.

The transition is being made with the prayerful support of Bishop John Bryson Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Catholic Archbishop of Washington.

“We welcome the St. Luke community warmly into our family of faith. The proposed ordinariate provides a path to unity, one that recognizes our shared beliefs on matters of faith while also recognizing and respecting the liturgical heritage of the Anglican Church,” Cardinal Wuerl said. “We also recognize the openness of the community to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their faith journey.”

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An Episcopal parish in the eastern state of Maryland will be the first in the United States to join the Roman Catholic Church under a new streamlined conversion process created by Pope Benedict XVI, leaders of both church groups said Monday.

St. Luke’s Episcopal parish in Bladensburg will come under the care of Washington Catholic Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who is forming a U.S. ordinariate ”” effectively a national diocese ”” for Episcopalians converting under the pope’s plan.

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The appeal is a Texas-sized piece of litigation: take a look at the first five pages of the Jurisdictional Statement, which are required just to list all of the parties involved and their counsel!

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From here:

On Wednesday, June 1, attorneys for the Diocese initiated our direct appeal to the Texas State Supreme Court, arguing that the high court should review the trial court’s Feb. 8 judgment in favor of local Episcopal Church (TEC) parties without the delay of an intermediate appeal.

The Statement of Jurisdiction asks for the Supreme Court’s immediate attention to what it describes as ”the largest church property dispute in Texas history,” involving ”60 churches and over $100 million in property.”

The Statement shows that the case meets all the statutory requirements for a direct appeal. Foremost among these is the requirement that the lower court’s decision challenges “the constitutionality of a state statute.” It explains that the trial court order, if allowed to stand, would overturn trust law in the state and set a precedent against the use of neutral principles to decide church property cases. The neutral principles approach has been established in Texas and most other states since 1979 and has been upheld in five Texas courts of appeal, as well as the state Supreme Court, as recently as 2007. The effect on trust law would extend to virtually every non-profit organization in the state, making it difficult or impossible for them to hold bank accounts, take loans, or conduct other business anywhere in Texas.

TEC supporters have 10 days in which to respond to the filing. Diocesan attorney Scott Brister explains that “the Court holds conference and takes votes every Monday in June; thereafter, it does not convene again until August.” Attorneys for the Diocese hope the court will accept the appeal before its summer recess and set a hearing date for early fall.

Jesus disarms and makes a spectacle of the power of money in the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1-15). A steward accused of embezzlement is told to settle the accounts one last time. He uses the opportunity to “forgive” his master’s debtors and ingratiate himself with them, so he can seek help after his threatened dismissal. The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, ridiculed Jesus. He replied that what people prize can be an abomination in the sight of God.

Let the litigious bureaucracy have the money it wants. We keep the Gospel and proclaim it, in season and out of season. The money the Episcopal Church raises from coerced offerings, from Pyrrhic legal victories or from those who believe its new gospel will do no more to save it on its appointed day of judgment than the wealth of Herod’s temple protected it from Roman soldiers in A.D. 70. In the end, money is of no account, mere dust on the scales.

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We are looking forward to having Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali visit our diocese May 22-25 for a teaching mission. He is the former Bishop of the Diocese of Rochester in England and a recognized expert on the subject of Muslim-Christian relations. He is a native of Pakistan who converted to the Christian faith and then felt called to the ordained ministry. He will preach at St. Vincent’s Cathedral on Sunday, May 22, and lead a diocesan clergy day on Tuesday, May 24, at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Fort Worth. That evening, everyone is invited to hear him speak at the Will Rogers Center in Fort Worth’s cultural district. His theme is “Hold Fast: An Urgent Call to the Western Church.” The event begins at 6:30 p.m., and I hope you will come and bring friends with you.

A hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. tomorrow, May 19, in the 141st District Court, to determine the amount of the supersedeas bond that the Diocese will be required to post to avoid having to turn over our properties pending the appeal.

Following our Motion, filed in April, to set the bond at $0 and permit our congregations to continue using and caring for their property, the plaintiffs now have filed what appears to be a request for a bond of “at least $13.5 million.”

