Thanks, Greg, for posting the Opening Round of the appeal to the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia by the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia after Judge Randy Bellow's court ruled overwhelmingly in favor of the Virginia churches that voted to separate from the Diocese of Virginia and the Episcopal Church three years ago. The Virginia churches will respond to these briefs by the end of January.
You can read the first round of briefs from the Episcopal Church, the Diocese of Virginia (sans Bishop Lee), and a round of briefs by other denominations (that's actually causing quite a stir at the local level of some of those denominations, by the way - oops!) here at the indomitable SF.
8 comments:
"that's actually causing quite a stir at the local level of some of those denominations, by the way - oops!"
Really? Care to elaborate, or did you just ask for a dose of wishful thinking for Christmas?
I have to read a lot of these things in my work. I recommend that if you really want to get a feel for the case, read them all at once, after the CANA parishes file their brief and the Diocese files a reply. It's a lot of reading at one sitting, but reading the various positions over a long period as they come in causes one to lose some of the give and take in the arguments.
Scout
What jumped out at me was the concept that 57-6 tramples on the rights of religious organizations to govern themselves in a way protected by the US Constitution. If memory serves that argument is somewhere on, or close to, page 16 of the brief filed by the "other" Churches --which this time apparently also includes Baptists.
P.S. Not to be inflammatory, I should have pointed out that the lawyers used the "trampling" imagery in their brief - not me . Just wanted to clarify.
The VA Statute has been "trampling" for over 150 years what took everyone so long to notice?
150 years is a short period of time in some legal cases - there was probably more unanimity and societal pressure to conform "back then" - the irony is that we can only guess how the people who gave land and money "back then" would feel about today's events - some were probably closet gays as one "f'r instance".
redleg82, the fact that you can count on one hand the number of times the statute has been used since the 1860s is a big reason.
And, of course, it hasn't been used in the context presented here, where dissident parish members, concerned about theological points, or the company they are keeping on Sundays, elect to leave a church but take title to the property of the church they are leaving. So this is rather new ground we are on.
Scout
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