Wednesday, July 13, 2016

San Joaquin Appeal Rebuffed by California Supreme Court

I have held off writing about the case of the Episcopal Church (USA)'s lawsuit against the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin as it was going through its final stages in the California courts. Today I can do so no longer, because today the California Supreme Court slammed the door shut by denying review of the abysmally egregious decision by the Fifth District Court of Appeal that I wrote about in this post, and this one. Naturally, it wrote no opinion justifying its refusal to grant review, but just issued a one-sentence order. [UPDATE 07/18/2016: To read the legal arguments and details of why we believed the Supreme Court should review the decision by the Fifth District Court. click on this link to access and/or download a .pdf of the Reply Brief we filed, which summarizes the issues pretty well.]

The result is that the Episcopal Church (USA)'s Machiavellian strategy of organizing a minority group that pretends to be the only diocese in the region after one of its former dioceses votes (by an overwhelming majority of laity and clergy) to realign with a more orthodox denomination has succeeded in California, much the same as it did in Pittsburgh. (But not -- Deo gratias -- in Illinois (Quincy), or [yet] in Fort Worth or in South Carolina [whose highest court has yet to issue its decision, ten months after the oral argument].) So the lawyers for 815 Second Avenue managed to hoodwink the highest judges in both Pennsylvania and California, but not everywhere.

In Pennsylvania, the appellate decisions were unpublished, so no lasting precedent was (thankfully) created. But in California, the Court of Appeal decided to publish its decision, so it will now stand forever in the California Reports as a monument to the inability of secular judges to figure out even the most rudimentary aspects of church canon law and corporations sole. (Haven't I always said on this blog that St. Paul already warned Christians of such ignorance centuries ago?) Unfortunately, when ECUSA sues its fellow Christians, it is the one responsible for dragging the canons into the civil courts -- and violating its very own canon in so doing:
Sec. 2. No member of the Church, whether lay or ordained, may seek to have the Constitution and Canons of the Church interpreted by a secular court, or resort to a secular court to address a dispute arising under the Constitution and Canons, or for any purpose of delay, hindrance, review or otherwise affecting any proceeding under this Title.
As this blog has repeatedly and exhaustively shown, however, ECUSA's leaders and parishioners just don't care about such things. All they appear to care about, given their litigation strategy, is money and property.

Just as I am done with ECUSA, so I am done with judges in California. In their collective inability to apply neutral principles to religious entities, and in order to allow 815 to lord it over local parishes and dioceses, they have made mincemeat of the Statute of Frauds, have misread a key statute to favor just the Church, have ruled that the trust imposed on all parish properties by the Dennis Canon can be lifted only by General Convention (and not by any single bishop), and now have let stand a decision that makes hash of the concept of a corporation sole -- and that rewards parties who resort to self-help by filing fraudulent papers with the Secretary of State rather than seek the aid of the courts in the first instance. They are so incompetent in these matters that it does no good whatsoever to write about their rulings anymore. Moreover, ECUSA is welcome to live and operate here under the skewed doctrines it has so brought into being -- along with its blasphemous rites of same-sex unions, its unwavering support for abortion, and all its other manifold apostasies.

There will be those, I well know, who will just say that the Curmudgeon is giving vent to sour grapes. They are just the ones, however, who have not followed the eight years of church litigation -- and the constant fight for right decision-making -- to which this blog has been dedicated, as an unflinching witness to the unvarnished truth. There is absolutely no sense of feeling a victim here; only regret that some very fine people who relied upon their attorneys to do their level best have been let down in the final analysis by their elected judges. May ECUSA, its bishops, clergy and laity get everything they deserve.

Homine sit turpitudo, Deo sit gloria.


14 comments:

  1. One suggested correction to your post: Delete "its fellow" from this phrase: "when ECUSA sues its fellow Christians". I'm sorry about this result. Hoping for the best in South Carolina. -- Watt

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    1. You are entirely correct in that suggestion, T. tawagoto -- it's done, and thank you!

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    2. I see the letter from Bp. Menees on anglican.ink. TOTALLY different from the typical response when the other side loses. -- Watt

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  2. So sorry for the people of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin. I pray that their mission will be all the stronger for having endured the lashings from 815.

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  3. I for one am not buying anything decided by these judges. It is abundantly clear that not only have they kowtowed to the Episcopal Church and their hirelings, but they have swallowed liberalism hook, line, and sinker. I of course am not an attorney, so I can't comment in legalese, but as a layman, I would never want these judges, or any others like them, to sit in judgement in a case where I was involved in property litigation against me personally.

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  4. An American Tragedy. May Peace be with the
    Unchurch.

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  5. I used to think it would be the Executive branch burocracy that will destroy this Democratic Republic; now I think it will be the Courts.

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  6. Curmudgeon, please let us know if there is any possible way that we could look at San Joaquin's result as being consistent with neutral principles of law. I simply cannot imagine any rationalization for this outcome. Am I being obstinate? Is my bias too great?

