A Festschrift Makes a Lovely Present

As I have gotten older my tastes have gotten, well, specialized. So for my birthday I allow myself to buy a book that may be a little harder to find, possibly rare. Something nobody else is likely to buy for me. This year's book was Essays Presented to Charles Williams (1947)--a festschrift written in William's honor to mark his departure from Oxford at the end of World War II,but one that they ended up publishing as a memorial to him in the wake of his sudden death.

Oh, who is "they," you ask? Only, y'know, the Inklings, in their one jointly authored book. Dig the table of contents, my friends:

1. C.S. Lewis: Preface
2. Dorothy L. Sayers: "'... And Telling you a Story': A Note on The Divine Comedy"
3. J.R.R. Tolkien: "On Fairy-Stories"
4. C.S. Lewis: "On Stories"
5. A.O. Barfield: "Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction"
6. Gervase Mathew: "Marriage and Amour Courtois in Late-Fourteenth-Century England"
7. W.H. Lewis: "The Galleys of France"

[By the way, recent scholarship is doing a lot to rehabilitate W.H. Lewis's reputation. He did suffer from a lifelong battle with alcoholism, as noted in many depictions of his brother's life, but Major Warren Lewis was a pretty good popular historian, the author of a series of explorations of Seventeenth Century France that are quite readable, and whose work is worth a look for any fans of the period.]

Anyway, C.S. Lewis's preface is a delight in introducing what Williams meant to his friends, and tells a great deal about the narrator too. Here's Lewis describing Williams's serene spiritual side compassionating Williams' dour, pessimistic side:

He saw its point of view. All that it said was, on a certain level, so very reasonable. He did not believe that God Himself wanted that frightened, indignant, and voluble creature to be annihilated; or even silenced. If it wanted to carry its hot complaints to the very Throne, even that, he felt, would be a permitted absurdity. For was that not very much what Job had done? It was true, Williams added, that the Divine answer had taken the surprising form of inviting Job to study the hippopotamus and the crocodile. But Job's impatience had been approved. His apparent blasphemies had been accepted. The weight of the divine displeasure had been reserved for the "comforters", the self-appointed advocates on God's side, the people who tried to show that all was well--"the sort of people," he said, immeasurably dropping his lower jaw and fixing me with his eyes--"the sort of people who wrote books on The Problem of Pain."

Beyond that great comedic deadpan, and being the best writer to rock a semi-colon I have ever read, Lewis is one of the very few writers about English literature to make me feel, and deplore, my own ignorance of far too much. He makes me want to remedy that, plunging headlong into medieval texts. To the extent I've remedied some of those defects, the credit goes to Lewis, and of course to Jim Earl, who taught me to read the good stuff, and miss the dross.

The Warden of Wall Street

So, I took a few days off from the blog. Largely, it's because I've been working on two long-form writing projects, and spent a lot of my energy there, but also because a story I read affects some people I'm close to.

Now, Trinity Church is a very special place in my personal story. I was received into the Episcopal Church there, just about 20 years ago. My spiritual director is HQ'd there, I have personally benefitted from its ministries, and, over the years, I have participated in those ministries--leading classes, prayers, and other associations, dating back from the time I was received. I am, as I have been described, a friend of Trinity.

And I'm glad of that. Trinity's motto, "for a world of good," is one it has earned. Music, liturgy, and oft-unnoticed service both at home and abroad:

As the current head of Trinity, [Rector James] Cooper has helped to carry on the church’s original mission to serve the poor and isolated. The church was established in 1697, predating the city of New York.
Cooper has worked tirelessly alongside groups including the Downtown Alliance, an organization that provides funding to house the homeless in lower Manhattan. The church also gave a leadership grant to the Downtown Alliance’s Back to Business grant program, which is focused on helping small businesses in Zone A and lower Manhattan recover from the effects of Hurricane Sandy.

In addition, Cooper helped to steer funding of $250,000 to the Robin Hood Foundation, supporting the transition of veterans returning from active duty in Afghanistan.

