Free Republic

February 6 Roy Schoeman- Jewish ConvertMark Shea- Former Baptist, Dr. Scott Hahn- Former Presbyterian, Fr. Ray Ryland- Former Episcopalian

Over at the National catholic Fishwrap, which sports the word “Catholic� in their title despite having been explicitly told not to by the local bishop, has an amusingly flaky piece by Sr. Maureen Fiedler, whom we have seen several times in these electronic pages. Sr. Fiedler is worked up over the new Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans/Episcopalians in the USA.Why? Because we should not welcome anyone into our Church who are against human equality!These new Anglican Catholics are fleeing from a welcoming, inclusive, non-homophobic community into one which denies that women and the abnormal sex acronym crowd can be ordained. Get...

More than 400 people, including a U.S. senator, witnessed the first same-sex civil union in Delaware on New Year's Day. Lawyers Lisa Goodman and Drewry Fennell were joined in the union by the Rev. Patricia Downing, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Wilmington, where the Sunday afternoon ceremony took place. Goodman and Fennell have been partners for 14 years. Goodman is a lawyer who led the advocacy group Equality Delaware's fight for the civil union law. Fennell heads the state Criminal Justice Council and formerly led the ACLU's Delaware chapter. U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., delivered the sermon and Lt....

Twenty-six months since Anglicanorum coetibus laid the groundwork for groups of Anglicans to cross the Tiber whilst maintaining elements of their liturgical, spiritual, theological and canonical patrimony, the top-shelf papal project has taken a sizable leap this New Year's morning, with as the establishment of the venture's Stateside jurisdiction by the Holy See. In an unprecedented Sunday announcement -- a significant sign of Rome's degree of seriousness about the effort -- the Vatican's press bulletin gave official word of the erection of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, encompassing the territory of the United States. The...

(StAgustine.com) New Year’s Day ushers in a new era for Roman Catholics and members of the Anglican Church who will have the opportunity to enter into “corporate reunion� with the Holy See.An apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus, issued by Pope Benedict XVI, will lead to the creation of “personal ordinariates,� geographic regions similar to dioceses but typically national in scope.Parishes in these ordinariates are to be Catholic yet retain elements of the Anglican heritage and liturgical practices. They are to be led by an “ordinary� who will have a role similar to a bishop, but who may be either a...

At least 20 clergy and several hundred of their parishioners are already lined up to join the Ordinariate, the new structure set up by the Pope a year ago that allows them to remain some of their Anglican heritage while entering into full communion with the Holy See. But many more members of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England are likely to defect following a critical meeting of its governing body, the General Synod, if traditionalists who cannot accept the ordination of women are denied special provision. The head of the Ordinariate, Mgr Keith Newton, told The Daily...

Rome will formally announce appointment on New Year's DayFormer Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande, Jeffrey Steenson, is to be named the Ordinary when the Anglican Ordinariate is erected on January 1, 2012, sources tell VOL. Word seeped out from the Vatican late last week that Steenson -- who left The Episcopal Church in 2007 over TEC's polity - has been tapped for the new post as the Ordinariate gets its first foothold in the United States. The former Episcopal House of Bishops' member has been deeply concerned with the continued fracturing of Anglicanism. The Episcopal Church's insistence on autonomy...

Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Fort Worth Baltimore, Md., Nov 17, 2011 / 11:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Fort Worth will be in charge of welcoming and forming Episcopal priests who wish to become Catholic priests under the recently announced U.S. Anglican ordinariate.The appointment, which was made by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was announced on Nov. 15 by Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington at the U.S. bishops’ fall general assembly in Baltimore. Cardinal Wuerl also announced that an Anglican ordinariate will be established in the U.S. on Jan. 1,...

BALTIMORE (EWTN News)—A group of religious sisters in Maryland is believed to be the first U.S. Episcopal order to become a Catholic religious community. On Nov. 1, the All Saints Sisters of the Poor professed their perpetual vows at the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore. Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, received the sisters into a newly erected diocesan priory at a special Mass on the feast of All Saints. The 10 sisters had been part of a religious community within the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. After seven years...

