CNY Diocese: Episcopal Diocese Refuses to Settle its Lawsuit Against Syracuse Parish

Thursday, January 25, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Raymond J. Dague 315-422-2052
http://www.DagueLaw.com

After six months of litigation by the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York to take over one of its former parishes in Syracuse, that parish has offered to settle the case by giving their property to the diocese, but the diocese has refused. The diocese filed the lawsuit against St. Andrews Church last July to take the property from those who have worshiped in the local congregation since 1903. The Diocese did this because the parish transferred its allegiance from Bishop Gladstone "Skip" Adams, III of Syracuse to the Anglican Archbishop of Rwanda.

"We thought we were making a very generous and charitable offer to settle their lawsuit against our people," said Raymond Dague, attorney for the parish. "They would get the buildings which are owned by us and for which they have sued us. This would have spared everyone the continuing scandal of a bishop suing a local church to assert spiritual authority in the civil courts."

St. Andrews Church at 5013 South Salina Street in Syracuse, New York offered to stop defending the lawsuit and deed the church building, the parish hall, and the rectory over to the diocese in exchange for a nominal lease arrangement of up to five years so the people in the local congregation could find another place to worship. During the time of the lease, the local congregation and not the diocese would have been responsible to maintain the buildings, and then turn the keys over to the diocese once the congregation built a new church.

Until now, St. Andrews and its priest, Fr. Robert Hackendorf, have successfully resisted the attempt by the diocese to take the parish through legal action, both last July and again last September. The lawsuit became highly acrimonious when the Episcopal Diocese sued the individual members of the church governing vestry in addition to suing the local congregation. In September, the judge dismissed the part of the lawsuit where the diocese sued individual members of the parish vestry, and also denied a request for a preliminary injunction against the local church. The lawsuit against the parish and the rector was allowed to continue.

The settlement was patterned after a deal worked out last fall between All Saints Church in Woodbridge, Virginia and the Diocese of Virginia. But since the All Saints deal, the Virginia Episcopal bishop has now signaled his intention to sue up to 11 parishes which have separated from that diocese. The Virginia bishop has also refused to negotiate with those parishes, indicating a more aggressive posture against local parishes. The lawsuits in Syracuse and Virginia are part of a national trend of some Episcopal dioceses suing parishes. In California the Diocese of Los Angeles has unsuccessfully sued several churches, and those cases are now on appeal.

Bishop "Skip" Adams and the Syracuse parish are on opposite sides of a controversy over homosexual bishops and the authority of Scripture which has for years engulfed the Episcopal Church, and which is now heating up with more lawsuits by some dioceses. St. Andrews adheres to the traditional teaching of the church that sex outside of marriage is prohibited by the Bible, while the Bishop and the leaders of the larger church have been outspoken supporters of the actively homosexual bishop of New Hampshire and a more liberal view of the Scriptures.