A. Articles of Incorporation
B. Parish By-laws
C. Any operable letters of agreement of employment agreements between clergy and the wardens and vestry of the parish or any other representative body however named.
D. Title (including Deeds and other documents which affect title) to all real property.
E. Balance sheet for fiscal year 2004, 2005, and a balance sheet as of March 31, 2006.
F. Evidence of appropriate Surety Bond as required by canons.

In none of the directives is there a call to conform to the doctrine and discipline of the faith once delivered to the saints.

In recent months the majorities of two congregations in the diocese have left the Episcopal Church. The Rev. Keith Acker SSC rector of Christ the King Episcopal Church in Alpine, California, departed from the Episcopal Church. The traditionalist Anglo-Catholic congregation joined the Anglican Province of America. They quit over the on-going crisis of faith and order within the Episcopal Church.

What pushed Acker over the edge was the bishop's refusal to license one of his assistants. His act of secession was compounded when the bishop did an in-your-face act by bringing a female deacon with him to celebrate at the parish. They have started a new congregation, Blessed Trinity. A second evangelical parish St. Anne's, Oceanside, led by the Rev. Tony Baron also fled the diocese and ECUSA with 97 percent of the congregation voting to come under Bolivian Bishop Frank Lyons. They plan to stay on their property as the deed belongs to the rector, the wardens and vestry of St. Anne's. The church is over 100 years old.

But VOL reported several months ago that as many as 8-9 parishes are ready to quit the diocese and the Episcopal Church following General Convention, hence the current directive by the revisionist Bishop James Mathes.

In his missile to the diocese, the toughest and most strident ever seen by this reporter of an Episcopal bishop to his diocese, Mathes says, "You are my representatives in the sacramental and teaching life of the church. The act of participating in or benignly tolerating a vestry denying my ecclesiastical and apostolic authority by changing any of these aforementioned documents represents a failure of your vow of obedience."

"Consistent with this, I now direct specifically that you shall not participate in changing these documents in any way to disaffiliate your parish from the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, the Episcopal Church, and/or my ecclesiastical authority as your bishop. You are further directed to take no actions which would have the effect of removing or purporting to remove yourself from my ecclesiastical authority."

"If you and your congregation pursue an effort at secession, you will at that moment be in violation of your ordination vows," Bishop Mathes wrote. "By this pastoral direction, you will be, by that very act or by your participation, an inhibited priest and deprived of standing or canonical or legal authority to do the very action you purport to effect. In issuing this pastoral direction, it is my hope that the issue of attempted congregational secession can be conclusively addressed and that we can concentrate on what is our common work together."

But Bishop Mathes is on shaky ground. To date California courts have used neutral principles of law to adjudicate church property disputes and three parishes in the Diocese of Los Angeles have won lower court rulings to keep their properties. Three efforts by Bishop J. Jon Bruno to take back the properties have failed. By their action the civil courts have nullified the notorious Dennis Canon.

Recently the Episcopal Church's highest administrative body, the Executive Council authorized an expenditure of $100,000 from short-term reserves for the House of Bishops' ad hoc task force on property disputes. This is being done because it is believed that some dioceses don't have the financial resources to fight civil actions over property disputes. Sources tell VOL that this is a drop in the bucket as to what will be needed following General Convention when all hell is expected to break loose with fleeing parishes across the country.

END