Isn’t the judge supposed to decide the issues? It’s for the bloggers to express opinions and we have that ground well covered without judges invading our turf.

expressed his opinion

I am reminded of Deep Thought’s Answer - after pondering 7.5 million years - to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything:

42.

And the Diocese of New West has their interpretation here

A parish does not have authority to unilaterally leave the Diocese, and it is consequently ultra vires for it to pass a resolution purporting to do so. Additionally, while parish corporations may hold title to real property, the effect of s. 7(4)(a) is that that property effectively remains within the Diocese unless the Executive Committee and Bishop agree to mortgage, sell or otherwise dispose of it. In using the church properties for purposes related to ANiC, the parish corporations are using them outside the jurisdiction of the Diocese, and, indeed, the ACC. In my view, this is sufficient to bring the properties within the ambit of s. 7(4)(a) such that the consent of the Executive Committee and Bishop is necessary. As that consent is obviously not forthcoming, the properties remain with the Diocese.

Justice Kelleher’s reasons are of a nature that I most feared: we lose, but there are errors in the judge’s reasoning that make it tempting to appeal. He had no authority to reject the centuries old case law regarding the holding of church property on trust and adopt the American “neutral principles of law” approach. However even if we were to appeal and win on that point, we will lose anyway, for reasons set out in the judge’s reasoning on the trust argument.

The overreliance on the Solumn Declaration of 1893 was a huge mistake, because we cannot prove that the ACoC has abandoned it, as would be required to win the case. Justice Kelleher has set out some of the reasons. It is merely a resolution of General Synod, which GS can amend or change at any time. The ACoC has done nothing formally in derogation of it. We cannot prove that it has renounced its fundamental doctrines.

I have not discussed this before publicly lest it come to the attention of the other side, but the fundamental-principles doctrine we have been arguing has never, in the entire history of the Canada and the United Kingdom, been successfully argued except in case of a change of denomination. That is the kind of abandonment of fundamental principles required in order to win a case such as this.

So although the judge’s conclusion that under a trust argument the ACoC may change its doctrine in any way it chooses is wrong, even if the appeal court rejects it, we lose the case anyway.

It is not in our interest to appeal the decision; the risk is too great that the court will overturn the building-fund decision and the illegal-firing-of-trustees decision. I suppose the best we can do in NW is try to get a small sum of money on respect of the illegal trustee replacement and an agreement that neither side will appeal.
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I have been saying all along that we never had more than a 2% chance to win this case (upped to 5% with the addition of the cy pres argument.) For some reason God has allowed our leaders to be deluded regarding both the facts and law of this case. To date little damage has been done; the building fund part of the case was worthy of litigation anyway, and as long as we were in court the whole thing might as well be litigated. But the time for self-deception and disingenuous spin of the kind in this press release is over.

In Ontario there was not the realism to make a serious settlement offer to the diocese (a realistic offer would have had them keep the buildings and pay us around 25% of their net worth). It has been stated that the congregations stated that they wanted to keep their buildings and didn’t want to pay money to the diocese for buildings they had already paid for. They didn’t seem to realize, and apparently our internal structure created no way to inform them, that they weren’t going to have any choice in the matter. A negotiated settlement is now worth nothing to the diocese. Let us pray that our leaders have the strength and prudence to negotiate/arrange the best means of putting this all behind is and prepare for a new start.

I’m not sure how you can come up with as definitive a number as a 5% chance of winning; that seems highly implausible to me. Nevertheless, for my part, even if we had known our chances of success were very small, I would still have wanted to fight the court case; the only alternative would have been to roll over, play dead and be bludgeoned by a bullying heretical diocese. We may not have won, but I think we have fought the good fight.

One thing I am inclined to agree with you about is that the ruling is not as ambiguous as I first thought when I read the ANiC news release. I am not a lawyer, but the meaning of [295] seems clear enough to me: the trustees are still in place and have to either come under Ingham’s authority or quit. Also the lack of necessity to decide mentioned in [273] seems irrelevant since it is clear Kelleher has decided who owns the properties.

I am totally confident in the abilities of our legal team and we need to pray for our clergy and congregations as they try to get past this tragic decision. There is no question that Michael Ingham will push this for all it is worth as he clearly demonstrates his loyalty and that is definitely NOT our Lord and Saviour.

On the other side - a break away group wanting to exclude certain people.

There’s where you are wrong. It is not a matter of inclusion - all are truly welcome in ANiC churches. It is a matter of doctrine, and the authority of the bible.

It also depends upon how you define triumph. By worldly definitions, yes, it looks like Ingham won. However, as our archbishop said, “They get the stuff, we get the souls”. That seems more in tune with a biblical definition of triumph to me.

The ANiC parishes trust God and his provision. The fact that they were not successful in the lawsuit does not lessen that trust; if following God’s leading always meant earthly success, Jesus would not have died on the cross, early Christians would not have been eaten by lions and ANiC would have won the court case. As I suspect you know – it doesn’t work that way.

Bp. Ingham’s invitation has less of the loving father about it and more of the invitation of the spider to the fly.

ANiC does not claim to be “righteous”; it is because we are not righteous that we need the salvation that only Christ offers – the uniqueness of which Michael Ingham has denied.

I’m also interested in your Scriptural basis for the following comment:

I also believe if the break-away group’s position was correct and truly supported by God, they would have triumphed over a Bishop they call apostate!

Extending your logic, it would seem that you don’t believe the Apostles held a correct positon on much of anything or were supported by God. But maybe I misunderstand?

Brian

As to your claim that we would have triumphed you are forgetting the court is a civil court and, as such, is not concerned with theological issues. That is one of the main reasons the Diocese steered matters in that direction.

It is time for us to consider the words of hymn number 121 in the blue Book of Common Praise:-
“Christian doest thou see them on the holy ground, how the hosts of darkness compass thee around?
Christian, up and smite them, counting gain but loss; smite them by the merit of the holy Cross.” You will undoubtedly want to check the remainder of this much needed words at this time. It is definitely applicable to this situation.