It couldn't happen here
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It couldn't happen here |
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LOS ANGELES – Attorneys for the Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles have given three breakaway parishes until Monday to either surrender their church properties – including even their prayer books – or to stop using them until the church or civil courts decide who is the rightful owner.
The parishes were also given five days to deliver financial statements, copies of all bank accounts and investment portfolios, and their registers of members.
In the past two weeks, the three conservative parishes – All Saints in Long Beach, St. James in Newport Beach and St. David’s in North Hollywood – declared that they had pulled out of the national Episcopal Church and no longer considered Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop J. Jon Bruno their leader.
They affiliated their parishes with an Anglican diocese in Uganda run by a conservative bishop who agrees with their more orthodox biblical interpretations and views about homosexuality.
On Friday, in hand-delivered letters to the three parishes, Los Angeles diocesan attorney John R. Shiner of Morrison & Foerster said the congregations were in violation of church canons and California civil law and could face a lawsuit.
Church buildings and all property were “irrevocably dedicated to the church and the diocese under the jurisdiction of the bishop,” according to the statement. The letter would prohibit the secessionist parishes from using not only the church buildings but also the hymnals and the Book of Common Prayer, which is central to Episcopal and Anglican worship.
The Rev. Praveen Bunyan, rector of St. James, called the ultimatum unfortunate. “We’re just worshiping in our own property,” he said. “We’re doing what is legally our right. We will continue to have worship services here. We have peace about it.”
He said parish attorneys would review the letter over the weekend before making any further comment. The Rev. William Thompson, rector at All Saints, issued a similar statement.
Leaders of St. David’s could not be reached, but they had previously said that they held title to the property and were confident they would win in any possible legal tussle.
In the past week, the parishes said that they had amended their articles of incorporation to delete all references to the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church, which is the American arm of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
The decision by the parishes to break off followed similar steps in the past year by a handful of other parishes nationwide and was further evidence of deep divisions within the denomination, which has more than 7,300 parishes in the United States.
In his first public statement on the current secession crisis, the national presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church on Wednesday criticized the diocese in Uganda for taking over jurisdiction of the breakaway parishes in southern California.
The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, said he had written his counterpart, Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, head of the Anglican Church in Uganda, to say he was “troubled” by the move.
“The bishops of the Anglican Communion and the primates (archbishops or presiding bishops of national churches) have made it clear that bishops are to respect the boundaries of one another’s dioceses and provinces,” Griswold said in a statement.
Bruno has asked Griswold and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to intercede and request that the Ugandan church respect the sovereignty of the six-county Diocese of Los Angeles.
Bruno has also warned the breakaway priests that they faced being defrocked if they did not return to the Episcopal Church.
In a recent pastoral statement, Bruno said, “The fact that a bishop from another autonomous church within the Anglican Communion has chosen to exercise oversight in this diocese flies in the face of our ethos as Anglicans and of the catholic unity of the church.”
Last updated 4th August, 2004