Anglican Ink reports that the Episcopal Church suffered another significant litigation setback earlier this week when a South Carolina Court ruled that the former Diocese of South Carolina and its parishes had lawfully seceded from the national church, and that those leaving were entitled to retain all of their property (link to the court’s opinion…
Category Archives: Canon law
Pope Francis broadens eligibility for Ordinariate membership
Back in March when then-Cardinal Bergolio was elected Pope, I expressed in this space my general optmism over the new Pope’s section, but raised a couple of caveats, including a question about the extent t which the new Pope Francis would support the Anglican Ordinariates initiated during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. It now appears…
Canon Law at the 7th Circuit
Very interesting ruling today from Judge Posner that involves an issue of Roman Catholic canon law, courtesy of Eugene Volokh, some choice excerpts from the opinion: These three interlocutory appeals arise from a complicated and acrimonious litigation, charging RICO, trademark, and copyright violations along with Indiana torts, that has been percolating in the district court…
Optimism, but some questions about Pope Francis
The election today of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be the 266th Bishop of Rome is a truly exciting event. As the first pope from the developing world and from the Global South, Francis appears to be the ideal man to lead the Church’s New Evangelization. He is by all accounts theologically orthodox, and more than…
An additional thought on the Episcopal Church mess
One additional point about the TEC issue. One of the things that TEC is claiming in the Fort Worth and Quincy cases, as a byproduct of its claim that TEC has a hierarchical polity, is that the “church” essentially has a unitary structure, where parishes answer to their diocese, and dioceses answer to the Fuhrer…
The peril of dissent in the Episcopal Church
I would prefer to not write about the Episcopal Church. Really, I would. I would live to leave them alone and, believe me, I would love it if they would leave me alone. But The Episcopal Church is the gif that keeps on giving. It seems that questioning the views – no matter how novel…
The Ordinariate, the Episcopal Church, and the future
Given the shrinking numbers of the Episcopal Church and, and the news reports, almost daily, of new ordinations and the like in the American Ordinariate, I got to thinking: when will the average Sunday attendance (in my view the best barometer on a week-to-week basis of the health of a church) for Ordinariate parishes exceed…
And the Episcopal Church world continues to turn
It seems that the poo-bah’s in the Church of What’s Happening Now Episcopal Curch are finally grappling with the big, important issues that a big, important church should address. Perusing recent posts on George Conger’s website, I came across a bit discussing the recent resignation of the President of the ECUSA House of Bishops, Bonnie Anderson…