As always, please keep the hearing in your prayers, and, if possible, plan to attend. The court is located on the fourth floor of the Family Law Center on Weatherford Street in Fort Worth.

Representatives of the Episcopal Church implied if they were victorious in the lawsuit and St. Vincent’s property was indeed vacated, it would be used for mission work. This was not the case when the building sheltering The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in New York City, valued at $386,400, was forced to be vacated and then sold for $50,000 in order to house the Islamic Awareness Center. Time magazine’s David Van Biema reported that Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church “would rather see the churches sold and deconsecrated for secular purposes than passed on to the departing congregations.”

I wonder what kind of message is being sent to the world as ecclesiastical focus shifts from charity to greed. Is it not permissible to just walk away during a disagreement instead of suing one another? I remember those preschoolers in that tiny chapel during the late ’70s settling differences on the playground by a handshake. God bless this grownup mess.

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During a daylong trial Friday, there wasn’t much disagreement about whether a 74-year-old at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church was bumped by her pastor hard enough that she lost her balance.

But it took a Kalamazoo District Court jury less than 45 minutes to decide that the incident didn’t rise to the level of assault and battery. That cleared the Rev. Jay R. Lawlor of the misdemeanor charge.

“I’m very relieved,” Lawlor, 41, said of the not guilty verdict. “I feel vindicated.”

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The diocese has received good news this month from two federal courts: Two suits initiated in 2010 against diocesan leadership have been stayed until the appeal of the primary suit has run its course in state courts, and a third will not impede an arbitration process already under way.

On Wednesday, May 11, in Fort Worth, federal court judge Terry Means responded favorably to two motions filed by the Diocese seeking to stay the intellectual-property suits brought against Bishop Iker last fall. One, brought by The Episcopal Church last September, seeks to seize control of the diocesan seal and the name “The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.” The other, filed a month later by All Saints’ Church on Crestline Road in Fort Worth, alleged that Bishop Iker had been using the parish’s seal and had improperly bestowed its name on another congregation. Subsequently Fr. Darryl Pigeon and the vestry of his Fort Worth congregation were added as defendants. Judge Means stayed the first suit in December; his decision of Wednesday confirms and extends that order. The stay on the All Saints’ suit is the first order he has issued in that case.

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A theological disagreement between a local church and its former diocese has become a drawn-out, draining legal quarrel over a church building.

In November 2008, leaders of the now St. Francis on the Hill Anglican Church broke away from the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande over a theological dispute over foundational doctrines as salvation through Christ alone and the authority of the Bible. Also highly controversial was the 2003 ordination in New Hampshire of the first openly gay bishop, the Rev. V. Gene Robinson.

It was the second church in El Paso to break away from the diocese over the same issues.

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The California Supreme Court on May 5 returned to a lower court the lawsuit involving a seven-year property dispute between the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and a breakaway Newport Beach church.

The court, in a 6-1 decision, said that St. James Anglican Church, which disaffiliated from the Episcopal Church in 2003, can present arguments to show that the church and the property are owned by the congregation and not by the Los Angeles diocese and Episcopal Church.

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Historic Christ Church, a prominent Savannah fixture since Georgia’s colonial days, now is divided in a bitter legal dispute over its future sparked by an argument about homosexuality that has riven Episcopal churches nationwide.

The congregation, which proudly embraces its nickname, “The Mother Church of Georgia,” has been wrangling over the ownership of its property in the heart of downtown Savannah ever since 87 percent of the members voted to split with the Episcopal Church in 2007. They were among dozens of congregations that broke away from the denomination in the years after the national group affirmed its first openly gay bishop.

On Monday the divided church membership battled in Georgia’s Supreme Court over who owns the $3 million property and the building. Many legal observers believe the case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Georgia’s top court is trying to sort out who gets to own Christ Church, the state’s oldest church, in a contest that grew out of conservatives’ disagreement with the national Episcopal denomination’s decision to have an openly gay bishop.

Monday morning, the pews were packed with bishops, clergy and parishioners as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments. The court’s justices peppered lawyers for both sides about which documents to rely on in sorting out ownership of the building.

