Virginia Churches Divided

Julia Duin at  the Washington Times reports on the Virginia circuit-court decision today that recognizes the right of eleven Episcopal parishes in that state to retain their church properties even though they have left the Episcopal Church and are now under the jurisdiction of Anglican bishops in Africa. They are in effect extension of African dioceses and the Virginia court finds that the Episcopal Church USA has no right to their local church buildings because a "religious division" has occurred. White Episcopal parishes in a former Confederate state now under the jurisdiction of Africans--that has to mean something big changed, enough to be called a religious division.

Comments

[James A. Altena]

While we can all be grateful for this initial verdict, and blow to the tyranny of TEC, let's not hold our breath until the appeals process is over. These decisions vary greatly depending on state laws; and even in California, another state where the laws are heavily in favor of departing congregations as opposed to their former parent bodies, an appeals court has reversed the initial court victory of three seceding TEC parishes in the San Diego area.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>White Episcopal parishes in a former Confederate state now under the jurisdiction of Africans--that has to mean something big changed, enough to be called a religious division.<<<

Not surprisingly, it has been those who remained in the Episcopal Church who have been the most virulent and scurrilous in the invocation of race. I have seen--in print (the Falls Church News Gazette)--the members who voted to leave the TEC and seek pastoral shelter among the African bishops referred to various as "the Africans" or "the Ugandans". Not surprising, I say, when one considers remarks some years back from John Shelby Spong, to the effect that African Christians are new to their faith, superstitious, and therefore incapable of understanding the nuances of modern, Western, enlightened Christianity. He did everything except call them ignorant savages one generation down from the trees.

But remember, they are the progressives, not the people who actually accept black Africans as the font of authority and pastoral care over their parishes.

[ROGER BENNETT]

I am surprised at yesterday's decision.
Some 25 years ago as a law student, I made an intense study of Church property disputes and published a (deservedly forgotten) law journal "Note" on the topic. My research did not, so far as I can recall, reflect the existence of any statutes on the subject. What it did reflect was that Church property disputes started as common law, not statutory, cases.
Different courts might devise different rules, many involving such legal fictions as the Church having been built with funds of people who wanted to support the traditional doctrines of the Church, and the Church consequently holding the properties in implied trust for the support of those doctrines. But this kind of thinking embroiled courts in adjudicating what WAS the traditional doctrine of the Church, and tacitly disfavored religious change.
Eventually - in no small part because of the "incorporation doctrine" whereby the First Amendment was made applicable to the states - there arose a perception that such cases were of constitutional dimension, and the strong tendency arose for courts to defer to the tribunals of hierarchical churches like TEC; similarly, courts tended to defer to the decisions of "connectional" Churches like the Reformed; only in Churches of congregational polity did the courts tend to apply a majority rule test.
The key to it all was essentially "what was the bargain you tacitly made when you affiliated with denomination X?" Under that test, the hiercharchical Churches' hierarchies won the disputes hands down. But the courts also implied that methods other than deference to denominational tribunals would be permissible if they didn't embroil the courts in adjudicating doctrinal disputes (not who's right or wrong, but who holds the congregation's traditional view) and if they invoked neutral principles of law.
It will be interesting to see whether the Virginia statute (which no doubt dates to Civil War times because so many denominations divided into northern and southern factions in that era) passes muster as a permissible "neutral" approach or whether TEC can sell its argument that this decision impermissibly "intrude[s] into the freedom of the Episcopal Church and other churches to organize and govern themselves according to their faith and doctrine." A lot may hinge on the history of the statute's enactment.

[Stuart Koehl]

The Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church, of which I am still (ostensibly) a member, went through a traumatic property dispute in the 1930s, due to the suppression of the married priesthood for Eastern Catholics in North America.

Because, when they first came to America, the Ruthenians did not have a hierarchy of their own, they were placed under local Latin bishops, who were, shall we say, unsympathetic to the idea of having Catholics with a "different Mass", to say nothing of priests with beards, wives and children under their jurisdiction. As a result of their pastoral sensitivity, about 125,000 Ruthenians left the Catholic Church in 1896 to join the Russian Orthodox North American Mission, thereby becoming the kernel of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).

Traumatized by this event, most of the remaining Byzantine Catholic parishes in the U.S. incorporated themselves as "social clubs" in order to prevent Latin bishops from seizing parish property.

In 1930, the Vatican promulgated a "constitution" (Ea Semper) for the Byzantine Catholics in the U.S. and Canada which again suppressed the married priesthood. Though the Ruthenians by this time had an "exarch" of their very own (Bishop Basil Takach), he refused to challenge the ruling. About 85,000 Ruthenians therefore left the Catholic Church and reintegrated themselves as the Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholic Diocese of Johnstown, under the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The question then arose of what to do with the properties. Some of the properties were held by Bishop Basil as Corporation Sole, therefore he had outright title to them. Of those that were incorporated as social clubs, there was no problem in those congregations that voted overwhelmingly to go one way or the other. But in most parishes, the vote was very close, and in true American fashion, the losing side took its case to court.

The cases dragged on for more than a decade, and almost destroyed the Church. It not only split parishes, it split whole towns and even families ("Mom, why don't we ever invite Uncle Stosh to dinner anymore?"), and feelings were so extraordinarily bitter that they did not begin to die down until those who had directly experienced the split began to die off.

There was no one great settlement--there were a hodgepodge of cases, and a hodgepodge of rulings. Most of the remaining parishes ended up with the Catholics, who promptly ended lay stewardship and gave title to the properties to the bishop. The others went into the Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox Church, though a few ended up in the OCA.

Not having a dog in this fight (I joined the Church at the age of 40, and have not a drop of Carpatho-Rusyn blood in me), I found this entire matter baffling. Last year, in Ohio, I met a woman who owned a shop selling Slavic folk art, and knew from her name that she was Ruthenian. Turned out by marriage, though. She recounted the incredibly acrimonious disputes that would erupt over this issue whenever her in-laws got together. "They're whacky as a flock of loons", she told me. I could only nod ruefully.

It strikes me that, by contesting the departure of the traditionals, the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia is making the same mistake that the Ruthenian hierarchy made back in the 1930s, to whit, putting material possessions ahead of the spiritual well-being of the Church. Just as the disputes in my Church took two generations to heal, so these will be plaguing whatever is left of the Episcopal Church half a century from now.

But, long ago, I realized that most bishops care more about the collection plate than the souls of their flocks, which is why Chrysostom rightly noted that few bishops would be saved.

[Nick]

Which is why I'm inclined to believe most of the traditionals should just walk if this becomes an issue. You can build a new church. I realize there is emotional attachment, but...I don't know...it just doesn't feel right.

[Matthias]

While Julia Duin's report is accurate, your summary of it is misleading. The judge has not (yet) awarded the property to the breakaway parishes, but only issued a ruling on one legal issue in the case. That ruling does suggest that the final ruling will award the property to the parishes, but it is not certain.

[S. M. Hutchens]

I have always been, and remain, disgusted by congregations in connectional denominations where the properties are clearly owned by the larger church body, deciding now that they are going to leave they have really been congregationalists all along and are entitled to take their church properties with them.

If they can credibly establish they are an exception to the rule under which they have lived, or that the rule does not in fact exist, that is one thing, but it is quite another to enjoy the advantages of connectional government while times (and bishops) are good, and then when the connection turns bad, disavow it, claiming "rights" they know very well have been relinquished for what was gained in the bargain.

[Matthias]

Mr. Hutchens, do you consider the Virginia parishes to be examples of such congregations?

[S. M. Hutchens]

I don't know enough about this situation to have an opinion on it. (Sometimes one has to know quite a bit to have one.) A connectional church may have a legally valid argument that allows it to keep its property in case of a parting of the ways. An original deed of gift, for example, may have been to the congregation's board of trustees, the relationship of which to the diocese has never been clearly established, thus supporting the argument that with respect to its property the church is independent. I am all for orthodox congregations taking advantage of every honest opportunity they have to retain their property.

