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COLORADO SPRINGS: Orthodox Priest Fights Back With Lawsuits Against Diocese
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
1/23/2008
Members and clergy of Grace & St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, an orthodox parish that fled the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Colorado, have filed lawsuits against Colorado Bishop Robert O'Neill and the diocese asking the courts to dismiss the diocese and bishop's filings against the Vestry of the parish. They lawsuit also includes a charge of extortion personally against O'Neill and the vestry.
In legal papers received by VirtueOnline, the parish alleges that the lay leadership of the church was merely doing its duty (ratified by over ninety-percent of the church) in supporting the Rev. Don Armstrong, and carrying out their fiduciary duties "in the best interest of the Church and its membership for the church to continue to own and utilize the Church's real and personal property."
O'Neill sent a letter threatening each of the individual defendants with a civil damage lawsuit unless they "gave up the occupation of the property."
In their counterclaim, the Vestry argues that the letter "is a blatant attempt by O'Neill, and through him the Diocese, to extort the individual defendants into violating their fiduciary and statutory duties to preserve the Church's property".
They say that bringing a third party complaint against individual defendants is an abuse of process under Colorado law by "asking the vestry to violate their duty to preserve the church's property for sue by its members."
The parish is now under the ecclesiastical authority of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), the U.S. branch of the Anglican Province of Nigeria and their bishop The Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns. It has been the tactic of attorney's like David Booth Beers, the national chancellor, to sue vestries, made up of laity, in an effort to intimidate them in property disputes.
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