WASHINGTON -- Once a flagship denomination of American mainline Protestantism, the U.S.-based Episcopal Church has for the first time in decades reported membership below two million.Self-reported statistics provided by the denomination this month show that the church has dropped from 2,006,343 members in 2009 to 1,951,907 in 2010, the most recent reporting year. The loss of 54,436 members increases the annual rate of decline from 2 percent to 3 percent, outpacing the most recently reported declines in most other mainline churches. The church's 10-year change in active members has dropped 16 percent.A branch of the otherwise fast-growing 80 million member worldwide...

... the guidelines established for the Anglican ordinariate by Pope Benedict XVI's in his 2009 apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus his 2007 Apostolic Letter "Summorum Pontificum" is St. Luke’s, in Maryland:“This truly is a historic moment,” said Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, who led Sunday’s conversion Mass, which he called “a joyful moment of completion.”Fifty-eight of St. Luke’s roughly 100 parishioners were confirmed at the applause-filled Mass, during which they were anointed by Wuerl — one by one, old and young, white and black.Osita Okafor, a 56-year-old Nigerian immigrant, found himself first in...

When the Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, N.Y., left the Episcopal Church over disagreements about what the Bible says about sexuality, the congregation offered to pay for the building in which it worshiped. In return the Episcopal Church sued to seize the building, then sold it for a fraction of the price to someone who turned it into a mosque.

The Washington National Cathedral, in its commemoration of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, has deliberately and carefully excluded evangelicals from their multi-religious commemoration. The service includes Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims, but not evangelical Christians. Mind you, I am opposed to interfaith services in any shape or form and that is why, in a previous blog, I stated that I was relieved that the mayor of New York spared us the agony of watching the One, True God of the Bible “worshipped” alongside false gods. National Cathedral (Washington, DC)The National Cathedral is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation. Having...

“[We must] talk of hard financial issues and church decline and growth, to address elephants in the room, and to speak truth to one another in love." Executive Council of the Episcopal Church A month long investigation by Virtueonline into the numerical state of The Episcopal Church reveals that more than one third of all 6825 Episcopal parishes in the U.S. have an average Sunday attendance (ASA) of 40 or less. VOL believes that the figure of 2.3 million Episcopalians, regularly stated by TEC leaders and officials, does not reveal the true state of church attendance. More than two-thirds of...

After same-sex marriage becomes legal here on July 24, gay priests with partners in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island will head to the altar. They have to. Their bishop set a nine-month deadline for them to marry or stop living together. Next door, meanwhile, the Episcopal bishop of New York says he also expects gay clergy in committed relationships to wed "in due course." Still, this longtime supporter of gay rights says churches in his diocese are off limits for gay weddings until he receives clearer liturgical guidance from the national denomination. As more states legalize same-sex marriage, religious...

Some of the Episcopal Church bishops in New York will require its gay clergy to avail themselves to the state’s Marriage Equality Act that legalizes same-sex marriage when it goes into effect on July 24.Bishop Lawrence Provenzano of the Diocese of Long Island announced in a pastoral letter that clergy living in same-gender relationships in the Diocese of Long Island must either marry within nine months of the new law being implemented or live separately.“For the gay and lesbian clergy of this Diocese who are living in domestic partnerships or civil unions, I hereby grant a grace period of nine months...

I wrote an article on this site a few months ago in which I expressed a change of mind. After many years of kicking against my native Anglicanism, I found that the American version of it, the Episcopal church, was to my liking.As I previously explained, this church is proof that Anglicanism is not necessarily defined by the intolerable (to me) conservatism of the C of E. There is a world elsewhere. I always vaguely knew this on a theoretical level, but since moving to New York I have experienced its truth.....I've been attending a well-known arty-liberal church in Manhattan...