But in most cases of this kind I have heard about I am skeptical of the departing congregation's presentments. The trust arrangement under which the property has been held is not at all difficult to understand, and has been acceptable to both the congregation and the diocese--until there is a division. All of a sudden then there is a "question" about the diocese's ownership that never existed before. If I were a judge I would hold that a congregation's failure to complain about the arrangement before the fact is presumptive evidence that it found it acceptable.

In many of these cases I would rule for the diocese, as wicked as it might be. It is one of God's rules, potentially tragic as the ones he made about gravity and momentum, that when you make the devil your piper, you have to dance to his tunes.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>In many of these cases I would rule for the diocese, as wicked as it might be. It is one of God's rules, potentially tragic as the ones he made about gravity and momentum, that when you make the devil your piper, you have to dance to his tunes.<<<

In any case, assuming that the Diocese gets to retain title to the property, what good does it do them/ In all eleven parishes, the vote to leave was overwhelming (yet, of course, the minority that voted to stay refers to those who voted to leave as dissidents). Thus, what the diocese retains will be just empty buildings--quite expensive to maintain empty buildings, at that. How they will fill the pews and the collection baskets, I don't know. It's not as though Northern Virginia is overflowing with under-served liberal Episcopalians in need of a church. So, whatever victory the Diocese wins will be Pyrrhic at best. Within a couple of years, the financial drain of maintaining the properties will bankrupt it. But the Diocese is in a bind, because many of these parishes, such as Falls Church and Truro, are on the National Preservation Trust list, and thus cannot be sold to developers (not that the market for real estate is all that good at the present moment). Neither, I think, will they be able to convert the properties to other uses, or find other denominations willing to take them up.

In the end, I suspect, the Diocese will end up selling the properties back to the people from whom it them, at a fraction of the real value. Everyone will suffer, except, of course, the lawyers, who will get rich no matter who wins. A clear-sighted hierarchy would realize this, but the dispute has moved beyond the point of reason on their part--this is about payback, and the good of the Church be damned. So will the bishops of the Episcopal Church, but that is another matter.

[GL]

>>>Everyone will suffer, except, of course, the lawyers, who will get rich no matter who wins.<<<

So some good will come out of all this. ;-)

[labrialumn]

Let's see: the people pay for their church building to be built, and their ancestors buried there, but some of you think that the property belongs to the now-apostate hierarchs?

[DGP]

Forget "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic." One of the empirical marks of the true Church is that every century or two, Caesar seizes her property.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>In the end, I suspect, the Diocese will end up selling the properties back to the people from whom it them, at a fraction of the real value<<<

Methinks there is a number with a $ in front of it that will settle the matter.

[Stuart Koehl]

I am reminded of a comment by my friend Bishop John Michael (Botean), Exarch of the Romanian Greek Catholics in the United States:

"If the Church must breathe with two lungs, then Satan has two hands around the neck of the Church, cutting off its breath. One hand is the love of property, and the other is the willingness to use violence to get or hold onto it"

His Grace was speaking of the situation in Romania, in which dispossessed Greek Catholics and the Orthodox literally came to blows over who owned what. But we could say the same thing here, save that we do our violence to each other in a court of law.

Didn't Saint Paul have something to say about Christians to resort to the secular courts to settle disputes with other Christians?

[Christopher Hathaway]

Mr. Hurchens. You are misinformed about the "connectional" nature of the Episcopal Church. Originally there were only parishes, which later organized themselves into dioceses. But the parishes predate the dioceses, and the organizing mentality has been one of the free fellowship of independent Anglican churches. The diocese have never "owned" the property of these parishes in any sense until a canon was imposed requiring them to cede them over to the diocese. But the propriety and legality, not to mention morality of such a canon is questionable.

I wonder how you can can say the diocese "is one of God's rules" when the more fundamental rule that God laid down is that Christians should not be in fellowship with heretics. Once any church has renounced the authority of the catholic faith it no longer has any legitimacy to claim obedience based upon catholic structure.

[smh]

The argument given by Mr. Hathaway is a fine example of what I mean by the sudden discovery that the Episcopal Church is in fact congregational: the dioceses never owned the property until a canon was "imposed." In the cases of the churches of which this is true, it was precisely at that point they should have exerted their rights of ownership against the diocese--which doubtless would have removed most of them then and there from the "fellowship." Not doing so in a timely fashion invalidates any complaint that comes later about "imposition." In my court, they would only be able to advance this argument if it was shown that they opposed the diocesan property grab at the time it happened. Those that fought it would get a hearing, those that didn't, wouldn't.

Without doubt Christians should not be in fellowship with apostates, but this does not invalidate the laws of property or contract, nor does it keep them from abandoning buildings now controlled by the appointees of church parliaments whose decisions they were willing to obey--as long as they agreed with them.

[Doug Drysdale]

The problem of "who owns what?" takes me back to the mid-to late-'60s, when Evangelical United Brethren people and churches has to deal with the impending merger with the Methodist Church. In the Pacific Northwest and Montana there was enough of a united front against the merger that most of us were able to pay settlements of about 5 cents on the dollar to retain our buildings. There is more to the story, and I would be glad to go into more detail about what did and did not happen, where, and why.

[bonobo]

From Stuart:

But, long ago, I realized that most bishops care more about the collection plate than the souls of their flocks

From Dr. Hutchens:

I have always been, and remain, disgusted by congregations in connectional denominations where the properties are clearly owned by the larger church body, deciding now that they are going to leave they have really been congregationalists all along and are entitled to take their church properties with them.

I rule for Stuart. Where "episcopalism" attempts to rule over doctrine, vivant congregationes!

Who knows? A healthy little injection of congregationalism might bring their Lordships (and ladyships?) back to their senses. If they consult not their hearts, at least let them consult their arse pockets...

[Stuart Koehl]

Dr. Hutchens is guilty of elevating an ecclesiological theory over the actual reality and lived experience of the Church (that is to say, the entire Church of Christ, and not merely the Episcopal Church as some element of it).

Since the third century at least, disputes of this nature have affected the Church, because bishops being human are subject to human frailties, sins and failures. Thus, at various times, some bishops, either singly or collectively have departed from the true faith that they, through the charism of their ordination, were sworn to uphold. In such instances, beginning with the Decian and Diocletianic persecutions, and carrying down to the Arian and Christological controversies, the people (Laos tou Theou), as ultimate guarantors of the faith, withdrew their recognition of the men whom they had elected or ratified (through the acclamation of Axios) to the episcopate. Naturally, in such circumstances, the people would wish to remain in possession of the ecclesiastical properties which rightfully belong to them, the bishop being merely the steward or caretaker of that which they have offered to God. Also naturally, the bishop would attempt to retain control. Sometimes things got nasty. Sometimes the bishop won, sometimes the people. Nonetheless, the precedent and the practice remained, down to the Reformation.

The situation in the U.S. is due to a quirk in U.S. law. In Europe, down to modern times, Church property either belonged to the state, or was held by the Church under common law. Most often, control of revenues and properties was vested in the bishop and his cathedral chapter, the latter serving as a brake upon the former. In the U.S., however, stewardship became vested in the bishop as a "corporation sole", a practice the entire Catholic Church adopted after Vatican II. This has had a number of deleterious effects on the Catholic Church,, because all power tends to corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is not different in the Episcopal Church.

In fact, through most of its history, the Anglican Church in the United States, which morphed somehow into the Episcopal Church, did not have or want bishops (or if it wanted them, it wanted them back in England (kind of like the unofficial Ruthenian prayer, "May God keep our beloved bishop--far away from us!). Each parish was in fact a free-standing congregation, run by a committee of vestrymen (George Washington was a vestryman for the Falls Church). Only in the late 18th or early 19th were real dioceses with bishops erected in the U.S., and then (at least originally) with extremely circumscribed powers. For the most part, down to the 20th century, Episcopal parishes tended to remain congregational in practice if not in theory.

