Setback for Third Province movement in San Jaoquin ruling

Wednesday, 6th May 2009
By George Conger

The third province movement in the United States may have received a severe setback this week after a California court issued a tentative ruling holding that dioceses are creatures of the national Episcopal Church and may not secede.

On May 4, Judge Adolfo Corona of the Fresno Superior Court issued a preliminary opinion, stating that he would likely issue a summary judgment on behalf of the Episcopal Church against Bishop John-David Schofield and the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin.

As a matter of law and fact the judge argued, the Episcopal Church was a “hierarchical church is one in which individual churches are organized as a body with other churches having similar faith and doctrine, and with a common ruling convocation or ecclesiastical head vested with ultimate ecclesiastical authority over the individual congregations and members of the entire organized church.”

“In a hierarchical church, an individual local congregation that affiliates with the national church body becomes a member of a much larger and more important religious organization, under its government and control, and bound by its orders and judgments,” he said. Under this principal, a parish is a subunit of a diocese, which is itself a subunit of the national Episcopal Church, the Judge Corona reasoned. the rest