Updated Thursday evening
ENS has also published a news article about this, see PITTSBURGH: Parish wants court-appointed monitor to oversee possession, use of diocesan property by Mary Frances Schjonberg.
Lionel Deimel reports from Pittsburgh in an article titled Calvary’s Cavalry Again Rides to the Rescue:
As the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh heads toward a “realignment” vote on October 4, 2008, when Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan plans to declare the entire diocese removed from The Episcopal Church to become a diocese of the province of the Southern Cone, loyal Episcopalians in Pittsburgh are becoming increasingly anxious about the looming apocalypse. Yesterday, however, they were given some reason to cheer, as Calvary Church attorney Walter P. DeForest rode to court on his white horse to file papers with the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County. Calvary is petitioning the court to appoint a “monitor to inventory and oversee property held or administered by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh to assure compliance with this court’s order of October 14, 2005,” as well as to request “creation of an additional escrow account(s)” for parishes concerned about the use of their funds by the diocese for the benefit of a church other than The Episcopal Church…
The legal filing for this case is available as a PDF here.
And there is additional background from 2006 here.
You can bet your bottom dollar that in the legal fees , Bishop Duncan will not be using any substantial ammount of his own savings.
By the way is Bishop Schofield still invited and going to Lambeth?
@Robert Ian Williams:
To the best of my knowledge, Schofield was not uninvited, therefore the invitation still stands, and he accepted the invitation.
http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2008/6/2/bishops-schofield-lamb-both-attending-lambeth
A analysis of the legal procedure is given here:
http://tinyurl.com/5vg6rd
I advise caution with “The Living Church, it has not always proved itself trustworthy.
The Church Times this week, in a story that is still only for subscribers, says:
TWO BISHOPS claiming their right to the see of San Joaquin have accepted invitations to the Lambeth Conference.
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=59174
I think all of these Bishops involved in this fracture from the Episcopal Church have forgotten exactly what they were hired to do. In my opinion, their duties are rather limited to confirmation and ordination. Any of their actions that bring disharmony within their diocese are not within their job descriptions.
“what they were hired to do.” But they weren’t “hired” to do anything. The episcopate is not a job like bank manager, it is a vocation from God, recognized by the ecclesia as manifested in that diocese. If you see Holy Order as just another job, then many of the people involved in this are not going to accept any other argument you make. If you recognize a bishop as something other than what the rest of do, that’s fine, many Christians in other traditions would agree with you. Even some within Anglicanism might feel the same way, but you… Read more »
“Let ’em all go, just give us the money.”
“Let ’em all go, just give us the money.” Can’t find this in the one piece I can open, so I assume this is just your take on the situation. Of course, you are aware that the principle of church property not belonging to the parish is not exactly some new liberal sheme to oppress the True Christians. It is an ancient principle that reflects our understanding of what the Church is. Now, if you have a adopted a relatively new and innovative ecclesiology, fair enough, but we haven’t done that, so whether or not you think a parish owns… Read more »