Only in recent times has the hierarchy of the ECUSA/TEC attempted to arrogate to itself the kinds of power and authority formally held by bishops of the Catholic Church. Not surprisingly, they have required more and more power the farther they have drifted from the true Christian faith, or only by the exercise of raw power could the apostate bishops, representing a distinct minority of the faithful, bully the majority into submission.

They were able to do this because of the fundamental weakness of the Anglican communion--its lack of a center of authority, whether that be one supreme bishop as in the Catholic communion, or in adherence to an overarching Tradition as is the case for the Orthodox. Having neither, each local Church is largely a power unto itself, with no conciliarity or any other check upon its impulses. And that is why we are where we are today.

In such circumstances, both custom and law seem to be on the side of the the "Africans". The Diocese of Virginia took little notice of the "dissident" parishes, what they did or said, as long as the money kept flowing in. Now that the livelihood of the Diocese is threatened (the eleven parishes involved provide more than a third of the Diocesan income), it suddenly wakes up to the fact that it has episcopal oversight of these congregations? I don't think so.

This is why, in stating that the dissident parishes have no standing in their dispute with the Diocese of Virginia, Dr. Hutchens elevates a point of ecclesiastical theory and a dubious point of law over the actual history practice of the Church, and the law as it actually stands in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

[labrialumn]

One of the causes of the American war for independence was the attempt by England to 'transplant' Church of England bishops upon the colonies, forcing all of them to become officially Anglican.

As a result, after the war, the Anglicans in America separated themselves from the ABC, and began calling themselves The Episcopal Church, so as not to appear to be disloyal and treasonous.

That is the 'somehow' you mentioned, Stuart.

[Karl]

Because I am not an attorney, thank God, none of this makes sense to me. I can't help to think, however, this does not bode well for Catholicism's big tent and its subdivisions and have to laugh through the tears that all of this comes to us through Henry's need to justify his adultery when he should just have remained a faithful Catholic and loved his wife.

Perhaps the separation of his head on this earth, makes it easier for Thomas More's to spin in Heaven as he sees what his beloved catholic Church has become in its centuries later lust to provide an "out" for people with the "seven year itch" though annulments.

Who knows.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>One of the causes of the American war for independence was the attempt by England to 'transplant' Church of England bishops upon the colonies, forcing all of them to become officially Anglican.<<<

It was a very minor cause. I knew the somehow, but did not want to be burdensome. The implications politically and culturally are covered in Kevin Philips' "The Cousins Wars".

[bonobo]

his beloved catholic Church has become in its centuries later lust to provide an "out" for people with the "seven year itch" though annulments.

That'd be the American Catholic Church, right?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>ll of this comes to us through Henry's need to justify his adultery when he should just have remained a faithful Catholic and loved his wife.<<<

Henry was entitled to his annulment. In the circumstances, and given the practices of the day, a monarch with a sterile wife was allowed to put her aside almost as a matter of course. The Church understood that the peace and stability of the realm demanded a male heir, and usually went out of its way to be accommodating in that regard. Considering that the Tudor dynasty had usurped the throne in 1485 and had shaky legitimacy at best in a country coming off of 35 years of civil war, Henry had every right to be concerned, and the Church, under ordinary circumstances, would have given him what he wanted.

But circumstances weren't ordinary. Rome at the time was occupied by the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. They had just sacked the city, and the Pope was a virtual prisoner in his own palace.

Did I mention that Charles V was the uncle of Catherine of Aragon?

Well, anyway, he was, and mightily pissed he was to hear how his niece was being treated. So when the Pope was inclined to grant Henry's petition, Charles sent him an offer he could not refuse. Roman Catholics like to make a big deal out of the Church's brave stand in defending the indissolubility of marriage, but in fact, it was just power politics. Other monarchs, princes and grand dukes would continue to get their divorces, provided they greased the right palms and were not opposed by somebody with more power than they possessed. In retrospect, denying Henry's divorce wasn't even pastorally prudent in the grand scheme of the Reformation, since it drove England out of the Catholic fold--against the inclinations of the majority of its people at the time--and made its slide into Protestantism both inevitable and irreversible.

The current problems with the Anglican communion do not so much concern Henry's divorce(s) as they do the faulty ecclesiology under which the CofE has operated. in its attempt to be all things to all people, in order to ensure the greatest degree of social and political harmony within the Realm, the CofE is something like the camel (a horse built by a committee)--a series of ungainly compromises that works well only within a very narrow set of environments.

[William Tighe]

Stuart,

When you write about the details of Tudor English history, you ought to inform yourself about the facts first. Some minor details first: Catherine of Aragon was Charles V's aunt, not his niece. Secondly, Catherine was not sterile: she had a healthy daughter, Mary, and in addition to three babies who died at or shortly after birth, she had one son who lived some three or four months before dying suddenly.

More to the point, though, it is impossible to imagine that Clement VII could have granted Henry the annulment that he requested. (Clement seems to have been weak, but conscientious, and driven throughout his pontificate by the fear that his illegitimate birth might lead to his deposition at the hands of any intended "reforming council" under the control of European princes that he might summon.) In the first place, dispensations to allow a man to marry his deceased brother's widow had been granted almost routinely by the papacy for some centuries before 1500, and it was generally held by that time by theologians and canonists alike that such marriages were forbidden by "ecclesiastical law" (from which then pope could dispense in all cases) rather than by "divine law" (from which most held that then pope could not dispense, although a minority held that he could even in matters of "divine law"); and in the second, those careful and legalistic monarchs, Henry VII of England and Ferdinand of Aragon, had gone out of their way to see that "all bases" had been covered by the dispensation that they sought and acquired from Julius II in 1503 so that their children could marry.

Henry seems to have convinced himself early on in his quest for an annulment, by 1527, that the Levitical ban on "uncoverning the nakedness of a brother's wife" absolutely banned marriages such as his own in all circumstances, and that the Deuteronomic "exception" (the levirate) was an exception made for the Jews which had expired with that of the Mosaic covenant. Consequently, his argument from the beginning was that any papal dispensation to allow such a marriage was ultra vires and invalid, and that the pope needed to acknowledge that fact. Cardinal Wolsey was aware that such an argument would go nowhere in Rome, and thought of a better one. The 1503 dispensation had assumed that Prince Arthur and Catherine had had sexual relations during their brief marriage, and so it had dispensed from the impediment of "consanguinity" [by affinity] that such a situation would have created. Had Arthur and Catherine not consummated their marriage, all that would have been required to allow Henry and Catherine to marry would have been a dispensation form the lesser impediment of "public honesty." (It should be noted that while Henry's "great matter" ground on in Rome between 1528 and 1534, he sought and obtained a dispensation from the pope to allow him to marry, if he ever became free to marry, a woman [i.e., Anne Boleyn] with whose sister [i.e., Mary Boleyn] he had had carnal copulation.)

We do not know if the first marriage had been consummated. On the morrow of their nuptuals, the 15 year-old Prince Arthur had boasted to his attendants that he had been "in Spain" the previous night. Henry, however, in the early years of their marriage, frequently boasted that he found Catherine a virgin, and Catherine herself swore an oath on the Sacrament at the time of the abortive legatine trial in 1529 that she had been a virgin when she wed Henry -- while Henry refused to make any statement about the matter. Wolsey wanted to argue that as Catherine had been a virgin when she married Henry, their parents had got the "wrong dispensation" and that, consequently, they had never been married, and,thus, that Henry was free to marry elsewhere if he so chose. Henry's best modern biographer, J. J. Scarisbrick (*Henry VIII* 1966) thinks that such an argument would have been plausible and might have succeeded in obtaining an annulment from Clement VII -- but Henry overruled Wolsey, and refused to allow such an argument to be made upon his behalf. However, Henry Ansgar Kelly, in his *The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII* (1976) -- Kelly was both a Benedictine monk and a canonist -- concluded that by the Fifteenth Century it had become standard canonical practice to assume that any papal grant that dispensed from a major impediment (e.g., consanguinity by affinity) automatically dissolved any lesser impediments (e.g., public honesty), and that Henry VII and Ferdinand had been "covering all bases" by seeking and obtaining the sort of dispensation they got -- although Kelly does concede that that if a pope was eager to give Henry an annulment and willing to use any canonical expedient, however dubious, to grant it, he might have based one on that earlier "mistake." However, Henry's lawyers never put that argument to Rome, and Clement himself never suggested it; Clement's only contribution to the matter was to suggest that if Catherine were willing to become a nun it might be possible for Henry to remarry in her lifetime, a suggestion that Catherine rejected with disdain.

