Two Continuing Church Prelates Seize Property To Block Parish's Disaffiliation

[david at virtueonline.org]

Two Continuing Church Prelates Seize Property To Block Parish's Disaffiliation;
Congregation Yields To Legal Pressure And Accepts "Settlement"
 
Report/Analysis By Robert Hart
The Christian Challenge
www.challengeonline.org
May 21, 2008

Given what the first wave of orthodox refugees from The Episcopal Church (TEC) went through in the late 1970s and afterward, it is small wonder that the Continuing Anglican manifesto, the 1977 Affirmation of St. Louis, defends the right of congregations to control their property.

So why have two bishops of a small Continuing Church jurisdiction acted just like a couple of Episcopal prelates, filing suit against a congregation to keep it from leaving with its property?

That is what a lot of Continuers want to know - or will want to know - when they read this story.

According to a press release from St. James Church, Kansas City, Missouri, two bishops of the Holy Catholic Church, Anglican Rite (HCC-AR) gained control of St. James' building, bank accounts and records under a May 2 court order, and locked out the congregation.

A temporary restraining order was obtained without prior notice to St. James' leaders by the HCC-AR's Bishop of the Holy Trinity and Great Plains, James McNeley, and Bishop Leo Michael, who has just transferred from the United Episcopal Church of North America (UEC) as the HCC bishops' choice to succeed McNeley, who is retiring. The smackdown of the St. James' congregation was evidently one of Michael's first acts as an HCC-AR bishop. 

Bishops McNeley and Michael reportedly sought the temporary restraining order to prevent St. James from holding a special parish meeting May 4 to vote on whether to stay in or separate from the HCC-AR diocese. Sources maintained that Michael had declared his intention to acquire St. James and make it into his cathedral.

HCC-AR Archbishop Thomas Kleppinger seemed to infer more recently, however, that the intervention was to stop a minority rebel group from moving St. James' outside the HCC-AR against the wishes of the rest of the congregation. But that begs the question of why, if a majority of eligible voting members were opposed, Bishops McNeley and Michael were so determined to keep the parish meeting from taking place.

According to the parish press release, the lawsuit, although signed by another Kansas City lawyer, was planned and written by St. James' own junior warden, James F. B. Daniels, who also acts as an attorney for the two bishops and their diocese. Prior to the actual seizure, Daniels did not notify other officers of the parish that the suit had been filed, the release said.

The seizure of St. James' building and financial records, and the lock- out of the congregation, halted all parish operations, including regular worship services by the parish's rector, the Rev. John Cochran, one of the named defendants in the suit. The bishops announced that services would be held in St. James' building by Bishop Michael or his nominee.

The bishops thus also succeeded in preventing the special membership meeting that St. James had scheduled for Sunday, May 4, immediately after the Sunday morning service. On the previous Sunday, April 27, the parish had voted to remove from its by-laws all references to either the HCC-AR or its local diocese.

According to the St. James release, these meetings were spurred by confrontations with the two bishops at the parish's annual meeting on January 20, and again with Bishop Michael on April 20. At the January parish meeting, the two bishops appeared, bringing with them four guests whom they insisted be allowed to participate in the meeting as though they were members, to provide what the bishops called "insurance votes," the St. James release asserted. Parish officers rebuffed this attempt to stack the church's list of voters.

The canon law of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity and Great Plains (DHTGP) in the HCC-AR defines who may or may not vote as a member of a parish: They must be "members in good standing," which includes the requirement that they "have received Holy Communion at least at Christmastide, Eastertide, and Whitsuntide during the preceding year,  are Communicants in Good Standing of this Church." The four guests were unknown to the rector and vestry.

On Sunday, April 20, Bishop Michael reportedly appeared without prior notice to the parish's leaders. He said he had previously arranged this visit with Junior Warden Daniels, who also had not given advance warning to other St. James officials. Indeed, Daniels was acting as the diocese's chancellor or in-house lawyer in conjunction with Bishop Michael's surprise April visit, the parish release maintained. After the Sunday service, Michael told the parishioners "Maybe you aren't worthy of me" and "Yes, I have the ability to take you to court and take this property," the release maintained.

It said that Michael and Daniels then threatened the parishioners with what they called "the nuclear option," this reportedly being the manner in which Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her Chancellor, David Booth Beers, currently proceed against parishes seeking to leave TEC. This starts with a claim that any parish leader or member who votes to leave the national church automatically forfeits, with that vote, any authority to act on behalf of the parish. Thus, the two Continuing Church bishops appear to have joined TEC in claiming that it is never possible to hold a valid vote to leave their church body.

A HEARING on the bishops' temporary restraining order was set for May 13 in the circuit court of Jackson County, at which time the judge called the attorneys for both sides into his chambers. There he told the lawyers he had read the file, and felt that the main issue was the church's holding a vote to leave. He proposed appointing a Special Master (a sort of ad hoc court commissioner, usually a retired judge) to supervise that vote. (This sort of supervised election to settle church control disputes is common in many states and is expressly approved by Missouri appellate cases, said a church lawyer familiar with the case.)

The same source reported that the judge also indicated that he thought the temporary restraining order should be modified to give the real property, checkbooks, and financial records back to the defendant, i.e. the vestry and rector, subject to there being no disposition of these out of the ordinary course of the parish's business. Further, he was inclined to order the plaintiff diocese to list the property, that is appointments and other items that are not real property, it claimed as its own and to order the parish to either return or safeguard any items so listed.

