Today the Supreme Court of the United States issued its order denying (without opinion) review (“certiorari”) of the decisions rendered last September by the Supreme Court of Texas in the Fort Worth and San Angelo cases.
The order was expected, because neither decision by the Texas Supreme Court was final. The U. S. Supreme Court almost never agrees to review lower court decisions until they are final. In these two cases, the Fort Worth matter was sent back to Judge Chupp’s court for a trial, and the Church of the Good Shepherd case was likewise sent back to the trial court in San Angelo for further proceedings.
The action by SCOTUS now frees both of those cases to move ahead.
This weekend the Catholic Diocese of New York City merged 112 parishes into 48 while closing 30. They did this because the ASA is down to 250,000. This crisis ASA is about half of all TEC true attendance across the USA! How does this story speak to the loss of a few TEC parishes in Texas?