Friday, October 05, 2007

ABC and advisors “making up the rules of the game as they go along”

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/index.php/2007/10/04/abc-and-advisors-making-up-the-rules-of-the-game-as-they-go-along/

[Anglican Mainstrean] 5 Oct 2007--The Anglican Communion is heading for an almighty pile-up. Sometime in November, a conservative archbishop is planning to announce radical plans to adopt a breakaway group of conservative American dioceses,and the resulting collision could prove very messy indeed. Under the plans, between three and five dioceses will - over a period of time - opt out of The Episcopal Church and affiliate with the conservative province thousands of miles away. The proposals, which I have seen, have been drawn up over a number of months and follow extensive consultations between the bishops of the American dioceses and their counterparts in the province concerned. Lawyers have advised the American dioceses that they should enjoy greater protection than parishes when it comes to the inevitable tug-of-war with the litigious leadership of the Episcopal Church over property because they are deemed to be legal entities in their own right. The dioceses will, however, have to respect all the legal niceties before opting out - most have to confirm fundamental constitutional changes at two subsequent meetings of their diocesan synods - so the realignment is expected to be staggered.

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