How sad. Simply, how sad.

What would define "continuation" of a diocese of the Episcopal Church other than "continuation" of the relationship with the Episcopal Church. There is indeed a group of people who have continued in leadership roles for a community, including Duncan. However, it is the continuing relationship with the Episcopal Church, and not his continuing function of leadership for *some* community that defines the "continuing" diocese. I expect the court will rule accordingly.

The recent rulings in California, New York, and Connecticut should give him a clue - if only he wanted one.

The mind boggles. Does this man live in the same universe as the rest of us?

Bishop Duncan knows he is going to lose, but he is a bit like Hitler playing with his architectural models of his new capital, as the Red Army pounded Berlin.

The sad thing is that not one cent of the legal fees will come out of his pocket.

Three little words = three big lies: "Faithfully your bishop."

'T'aint so.

The Standing Committee of Bob Duncan's diocese includes Geoffrey Chapman, author of the secessionist blueprint Chapman Memo. How stupid does Duncan think we are? One more "it's not his lying to me I object to, so much as his thinking that I'm dumb enough to believe him" moment.

Marshall Scott wrote: >>...it is the continuing relationship with the Episcopal Church, and not his continuing function of leadership for *some* community that defines the "continuing" diocese.<<

What is if the opposite party says:

In the 16. century the whole RC Church in England-except a small minority-abandoned the communion of Rome, but remained the continuing Catholic Church of England.
In the 18. century the whole RC diocese of Utrecht abandoned-under coercion-the communion of Rome, but remained the continuing Catholic /Old Catholic/ diocese of Utrecht.

Peterk, the majority of English and Welsh people didn't realise what was happening..they were coerced by a vicious regime into acceptance of the Elizabethan settlement. Its a nineteenth century myth to say it was an all inclusive settlement.

PeterK,
In the two cases you cite it was not a question of individual dioceses, but of "national churches." This is the long-standing limit to the autonomous unit of churches in the Christian (i.e., Orthodox) tradition until Rome began to assert a universal primacy. Individual dioceses have no authority to withdraw from their province unilaterally; national churches do have the right to assert their autonomy over a central hegemony from Rome.

Two different things.

xDuncan is murmuring reassurances into his own hat, just to hear his own voice resound. I hope it comforts him, but we need not take his self-soothing as definitive law.

What xDuncan and Company so meanly preach about queer folks, well that is really personal, I assure you.

xDuncan cannot have it both ways: I am a modern Martin Luther type reformer with huge amounts of personal faith and courage to speak truth to power; and at the same time, I am just a humble bishop doing his humble job (which just happens to be looting the diocesan treasuries).

xDuncan is a Home Invasion gang leader. He knows it. We know it. Nobody at all is dumb enough to believe this stuff that gets published as cover story. I bet even little old Episcopal ladies in PBurg know it, oh yeah.

xDuncan's hobby of counting and policing queer folks orgasms - well that was just his hobby. His sad real offense is that he tries fraud, stealing diocesan assets which never really belonged to him and his sort in the first place.

If ten kids in a sunday school class give me the twenty dollars they collected for starving people in Darfur, and I agree to hold that twenty dollars for the class; it is not my money. Not even if I am a bishop.

I agreed to hold the money safe until the class decided what to do next. Now in effect xDuncan shows up, saying to us: Well class I put your twenty dollars in my retirement account, since after all you are all silly school children who do not know left from right, and after all, I am your bishop just as God says. Trust me on this, I am godly. I wouldn't mislead you.

Small Duncanized potatoes after Bernie Madoff, then.

PeterK:

We might need to discuss at length what it means to be "continuing Catholic;" but in neither case did the body consider itself the "continuing *Roman* Catholic" body - dioceses, but self-consciously in new ecclesial bodies. And the new prelates appointed from Rome with responsibility for the British Isles or for the Low Countries did not consider themselves coming to "new" sees, but to fill existing but vacated sees.

After the theft, the thief wants to "mediate". Oh xBob, same as you ever were!

Yes and the real diocese of Pittsburgh have acted with restraint and Christian charity... read their reply to Duncan on their web site.

Marshall Scott:

Of course, the "Duncanites" are no more Episcopalians. But I wrote not about this problem, but about the possibility to be a continuing diocese.

Regarding your argument:

The CoE did not consider itself the continuing ROMAN Catholic body, but the CoE took the RC church property with it.
The Old Catholics of the Netherlands did not want to become a separate church body. The official name of their Church is till now the "Roman Catholic Church of the Old Episcopal Cleresy", although the commonly used name is the "Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands".

Tobias Haller:

The Archdiocese of Utrecht was not the whole Catholic "national Church" of the Netherlandes.

I do not think that the case with Pittsburgh is the same, but your arguments are-in my opinion-not absolutely unquestionable.

Sincerely held convictions are not proof of continuity..there are plenty of people in mental asylums who think they are Napoleon etc.

"Sincerely held convictions are not proof of continuity..there are plenty of people in mental asylums who think they are Napoleon etc."

And there's been a whole string of bishops in Rome who think themselves kings of the bishops, too. The vast and intense disagreement with this on the part of a sizable chunk of the rest of the world's bishops would seem to prove your point, the Pope's convictions are not proof of continuity either.

Think the "Jerusalem syndrome".

"the Pope's convictions are not proof of continuity either." - Ford Elms (apropos R.I.W) -

No! Especially when one considers the 'accident' of the Double Papacy - in Rome and Avignon. Who, then, was really 'Pontifex Maximus'? And did (does) it really matter?. In some ways, every vicar could be said to be a 'Vicar of Christ'.

First Millennium Ecclesiology was that the Emperor or King was vicarius Christi.

The Bishop of Rome was successor to an Apostle and the Servant of the Servants of Christ.

Ah, but Goran, Rome's refusal to accept this, at least as it related to the power of the Bishop of Rome, played a huge role in a certain Papal legate placing a Bull of Excommunication against the Patriarch on the altar of Hagia Sophia and beating the dust from his shoes as he stormed out in a huff.

"Refusal to accept"??? The definition of a Revolutionary Usurpation.

Leading to the 1073 Dictatus Papae and the split between Religion and Life so habitual in the West...