Other initiatives Cooper has lent his time and talent to include a Relief Bureau to counsel the sick and jobless, food pantries and soup kitchens at Trinity chapels around the city, global grant programs that award millions both abroad and to vital programs in New York as well as the massive relief effort and shelter the church provided to the rescue workers at Ground Zero after 9/11.

These are very real contributions to the City and the world. Yet, as the Times story notes, the Church has been "racked by infighting in recent years over whether the church should be spending more money to help the poor and spread the faith, in New York and around the world. Differences over the parish’s mission and direction last year led nearly half the 22-member vestry — an august collection of corporate executives and philanthropists — to resign or be pushed out, after at least seven of them asked, unsuccessfully, that the rector himself step down."

That's an admirably concise and non-judgmental summation of a controversy that has been reported in far more bitter terms elsewhere, and earlier. The internecine conflict appears to have been quite brutal. The Times, and every other story, agrees on one facet that appears to power the story: Money. From the NYT again:

It reported $158 million in real estate revenue for 2011, the majority of which went toward maintaining and supporting its real estate operations, the financial statement indicates. Of the $38 million left for the church’s operating budget, some $4 million was spent on communications, $3 million on philanthropic grant spending and $2.5 million on the church’s music program, church officials said. Nearly $6 million went to maintain Trinity’s historic properties, including the main church building, which was built in 1846; St. Paul’s Chapel; and several cemeteries, where luminaries including Alexander Hamilton and Edward I. Koch are buried. The remainder went into the church’s equity investment portfolio.

****

Trinity has released other estimates of its wealth over its 315-year history, but none recently. From 1909 to 1939, parishioners could find bare-bones annual statements at their pews; before that, the last disclosures beyond the vestry were in 1814.

“Trinity is moving more and more toward a transparent, modern system of governance, though not without bumps and bruises and pain,” said Mr. Cooper, adding that he supported the disclosure.

Some details are not included on the form, church officials said, like Mr. Cooper’s $475,000 annual salary — which rises to a total compensation of $1.3 million when his pension and the estimated cost of his residence in a $5.5 million, church-owned SoHo town house are added.

Now, when I first read these numbers, Trinity's percentage of income spent on diversification of investments and its endowment seemed disproportionate to me. But I have the financial savvy of a cocker spaniel (albeit a particularly cute, soigné cocker spaniel), so I asked a friend who had, you know, a clue. He told me that the basic structure sounded about right (in the sense of prudent), though suggested that some of the specifics of the spending priorities within the church budget might be debated.

So, why does the story still leave me dissatisfied? I think it could be what I call "The Warden Factor" You don't know Anthony Trollope's The Warden (1855)? What are you doing reading this blog, then? Seriously, it's the beginning of Trollope's brilliant Chronicles of Barsetshire and a lot more worth your time than anything I have to say.

In the novel, the Rev. Septimus Harding, a clergyman appointed to head a charitable institution at a stipend that is, for the work he does, lavish--it's the result of the appreciation of the property values which are the basis of the endowment, and, over the years, the salary for the Warden (the Chief Executive Officer, if you will), has risen to become disproportionately high for a clergyman engaged in charitable work. In the novel, Trollope refuses to accept a simple manichean good/bad distinction between his characters. Septimus Harding, a good, conscientious clergyman, is a much better man than his adversaries--but, he comes to believe that he is wrong and they are right, as in this scene when he hands a newspaper editorial critical of him to his daughter Eleanor:

"An action has been taken against Mr Warden Harding, on behalf of the almsmen, by a gentleman acting solely on public grounds, and it is to be argued that Mr Harding takes nothing but what he received as a servant of the hospital, and that he is not himself responsible for the amount of stipend given to him for his work. Such a plea would doubtless be fair, if anyone questioned the daily wages of a bricklayer employed on the building, or the fee of the charwoman who cleans it; but we cannot envy the feeling of a clergyman of the Church of England who could allow such an argument to be put in his mouth...."
As Eleanor read the article her face flushed with indignation, and when she had finished it, she almost feared to look up at her father.

