PITTSBURGH: Bishop gets state approval for new corporation
Episcopal News Service. June 23, 2008 [062308-02]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Bishop Robert Duncan has created a new corporation called the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.
According to the most recent edition of Calvary Episcopal Church's newsletter, the application submitted to the Corporation Bureau of the Pennsylvania Department of State seeking to incorporate the non-profit organization states that its purpose is "upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer."
Calvary rector Harold Lewis writes in the newsletter that "we believe the action was taken because [Duncan] knows fully well that, as we have long contended, he is not entitled to take the assets belonging to the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh to the Province of the Southern Cone. For this reason, it would appear that he has formed a corporation under the name of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, in the hope that that new entity can serve as the repository of diocesan assets."
The parish, Lewis and Calvary's senior warden have been involved in a lawsuit against the diocese since the fall of 2003 when a special diocesan convention passed a resolution stating that all property in the diocese, which under Episcopal Church canons is held in trust by the diocese for the entire church, instead belongs to individual congregations or the diocese itself. The legal action sought "to preserve and protect the unity and integrity of the property," a statement on Calvary's website said at the time. They won a ruling prohibiting the diocese from transferring title or use of real or personal property to any entity outside of the Episcopal Church.
The new non-profit corporation is listed on the Pennsylvania Department of State's website here.
The Diocese of Pittsburgh has moved its annual convention from its usual meeting time during the first weekend in November to the first weekend in October. Delegates to the convention will be asked to make the diocese a member of the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.
The convention will also consider a resolution (Resolution Two) that would give parishes two years or more to make their by-laws reflect a realignment with the Southern Cone. That resolution would also allow parishes "a season of discernment about whether to accept re-alignment or to petition to break their union with Convention" and asks that "charity and generosity continue to be embraced as virtues in diocesan life where matters of fidelity and direction profoundly divide us."
A third resolution would state, in part, that although the convention would adopt the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church as advisory policies "until a more comprehensive set of Constitution and Canons can be developed and approved by the Diocese," the action "should in no way be interpreted to suggest that The Episcopal Church has any authority over the Diocese, any Parish of the Diocese, or any Clergy of the Diocese."
In moving up the convention, Duncan told the diocese that "the expressed threat of deposition of the Diocesan Bishop at a September meeting of the House of Bishops is the 'sufficient cause'" required by diocesan canon to make such a change.
The Episcopal Church's Title IV Review Committee has certified that Duncan has abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church. Duncan has denied that charge. Two of the House of Bishops' three senior bishops refused to give Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori their canonically required consent to inhibit him, based on the certification, from the performance of any episcopal, ministerial or canonical acts. Such an inhibition requires the consent of all three senior bishops.