October 18, 2011

Pa. High Court Rejects Duncan Appeal

Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied deposed bishop Robert Duncan (now Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America) the right to appeal to that court in the Calvary litigation. The court issued this order:
ORDER

PER CURIAM
     And now, this 17th day of October, 2011 the Petition for Allowance of Appeal is hereby DENIED.
The order means that the stipulation of 2005 agreed to by then Bishop Duncan (and other defendants) and Calvary Episcopal Church stands, and diocesan property belongs to the diocese in The Episcopal Church. Parishes wanting to leave—many now claim to be in Duncan’s Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh—are to negotiate with the Episcopal diocese for their property.

The order should end litigation over diocesan property and shift focus to parish property.

Interested readers can read the first newspaper story about the 2003 lawsuit by Calvary Church on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Web site.

4 comments:

  1. A good thing, then. Negotiation is better than litigation.

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  2. Not a surprise, and maybe this chapter is being brought to a close. If any representations were previously made to the departed Anglicans that the case had any chance of success, then those representations were inaccurate to the point of seeming deliberately so.
    It will be interesting to see how the Post Gazette handles this result. After the last story by Ann Rodgers about one of the property settlements, I finally had enough with her insistence in every story that a majority had voted to leave and that litigation was continuing. I sent a letter to the editor of the PG, quoting the specific lines in the original stipulation which Ms Rodgers was continuously disregarding. The letter was never acknowledged although her subsequent obituary of a bishop seemed a little bit more even-handed.
    I hope that the Diocese is now utilizing the public relations skills of someone with expertise in that area. You can be sure that Duncan's crowd will make the effort to spin the loss into a win.

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  3. You can be sure that Duncan's crowd will make the effort to spin the loss into a win.

    Ain't that the truth?

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  4. Yup, or else writing obtuse essays explaining why the Court erred. Beware the Duncanites.

    FWIW
    jimB

    ReplyDelete

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