Daniels reportedly rejected the judge's proposed solution. Instead, he insisted that the defendants had until Friday, May 16, to accept a "settlement" he proposed, and if they failed to do that, the hearing would continue the following week. The proposed settlement was a demand for everything the diocese sued to obtain, with the added stipulation that St. James pay $1,200. from the parish's funds to the defense counsel. Under Daniels' proposed settlement, the rector could remain in his home for now, but must leave by the end of November, and clergy stipends would continue only until September for the three priests who have been serving St. James. The remainder of the funds, all the parish's furnishings, fittings, utensils, vestments, and other personal property, and all of its land and buildings -- i.e., the church and the rectory -- would be transferred to the Diocese of the Holy Trinity and Great Plains.

The people of St. James, against their lawyer's advice, reportedly accepted Daniel's proposed "settlement" on Friday, May 15. It is worth noting that their lawyer, the Rev. Michael Grear (who serves as a deacon in the Anglican Church in America, a mainstream Continuing Church body), was not paid by the hour, but only a flat fee. He was willing to continue the battle. But Fr. Cochran said, "The parishioners are literally begging me to stop the fight. On our side it looks as if I am the last one standing. Comments have been made to me such as 'I won't even go back to that church even if it is only to vote.' I am afraid the pain is too much for them to bear."

As it stands now, because of the settlement, the two bishops have obtained everything they sought in their original court filings, in which they had asked the court to issue a permanent injunction against St. James after the motion hearing and without affording the parish a trial on the bishops' claims. All of St. James' parish assets will transfer to a new foundation independent of the parish and controlled by McNeley, Michael, and their personal appointees. This includes a substantial endowment that has now come under the control of the diocese. St. James was established originally in the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) - before the HCC-AR and the diocese came into existence as a result of a schism from the ACC in 1997.

Most of the people of St. James have been attending a nearby ACA parish since the Sunday after the Ascension, when they found themselves locked out of their own parish church. It is not known what they may decide to do permanently. Since Whitsunday, between 8 and 12 people have attended Sunday services conducted at St. James by Bishop Michael.

Representatives of St. James' majority claim that the suit against their parish was the "flight test" of a new procedure for HCC-AR bishops to deprive other congregations under their jurisdiction of their assets. But they noted that this kind of action is expressly forbidden by the HCC-AR's constitution, which states the matter very clearly:

"ARTICLE XXI -- OF THE TEMPORAL AFFAIRS AND POSSESSIONS OF CONGREGATIONS: The right of Congregations to control of their temporalities, and to freedom from claims of any Diocesan or Provincial or Synodical Trust or implied Trust asserted by the adherence of such Congregation to the Communion of this Church, or by its adherence to the Constitution or Canons of any Diocese, Province, or Synod shall be forever recognized and protected.

"No person or ecclesial body in this Church shall ever resort to any civil court for the purpose of depriving any congregation departing from this church of any property or right pertaining to it."

LOCAL OWNERSHIP of parish property is in fact a cornerstone of all Continuing Anglican bodies, most of which began forming in the late 1970s, following The Episcopal Church's abandonment of apostolic order and classical Anglican liturgy. Most of the parishes that withdrew from TEC 30 years ago lost their property to the denomination.

Thus the use of financial pressure to establish and propagate apostasy and heresy by The Episcopal Church was something that the framers of The Affirmation of St. Louis understood, and so they made it impossible for this tactic to reappear in the Continuing Churches. For this reason the Affirmation says, "Financial Affairs: The right of congregations to control of their temporalities should be firmly and constitutionally recognized and protected."

More importantly, St. Paul says this: "Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren." (I Corinthians 6:1, 7,8) 

Neither Bishop McNeley or Bishop Michael had responded at this writing to TCC's invitation to explain or defend their action against St. James. However, HCC-AR's Archbishop Keppinger complained about the reporting of this story (based on the parish news release) on the VirtueOnline website in an "open letter" that tells his side of the story; that was followed by a letter from Bishop Michael. These letters assert that the report is unfair, and based on lies and half-truths. They sought to justify the legal action filed by the attorneys for Bishops McNeley and Michael. They did not address the issue of HCC-AR canon law, or The Affirmation of St. Louis. Both letters were subsequently rebutted, point by point, by ACC Chancellor, the Rev. Canon John Hollister. (The text of the letters with his commentary can be found on the weblog The Continuum, under the title: "A Response to Bishops Kleppinger and Michael." http://anglicancontinuum.blogspot.com/2008/05/response-to-bishops-kleppinger-and.html )

Bishop Michael resigned from the UEC on February 18, three days after Bishop McNeley's pending retirement became official on February 15. The other HCC-AR bishops quickly appointed Michael as McNeley's successor, despite church and diocesan canons that require a successor bishop to be elected by the clergy and people of the diocese, sources close to St. James say.

AT A TIME when Continuing Church jurisdictions should stand out as separate and very different from TEC, it seems that the bishops of the HCC-AR are abandoning the admonitions of St. Paul and the Affirmation, and their own canon law, in favor of imitating the very worst behavior of the Katharine Jefferts Schori and her legal team.

And this is supposed to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God, and Continuing Anglicanism, how?

END