The church was formed in 1733, and Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, granted the land where it sits, on the edge of one of Savannah’s shaded squares. Among its early priests were John and Charles Wesley, authors of dozens of hymns and the Methodist movement.

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On May 4, in response to a Complaint filed April 25 in federal district court by the Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Company [PIIC], the Diocese filed a Motion to Stay the suit pending the results of an arbitration which had already commenced between the parties.

The suit, which is the fifth action against the Diocese and its elected leaders in the last 24 months, was announced on the Web site of the local TEC-affiliated congregations, led by Bishop Wallis Ohl.

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The decision by a two-justice majority on the Court of Appeals, which the Supreme Court has now reversed, will go down in the annals as a monument to result-oriented judicial reasoning. Even though the two justices did not entirely agree on how to get there, they both knew where they wanted to come out, and they did not care how much bending of due process it took to get there. Indeed, in any future appeal of the case, they ought to be disqualified from hearing it, since their bias against letting St. James have its day in court was so manifest from their opinions. To conclude on the basis of some verbiage that the California Supreme Court has the power to end a case completely and finally, before even an answer to the complaint is filed, is a proposition so preposterous that it deserves to be forever preserved in the scroll of infamy.

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A California Supreme Court opinion released today “does not detract at all” from the high court’s 2009 opinion affirming that property occupied by local parishes is held in trust for the general church, said John R. Shiner, lead attorney for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

“All the Supreme Court has done is send the case back for further proceedings consistent with its earlier opinion,” Shiner said of today’s 6-1 opinion concluding that a lower court should address contentions made by St. James’ Church, Newport Beach. These arguments include the statement that a 1991 letter may influence the issue of property ownership. The property dispute began in 2004 when a majority of members of the parish voted to disaffiliate from the Episcopal Church.

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The California Supreme Court today held that St. James Anglican Church can defend its property rights against the claims of the Episcopal Church with evidence in a court of law. The Court confirmed that its 2009 Episcopal Church Cases decision did not end the property dispute in the Episcopal Church’s favor as it had claimed. “Further proceedings are still necessary to finally decide the dispute,” said the Court.

Today’s decision, titled Rasmussen v. Superior Court (Bunyan), returns the case to the Orange County Superior Court where St. James will now have the right to defend itself with evidence before a court of law, including having motions heard to dismiss church volunteers who have been sued by the Episcopal Church.

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Lower courts disagreed over whether that opinion constituted a final ruling; the trial court thought it had a trial to hear, the appeals court said no, it was over, and Thursday, the Supreme Court reversed the appeals court.

In its ruling, the high court said that it never meant to establish ownership of the property two years ago.

“Based on the arguments the parties presented, we did conclude ‘on this record,’ that the general church owns the disputed property.”

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A new lawsuit involving the parish of St. Francis on the Hill in El Paso, Texas was filed on Tuesday, April 26 in the local district court (34th Judicial District). The suit marks another low point in the desultory annals of litigation brought by dioceses of the Episcopal Church (USA) against their former parishes, vestries and rectors. Coming literally on the heels of a final judgment entered in that same court on March 11, which awarded all of the Anglican parish’s real and personal property to the Diocese of Rio Grande, the new lawsuit was filed even though that prior judgment has since been appealed to the Eighth Court of Appeals in El Paso….

What is particularly despicable about this latest lawsuit is not just that it seeks to embroil the parties who are appealing the trial court’s judgment in brand-new litigation pending that appeal, but it also seeks punitive damages (in addition to other relief) against them….

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From here:

…[On] April 28, Judge John Chupp will determine to what extent he will permit the local minority group aligned with TEC to conduct discovery with regard to the Motion to Set Supersedeas Bond* that has been filed by our attorneys. We are asking Judge Chupp to permit the Diocese and our 48 congregations to continue to have possession of the property while the case is being appealed, without the necessity of posting a large bond. The local minority group wants to take depositions and conduct other discovery, including inspections of the property, ostensibly for the purpose of developing evidence to support their argument that a substantial bond should be required as a condition for the continued possession of the property by the Diocese and its congregations during the appeal.

