Friday, December 17, 2010

Anglican Down Under likes this news

http://babybluecafe.blogspot.com/2010/12/coalition-forming-for-win-win.html

Is it presumptuous to think that God might like this news too?

6 comments:

liturgy said...

I don't know anything about all these legal details whatsoever...

Baby Blue says the website is called, ""Seeking Common Ground in Common Prayer"

Actually it is "Finding Common Ground in Common Prayer"

either way - that concept is what I think used to hold Anglicanism together...

Brother David said...

You like this because of the video at the end!

Those leaving and trying to take the property with them tend to fall back on this strategy when it starts becoming apparent that they are going to lose. The nine parishes have lost twice before the appellant court and must be seeing the writing on the wall.

Father Ron Smith said...

I, personally, don't know why these people are trying to reverse the results of an act of intentional schism that has already occurred.

Or is this a desperate effort on the part of the dissenting parishes trying to twist God's arm about certain decisions of the courts, that have denied their rights to abscond with the property that belongs to the official TEC Diocese?

Canon Neal said...

I do not see this as a "let's try to settle this thing before we lose" approach. If you read the last opinion carefully, the judge gave the "Anglicans"--quotes not intended to be pejorative but to distinguish those who have left from those who have stayed--a roadmap for winning their lawsuit.

What you all seem to fail to realize in your suspicions is that this is a small geographic area, many of these folks are friends and family members and co-workers, and they often only disagree about the issue of leaving.

If you've followed the money, the Diocese of Virginia has hocked itself and hampered its own missionary endeavors to be able to fund these suits with lines of credit of $4million. Everyone on both sides is alarmed at the costs. The Diocese of Virginia used to be a leader in planting new churches; no longer.

The scorched earth policy that David and Ron seem to favor has wreaked untold damage to friends and even families. If you presume ill motives on someones behalf, chance are I would encourage you to examine the state of your own soul, particularly at a time, so close to Christmas, when God did not leave us in the mess we had created for ourselves.

I applaud this "come now and let us reason together, says the Lord" initiative (Isaiah 1,18). It is the basis of what used to hold Anglicanism together.

Brother David said...

If you read the last opinion carefully, the judge gave the "Anglicans"...a roadmap for winning their lawsuit.

What road map would that be Neal? That they can have a "do over"? You cannot change history Neal. Just as you cannot un-ring a bell. The ADV congregations have already done what they did. They left TEC and Dio VA and joined CANA and then became a subunit of CANA, the Anglican District of VA. In the final opinion, which was the appellate court's decision, the route that the ADV congregations took did not meet the requirements of the VA statute, namely that CANA is a missionary unit of the Church of Nigeria, which the appellate court has ruled is not a "division" of TEC or Dio VA.

So there is no road map to redemption. They cannot withdraw their original claims. Those claims have been sent back to the lower court to adjudicate as they were filed and without benefit of the VA statute upon which the congregations had hung their case.

So yes, I think that now that the handwriting is on the wall they want to backtrack and see if they can perhaps still walk amicably away with the property, which they have been told that they cannot.

Brother David said...

BTW, this past week the lower court judge, who originally ruled in their favor, has denied the request by the ADV congregations to have the merits of the case reheard before a jury. The first time through they thought that they had a slam dunk with just the judge. But his determination was overturned by the appellate court and returned for readjudication. So this time the ADV congregations thought that it was time to change the game and appeal to the sympathies of a jury. They keep learning the hard way that they cannot have their cake and eat it too.

And there is still a very long road ahead of them. Because if they keep at it, this will surely go to the US Supreme Court.