I know of no evidence that "the pope was inclined to grant Henry's petition." He was "inclined" to hope for a time that Catherine would become a nun, but from 1530 onwards Clement and Henry both came to "incline" to draw out the case in Rome for as long as possible, Clement in the hope that Catherine might die or Henry might lose interest in Anne, Henry in the hope, at first, that Clement might die and be replaced by a more sympathetic pope, and subsequently that he might find a way to do an end run around papal authority and get the case settled in England -- as indeed happened in the end.

[Stuart Koehl]

OK, that'll teach me to write stuff off the top of my head without checking my notes. I do confess to being geneologically dyslexic--I'm always confusing aunts with nieces, and I can never remember what once or twice removed means. I don't think I will back down on the basic premise that Henry was entitled to his annulment, simply because such petitions were granted on a regular basis for similar reasons (excuses, if you like) in the name of raison d'etat. Henry, of course, had another option open to him--this being the Renaissance and all, he could have had Catherine discreetly poisoned (assuming he wanted to take the risk of the inevitable nasty rumors being believed--half the people who were supposedly poisoned back then probably died of salmonella or some other form of food poisoning). That he didn't speaks relatively well of Henry: he must have had some residual affection for Catherine.

Regarding Catherine's sterility: yes, she had a live daughter and several stillborn sons. But Henry probably left her with a souvenir of one of his early dalliances, because Mary bore all the signs of congenital syphillis (possibly Elizabeth, too, since reproductive problems are a common symptom of the disease). Syphillis probably rendered Catherine sterile, or at least incapable of bearing healthy children, following the birth of Mary. Effectually, she was barren. Henry did need an heir. It was foolish of Clement not to realize this. And Clement was not a free agent, either way. So I am sure he hoped to spin out the case, as did Henry, for the reasons Dr. Tighe outlined. I'm also sure that without a Spanish army camped in his backyard, Clement might have been a bit more creative and flexible.

Of course, had Henry been Orthodox, he never would have gotten into this problem. Not only would divorce had been open to him (assuming he could make up a plausible excuse), but he could not have married Catherine in any case: under Orthodox canon law, a betrothal is as binding as a marriage, and constitutes a prior impediment. For this reason, Catherine would have been considered the wife of Arthur, and as her husband's brother, Henry would have been prohibited from marrying her.

[William Tighe]

I doubt that Henry had syphillis. There is no evidence whatsoever of it in him if one looks at his medical history. He became immensely obese from about age 50 onwards (as did Charles V for that matter), and his history of being knocked about on the tiltyard (from which he retired permanently at age 45 in 1536) left him with a great ulcer in the leg, almost permanently open and discharging disgusting matter (a sign of bone necrosis) -- when it healed over he almost always began to run a temperature and to lapse into semi-consciousness.

More to the point is that he actually seems to have, umm, "sexual dysfunctions" that left him semi-impotent from his late 30s onwards. What probably turned him savagely against Anne Boleyn in 1536, on top of his disappointment at the lack of sons from their marriage and his increasing exasperation at her "shrewish" temper (if he retained any residual affection for the wife of his youth, he expressed it only when comparing Catherine's "dutifulness" and attentiveness to him to Anne's deficit in those respects) was the way that she gossiped with her female companions about Henry's "lack of performance" in that area: when this came to Henry's knowledge, he was prepared not only to believe that she slept with a large number of men about the court (including her own brother and Henry's closest body servant, Henry Norris), but also to have admissions of "the truth" tortured out of some of them, and to have their confessions openly recited in court -- as the Spanish ambassador wrote to Charles V in the midst of it all, "no cuckold ever wore his horns so proudly."

Outside of his marriages, Henry had only two known affairs for sure: one, with Bessie Blount, produced around 1519 his illegitmate son Henry Fitzroy (d. 1536), and the other, around 1523-5, with Mary Boleyn, may have produced her children, Henry (d. 1596), whom Elizabeth I created Lord Hunsdon in 1559, and Catherine (d. 1569), the wife of Sir Francis Knollys -- but their dates of birth are unknown, and they might equally have been children of Sir William Carey (d. 1528), to whom Mary was married off in the midst of her affair with Henry, but who subsequently lived with him as his wife when Henry cast Mary off. He may once have pursued Joan Stafford, the sister of the Duke of Buckingham whom Henry had executed in 1521 after a rigged trial convicted him of treason, but this isn't certain.

The interesting is to compare Henry's "love life" with that of his contemporaries Francis I and Charles V. Francis always travelled around France with a bevy of mistresses and bedfellows, and clearly did die of syphillis in March 1547, while Charles, while always faithful to the Empress Isabella when they were together, tended to acquire a concubine fairly quickly when he was off on military campaigns. Compared with them, Henry appears bashful and awkward in his behavior.

[Stuart Koehl]

On Henry and syphilis, see Hans Zinser's "Rats. Lice and History", as well as McNeill's "Plagues and Peoples". Mary exhibited several of the physical characteristics of congenital syphillis, including the protruding forehead and peg-shaped teeth which are visible in her portraits. Later in life, she suffered from edema, another typical symptom.

Henry's jousting wound may have superated due to poor healing. On the other hand, ulcers are a sign of advanced syphilis, as is paranoia and other mental imbalances (not that Henry needed much help in that department). Henry's um "ED" problems may also be traced to venereal disease, though his obesity (and probably accompanying diabetes) could also be responsible.

On Anne Boleyn's "shrewish temper", it is well attested. However, I do think Henry might have been a little more indulgent of it if Elizabeth had been an Edward. Anne's miscarriage of a son convinced Henry it was time for a change. No doubt, he felt time was against him. That Henry tried to fabricate evidence of adultery against Catherine of Aragon is true, but, as we say in the old neighborhood, "Nothing personal, just business".

The comparison between Henry Tudor and Le Roi Long Nez is interesting. Both were hound dogs, but Henry was more a serial adulterer, whereas Francis indulged himself with Gallic gusto. Charles Hapsburg was very much a soldier, and, as we say today, "What happens on deployment stays on deployment".

[Nick]

Can't we have a few faithful kings now and then? Even with your vigorous defense Stuart that's still not reason enough to take the course he did. At the very least it was illegal since it usurped what was the traditional legal authority and at the most dumping your wife is always immoral.

[Stuart Koehl]

It;s a tough question, Nick, which we from our 21st century perspective would have a hard time answering. A king--a real king, not the purely symbolic constitutional monarchs we have today--is not a free individual. Rather, he is vested with responsibility for the security and stability of the realm, as well as the welfare of all his subjects. in an age where power was hereditary, a lot therefore rode on the roll of the genetic dice.

The dominant event for England in Henry's day was the Wars of the Roses, which lasted from 1450 to 1485 (with periodic intervals of peace) and which ended only when Henry Tudor, our Henry's dad, killed Richard III at Bosworth Field and usurped the crown (there were literally dozens of other with a better claim to the throne; Henry VII and VIII eventually killed all of them).