"Well, my dear," said he, "what do you think of that;—is it worth while to be a warden at that price?"

"Oh, papa;—dear papa!"

"Mr Bold can't un-write that, my dear;—Mr Bold can't say that that sha'n't be read by every clergyman at Oxford; nay, by every gentleman in the land;" and then he walked up and down the room, while Eleanor in mute despair followed him with her eyes. "And I'll tell you what, my dear," he continued, speaking now very calmly, and in a forced manner very unlike himself; "Mr Bold can't dispute the truth of every word in that article you have just read—nor can I." Eleanor stared at him, as though she scarcely understood the words he was speaking. "Nor can I, Eleanor: that's the worst of all, or would be so if there were no remedy. I have thought much of all this since we were together last night;" and he came and sat beside her, and put his arm round her waist as he had done then. "I have thought much of what the archdeacon has said, and of what this paper says; and I do believe I have no right to be here."

"No right to be warden of the hospital, papa?"

"No right to be warden with eight hundred a year; no right to be warden with such a house as this; no right to spend in luxury money that was intended for charity.

The cases are not entirely apt; I have no doubt that Rev. Cooper works a great deal harder than did Rev. Harding, and, unlike the fictional Hiram's Hospital, the bulk of the income does not go to the incumbent by any stretch of the imagination. But the vexed relationship between God and Mammon is touched on here as in the novel; as the Telegraph quotes, the concerns that Trinity's philanthropy budget has remained roughly the same while other portions of the budget have "soared" and the Rector's compensation is described as "a Wall St pay and conditions deal." The Times cites a complainant describing the church as having become too "corporate." The notion that Trinity has become too much of the world, too comfortable among the Wall Street titans it resides among, seems to have some emotional resonance.

Consonant with this, the favorable article in the New York Press previously linked adds to its praise of the rector "But of all his responsibilities, perhaps the most important is the management of Trinity Real Estate, which handles the parish’s 6 million square feet of commercial real estate in Lower Manhattan. The income generated from the church’s real estate holdings, which Trinity has held for more than 300 years, enables the organization to sustain and develop programs and ministries around the world."

That--jars. It may even be true, as things currently are, but should it be? Is this yet another instance of that chilling line from The Mission, "thus we have made the world"? If so, what do we do about it?

A Moment's Peace

Well, we've had quite the week, haven't we?

The murderous attack in Boston, and the resultant manhunt and ephemeral questions of whether the living suspect would be treated as an enemy combatant (he wasn't), the appalling accident in West, Texas, and the high cost in human lives of ignoring safety regulations. Even the "good" news last week--the Virginia Supreme Court's finding that the Falls Church property reverted to the Episcopal Church and continuing diocese--should not be a cause for triumphalism. The fact that it came to this represents a failure of all involved, a failure of imagination, of the ability to reach beyond the law's requirements. The Diocese and National Church could not countenance the parish incumbent's and departing majority behavior, but neither was this how things should have ended.

But there is still life and beauty in the world. La Caterina, first and foremeost. My cats still crowd my keyboard, wanting snuggles, my feral friends Sherlock and Poppelthwaite grow ever more affectionate, while Mr. Giles remains an ideal cat friend.

Liturgy goes on, the Daily Office goes on. A new writing project takes on a new urgency and life of its own.

And moments of joy keep turning up. A sheet of flowers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A birthday dinner with old friends and new. A discussion of Leonard Cohen and his music turns up an ineluctably beautiful moment of his voice blending with that of Julie Christensen and Perla Battalla.

Listen to this all, but note how the voices blend at 4:00 on:



And note how the sacred and profane blend in Cohen--this song conveys the ache of desire in the lyrics and in (in this video, at any rate) performances, with extraordinary sharpness. And then listen to Christensen and Battalla do "Anthem":



And that's life, innit? Sorrow, joy, insight, the spirit and the flesh, all mixed up in a never ending symphony, sometimes discordant, sometimes filled with

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

So we pass this tough week, and move into the next phase of the dance.

