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VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - CONNECTICUT:Supreme Court refuses to hear Bishop Seabury Anglican Church Dispute:
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decided on Monday not to hear the property case of Bishop Seabury Anglican Church vs. The Episcopal Church/Diocese of Connecticut.
Less than four of the Supreme Court's Justices were interested in reviewing the two petitions from parishes that lost their properties in state Supreme Court decisions. It takes a vote of at least four Justices to grant review. The two cases (the Timberridge case from Georgia, No. 11-1101, and the Bishop Seabury case from Connecticut, No. 11-1139) are shown as having review denied, said Canon lawyer Alan S. Haley.
Fr. Ron Gauss, Senior Associate rector of the church said it was strange insofar that according to SCOTUS, there is plenty of room on the docket since they are running short to fill of their OCT-DEC calendar.
"One observer noted that not one of the Justices wanted to venture into the area of Church/State, and just leave the muddled mess to the States. Eventually - somewhere down the road, the Court will have to decide. I can't visualize anyone with a sound mind would ever want to donate to the Episcopal Church in Connecticut to build or establish a congregation. Even with a Deed or a quit claim deed, the Court would ignore it", Gauss wrote in an e-mail to VOL.
"Bishop Seabury Anglican Church gives thanks to God, and all who have stuck it out with us throughout the battle. Many have left with all kinds of excuses and many have stayed with strength, and prayer. We are now preparing to enter into a new phase of our life as a congregation."
Gauss noted that the Bishop of Connecticut, Ian Douglas made several offers to the congregation, but they all revolved around the departure of the Senior Associate, the Venerable Ronald S. Gauss. (The parish voted some years ago to make Jesus the Rector of the Parish.)
"Our congregation is given the option now of leaving the building, returning to the Episcopal Church with DEPO (Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight), returning to the Episcopal Church, becoming another denomination (Leaving CANA/ACNA), or becoming Roman Catholic. We are staying put in CANA. "We give God praise and glory in all situations knowing that God knows far better what is needed for this parish than we can ever understand or fathom," said Gauss.
"The result today for church property law is regrettable, because it means that the morass of State court decisions interpreting Jones v. Wolf, 443 U.S. 595 (1979) will remain unresolved, with some States allowing certain churches to bypass their legal requirements for the creation of a trust, and with other States requiring that all churches comply with their local trust laws. Thus the outcome of any church-parish dispute over property will continue to turn upon the State in which it arises: if the parish is in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York or Ohio, it will most likely lose its property; but if it is in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire or South Carolina, it will most likely keep its property. And if it is in Kentucky or Pennsylvania or Virginia, then the courts could hold that any national trust canon is ineffective to create a trust, but still find that a trust existed anyway," wrote Haley.
"Fortunately, the denial of review will have little or no bearing on the three pending property lawsuits involving entire dioceses which left the Church (Quincy, Fort Worth and San Joaquin). That is because the Church's Dennis Canon has no application to real or personal property owned by dioceses. Furthermore, the fact that the Supreme Court declines to review a lower court's decision is not a judgment on the merits -- it does not mean that the Court views that case as having been correctly decided. Its net effect, therefore, will be to leave the various States' results exactly as they are.
"The interesting fact is that we have never before had a Supreme Court on which there were no members of Protestant denominations. The current Court is made up of six Roman Catholics (Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Sotomayor) and three Jews (Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan). Whether that is what determined that there were not enough justices interested in the property disputes of Protestant churches is something we shall probably never know. Also, none of the justices who served on the Court in 1979, when they issued the Jones decision, is still on the bench today, so any institutional history that attended that case has been lost."
Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut Ian T. Douglas expressed satisfaction with the decision. "This has been a long and difficult process that has taken away from our common witness to the Good News of God in our Savior Jesus Christ. With the decision of The Supreme Court we can now put this matter behind us and once again turn our full attention to the work of proclaiming and making real God's mission of restoration and reconciliation in all the world."
"Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court declined to review the Connecticut Supreme Court's decision that the property of Bishop Seabury Episcopal Church was held in trust for the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and The Episcopal Church in the United States and that former parishioners of the parish could not take that property with them to another church. This ruling brings the litigation over the property to its final conclusion: the judgment entered in favor of the Parish, the Diocese and The Episcopal Church is now fully enforceable. "Now that the high-court has refused their petition, Bishop Douglas anticipates working through the options with the group."
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HARTFORD, CT: Episcopal Diocese Wooing Breakaway Groton Church Back Into The Fold
U.S. Supreme Court Declined To Consider Fight Over Bishop Seabury Church Property
By WES DUPLANTIER
The Hartford Courant
http://www.courant.com/community/groton/hc-groton-episcopal-church-0621-20120620,0,3082343.story
June 20, 2012
Following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision this week not to hear the case of a conservative Episocopal parish in Groton that split from the larger church, Connecticut's Episcopal bishop said Wednesday that the diocese is trying to reconcile with the breakaway congregation. The high court said Monday that it would not hear arguments about whether the Bishop Seabury Church in Groton should have to return property to the Episcopal diocese, which it left in 2007. The state Supreme Court ruled last year that the 136-year-old parish had to return the property - the 6.5-acre church site, the sanctuary and its contents.
Bishop Seabury Church was one of six parishes in Connecticut that split from the Episcopal Church of the United States after it ordained an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2003 and elected a woman as presiding bishop in 2006.
Bishop Ian T. Douglas of the Connecticut Diocese said Wednesday that of the five other parishes in the state that broke from the church, two have closed down, two have rejoined the church under his supervision and another is negotiating its return under supervision.
"The rate of parishes leaving has been in decline," Douglas said. "If anything it's been just the opposite, parishes seeking to have reconciled relationships."
The Episcopal Church has more than 170 parishes in Connecticut.
Douglas said he is now starting talks with the leader of the Groton congregation, Father Ronald Gauss, about five options the parish has for returning to the church.
Those options could allow the parish to be overseen by Douglas or another bishop within the Episcopal Church. The Groton parishioners also could become part of the Catholic Church but still be affiliated with The Episcopal Church and then rent their current building from the Episcopal diocese.
The Groton parish could even incorporate as a congregation separate from the Episcopal Church, but Douglas said renting buildings to groups that do that has been "generally discouraged" across the church, meaning Seabury would likely have to move from its current premises.
Or, Douglas said, the Groton parishoners could simply leave The Episcopal Church and worship elsewhere.
But he said the diocese would not object to having a parish that disagrees with some of its policies, such as ordaining homosexual bishops, if its members hold the same core Christian beliefs.
"We do not all march to the exact same tone in the way that we subscribe to our faith, yet we all would subscribe to the same creedal foundations of the faith," Douglas said.
Gauss said scenarios that allow his 250-member congregation to rejoin the church could require him to leave the parish, a statement with which Douglas agreed.
That's because Gauss was deposed - stripped of his standing in The Episcopal Church of the U.S. - after his parish broke away. Seabury is currently affiliated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria.
Gauss said five other area churches have offered his parish space if the congregation is forced to leave its building at 256 North Road in Groton. One neighboring church also has offered Seabury money if the parish needs financial support, he said.
Whatever Seabury decides to do, Gauss said, the decision would not be determined solely by one-on-one talks between him and Douglas. He said he would make the decision with his parishioners, just as he did when Seabury left the church five years ago.
"We're a church where all choices are made through the members," Gauss said.
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