The interior of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Bladensburg, MD. Credit: Mohamedu Jones Bladensburg, Md., Jun 8, 2011 / 06:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The small congregation of St. Luke’s Episcopal parish in Bladensburg, Maryland will join the Catholic Church through the Anglican ordinariate structure created by Pope Benedict XVI.“We welcome the St. Luke community warmly into our family of faith,” Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington said June 6. “The proposed ordinariate provides a path to unity, one that recognizes our shared beliefs on matters of faith while also recognizing and respecting the liturgical heritage of the Anglican Church.”He...

A great day to sleep late in Jersey, as long as you’re not within earshot of St John’s in Montclair. via Interfaith Service at St. John’s Parish in Montclair | Baristanet. This Sunday morning, May 22, at 10 a.m., the sounds of the adhan — the Muslim call to prayer — will ring out in St. John’s Episcopal Church Montclair. While there’s no minaret at the church, the words of “Allahu akbar,” (God is greater) will none-the-less invite both Christians and Muslims to worship side by side. During the interfaith service, verses from the Holy Qur’an will complement readings from...

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A years-long fight between The Episcopal Church and several conservative congregations has landed back in a courtroom in Virginia. Several prominent congregations with roots dating to Colonial times, including Truro Church in Fairfax and The Falls Church, voted in 2006 to split from The Episcopal Church and align with a group of conservative Anglican churches. The congregations disagreed with what their members felt was liberal Episcopal doctrine on homosexuality and other issues.

Yet another denomination has voted to ordain openly homosexual candidates to its ministry. Yesterday, the Presbyterian Church (USA) presbytery of the Twin Cities in Minnesota voted to approve a change to the church’s constitution that will allow the denomination’s 173 presbyteries to ordain persons without regard to sexual orientation. The Twin Cities presbytery cast the deciding vote in what is now a 33-year effort to remove all restrictions on homosexuals serving in the church’s ordained ministry. It became the 87th presbytery to affirm the action of the church’s 219th assembly last summer authorizing the constitutional change. The action not only...

http://www.saintthomaschurch.org/music/services/show/1785 click listen now

I’m still here in Israel on an Act For Israel media fellowship. After many days, packed with meetings, yesterday we visited the Golan Heights. On our way from there, we stopped at Yardenit, a site on the Jordan River where, in honor of Jesus’ baptism near there, some are baptized into the Christian faith.While there, a young woman was wearing a white robe indicating she was to be baptized. I overheard a conversation she was having with someone else. She said she was going to be baptized but “not really� as she’s not very religious and just wanted to...

I made a solemn New Year's resolution (complete with a long, unblinking stare while swearing with my hand placed upon a copy of "O" magazine) to not waste much more time or cyber ink on Alberto Cutie. But then I read this interesting bit of "news":Alberto Cutie, a priest who was forced out of the Catholic Church because of the fact that he married a woman is now getting his own reality TV show (Fox) in a bizarre turn of events.I thought, "That's strange: I don't remember Cutie being forced out of the Catholic Church." I do remember that he...

The most powerful propaganda is often the most subtle. If a person is portrayed as doing great, humanitarian things versus doing divisive or hurtful things, that person's cause and message are also given a psychological boost. In today's culture wars the mainstream media does this in spades. When writing about people involved in these issues, there is rarely any middle ground -- as we've warned pro-family people for years. Although the casual reader may not realize it, the media takes this very seriously. On Dec. 5 the Boston Globe ran a prominent feature article on Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the...

The historic marriage of Episcopal Divinity School, dean and president, the Very Reverend Katherine Hancock Ragsdale and Mally Lloyd, Canon to the Ordinary, took place today at the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Boston.The Episcopalian bishop of Massachusetts began 2011 by solemnizing the first lesbian marriage - of two senior Episcopalian clergy - at Boston's St Paul's Cathedral Saturday (January 1). The marriage of Episcopal Divinity School, dean and president, the Very Reverend Katherine Hancock Ragsdale and Mally Lloyd, Canon to the Ordinary, was the first lesbian marriage solemnized by the Right Reverend M Thomas Shaw SSJE, Bishop Diocesan...