According to David Weaver, who is representing our congregations, “Since the plaintiffs likely will not prevail on the bond issue, they are attempting a flanking maneuver by seeking permission from the Court to allow them to engage in expensive discovery procedures.”

Please keep the hearing in your prayers, and, if possible, plan to attend. The 141st District Court is located on the fourth floor of the Family Law Center on Weatherford Street in Fort Worth.

*A supersedeas bond is a deposit made during an appeal process when the case involves property and the party making the appeal wishes to delay full payment until the process concludes

A years-long fight between The Episcopal Church and several conservative congregations has landed back in a courtroom in Virginia.

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The Episcopal Church will remain a work in progress as it rebuilds from a 2008 schism and seeks to attract members, its leader said on Tuesday.

“We’re a community that is on the road together, wrestling with what it means to be a Christian in this particular age,” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said before a morning service at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Wilkinsburg. “In order to communicate that message, we have to go out into the community.”

That may or may not include establishing traditional churches, said Jefferts Schori, who last visited the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh about a month after a majority of clergy and lay deputies voted to break with the church she leads to follow their more theologically conservative bishop, Robert Duncan, who formed the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Although the two churches battled over property in court, Jefferts Schori said she forsees a day when churches will become something different.

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As the Diocese of Virginia and several Anglican District of Virginia congregations approach a new round in court April 25, the diocese has reached a settlement with a second congregation.

Under the settlement, announced April 19 by the diocese and by Church of the Word, Gainesville, the parish keeps the property and the diocese keeps $1.95 million of a payment made by the Virginia Department of Transportation for construction-related damage to the property.

The settlement, like others reached in recent months, requires the parish to cut its ties with the Anglican Church in North America for five years. Church of the Word also must cut its ties to the Anglican District of Virginia, which will vote in May on whether to become a diocese of the ACNA.

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She does have two principles that she would like to see followed.

“Our task is to see that the value of those gifts [to the Episcopal Church] not be inappropriately disposed of. We have to recover some approximation of fair market value for properties,” she said.

The second principle “is that we shouldn’t be in the business of setting up competing ecclesiastical interests with Episcopal Church resources.”

She can’t simply give the property to the people who want to leave the Episcopal Church, because that would violate her responsibility to guard the inheritance of the denomination that she leads, she said.

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Church of the Word (COTW), one of a handful of Northern Virginia churches embroiled in a four-year long lawsuit with The Episcopal Church (TEC), will retain its church property after an out-of-court settlement signed Monday, April 18, released it from the pending litigation.

The leadership of COTW, which is a multiracial congregation made up of predominantly young families, is relieved to have achieved their major goals of separating from TEC, retaining their property, and preserving their tradition of worship and ministry.

Church of the Word is one of a number of formerly Episcopal congregations that had severed ties with the denomination over matters of doctrinal drift and novel pastoral practices. Upon breaking away from the denomination in December 2006, TEC filed a lawsuit against eleven Northern Virginia churches in an attempt to keep them from retaining their property. Currently, the next phase of this litigation will continue for the remaining seven churches with the commencement of a late-April 2011 trial in the Fairfax County, Virginia, Circuit Court.

COTW’s settlement allows it to keep its property, and now free of litigation, may concentrate on its vision, which is to ”˜Encounter and Share Jesus Christ’. It does, however, require that COTW sever its affiliation with the newly established Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), and the Anglican District of Virginia (ADV) for a period of five years.

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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church is making a Holy Week visit to Pittsburgh, where the Episcopal Diocese split in 2008.

She will answer questions from the public Tuesday evening at Trinity Cathedral, Downtown. She also will preach and preside earlier that day in Wilkinsburg as Episcopal clergy renew their ordination vows to Bishop Kenneth Price Jr., of Pittsburgh.

“I look forward to joining the clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh as we gather to renew our ordination vows,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said. “There is a particular solemnity about celebrating this rite in a community which has experienced division over those very vows.

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