The period of the Wars of the Roses was characterized by anarchy, economy disruption, endemic violence against persons, and the constant risk of civil war or foreign invasion, England was weak and insecure (except during the second reign of Edward IV), and people remembered this. They also remembered that the proximate cause of the wars was in mental incapacity of Henry VI, son of the mighty Henry V, who ascended the throne as an infant. During Henry's minority, he was constantly manipulated by noblemen striving to control the regency; after his majority, he was manipulated by his French wife Margaret of Anjou and her favorites. As a result, England as a whole felt the need for a smooth succession through legitimate and mature male heirs (the turmoil of Edward VI's reign shows how right they were).

Henry therefore placed the highest possible priority on producing a male heir. After years of failing to produce one, Henry needed a new queen. They did not know much about human reproduction back then, but they did know that young fillies made the best brood mares, and Catherine was, by the standards of the day, rather long in the tooth. Raison d'etat demanded a new queen. Catherine, had she not been so vested in Spanish pride, should have understood that and done what was expected of her. Henry's fault was in directing his attentions towards Anne Boleyn; if he had shown interest in another Hapsburg princess, I'm sure the road would have been smooth for an annulment, or that sufficient Spanish pressure would have been brought on Catherine to cause her to retire to a convent.

Henry's marital difficulties thereafter reflect his increasing desperation (and possible mental deterioration) as he tried to conceive beget a healthy son. There is no doubt that he adored Jane Seymour, and was shattered by her death, or that he was greatly disappointed in his subsequent wives until the mild-mannered Catherine Parr took care of the lion in winter. It must have cause Henry great distress that he was leaving his kingdom to a young son of delicate health, who was already coming under the control of the dominant nobles of England.

There have been many faithful kings (and queens) throughout history. Some were also great rulers. Others were good men but lousy monarchs (think Louis XVI, George III or Nicholas II).

Conversely, there have been some really great kings who had the sexual mores of a bonobo. But those salacious details, while they make history lessons fun, is not really how we judge kings. We judge them on how they rule. Henry VIII therefore is a mixed bag. His reign began with great promise, some of which was fulfilled, but much was frittered away. Economically, England did not thrive in his day, and there was actually a backslide from Yorkist rule. He was not the miser his father was, and much of his spending was frivolous. On the other hand, he built up the Royal Navy into the nucleus of the force that defeated the Spanish Armada, he centralized the power of the English monarchy and broke forever the kingmaking power of the nobility. And he fathered Elizabeth I. So, in the end, and after a decade or so of weakness and instability, Henry finally got a successor worthy of him. How was he to know that Anne Boleyn's daughter was the toughest MAN in England?

[Joe Long]

"White Episcopal parishes in a former Confederate state now under the jurisdiction of Africans--that has to mean something big changed, enough to be called a religious division."

Let us pause a moment to remember Confederate Brigadier General, and Episcopal Bishop, Ellison Capers of South Carolina, 1837-1908. "Bishop Capers entered in the work of his episcopate with unabated zeal and devotion. The closing years of (his predecessor) marked a stormy period of dissent and strife....Seven churches had withdrawn from official affiliation with the diocese. Negro representation in the Diocesan Convention was the bone of contention. The rector of one of the most prominent and influential churches of Charleston was preaching that the negro had no soul, and published a book to sustain his theory...." (The Soldier-Bishop Ellison Capers, 1912.)

Capers' own first forays into preaching - back after his own conversion and before the War - had been to groups of plantation slaves. His Confederate war record gave him special leverage to work against this incipient racist heresy, and he brought the defectors back into the Episcopal fold. Representation of black Episcopals was an issue for the rest of his life; in 1907 he wrote "...the denial of representation in our church councils is, in my judgement, a practical bar to Church progress among negroes." He proposed a "separate missionary organization, under leaders of their own, who would be to them what our missionary bishops are to their jurisdictions....such an organization...is needed to stimulate a spirit and mind of self-help and self-respect....I feel a deep interest in the moral, material and spiritual welfare of our colored brethren, and I feel sure that their progress as Churchmen will not be furthered under our present system". This, according to rumor, after many frustrations at preparing black candidates for the ministry, only to have them turned down for spurious reasons.

A much-sought-after speaker at Confederate dedications and memorial events, he was also a reconciliationist who returned a captured battle flag (with a delegation of his men) to their former enemies in Cleveland, Ohio.

I doubt Bishop Capers could visualize such events as we're seeing today, in his wildest imaginings. However, I don't doubt a bit that this represents another secession movement he'd heartily endorse.

[Stuart Koehl]

Of the same mind as Bishop Capers was the one-time Professor of Natural Philosophy and Artillery Tactics, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, who at his own expense, and against the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, established a Bible School for the slaves in Lexington, VA, because he believed that they had the God-given right to read Scripture for themselves. Old Jack was, of course, a rock-solid Presbyterian, but he, too, had no doubts that in the eyes of God the black man was just as much a human in need of salvation as the whitest of white men.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Diabetes could explain the long-unhealed, ulcerating would. Bacteria enjoy a little extra sugar (and unchelated iron) in the blood.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Would to God that I'd written wound!

[James A. Altena]

Trying to catch up (one a day, probably) on various MC threads after a weekend absence –

First, it is always a pleasure to have a genuine scholar of the English Reformation such as Prof. Tighe share his erudition on MC.

Second, to bring this thread back to its putative topic, as a vestryman of a former TEC parish that suffered through (and ultimately lost on) litigation regarding parish property, and read a good deal of relevant legal and historical literature in the process, I believe I can offer several relevant observations.

What Mr. Bennett refers to is a division between two controlling legal principles in church property litigation actions, known respectively as “deference to highest authority” [of the denomination] vs. “neutral principles of law.” The latter was established as an alternative by the U. S. Supreme Court in the 1979 decision Jones v. Wolf, and holds that courts may decide such disputes on a basis other than deference to the highest recognized authority of a legally constituted ecclesial body if the decision does not involve ruling on issues of doctrine or discipline, but rather only upon “neutral” issues such as e.g. determination of legal ownership according to title deeds. The determination whether to adhere to the older “deference” approach or the newer “neutral principles” approach is a matter of state law. Virginia (like California) has laws that tilt to the latter; hence Mr. Bennett need not be surprised at the initial decision.

Stuart’s subsequent comments on this subject need some nuancing and correction in several respects:

1) “In fact, through most of its history, the Anglican Church in the United States, which morphed somehow into the Episcopal Church, did not have or want bishops” is simply wrong. Until the American Revolution, the colonies were under the Episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, and petitioned several time for at least a resident suffragan bishop to be provided. Once the colonies gained independence in 17834, diocese were organized in every state by the end of the decade, and duly constituted in new territories and states as the USA (and its Episcopal Church) expanded westward. As for ”somehow morphed,” I will presume that to be tongue in cheek, since the process by which the PECUSA became a distinct autocephalous ecclesial entity (thereby resulting in the “Anglican Communion” as distinct from the “C. of E.”) is amply documented in several fine histories.

2) “The situation in the U.S. is due to a quirk in U.S. law. In Europe, down to modern times, Church property either belonged to the state, or was held by the Church under common law. Most often, control of revenues and properties was vested in the bishop and his cathedral chapter, the latter serving as a brake upon the former. In the U.S., however, stewardship became vested in the bishop as a "corporation sole", a practice the entire Catholic Church adopted after Vatican II.”