With Pope Benedict XVI's Anglicanorum Coetibus clearing away the obstacles for Anglicans to reunite with Rome, some Episcopal parishes are doing that very thing. This past Sunday, Baltimore's Mount Calvary Episcopal Church voted to join the Catholic Church, making it the first congregation in Maryland to do so.The small Anglo Catholic parish at Madison Avenue and Eutaw Street was feeling increasingly alienated from the Episcopal Church as it accepted priests who did not believe in what most of the congregation saw as the foundations of the faith, according to Warren Tanghe, a former Episcopal priest who is now attending...

Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC: The Grand Procession of the Ghouls, Blessing of the bicycles, the creepy Peace Fountain, The Peace Altar, Paul Winter’s Earth Mass and Summer/Winter Solstice concert, Blessing of the Animals, Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, The Temple of Understanding, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, William Irwin Thompson, The Lindisfarne Association, Madeleine L’Engle, Rev. James Parks Morton, United Nations Sunday, and Christa: a crucifix depicting Christ as a woman… and more!

On Tuesday night, a group of 40 Episcopal bishops from around the country attended a weekly vigil in Douglas, AZ, held for those who have died trying to cross illegally into the U.S. The advocacy group known as Frontera de Cristo has been conducting the vigils along the Pan-American Highway since 2000. The group placed crosses on the sidewalk and spoke the names of those who died attempting the illegal crossing. The bishops are in Arizona for a meeting of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, and have been visiting with illegal aliens and listening to their stories...

One God of Love and Peace: Muslim/Christian Event on Saturday, September 11 Submitted by sdaughtry on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 10:49am. St. Thomas Episcopal Church invites you to gather on Saturday, September 11 at 2pm to celebrate and give thanks for our common humanity as brothers and sisters created by one God. Dr. Imad Damaj of the Virginia Muslim Coalition and the Rev. Susan N. Eaves will read passages from the Koran and the Christian Scriptures that speak of our shared understanding of the God who calls us into community, love of God, and love of neighbor. Please join us for...

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, will ordain an Episcopal cleric from New York State as the Episcopal bishop of Alaska on September 4. The ceremony will take place at a Catholic parish in Anchorage. Until recently, Lattime was a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester’s Committee for Gay and Lesbian Ministry, which “seeks to further the cause of recognition and legitimization of lesbian and gay relationships within the church and in civil society.” Lattime is married and has three children. “Catholic churches are consecrated or blessed buildings which have an important theological and liturgical...

An Episcopalian bishop has been restored to authority in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, despite an earlier suspension for his gross mishandling of sex-abuse complaints. An ecclesiastical tribunal found that the bishop could not be deposed for his misconduct, because it occurred 35 years ago and the statute of limitations had tolled. The decision came down on Wednesday. What do you suppose happened on Thursday? The major television networks led their morning news coverage with the story?The New York Times launched a 5-part series of front-page reports on sexual abuse in the Episcopal Church?SNAP held a press conference demanding that the...

A United Methodist congregation should conduct same-sex marriages despite the possibility of negative consequences, according to Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. "I'm here to tell you that when you speak about God's limitless, boundless and unimaginable love, you will get into trouble: I promise you, I know this," Robinson said to the congregation. Robinson both gave a sermon at the invitation of Foundry's Senior Pastor, Dean Snyder, as well as answered questions from church members during an informal session following the Sunday morning worship services. Robinson's sermon was part of a month-long "outstanding preacher" series...

Decrying as “missionaries of hate” U.S. Christians who preach in Africa against homosexual practice, a former bishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda spoke June 8 at a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.Christopher Senyonjo was hosted by Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop to be consecrated in the Anglican Communion. Robinson has served as Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP) since March. The two spoke about anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, which they blamed upon U.S. evangelicals. They also called for a broader effort to decriminalize homosexual practices...

