A new year has brought new twists and turns to the Episcopal Church’s legal wars. The national church beat back the secession of a West Texas congregation from the Diocese of the Rio Grande, saw reasons for optimism and gloom from Presbyterian property cases in Georgia, Indiana and Missouri, found its lawyer in the Fort Worth cases accused of professional misconduct, and witnessed the amicable settlement of a church property split in New Jersey.
Church officers desperately struggling to hold on to physical church property rather than ‘live out the Faith once given’ provides ‘proof certain’ of their venality to their critics.
Episcopal “evangelism”. See the budget.
Let us rather assume that [b]all[/b] church officers – TEC and ACNA – “struggling to hold on to physical church property” are doing so out of a belief in the licitness of their claim.
While [url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com/2011/01/historical-response-in-fort-worth.html]history[/url] may demonstrate the persistence of diocesan autonomy, that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been many Episcopalians – including some who would be held up as heroes by the orthodox – who subscribed to a more hierarchical principle.
There’s more info on the amicable settlement here: http://www.americananglican.org/a-precedent-for-negotiated-settlements
Follow the links to read Raymond Dague’s report.
This is all so mortifying, horrifying, unedifying. Looking back on the mess which is the 815 administration’s Pyrrhic efforts, I’m reminded of what Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand said (of Napoleon’s judicial murder of the Duc d’Enghien), “It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake.”
The ethics accusations against the lawyer for the Episcopal parties in the Fort Worth matter seems particularly mean-spirited. The premise for the allegations is that those who departed were, when part of the Church, his clients, and that his continued representation of those who stayed, advancing the same arguments that he advanced for the departees when they were trying to hold on to property claimed by Episcopalians who sought to affiliate with and Orthodox denomination, somehow breaches his ethical duties to those who left. It really begs the question of whether those who left are the continuing representatives of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. To level the charge, knowing that that issue is central to the litigation, seems to manifest a special effort to slime an attorney for doing something that, if one is on the other side of the case, seems perfectly acceptable. I guess the most recent ruling against the secessionist faction will put paid to this argument.
NoVA Scout,
As I understand it, the issue is not that Mr. Nelson previously represented Bishop Iker and now does not, but that he presently asserts that Bishop Iker – in the Holy Apostles case – admitted that the Episcopal Church was hierarchical, when in fact what he pleaded was that the [b]Diocese[/b] was a hierarchical church, while the Episcopal Church was a “confederation of dioceses.” The [url=http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2011/01/ecusas-fort-worth-attorney-charged-with.html]Anglican Curmudgeon[/url] discusses this at some length.
Whether it rises to the level of professional misconduct is in the eye of the beholder, but it would seem at the very least disingenuous to misrepresent one’s own former pleadings.
Perhaps I read Mr. Haley’s account too distractedly. I will give it more attention later this evening. It also may be that the distinction between the Diocese and the national church was not much in play in the previous case, given that Bishop Iker’s Diocese was attempting there to prevent a departing parish from taking property, as opposed to the current situation, where Bishop Iker is purporting to have taken the entire Diocese out of the national Church.