From here:

Following the sever-and-stay order issued April 5 by the 141st district court, leaders of the Diocese and Corporation of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth will file a Notice of Appeal with the trial court early in the week of April 11. We will dispute the court’s ruling that all our property is held in trust for TEC; on the contrary, the property is held for the benefit of the local congregation, as our Constitution and Canons plainly state.

Our attorneys anticipate making the appeal directly to the Texas State Supreme Court. It is within the Court’s discretion to take the case directly, or to require that we go first to the intermediate Court of Appeals. Since all parties agree that the case will come inevitably before the high court, we hope to save both the time and expense of an intermediate appeal as we seek resolution to the litigation brought against us, which has been so distracting from our mission for the past two years.

As an additional result of the April 5 order, all discovery in the case is now on hold. The plaintiffs’ proposed property inspections will not be carried out. Nor will the judge’s Feb. 8 order to surrender our property be enforced during this period: Our congregations will not be evicted from their churches for the duration of this process, if ever.

We give thanks for the opportunity to appeal our case, and we continue to pray for our attorneys as we move on to this very important phase of the litigation.

I belong to a small beautiful Episcopal church in McKeesport that is caught in the [Pittsburgh] bishops’ war. Like the Civil War, the church members were pitted against each other. Family members split on which bishop to follow and lifelong friends parted ways. Empty pews far outweigh the occupied pews. The church will survive or fail because of the good people who go there to praise God each week, not from any help from higher up in whatever diocese wins the next round.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Church of Our Saviour, Oatlands, which reached an amicable property settlement Feb. 20 with the Diocese of Virginia, has bought a 24-acre site for its new home, only a mile north of its current location in rural Loudoun County. The parish will buy Oaksworth Farm, a former Christmas-tree farm and vineyard, for $1,870,000, said the Rev. Elijah White, rector of Our Saviour since 1977.

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Read it all and follow the link to the court document itself.

Two senior priests of the Diocese of Fort Worth have left the breakaway Anglo-Catholic diocese for the Anglican Ordinariate.

On March 8, Bishop Jack Iker announced that his number two man, Canon Charles Hough, and Fr. Louis Tobola had resigned their posts effective March 31.

The bishop noted Canon Hough had served as Canon to the Ordinary for the past 17 years, and he and Fr. Tobola had each served for over 30 years in the diocese. “Though they have not yet resigned from the ordained ministry, they are expected to do so at the time the Ordinariate is established for former Anglicans who wish to come into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church,” Bishop Iker said.

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Christ Church is welcoming a new building for a new era.

The Fallbrook congregation, formerly known as St. John’s Anglican Church, has been conducting services at Living Waters Christian Fellowship Assembly of God Church for the past two years. The church began sharing space with Living Waters after legal battles over property rights and organizational authority allowed the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego to take over the former church property (which is now operating as St. John’s Episcopal).

The members at St. John’s Anglican had previously voted to secede from the Episcopal Church, which is the North American branch of the global Anglican…[Communion], and reaffiliated with a more theologically traditional conservative archdiocese in Africa. Disagreements regarding homosexuality and biblical authority are at the core of an ongoing dispute between the Episcopal Church and hundreds of its congregations, as well as Anglican bishops in other countries.

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Special events are planned throughout the diocese for candidates to meet and interact with congregations. They will be held Tuesday at St. John the Evangelist in Stockton; Wednesday at St. Paul’s in Bakersfield; Thursday at St. Michael’s in Ridgecrest; and Friday at St. James’ Cathedral in Fresno.

All begin at 3 p.m.

Those events will be followed by question-and-answer sessions involving laity and clergy at 6:30 p.m.

A special convention for the election of the new bishop will be held May 14 at St. James’ Cathedral.

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This appeal arises from a property dispute among parishioners from the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd (“Good Shepherd”) in San Angelo, Texas. In 2006, a majority of the Good Shepherd parishioners voted to withdraw Good Shepherd from the Episcopal Church of the United States and the Diocese of Northwest Texas and to reorganize as the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd affiliated with the Diocese of Uganda, Africa; a minority voted to continue Good Shepherd’s affiliation with the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Northwest Texas (the “Diocese”). The Diocese and the individual appellees, The Rev. Celia Ellery, Don Griffis, and Michael Ryan (collectively, the “Continuing Parish Leaders”), filed suit for declaratory judgment to establish their rights to continued possession and control over the church property, which was claimed by appellants, who are members of the withdrawing group (collectively, the “Former Parish Leaders”).1 The Former Parish Leaders counterclaimed with a suit to quiet title and request for declaratory judgment that they were entitled to possession and use of the church property. The Diocese and Continuing Parish Leaders moved for summary judgment, which the trial court granted. The Former Parish Leaders appeal, arguing primarily that the trial court erred in failing to properly apply “neutral principles” of law to resolve the dispute. We will affirm the trial court’s judgment.