LONDON, CA (AP) -- The Anglican Communion has suspended U.S. Episcopalians from serving on some interfaith bodies because of the election of a lesbian as a bishop in California. The U.S. church opened a rift in the global communion, and within its own ranks, seven years ago by electing a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. Conservative African Anglicans have taken a lead in opposing moves in the United States and Canada to promote gays and to bless homosexual relationships.

Over the past two years, economic hard times have loomed as large at Washington National Cathedral as the Gothic spires that grace the city's skyline. The cathedral has slashed its budget from $27 to $13 million, outsourcing its gift shop operation and shuttering its popular greenhouse and its continuing education college for clergy. Three rounds of layoffs have reduced the staff from 170 to 70, including, at the end of this month, the cathedral's conservator and the liturgist who oversaw the April memorial service for civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height.

The Consecration of Mary Glasspool as an Episcopal bishop on Saturday was incredible. They had odes to Mother Earth, random pagan rituals, a smudging ceremony to increase their relationship to plants or something, a smidge of ancestor Worship thrown in, and don't forget the dancing Girls. And, of course, there's guitars. There's always guitars. And by the way there didn't seem to be a whole lot of Jesus at least in the first hour or so that I saw. You can see the video here. AFP reports:A 56-year-old lesbian was ordained as a bishop by the Episcopal church here Saturday,...

The Anglican rift over homosexual clergy has grown deeper than ever after the ordination in California of the Church’s first lesbian bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had previously called the move regrettable and warned that it called into question the place of the US Episcopalian Church in the global Anglican Communion. Mary Glasspool, 56, was ordained on yesterday in front of 3,000 supporters — and two protesters — in the Long Beach Arena, south of Los Angeles. Canon Mary Glasspool after her ordination as bishop in a Los Angeles arena Calling herself a “reconciling person”, she offered...

Seven years after the Episcopal Church caused an uproar by consecrating its first openly gay bishop, it has done the same thing again -- only this time with a woman. The Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, of Baltimore, was ordained and consecrated on Saturday, making her the second openly gay bishop in church history and one of the first two female bishops in the Diocese of Los Angeles' 114-year history. Breakaway Episcopal conservatives have formed a rival church, the Anglican Church in North America. Several overseas Anglicans have been pressuring Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's 77...

Daniel W. Herzog became an outspoken national opponent of ordaining gay clergy after he retired from the ministry in 2007. He made news that year when he and two other diocesan bishops left the Episcopal Church to join the Roman Catholic Church. The Episcopal Church, the American wing of the worldwide Anglican Communion, had been in turmoil following the consecration in 2003 of V. Gene Robinson as its first openly gay bishop.Herzog's return was announced this week by Albany Bishop William Love. Both Herzog and his wife, Carol, left the church. Herzog was one of only a handful of Episcopal...

Fr. Christopher Phillips with Pope Benedict XVI Fr. Christopher G. Phillips is the pastor of Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church in San Antonio, Texas, where he has served for nearly twenty-seven years. He is the founding pastor of the first Anglican Use parish, erected in 1983 under the terms of the Pastoral Provision. Fr. Phillips was ordained as an Anglican for the Diocese of Bristol, England, in 1975. After serving as Curate for three years at St. Stephen Southmead, he returned to the United States and served in two Episcopal parishes in the Diocese of Rhode Island....

Grateful for the gracious guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the leadership of the Most Reverend Peter J. Akinola, the Primates Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON/FCA) met in Bermuda from April 5 through 9, 2010. The Primates Council consists of Primates (Senior Archbishops) of Anglican Provinces who met together in Jerusalem in June 2008 as part of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). Their determination to give witness to the life transforming gospel of Jesus Christ and the trustworthiness of the Bible led to the establishment of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA). FCA is a movement...