This requires some unpacking and correction. One can only call the U.S. law here a “quirk” only if one calls every U.S. law that deviates from European precedent (including the entire system of government) a “quirk.” In the 19th c., often as a result of general anti-RC prejudice, many states (including e.g. my current state of residence, Pennsylvania, c. 1855) passed laws that specifically forbade “corporate sole” ownership of church property and implicitly mandated congregational property ownership. Thus, the PECUSA in effect evolved a dual spiritual/temporal polity system in the 18th c. Parish properties were indeed generally owned and/or controlled by lay vestries, with the bishop having an office of primarily “spiritual” power. However, parishes did also have specific enforceable financial obligations to the bishop and diocese as a whole, so the model was not completely congregational. Insofar as I am aware (Dr. Tighe may correct any error here), however -- and this is significant -- there were no property lawsuits resulting from either the secession of entire southern PECUSA diocese during the Civil War, nor the subsequent departure of individual PECUSA parishes to form the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873. The “corporate sole” pattern of property ownership (including for the RC Church) became prevalent c. 1910-1930, as an outgrowth (and indeed imitation of) the formation of the monopolistic secular business corporations of the later 19th c., combined with the new centralized “good government” management philosophy of the Progressive era, all of which was consolidated during the “New Deal” era of the 1930s. It was during this period that the previous laws favoring congregational ownership were removed from the books in many states, and the PECUSA national church constitution re-written to reflect implied diocesan control of assets in “trust” arrangements, rather than outright congregational ownership (though the enforceability of this remains a gray area, as will be noted below). What occurred during the 1960s and 1970s was a further centralization and consolidation of power into national church headquarters as (in effect) corporate conglomerates, with this trend also following the example of heavy government centralization instituted by the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s. As a result, bishops progressively ceased to be spiritual pastors and increasingly became CEOs of their diocesan corporate franchises. The culmination in the PECUSA (now TEC) was the passage of the so-called “Dennis Canon” in 1979, unilaterally declaring all real parish properties and assets to be vested in the national church headquarters in NY City and/or the respective dioceses.

3) “In such circumstances, both custom and law seem to be on the side of the ‘Africans’” is a far more problematic statement than Stuart supposes. First, unlike in English common law, “custom” has little or no force in U. S. law. Moreover, 1st Amendment legal precedent explicitly holds that the “wall of separation” forbidding state entanglement in church doctrine means that a court specifically may *not* rule in favor of one party or another in church litigation based on a claim of older and/or more faithful adherence to doctrine or custom. Instead, the court traditionally deferred to the highest recognized ecclesiastical authority (the diocesan bishop and/or Standing Committee) as the recognized arbiter and interpreter of doctrine and/or custom, or (more recently) allows for appeal to positively stated civil law apart from doctrine and/or custom. In the first case, the TEC bishop and diocese win; in the second case, the “Africans” stand a chance, but not on the basis of custom or traditional law, but rather on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling only 29 years old, referring to laws that varies from state to state.

4) Thus, Stuart is wrong in his criticism of Dr. Hutchens here. First, as Dr. Hutchens stated, he did not take a specific position on the Virginia litigation (where he admittedly does not know the law) but made a general observation – and one that frankly has teeth. Most PECUSA parishes passively acquiesced in the encroachments of diocesan and national power, even the Dennis Canon in 1979, and only now have some raised a belated hue and cry. Second, Dr. Hutchens did not appeal to any “point of ecclesiastical theory” or “elevate] an ecclesiological theory over the actual reality and lived experience of the Church.” His point was a moral one: “when you make the devil your piper, you have to dance to his tunes.” (I recall that Stuart has been exceedingly fond of saying in multiple MC posts that one has to dance with the partner one brings, which is the same thing.) If and when parishes willingly acceded to such arrangements in order to gain certain advantages, they forfeited any moral right to complain of them later, and under the U.S. legal system have no legal right to challenge them except that of positive law already outlined. (This also covers Dr. Hutchens’ response to Christopher Hathaway.)

Dr. Hutchens did specifically allow for exceptions: “A connectional church may have a legally valid argument that allows it to keep its property in case of a parting of the ways. An original deed of gift, for example, may have been to the congregation's board of trustees, the relationship of which to the diocese has never been clearly established, thus supporting the argument that with respect to its property the church is independent. I am all for orthodox congregations taking advantage of every honest opportunity they have to retain their property.”

The devil here is in the details. E.g., in Virginia, some of the parishes have charters that predate the formation of the PECUSA in 1789 and remain in force. In Michigan, Mariners’ Church in Detroit was established by a will as a separate corporation under state with a separate board of trustees, with the PECUSA diocesan canons specifically stating that the parish was in “voluntary union” with the diocese. When the Dennis Canon was passed, Mariners’ specifically had the state re-affirm its charter, and published a letter of pubic record in the newspapers disclaiming any assertion of the diocese to ownership of its property, and thus defeated the diocesan lawsuit handily. But one will seek in vain for any comparable legal situations or moves by many other parishes. Even in Virginia, PECUSA parishes whose foundings post-dated 1789 lost to the diocese in court property suits after 1979.

Several other factors complicate the matter here. One is the manner in which the Dennis Canon was passed. Normally, legislation to be considered by a triennial general Convention of the PECUSA (now TEC) was/is published beforehand in a large, blue-cover paper back volume (the “blue book”), debated on the floor, ad put to a recorded vote. The Dennis Canon, however, was introduced on the floor without prior warning, and immediately moved to a vote with no debate. The vote was called by the chair on a voice vote, and the legislation declared to be of immediate effect. Each of these steps was technically legal; their combination was unprecedented. Parishes nationwide were sandbagged in a thoroughly unscrupulous fashion.

Another factor, with possible implications for how the Dennis Canon was passed, is that courts have generally held that an implied trust cannot be asserted unilaterally – the party granting the trust to a higher entity must give explicit consent. The Dennis Canon has been challenged on these grounds in a spotty fashion, but a comprehensive challenge was not mounted at the time of its initial passage. As a result, some courts have ruled that the passage of sufficient time has constituted implied consent; others have not.

A third factor, which might lead Dr. Hutchens to temper his criticism of parishes that did not immediately react by secession from the PECUSA, is that they may have endeavored to be faithful to the gospel in a self-sacrificing way. Specifically, I mean that they -- unlike the PECUSA/TEC hierarchy -- took seriously the injunction of St. Paul not to bring fellow Christians to court. They refrained from initiating legal action both because they believed themselves obliged both to give their opponents the benefit of the doubt as to being Christians, and to avoid creating scandal before a secular world that would not discern any such dispute as between between Christians and heretics (or apostates) rather than between Christian within the same church. (This was a major concern in my parish. Ultimately, under Fr. Ousley's guidance, we decided that we could not initiate litigation, but -- per the legal trials of Christ and St. Paul -- we could defend ourselves in court if brought to trial by our foes. We therefore did not employ several possible legal strategies that might have gained us certain advantages that our chosen path did not. Whether that would have made any decision in our final outcome, we will not know before the Parousia.) I do not know whether the parishes in Virginia are the plaintiffs or defendants.

The specific circumstances of the litigation of my own parish were very complex, and I will not go into them here. Ultimately, we lost when the PA State Supreme Court ruled that although out parish owned it property under law, that an implied trust had been created in favor of the diocese that allowed the property to be sued only for the benefit of the diocese. (In making that ruling, the court claimed to be upholding previous precedent, but in fact substantially altered its standard for establishment of an implied trust. Had the original standard been upheld, we should have won instead.) It is quite possible that, even given his great admiration for Fr. Ousley, were Dr. Hutchens to consider all the relevant factors in the case of my parish, he might well come to the conclusion that our case is among those that earn his censure. Suffice it to say that I believe otherwise; but I can agree entirely with his principle even if it were to turn out that we disagree on its application in this particular instance.

And the principle Dr. Hutchens articulates should be born in mind. the ends do not justify the means. The temptation always lies before us to gain the world and lose our soul. And one of the subtlest of such snares -- the one that lay before my own parish -- was to make the error of assuming that because our desired end was good, that any plausible means to that end would therefore be sanctified by that end and good intentions. On the contrary, the Gospel call to self-sacrifice, to taking up the Cross, means among other things that we must be willing to forswear good worldly ends if we cannot obtain and attain them by strictly godly means. And this is e.g. the problem with Stuart's defense of Henry VIII vis-a-vis Catherine of Aragon -- that she should have "understood" reasons of state and "stepped aside" to increase Henry's chances of having a male heir. In other words, she should sin, and aid and abet Henry's sin, on worldly rather than godly calculations of the good of the realm, rather than both trusting in God's providence for the realm instead. This is simply the rationale of the ends justifies the means -- the counsel St. Paul denounced of "Let us do evil, that good may come." God being merciful, I believe that some great positive good also came out of the English Reformation; but this Anglican will never for one moment defend Henry's part in bringing it about.