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Marti Fritz has put her heart and soul into St. Luke’s Episcopal Church for 30 years.

She sings in the choir, served twice on the lay board, raised her children in the congregation. Her husband is the church archivist. The ashes of Fritz’s mother and sister are in the church’s memorial wall.

“It’s really my home,” Fritz said of the church.

Right now, it’s a home in turmoil.

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Two clear messages have gone out from Dublin.

First, the authorities in Dublin Diocese were happy to showcase TEC despite its promotion of same-sex marriage. They have hammered in a wedge that may split our Church in two.

Second, the Primates’ meeting may have finally demolished the proposed Anglican Covenant, section 4.1.1 of which describes a Communion of national Churches “in which each recognises in the others the bonds of a common loyalty to Christ expressed through a common faith and order, a shared inheritance in worship, life and mission, and a readiness to live in an interdependent life”.

TEC’s breaches of that common faith and order are one thing; the failure of the Primates’ meeting to address them is quite another….

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With gratitude to the Search Committee for their faithful completion of the task appointed them, and with anticipation of the continued guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Standing Committee of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, ACNA, is pleased to make formal announcement of the candidates for Episcopal Election. The following candidates were selected after a process of serious prayer, discussion, and discernment from the nominations which were received as of January 2011. They are listed simply in alphabetical order:

The Rev. Dr. Ronald Jackson, Diocese of Luweero (Province of Uganda)
The Rev. Dr. Eric Menees, Diocese of Western Anglicans (ACNA)
The Very Rev. Carlos Raines, Diocese of San Joaquin (ACNA)
The Very Rev. Canon Ryan Reed, Diocese of Fort Worth (ACNA)

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When the Diocese realigned in November 2008, a small minority of our members elected to leave their churches to worship elsewhere. The following April, the Diocese was sued on behalf of those people, and two years later we are still in the midst of what will be a precedent-setting case to defend our property under Texas law.

In the weeks since our last court hearing, on Feb. 8, our lawyers have been conferring and negotiating with the plaintiffs’ attorneys over the terms surrounding Judge John Chupp’s Jan. 21 ruling, which favored the plaintiffs. Since the Jan. 21 ruling did not dispose of the case, the parties are engaged in a process of “discovery” which permits them to obtain and examine one another’s records. Some of the documents requested by the plaintiffs previously have been delivered to them for inspection, and other documents currently are being prepared.

In addition, lawyers for the parishes and missions of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and lawyers representing the minority breakaway faction (affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America) are making arrangements for the inspection, requested by attorneys and representatives of the minority faction, of all our property, including the Diocesan Center, Camp Crucis, and all our churches. This inspection is being arranged pursuant to a Request for Entry Upon Property filed by the minority faction pursuant to Rule 196.7(a)(1) of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure.
This rule provides that any party to a lawsuit may request and obtain entry upon the property of another party to the lawsuit “to inspect, measure, survey, photograph, test, or sample the property or any designated object or operation thereon.” The Rule is customarily and routinely invoked whenever there is litigation between competing parties with respect to which party has a right to title or possession of property. This is nothing to be alarmed about, though the other side is attempting to use it for propaganda purposes, to promote the impression that they have prevailed in the litigation, when, in fact, it is far from over.

Previous rulings by the Trial Court in the litigation pending in Tarrant County ”“ including the interlocutory Declaratory Judgment ”“ have no effect on the right of the minority faction to inspect the properties. According to Rule 197(a), the right of a party to inspect property in the possession of the other party exists until “the earlier of 30 days before the end of the discovery period or 30 days before trial.”

The motivation that underlies the minority faction’s decision to incur the thousands of dollars in expense for the inspection of the property in the Diocese is unknown to the attorneys and officers of the Diocese. Unfortunately, however, the Diocese will incur substantial expense, because the inspections by the minority faction must be supervised by the attorneys representing the Diocese and its parishes and missions.

Attorneys representing both sides of the dispute are attempting to schedule the inspections so as to minimize disruption of regularly scheduled activities and events sponsored by the Diocese and its parishes and missions.

St. James Anglican Church in Newport Beach went back before the state Supreme Court Tuesday in the latest chapter in its long-running battle with the Episcopal Church.