Protestant Organist Finds Musical Home in the Catholic Church April 6th, 2010 by Patricia Coll Freeman On the third Sunday in Lent, high in the choir loft of Holy Family Cathedral in Anchorage, a born and bred West Virginian Baptist directed a group of Catholic singers and worshipers through the prayerful notes of the Latin Agnus Dei.But at Pentecost, Gary Marks, the cathedral’s new music director and Baptist-turned-Episcopalian with a Methodist divinity degree, comes home to the Catholic Church guided by the Holy Spirit along the mellifluous thread of sacred music.God’s Musical Direction“The church and music have always been tied together for...

(RNS) With her careers as veterinarian, astronaut and U.S. president behind her, Barbie has at last found her true calling: as a second-career Episcopal priest. The 11.5-inch-tall fictional graduate of Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif., has donned a cassock and surplice and is rector at St. Barbara’s-by-the-Sea in (where else?) Malibu, Calif. She arrived at the church fully accessorized, as is Barbie’s custom. Her impeccably tailored ecclesiastical vestments include various colored chasubles (the sleeveless vestments worn at Mass) for every liturgical season, black clergy shirt with white collar, neat skirt and heels, a laptop with prepared...

March 22 Fr. Donald Calloway Former Episcopal FROM Aquinasandmore blog We recently had the opportunity to interview Fr. Donald Calloway M.I.C., well-known Marian priest, popular speaker and presenter, and author of the new book No Turning Back: A Witness to Mercy.Our interview:Father, our readers and customers know your name from your many books and talks, but can you give us some more information about your background?IÂ’m a convert to the Catholic faith. I was born in 1972 to non-Christian parents; my parents were not members of any religion. When my mother remarried I was adopted and baptized into the...

Mary Douglas Glasspool. Los Angeles, Calif., Mar 18, 2010 / 11:34 pm (CNA).- On Wednesday, the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles reported the approval of the election of Mary Douglas Glasspool as their first openly partnered lesbian assistant bishop. The decision drew sharply contrasting reactions from those within the Episcopal community, including dissatisfaction from the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Glasspool, 56, was elected bishop in December of last year but had to wait for consent from the Office of the Episcopal Church, which was confirmed yesterday. Upon hearing of her election confirmation, Glasspool was reported by the LA...

A majority of bishops and dioceses of the Episcopal Church have approved the election of the church’s second openly gay bishop, the Rev. Mary D. Glasspool, a decision likely to increase the tension with fellow Anglican churches around the world that do not approve of homosexuality. The worldwide Anglican Communion, the network of churches connected to the Church of England, has been in turmoil since the Americans elected their first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire in 2003. Theological conservatives in the Communion say the Bible condemns homosexuality, while liberals say the Scripture is open to interpretation....

It's a strange phenomenon when weather—or anything—slows the archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola. But that's what happened when record snowfall in Washington last month forced the cancellation of a long-anticipated celebration, known among Anglicans as a festal eucharist, to commemorate Akinola. The stout, 66-year-old clergyman, who friends say gets by on three to four hours' sleep a night and keeps a travel schedule to rival any gold-status f requent flier, will step down March 25 as head of the Anglican church in Nigeria—at 20 million, the largest Anglican communion in the world. The event that was to include national and...

Now "strengthening of the heart" is one of the great wants of many professing Christians...They want to realize more tangible comfort. They fancy they ought to feel more and see more...Where shall they turn? What shall set their consciences at rest? Then comes the enemy of souls, and suggests some shortcut road to establishment. He hints at the value of some addition to the simple plan of the Gospel, some man-made gimmick, some exaggeration of a truth, some flesh-satisfying invention, some improvement on the old path, and whispers, "Only use this, and you shall be strengthened."... "Come to us," says...

LA CRESCENTA, Calif. – March 1, 2010 – St. Luke’s Anglican Church has learned today that the Supreme Court of the United States has denied its petition for writ of certiorari filed in December of last year. St. Luke’s asked the Court to decide whether California courts violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution by conferring on The Episcopal Church and its Diocese in Los Angeles a special power – not available to nonreligious persons or nondenominational churches – to seize St. Luke’s property and take over its corporation based on its religious affiliation. Since its founding, the...