Episcopal Diocese sues for control of Groton church

The action of the Connecticut Episcopal Bishop and those filing this lawsuit violates scriptural mandate, the love of Christ, the faithful parishioners who have already been alienated by the Episcopal Churches failure to be faithful, and common sense. Ironically it exposes you (The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut) to in love with power and property rather than Jesus. You expose yourselves to be exactly what your critics say you are. You are at the very least intelligent, educated people - why can't you get this?

Give to Caesar what is Caesars, and unto God what is God's.

I always thought the Church taught it was better to give than receive, or is it for those at the bottom to give and those at the top to receive.

The church is still a business, owns property and can exclude who it wants

The church leaders get together, decide that they own all the property,and "lose" the meeting minutes that prove it even passed.

That parish has no debt to the diocese, and takes no money from it. Yet they are being ordered to give over the deeds, which it holds, the money, the pulpit, and the endowments to the twisted, spiritually bankrupt remains of a so-called "church", the likes of which would have its founders spinning in their graves. Why is this happening? Because the parish has decided they don't want to change their beliefs according to every new prevailing wind that comes along.

I guess religious freedom today is only for those who agree with the people in power. Those who don't follow along with these theological innovations are crushed without mercy.

It's Bolshevism at its best.

Membership in the diocese of Connecticut has been dropping each year for the past 10 years, a 17.3% drop. Average Sunday attendance (ASA) began plunging after 2002.(Gene Robinson was consecrated in 2003). The yearly drops in ASA from 2003 to 2006, the last year data available, were 982, 545, 651, and 545. Now there are are about 177 parishes in the diocese or about 110 attending per parish on a given week.

Thus, the diocese is losing the equivalent of 5 to 9 parishes EACH YEAR . The diocese needs less buildings not more.

Bp Smith's locking out members of their churches and suing other Christians will only accelerate the demise of the diocese. The diocesan website gives Bp Smith's email (see http://tinyurl.com/5o56s4 ). I plan to write him and remind him of St. Paul's very clear injunction against lawsuits (1 Cor 6:1-8).

The issue(s) related to MONEY really seem to be the motivation of the Episcopal Church at the moment-- with hardly a phoneme sincerely uttered about Christian discipleship and NOT serving Mammon, but God.
To paraphrase Mohandas Gandhi is reported to have said, if/when the great masses in a population move to abolish the Raj/Rule in "India," then no Empire will abide there. In the end this utterly mercenary business of grabbing the finances of churches that do not 'go with the program' of the ECUSA in sensitive and caring Christians will have only the effect of SICKENING...The Raj of the Pink Nation in Anglicanism (established) in the end will confront the reality that minors deserve-- and will get-- minority status-- and that the Silenced Majority-- those who have been forced to quietus about this oppression-- which only appears aimed at 'getting the loot and running' from the previously unassuming Episcopal form of worship-- will be addressed/redressed with all the vigor that the federal government can (and should) invoke in countering Racketeering -- viz. RICO and other anti-Syndicate legislation.
With this fallen/thrown business-as-too-usual, the words of Yeats come to mind...
"THINGS FALL APART; THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD;
MERE ANARCHY IS LOOSED UPON THE WORLD...
AND WHAT ROUGH BEAST,
ITS HOUR COME AT LAST,
SLOUCHES TOWARD BETHLEHEM TO BE BORN?"
The Second Coming (1921)
--With Best Wishes for a Kinder Jesus-Movement,
Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Louisville, KY, USA