St. James was one of three Episcopal churches in Southern California to split from the denomination in 2004, after the national church ordained a gay man as bishop in New Hampshire. The Los Angeles Diocese, later joined by the national Episcopal Church, sued St. James after the split, asserting ownership of the church property at 3209 Via Lido.

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In less than two years, founders of Christ the Redeemer Anglican Church have not only managed to fill the pews, they have raised enough money to buy the former St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic Church property outright.

Christ the Redeemer, which broke away from Christ Church in Hamilton over what they saw as “moral drift” in the Episcopal Church as a whole, had been leasing the former Catholic church since 2009.

On Feb. 16, the Anglican church paid $1.6 million for the property, after raising $800,000 for a down payment in just six months. The deed was placed on the altar.

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Please keep him and Marilyn in your prayers. My understanding is that he is intending to pursue ministry in the Roman Catholic Church, likely under the provisions of the Ordinariate when that all becomes clear.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Notice how the conclusion does not even begin to follow from the premise. Because the Constitution does not circumscribe the authority of the Presiding Bishop does not mean either (a) the authority must be unlimited; or (b) that General Convention has the power to define the authority of that office — or to add to, or detract from, its authority on its own. And since duty flows from (and is defined by) authority, having the power to prescribe duties appropriate to the authority that has been given is not the same as having the power to create new authority by creating new “duties.”

Can anyone today seriously argue that the office of the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA is without any limits on its authority? The Title IV Task Force II seems to think so — and they defend their extension, sub rosa, of metropolitical authority to that office on the ostensible ground that such authority is “nothing new,” because General Convention “has never considered that office to be limited as the Runyan & McCall paper states.”

Only persons who were determined to ignore the evolutionary history of the office of Presiding Bishop could make such an outlandish statement….

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A judge Friday sentenced the Rev. Donald Armstrong to four years probation for his no-contest plea to one count of misdemeanor theft of funds from the Colorado Springs church where he once served as rector.

Fourth Judicial District Judge Gregory R. Werner also ordered Armstrong to pay restitution in the amount of $99,247 that was diverted to pay for his son’s and daughter’s college education. The money came from a trust fund originally set up to pay for the education of seminary students.
Werner refused to order an apology, citing his practice of not wanting to get involved in how such a letter would be worded. He also agreed with [Armstrong lawyer Dennis] Hartley that jail time would serve no purpose.

“There is a huge divide between these two churches,” he added.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Officials of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina affirmed this month their sovereignty and discussed the need to encourage growth by starting new congregations.

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Before taking up their memorandum in detail, however, I want to put some of the matters involved into a proper perspective. Some of what I will now say may come as a surprise to those who are unacquainted with how ECUSA came into being….

First proposition:

General Convention is not the “supreme” (highest) authority in the Church — it never has been, and (unless the current liberal takeover is perfected) never will be….

Second proposition:

As formed in 1789, and as continued in existence ever since, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America is a voluntary confederation, and not a forever indissoluble union, of dioceses….

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Read it all and follow the links.

The Diocese of South Carolina’s 220th convention has revised six articles [PDF] of its constitution, distancing itself from canon-law revisions approved by General Convention in 2009.

The revisions met the required two-thirds majority for a second consecutive meeting of the diocesan convention, and the diocese’s constitution is now revised.

South Carolina was the first diocese to challenge major revisions to Title IV of the Episcopal Church’s Constitution and Canons, which regards ecclesiastical discipline.

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Saying they are aiming to answer claims that a revised set of Episcopal Church disciplinary canons set to go into effect July 1 are unconstitutional, several of framers of the changes to Title IV have issued a paper which they assert “conclusively establishes the constitutionality of the amendments.”

The statement, posted here, was written by Duncan Bayne, Diocese of Olympia vice chancellor; Stephen Hutchinson, Diocese of Utah chancellor and Joseph Delafield, Diocese of Maine chancellor. Delafield, the spokesperson, said that all three were “active participants in the nine-year process of development and adoption of the amendments.”

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The Oatlands deal requires the congregation to give up its claim to the church building, which dates to 1878. The congregation will get an inexpensive lease for five years with the diocese but is forbidden from affiliating with breakaway groups while still using the building.

It wasn’t clear Sunday whether settlements with other congregations would follow.

Henry Burt, spokesman for the Episcopal diocese, said the church is “in negotiations with other congregations, and we hope some will also go this way.”

Jim Oakes, a spokesman for the umbrella group for Virginia’s breakaway conservative congregations, said he didn’t believe any of the other churches were in talks with the Episcopal diocese.