    This legal result reminds me of another recent controversy. We lived in California when Proposition 8 was passed, affirming that marriage is between one man and one woman. I was shocked and gratified when the California Supreme Court upheld the law. I was sickened when the federal 9th Circuit struck it down, and when the Supreme Court of the US rejected the appeal because the citizens of California behind the appeal have no standing; only California's executive politicians actually have standing to sue to uphold the laws. This process is badly broken.

    Things are not perfect where we are now, but absurd results appear to occur on a scale perhaps 10 times smaller than in California. Justice seems to prevail more often than not. On the other hand, California's political corruption has reached a level where I fear the state has fallen under tyrannical one party rule; and courts will likely decide in favor of those who are politically favored.

    I believe that our political system has historically moved toward extremes and then retreated. For instance, after FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society, we did have moderation in the 80's. I also believe that the earthly institutions of the Church have been rotting from within since some time in the First Century, and yet great things have been done by the Church. Also the US has been a largely Christian and believing nation, and continues to be so today. I fervently hope that the failure of the Left to win every court case against departing Anglicans, indicates that even California's judiciary can one day swing back toward justice. If not, then I will pray for our Curmudgeon and other California Christians from the relative comfort of my state. Then again, maybe I will pick up my cross, embrace the persecution joyfully, and move back to the lovely physical climate of my once-home state.

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    1. LJ, see the Update I added to the first paragraph of our post for a link to our reply brief -- there you can see that the Fifth District's decision is about as far from "neutral principles" as one could get. The problem is that they agreed with us on all of our neutral principles points, and reversed the trial court on every issue which it had decided in ECUSA's favor. But then they decided to hand over all the property to ECUSA anyway, by perversely reading the change-of-name amendment as though it never had any effect. It gave standing to strangers outside the Anglican Diocese to challenge its internal procedures in civil court. And then, even though the rump group had not followed its own internal procedures in properly calling and holding a convention, the Court held that because the Anglican Diocese had only partly followed its rules, it would award all of the property to the group that had completely failed to follow its rules. Go figure.

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    2. Remembering that I once read that British lawyers consider slowness of a court in making decisions a sign of weakness from an intellectual standpoint, I found this related quote online from an old American Bar Association (ABA) Journal quoting Karl Detzer, an American lawyer: "No political influence, direct or indirect, is tolerated anywhere in the administration of British justice."

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  7. I wish it were otherwise, but the fight is over. The ultimate verdict, as I see it, will rest with God, and not with the California courts, which I believe, are so loaded with liberals these days as to ensure that it is nearly impossible for conservatives to have their say in court on any issue.

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  8. As Justice Thomas has written, liberal judges are not making decisions based on law anymore but on policy objectives. They decide first who should win and then twist the law to achieve that end. Obviously, it was decided that the liberal TEC could not lose to the conservative gay haters and the judicial system in CA made it happen. End of a very sad story.

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  9. So let me get this straight, put aside your flowery language, when the courts rule for you, they are brilliant and just jurist, and when they rule against you, it's the devils work. I thank God that our judicial system is not so capricious. Why can't you just say this is Gods will and let's see if God prospers the churches that choose to leave. I think biblically that will be how we determine who was truly right in this matter.

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    1. Omar Reyes, you cannot possibly judge, as a layman, the things that were so awful in the published opinion (as revised) of the Fifth Appellate District. Suffice it to say that you will never read any piece by an informed attorney or professor of law that defends its decision to treat a permanent entity (a corporation sole) as passing out of existence just because its governing group did not dot all their i's and cross all their t's in filing an amendment as to how it was to be called in the future in California. Such defects normally are (and in this case, were) corrected by adopting a resolution ratifying the change that was attempted to be made. (The Court held that only the Diocesan Convention could approve the change of name to the corporation sole. Well, the Convention did just that in October 2008, but the judges chose willfully to ignore that fact so that they could hold that the "corporation sole did not exist" when it transferred title to the Diocese's property six months earlier. A corporation sole, by law, has a permanent legal existence. It is arrant nonsense to claim that it did not exist just because its name was different at the time its deeds were signed.)

      It is indeed God's will that this totally ignorant decision be the current law in California -- good luck with that. And as to your idea that God is prospering ECUSA, may I just inform you that we attorneys for the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin have been told that the victorious Episcopal "plaintiffs" have no congregations whatsoever that they can put into any of the churches that the egregious California civil courts have -- in their secular stupidity -- awarded to them.

      So, I will turn your own comment back on you: whom is God prospering here? ECUSA, who has no people to fill up the churches that they have seized with the connivance of the blundering California courts, or the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, which is growing weekly by leaps and bounds, and whose congregations are more than willing to find new spaces in which they are free to worship without being beholden to the apostate, bullying and property-grubbing Episcopal Church? ( Like the dog in Aesop's fable, it cannot enjoy or use the hay itself, but perversely delights in keeping the hungry oxen from feeding in their own manger.)

      Sorry to be so harsh in reply, OmarReyes, but frankly, you asked for it. You come here proclaiming the righteousness of the test of Gamaliel, but then you are ignorant of the facts that show that ECUSA has utterly failed, and is continuing to fail, as we trade comments, in that very test. May God grant you the grace to see the error of your misplaced loyalties.

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