They Can't Believe They're Losing to these Guys?

In my last two posts (here and here) I examined the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia in Falls Church v. PECUSA. In so doing, I looked at some of the reaction to the opinion, and found among some of the "reasserters" a level of surprise and shock that frankly makes no sense to me.

(I should note, in view of the fact that I have directly engaged with A.S. Haley, the "Anglican Curmudgeon," that I am not referring here to his writings on the decision. While no one commenter prompted the reflection, an exchange with C.R. Seitz, of the Anglican Communion Institute crystallized my thoughts.)

I mean, I understand anger; the supporters of secession are acting based on deeply held views; though I believe them to be profoundly in error, they are paying a high price for acting on what what they believe to be right. But surprise?

Look, let's game it out:

1. The Supreme Court has long held that

"The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect. . . . no "arbitrariness" exception -- in the sense of an inquiry whether the decisions of the highest ecclesiastical tribunal of a hierarchical church complied with church laws and regulations -- is consistent with the constitutional mandate that civil courts are bound to accept the decisions of the highest judicatories of a religious organization of hierarchical polity on matters of discipline, faith, internal organization, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law.

2. More recently, the Court has acknowledged a limited role for civil courts in applying "neutral principles of law" to property disputes arising out of schism. In so doing, the Court provided that a hierarchical church could with "minimal" efforts, create an enforceable trust over parish property, and all that would be required would be for "the constitution of the general church [to] be made to recite an express trust in favor of the denominational church," to which "civil courts will be bound to give effect."

3. In the same year in which the Court stated this, the Episcopal Church adopted the Dennis Canon, expressly created such a reversionary trust in case of schism.

Now, right or wrong, love or hate it, on what view of these facts does this not make an effort on the part of a seceding parish or diocese to retain said property a mighty heavy lift? You can't question the procedural legitimacy of the Dennis Canon in civil court--see point 1. Even if you get a court to find it's not directly binding, it's weighty evidence of intent and course of dealing, and if the court goes the other way, it's essentially disregarding the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment, inviting overruling by any higher court, or by the Supreme Court itself. And it's a rule affecting property ownership, in which stability is especially important.

I'm not saying it can't be done, mind you--there has, in fact been some confusion in the application of neutral principles under Jones, and some tension between decisions in various states. (I think the linked author reads All Saints v. Campbell, a decision which explicitly turns on its highly unusual facts, too broadly, but I suspect we'll soon see if the South Carolina Supreme Court adopts that broader ruling.) I'm just saying it's like counting on drawing to an inside straight flush--counting on a perfect storm of luck, in effect. And, in fact, as A.S. Haley has recorded, that has in fact been the size of it.

I write this not--I promise!--sarcastically, or mockingly, but because the surprise I saw in the various reactions to the decision troubled me. I get taking a heavy risk because of a perceived moral imperative. What I don't see is the shock when the risk eventuates, and I guess I'm hoping that the principals, if not the commentariat, were properly advised of the risk's magnitude and likelihood.

Vagaries of Virginia: A Look at a Dissenting View

Because I have a respect for him (though we approach issues with very different commitments and don't often agree), I was waiting to see A.S. Haley's take on the Virginia Supreme Court's decision in Falls Church. Unsurprisingly, I don't agree with his favored bottom line, nor do I agree with his overall analysis. That said, I think it's worth considering some of the specific points he makes in context.

In a sense. we agree on one thing: the Virginia Supreme Court's opinion is severely flawed in its methodology. As I explained last night, I believe that the Court went off the rails at an earlier point than does Haley, in that it found that, based on the law in effect at the time of the adoption by the Episcopal Church of the Dennis Canon, the Dennis Canon was ineffective in creating a trust.