[Stuart Koehl]

Quin Hillyer weighs in on the case:

Episcopalian Showdown
By Quin Hillyer
Published 4/10/2008 12:08:29 AM

Conservatives and common sense together won a big victory last week when a Virginia state judge ruled in favor of parishioners in 11 individual churches who have broken away from the Virginia Diocese and the national governing body of the U.S. Episcopal Church.

By astonishingly overwhelming votes within each congregation, the parishioners decided instead to join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), which is affiliated with the worldwide Anglican Communion through the Church of Nigeria. Naturally, the state and national Episcopal churches have not taken kindly to the breakaway parishes, and have sued to force the parishioners to leave the church properties involved. What the parishioners won on April 4 was just the first battle in what may be a long-running, multi-pronged lawsuit, but it was a hugely important victory nonetheless. Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows ruled that something called the Virginia Division Statute means what it very clearly states, which is that the majority of a church parish is entitled to its property when there is a division within the congregation -- and that the 90-plus percent vote in eight of those 11 parishes (the lowest vote in favor of breaking away was 72 percent) clearly represent a "division" from the Episcopal Church.

The 11 parishes are theologically more "conservative" or "traditionalist" than is the institutional U.S. Episcopal Church (although their worship styles can tend far less toward traditional Episcopalian ceremony and more toward Evangelical enthusiasm). One of them, The Falls Church, is among the oldest churches in the nation, and it and nearby Truro Church both have large and active congregations that have spent many millions of dollars vastly expanding the physical plants of each parish. The Falls Church boasts significant numbers of current and former Bush administration officials and conservative journalists within its membership.

The national media tend to portray the split between these parishes and the Episcopal Church as being mostly about issues of sexuality, particularly homosexuality. And to be sure, those differences exist, although the conventional portrayal -- of the conservative parishes as being brutally censorious while the national Episcopal Church is merely "tolerant" -- is both simplistic and skewed. But the differences between CANA and the Episcopal Church involve issues both more numerous and deeper, theologically, than mere battles over whether to ordain lesbians or perform same-sex rituals. And it's also not a mere battle of conservative political activists versus liberal political activists; it's more a case where the conservatives abjure politics within worship, whereas the national Episcopal Church seems to believe that politics itself -- specifically, liberal politics -- is a form of worship.

Go to the national church website, and the site map doesn't even include the word "Creed" -- not Nicene, not Apostles' -- because almost nothing in the national church seems focused on internal spiritual beliefs. To quote one of the site's featured mini-essays (a highly representative example), "It's not about having answers as much as it is about engaging a story. It is about your story and how your story connects to an ancient story of desert wanderers that, in time, came to see that humanity and this energy they called God mingled and existed through Christ and thus, exists in all of humanity."

But even the Episcopal Church website's vapid pop psychology is overwhelmed by the volume of political statements and programs that make the site little distinguishable in tone or focus from that of, say, the Americans for Democratic Action. The first listed "mission" of the church is "justice and peacemaking," which has subsets that advocate "speak[ing] truth to the powerful," "social justice ministry," "criminal justice," "racism" defined not just as prejudice but only as "prejudice coupled with power," (hint: black Americans therefore can't be racist), and an "Office of Government Relations" which sees its goals as "including issues of international peace and justice, human rights, immigration, welfare, poverty, hunger, health care, violence, civil rights, the environment, racism and issues involving women and children."

Who has time to save souls when Caesar needs so much guidance?

NEVERTHELESS, THE CIVIL LAW is and must be neutral about who has a more noble or rewarding faith. The breakaway parishes ought to win every facet of the lawsuit not because their beliefs or their politics are better, but because both law and equity, along with common sense, are on their side. Not only does Virginia state law (the Division Statute) explicitly apply to just such a situation as now exists, but the history especially of The Falls Church argues against the claims of the Virginia Diocese with which they have disassociated.

First, The Falls Church was founded, formed, and developed long before the diocese, or the national Episcopal Church, even existed. Title to the land and buildings is held by the individual churches' trustees, not by the diocese. These churches (and others) helped create the diocese, not vice versa. And, to the tune of many, many millions of dollars, these churches have supported the diocese financially, not taken from the diocese. The very same sets of parishioners who voted so overwhelmingly to leave the Episcopal Church are the ones who on their own, without diocesan help, raised the vast sums of money needed to expand, improve, modernize and beautify their church properties. Why the diocese should be able, despite all those facts, to swoop in and claim the land and buildings (to be peopled by whom, one wonders?) out from under the parishioners who paid for and nurtured them is a question that surpasseth human understanding.

Boiled down to their essence, the Episcopal Church arguments against this are twofold -- and nonsense twice over. First, the Episcopal Church will raise a federal First Amendment (free exercise of religion) issue, saying in effect that the state has no say over the internal laws of an organized Church. Because the organized Church (in other words, the institutional structure, the bureaucracy of the Diocese of Virginia and the U.S. Episcopal Church) has bylaws that claim corporate ownership of all individual churches' parish property, the state supposedly must uphold those bylaws despite any claims, evidence, or history to the contrary. Second, they will argue that "hierarchical" churches (e.g., Episcopal, Catholic), unlike "congregational" churches (e.g. United Church of Christ), are indivisible without the assent of the whole body (in this case, the diocese) -- much the same way that Lincoln argued that the Union was indivisible.

Of course, their arguments fail the smell test, because a civic polity and a religious one are two entirely different things. At issue in the lawsuit are civic property rights, which are always governed by the state, not the spiritual matters that are exclusively (and rightly) the province of churches alone.

Throughout this whole fight, the CANA churches have offered to negotiate a financial settlement, and they have kept their rhetoric low-key and respectful. After last Friday's ruling, Jim Oakes, vice-chairman of the new Anglican District of Virginia (the group of breakaway churches), struck just the right tone in his statement. "Let us choose healing over litigation," he said, "and peaceful co-existence over lawsuits, and let us devote all our resources to serving Christ and helping others around the world."

If only the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia would be so reasonable. The congregations of the CANA parishes built, care for, and worship in their churches. The Episcopal Diocese ought to adhere to the scriptural admonition against coveting those properties the diocese had no part in creating or maintaining. To do otherwise -- to continue attempts to confiscate those properties -- is to accomplish the exact opposite of social justice.

Quin Hillyer is an associate editor at the Washington Examiner and a senior editor of The American Spectator.

[Bobby Winters]

Will the final decision be made by a judge or a jury?

[Judy K. Warner]

>>>Most PECUSA parishes passively acquiesced in the encroachments of diocesan and national power, even the Dennis Canon in 1979, and only now have some raised a belated hue and cry. <<<

They may have "endeavored to be faithful to the gospel in a self-sacrificing way." Or many of them may not have cared about the changes made by the church. The Dennis Canon came soon after a group left the Episcopal church because of its moves away from orthodoxy, including ordaining women and revising the Book of Common Prayer to water down the liturgy, and the church was no doubt worried what this would lead to. In the end, it was not many who left to join the new group. Many in the Episcopal Church have been fine with the changes, including I believe Falls Church and Truro. I haven't heard anything about their going back to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer or ceasing to ordain women. In fact, I think the Africans they are joining ordain women. It was homosexuality that was the last straw. I'm not sure the Episcopal Church is more involved in leftist politics now than it has been for a long time.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>In the end, it was not many who left to join the new group. Many in the Episcopal Church have been fine with the changes, including I believe Falls Church and Truro.<<<

Since African dioceses that provide oversight to CANA do not accept women's ordination, the Falls Church at least has made a formal declaration that it, too, does not accept the ordination of women.