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South Carolina is thus far the only diocese in the Church to take measures to prevent the changes to the national Canons, which are scheduled to go into effect this July 1, from taking effect within its boundaries. I have explained some of the reasons why those changes are contrary to ECUSA’s Constitution in this earlier post: essentially, they extend unprecedented metropolitical powers to the Presiding Bishop, which that office has never been authorized to exercise, and they radically add to the authority of local bishops over their own diocese’s disciplinary proceedings.

Three other dioceses have protested the scope of the revisions made by General Convention in 2009 to Title IV of the Canons (having to do with disciplinary proceedings against clergy). Some have called for General Convention to revisit the subject, and scale back the powers granted to diocesans and to the Presiding Bishop. But most dioceses (including my own, alas, which I could not deter) have implemented the changes into their own canons, by making revisions in the disciplinary proceedings and in the bodies that carry them out.

Thus ECUSA heads into a Constitutional crisis of its own making, which its leadership seems determined to ride out, confident that the Executive Council and General Convention will back them up. As with the leadership’s current litigation strategy, the course is a very high-risk one for them to take….

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Building on two recent amicable agreements that settled parish property disputes, the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has invited all other local congregations leaving the Episcopal Church to begin conversations aimed at reaching similar negotiated settlements.

In a February 17th letter mailed to the rector, wardens, and vestry of each congregation, Bishop Kenneth L. Price, Jr. of the Episcopal Diocese offered a Pastoral Direction for resolving property issues, including an 8-point overview of what would be involved in those conversations.

The documents were sent to 41 parishes that have not participated in the Episcopal Diocese since October 2008. Copies were sent as a courtesy to the many parishes that have remained active in the Diocese. The bishop’s letter also pointed to consequences required by church law for parishes that keep themselves removed from the Diocese for a prolonged time.

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Dear Friends,

Attached is a letter describing an agreement made by Somerset Anglican Fellowship with the TEC Diocese. Some of you have already read about this in the newspaper or received an email; many of you have communicated with me your concerns that there might be many “secret deals” being made which will leave many congregations “on their own.” Here is some information about the agreement, and our current situation, that we thought it would be helpful for you to know.

1) Somerset Anglican Fellowship negotiated this settlement without the input or approval of the Diocese. In fact, we have reason to believe that the lawyer representing SAF advised them not to inform the Anglican diocese. We are very concerned that a congregation thought itself to be so in jeopardy as to necessitate secret legal action.
2) St. Stephen’s, Sewickley and Church of the Savior, Ambridge have consulted legal counsel with regard to individual settlements with the TEC Diocese. Both parishes informed the Anglican Diocese at the time and both parishes have decided not to participate in any settlement without the involvement of the Diocese.

3) To the best of our knowledge, there are no other parishes which are unilaterally attempting to make a settlement with the TEC diocese.

4) The Anglican Diocese remains committed to finding the best solution for each of its parishes in light of the recent legal decisions. We also continue to hope for and look for some kind of settlement that would benefit all of our congregations.

5) Please do not hesitate to email or call Canon Mary, Geoff Chapman (Chair of the Standing Committee) or Jonathan Millard (Standing Committee member) or me if you have further questions or concerns.

In light of these very serious developments, I feel compelled to issue a godly directive to all of the clergy of the diocese not to engage in, conduct, or conclude negotiations without first discussing such actions with me, or with Canon Mary, and with our chancellor.

Faithfully,

The Most Rev. Robert Wm. Duncan

The Somerset Anglican Fellowship resolved a three-year dispute with the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh Monday.

Property and legal disagreements arose in 2008 after members of St. Francis-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church decided to break apart from the diocese because of theological differences. St. Francis is located in Somerset.

Under the supervision of the Rev. Mark Zimmerman, the Somerset Anglican Fellowship formed and began holding services in a suite at Georgian Place.

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Lawyers for a Groton parish and the Episcopal Church have clashed before the state Supreme Court over whether the parish can keep its building and land after breaking ties with the national church.

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In a hearing today before the Hon. John Chupp, attorneys for the Diocese and Corporation persuaded him to grant all our objections to the Partial Summary Judgment orders he issued Jan. 21. As a result, The Episcopal Church authorities will not succeed in their efforts to force some 6,000 regular Sunday worshipers to vacate their churches any time in the near future – and perhaps never, depending on the results of an appeal of the case. As the appellate process proceeds, the Bishop, clergy, and elected lay leaders will continue to carry out their duties and ministries as in the past.

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