Thinking Anglicans

Brazilian court rules against Recife breakaway diocese

The News Service of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil reports:

Court Orders Return of Churches to the Anglican Diocese of Recife / Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil”

After a long judicial battle that lasted for a decade, a Brazilian judge has this month finally decided that the actions taken by Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti in creating of the Diocese of Recife – DR, flagrantly violated Brazilian law as well as Canon law, the Doctrine & Discipline of the Episcopal Anglican Church in Brazil (IEAB), resulting in the suspension/demotion, and eventual dismissal of Bishop Robinson from his episcopal authority & legal legitimacy for such actions.

With the sentence, it was decreed that all the actions taken by Bishop Robinson were nullified, and all would be returned to the Anglican Diocese of Recife (DAR), including property, administration & all goods and rights which were illegally usurped, including amongst them five churches with all of their belongings. From now on, all of these parishes are under the direction and supervision of Diocesan Bishop Sebastião Armando…

For some background to this, a Thinking Anglicans report from 2005 may be helpful: Recife: a clarification.

Many of the links from that report are now broken, but the article from the Living Church is still available from the web archive Southern Cone Primate Annexes Brazilian Diocese.

There is also this 2005 report from the Church Times Venables takes Brazilian diocese under his wing. The current issue also has a news report, but this is only available to subscribers.

Anglican Ink has this report by George Conger: Recife loses court battle over church property to the IEAB.

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Concerned Anglican
Concerned Anglican
11 years ago

This is good news – same as in most of the American Episcopal Church. Breakaway factions cannot secede and take the property and money with them, that would be a recipe for anarchy.

If there are sincerely held beliefs that compel people to leave their churches and start another, then they must do it the hard way – from scratch by themselves, not stealing from the parent body.

Look at Scottish Presbyterianism to see how it’s been done in previous generations.

Laurence
Laurence
11 years ago

So the courts have ruled against theft – right I see ! Who would have thought it ?

Father Ron Smith
Father Ron Smith
11 years ago

GAFCON leaders must be wondering where the next legal battle will take their sponsored schismatic elements in both North and South America – in terms of their continuance as rebel ex-Anglican faith communities that have lost their property battles with their local Anglican Church bodies. After the disappointment with the property claims of their ACNA associates in the USA and Canada, GAFCON must by now be wondering how their campaign of encouraging local disaffiliation from mainline Anglican Churches turns out. In many cases, the local civil legal authorities have rejected claims of the dissidents to property that does not belong… Read more »

Cynthia
Cynthia
11 years ago

So much for the propaganda that “the entire Global South stood in opposition to the liberal Anglican churches.”

Jeremy
Jeremy
11 years ago

“Those of us who remain loyal to the Founding Province of Canterbury….” I don’t think this is a useful way for liberals to define ourselves. We are loyal to a certain form of Anglicanism, the via media, the Elizabethan Settlement, the three-legged stool, etc. Sometimes Canterbury is loyal to that form of Anglicanism–but very often it is not. Consider the treatment of the Episcopal Church over the past decade, at Canterbury’s hands. And now the worm has turned in Parliament, and gay marriage is the law of the land. And the CofE, Canterbury included, is left looking rather stupid. People… Read more »

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