As to how things slip to this point over time, it has to do with boiling the frog gradually. Most people, to be blunt, do not take much interest in Church affairs, but feel they have done their part by showing up for services and putting in time at coffee hours, picnics and the like. This allows small groups of activists to worm their way into the critical committees and work "under the radar". At first, their changes are minor and gradual. But at each step, the people are presented with a fait accompli, and made to believe that they, not the activists, are an insignificant minority standing in the way of "progress". As the changes become more drastic and follow on each other more quickly, a feeling of hopelessness pervades the pews, leaving people with only two choices--to leave the Church that has nourished them since childhood, to which they have deep personal and spiritual ties; or to grit their teeth and stay. There is a third choice, of course--gradually to drift away into the great "unaffiliated", which appears to be the course taken by most Episcopalians over the last several decades.

[Joe Long]

Stuart - your post gives me hope. Maybe conservatives can worm their way into critical committees and work "under the radar" too! The study of how lefties can change a church's climate and eventually formal doctrine, against the will of the rest, could surely help conservatives work similar feats in the other direction...particularly when working just against inertia, not actually contradicting the ideology of the general congregation!

[Judy K. Warner]

Conservatives seem constitutionally unable to work that way. But I hope I'm wrong. Leftists are the ones who love to sit in meetings. In fact, it was a Stalinist principle to be the last ones at any meeting because that's when important things get decided. Normal people have already given up and gone home. I think this is why any organization that is not explicitly conservative tends to become liberal over time. (That's somebody's law, I forget whose.)

[William Tighe]

"Since African dioceses that provide oversight to CANA do not accept women's ordination, the Falls Church at least has made a formal declaration that it, too, does not accept the ordination of women."

No, Stuart, you are mistaken. The (Anglican) Church of Nigeria (a largely Evangelical Anglican body), while it does not currently purport to "ordain" women to the priesthood or episcopate -- or even to the diaconate for that matter -- has made it clear that its not doing this is based not on any (Anglo-)Catholic rationale, but only because "we have no need to do so at the present time." Furthermore, the Nigerians and their primate, Peter Akinola, have explicitly allowed their American CANA bishop, Martin Minns, to "ordain" women for CANA, and he is a proponent of WO.

Save for Nigeria, just about every African Anglican church that is largely or wholly Evangelical in its theological orientation "ordains" women -- in the cases of Uganda and Kenya from the late 1970s onwards (in Kenya this led to a movement into the Swedish-originated Lutheran church there on the part of some high-church Anglicans, and now the Lutheran church there is both one of the highest and most strongly opposed to WO Lutheran churches in the world) down through Rwanda and Burundi in the 80s to the largely Freancophone Congolese Anglican church in 2004. Those churches that have been a mixture of Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic have been going that way, too: the province of West Africa (which includes Ghana) a few years ago and Tanzania in 2005 -- although in these instances this particularly foul-smelling camel has got its nose into the tent initially through the adoption of a policy of "diocesan option" whereby individual dioceses and their bishops can choose their own ways on WO.

These African churches that have "taken up the habit" of WO are generally quite keen on the vice, particularly the Ugandans. The AMiA (Anglican Mission in America) was originally sponsored by the Rwandan Anglican church and the Anglican Province of SE Asia (both Evangelical, but the latter not practicing WO), but SE Asia dropped its sponsorship under a new archbishop. It is fairly well-known that, after a long study process, the AMiA declared an indefinite "moratorium" on the "ordination" of women to "the priesthood" -- and of late it has seen voices raised for a similar moratorium on WO to "the diaconate." Rwanda maintains its sponsorship of the AMiA, but its archbishop, Emmanuel Kolini (a former Catholic) has insisted on the formation of a parallel ACiA which will accept "ordained" women and allow them to function as "priests."

So, frankly, I don't much care who ends up with the VA real estate, since one side to the conflict favors yesterday's heresy, and the other today's.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>In fact, it was a Stalinist principle to be the last ones at any meeting because that's when important things get decided.<<<

A variant on the principle is found in our government today: Always be the person who writes the Executive Summary of any report, since that is the only part ever read by decision makers and the media. Corollary: Always get the last re-write.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>It is fairly well-known that, after a long study process, the AMiA declared an indefinite "moratorium" on the "ordination" of women to "the priesthood" -- and of late it has seen voices raised for a similar moratorium on WO to "the diaconate." Rwanda maintains its sponsorship of the AMiA, but its archbishop, Emmanuel Kolini (a former Catholic) has insisted on the formation of a parallel ACiA which will accept "ordained" women and allow them to function as "priests."<<<

The error, then is not my own, but that of either the spokesman of the Falls Church, or (more likely) the reporter for the Falls Church News Gazette, who reported what I posted here. The announcement did specifically mention the AMiA.

From my perspective, it would appear then that there will be no new women priests in these jurisdictions, which ought to be victory enough: without a supply of replacements, and operating in what the OEO would call "a hostile environment", the number of women priests therein will dwindle and eventually disappear. This is, in fact, how most heresies end--not with a bang, but with a whimper: having been pushed to the margins, they gradually fade away without ever formally being dissolved.

[James A. Altena]

Thanks to Prof. Tighe for beating me to the punch, and with far more detail than I could immediately muster.

“From my perspective, it would appear then that there will be no new women priests in these jurisdictions, which ought to be victory enough. . . .”

Sorry, Stuart, but you’re misinformed and far too sanguine here as well. The following "Anglican District of Virginia" parishes have priestesses:

All Saints, Dale City -- Valerie Whitcomb
Falls Church -- E. Kathleen Christopher

Details courtesy of:

http://anglicandistrictofvirginia.org/content/view/25/44/

(A couple of sites were lacking in details.)

2) There are also the priestesses that were “grandmothered” in, such as Judith Marie Gentle-Hardy (a rather remarkable figure who on virtually every other issue than WO is more orthodox than many of her male colleagues.) And some of the recently ordained bishops for these new “African” jurisdictions in the U.S. (particularly the ones under Ugandan rather than Nigerian oversight) have made it very clear in the past that they see no obstacle to women’s ordination and intend to pursue it as soon as that is, shall we say, politically expedient.

3) Also, last year AMiA in effect carved out what is in effect a separate parallel jurisdiction in relation to itself that allows women’s ordination, with Bp. Chuck Murphy offering extremely contorted rationales as to why this did not constitute an actual back-pedaling on the WO issue.

Check the online archives of the traditonal Anglican magazine “The Christian Challenge” – www.challengeonline.org – for news stories, particularly the following:

http://www.challengeonline.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=142

The local AMiA clergy here in the Philadelphia suburbs, at St. John’s, Churchville (virtually the only parish in AMiA that uses the 1928 BCP in any form) – Fr. Philip Lyman (now decamped to Maryland), Fr. Kenneth Cook, and Fr. Jason Patterson (who wrote the main brief against ordination of women “deacons” as distinct from deaconesses) were pivotal figures in researching, writing, and commenting on the original AMiA report that resulted in the original decision against approval of WO in the AMiA. (My wife was one of the people asked to comment on the draft versions.) Needless to say, they are very upset and concerned at the apparent backsliding of AMiA on this issue.

So I tend to lean in Prof. Tighe's direction. I am glad for any morally and legally legitimate blow that further humbles the crumbling ediface of apostate TEC; but the newly emerging alternative is built on a foundation of heretical theological sand and cannot stand the breakers that will pummel it.

[Bill R]

"...a rather remarkable figure who on virtually every other issue than WO is more orthodox than many of her male colleagues..."

Interesting. I wonder if such persons realize that their method of handling the Biblical texts with respect to WO isn't much different from the way proponents of homosexual "marriage" address the Scriptures dealing with sexual morality.

[James A. Altena]

No, Bill, they completely deny or miss the connection, due to a combination of a defective theological anthropology and an equally defective sacramental theology.