National & World News
Network delegates seek end to property litigation
Moderator Duncan's remarks prompt a founder's resignation
[ENS] Delegates to the Annual Council of the dissident Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDP) -- also known as the Anglican Communion Network (ACN) -- have resolved "unconditional commitment" to the Anglican Primates' February request that litigation between the Episcopal Church (TEC) and those who have attempted to leave with its property be suspended.
Recent decisions in California appellate courts have favored the Episcopal Church and its dioceses over breakaway congregations, reversing a trend of the past few decades. Courts in other states have consistently favored the Episcopal Church.
The resolution passed unanimously during the council's fourth yearly meeting at St. Vincent's Cathedral Church in Bedford, Texas, in the Diocese of Fort Worth, held July 30-31, 2007.
Although the resolution declared the group's "willingness and readiness, on behalf of its affiliates and partners, and those who hold similar values and positions, to engage in mediation" with TEC, Network Chancellor Wicks Stephens told the group the measure has "no intention of saying we will negotiate a settlement" for congregations currently in litigation.
Duncan, who addressed the council on Monday, began by reciting a list of names of Network clergy and bishops who departed the Episcopal Church in the last year, including bishops Andrew Fairfield, Daniel Herzog, William Cox, and David Bena, as well as John Guernsey, Martyn Minns, Bill Atwood, and Bill Murdoch -- all soon to be or already consecrated as bishops for other Provinces of the Anglican Communion, to exercise authority over breakaway congregations in the United States.
"God, in His wisdom, has not used us to reform the Episcopal Church," he said, into "...a Church that is truly evangelical, truly catholic, and truly pentecostal." As a result, the Network turned to the task of gathering "other orthodox fragments -- virtually all of whom were once, like ourselves, mainstream Episcopalians" -- into "a 'new ecclesiastical structure' called for by the Primates of the Global South."
"During this past year, the Network Bishops have done everything we could to work with a broader Windsor Coalition within the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops," said Duncan. "In order not to abandon the wider coalition in its one last stand, the Network Bishops have agreed to take part in the upcoming meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury and members of the Primates Steering Committee and Anglican Consultative Council.
"We do so, some of us at least, without any implied recognition of or submission to the American primate, without any diminishment of our appeal for Alternative Primatial Oversight, and without any expectation that the Episcopal House of Bishops will turn from the course so unequivocally embraced at their March meeting," he continued.
In a question and answer session following the address, Duncan lashed out at Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. "Never, ever has he spoken publicly in defense of the orthodox in the United States," Duncan opined. "The cost is his office...To lose that historic office is a cost of such magnitude that God must be doing a new thing." Later he attributed the origin of his remarks to Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen.
Reacting to Duncan's comments, one of the Network's founders, the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, announced his resignation from the Network in a statement posted on the website of the Anglican Communion Institute.
Duncan's statements, said Radner, "so contradict my sense of calling within this part of Christ's Body, the Anglican Communion, that I have no choice but to disassociate myself from this group, whom I had once hoped might prove an instrument of renewal, not of destruction, of building up, not of tearing down."
Los Angeles: Appeals court will not reconsider property ruling
[Episcopal News Service] A California Court of Appeals has refused a request that it review its June ruling against three Episcopal congregations where the majority of members had voted to leave the Episcopal Church for oversight by bishops in another Anglican province but retain the congregations' property.
A notice posted July 24 on the website of the California 4th Appellate District Court Division 3 said that the petition for a rehearing filed by attorneys for the departing members had been denied.
The appellate court, in an exhaustive 77-page document issued June 25, ruled in favor of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Los Angeles and overturned rulings by a lower court. The case involved property retained by congregations now calling themselves St. James Anglican Church, Newport Beach; All Saints' Anglican Church, Long Beach; and St. David's Anglican Church, North Hollywood. The congregations voted in August 2004 to amend their articles of incorporation, and maintain that they are now part of the Anglican Province of Uganda. Read it all here.