PITTSBURGH: Parish wants court-appointed monitor to oversee possession, use of diocesan property
Episcopal News Service. July 10, 2008 [071008-07]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania parish opposed to Diocese of Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan's plans to make the diocese a member of the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone has asked a court to appoint a monitor to "inventory and oversee property held or administered by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh."
The petition from Calvary Episcopal Church claims approximately $750,000 of diocesan money has been diverted "for the defense of the anticipated opposition to Bishop Duncan's separatist effort."
The monitor is needed, the petition claims, because "there are millions of dollars of Property (real and personal) held or administered by the Diocese or entities within the Diocese, including but not limited to the treasury, trust funds, and Sheldon Calvary Camp, which are in jeopardy."
Noting that Duncan has formed a new corporation called "the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh," the petition says that he "apparently intends to claim he heads the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh even if he and his followers are not part of The Episcopal Church." Such a move can't release Duncan and others from complying with an October 2005 court order prohibiting the diocese from transferring title or use of real or personal property to any entity outside of the Episcopal Church, the petition argues.
The July 7 petition asks in part that the court "assure compliance" with the 2005 order.
The order was the end result of a lawsuit Calvary Church filed against the diocese in the fall of 2003 after a special diocesan convention passed a resolution stating that all parish and diocesan property is held free from any trust or other interests of the Episcopal Church. The action sought "to preserve and protect the unity and integrity of the property" for the mission of the church, a statement on Calvary's website said at the time.
As an alternative to the monitor, Calvary suggested in the July 7 petition that the court order the diocese to provide the parish's attorney "with access to all financial books and records of the Diocese reflecting all transactions occurring and all assets held or transferred at any time since October 14, 2005."
As part of the 2005 order, Calvary was allowed to place its diocesan assessments in an escrow account. Its current petition asks that the court extend that option to other parishes in the diocese "concerned about the use of their funds by the diocese for the benefit of a church other than the Episcopal Church."
At the diocese's annual convention 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 vote on 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 also allows 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."
When Duncan called the annual convention for a month earlier than its traditional meeting time, he 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 denied that charge. Two of the three senior Episcopal Church diocesan 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 until a final vote by the House of Bishops on whether or not Duncan should be deposed. Such an inhibition requires the consent of all three senior bishops.