Much of my disagreement with Haley on this case takes place here: If the Virginia Supreme Court has this point right (as Haley's analysis postulates) then, while I still don't buy his argument, it's a stronger one than if the concurring opinion by Justice McClanahan, which I think is indisputably correct, is in fact so--that the Virginia statute, by discriminating against hierarchical churches on the basis of their polity,was unconstitutional at the time the Dennis Canon was adopted.

Assuming that is correct, for the moment (and I really haven't seen a good argument why the Establishment Clause allows a state to disfavor a religious body based on animus toward its polity), then the Virginia Supreme Court should simply have found that TEC availed itself of one of the means of creating a trust set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Jones v. Wolf, that is, "by providing, in the corporate
charter or the constitution of the general church, that the identity of the local church is to be established in some other way, or by providing that the church property is held in trust for the general church and those who remain loyal to it." As the U.S. Supreme Court stated in Jones, as a matter of constitutional imperative, that "the civil courts will be bound to give effect to the result indicated by the parties, provided it is embodied in some legally cognizable form," that should be the end of it. Only the patently unconstitutional discrimination against hierarchical churches embodied in Virginia law prior to the amendment of the statute in 1993 prevented that simple analysis and readily predictable outcome.

But since the Virginia Supreme Court didn't undertake the more appropriate analysis, it posed a question which Haley contends it then went on to answer incorrectly--that is, the discrete question of whether, under Virginia law, the parties' course of dealing can create a constructive trust where the parties had previously created an express trust that was ineffective under Virginia law, and when no subsequent acts (prior to the break giving rise to the present litigation) changed the status quo? Or, as Haley puts it:

Look at the words of the statute that changed Virginia law, quoted above. It begins: “Every conveyance or transfer of real or personal property ...”. If trusts in Virginia stand or fall by the law in effect when they were created (opinion, p. 17), then what conveyance or transfer of The Falls Church property took place after 1993 to give rise to the existence of any trust as described by the Dennis Canon?

The Court cannot have it both ways (but Justice Powell tries to do just that). Either the trust in question arose at a time when it was invalid under Virginia law, or it arose at a time when it was valid, i.e., after 1993. And to arise and be effective as declared by the statute, it had to be part of a conveyance of transfer upon terms of trust executed after that date. If it “arose” out of a course of conduct or dealing, then it does not come within the language of the statute—and so it would remain invalid under Virginia law.

This is actually a fair point, and raises a genuine analytical weakness in the Supreme Court's analysis. If you take the amendment in its most literal reading, than it could reasonably be interpreted to mean that some new conveyance or transfer would be needed to bring a hierarchical church that had tried (and, in the Virginia Supreme Court's analysis) to effectuate a trust prior to the amendment within the amendment's scope. The fact that the result would be patently (almost grotesquely) unconstitutional doesn't really address the Virginia Court's analysis, as the Court doesn't reach that issue.

It's not quite the slam dunk Haley thinks it is, mind you, because if the statute is reasonably read as a remedial statute, seeking to avoid a constitutional problem, and/or to eliminate disparate treatment by religion, the broader reading of it taken by the Virginia Supreme Court is considerably more defensible--that remedial statutes are to be read broadly is an ancient truism of statutory interpretation. By looking at the ongoing course of dealing, the Court, exercising its equitable powers, sought to avoid disparate treatment of like-situated entities. Still, I wouldn't be fair if I didn't acknowledge that Haley had made a very salient critique of the rationale on which the Court based its ruling.

(I am not sure though, from what I have read, that the Falls Church made this argument explicitly; if they didn't than the Court's not addressing it other than in the rather short account of the parties' dealings up to the division point, makes more sense.)

I agree with him that, as this decision is limited to an interpretation of the Virginia law of trusts, it is not susceptible review by the U.S. Supreme Court, and will stand whether the reader finds the opinion,Haley's critique, or my limited defense persuasive.

I do disagree with the rest of Haley's analysis; most especially with this:

ssume for a moment that in 2006 the property was held by The Falls Church as a trustee for the Diocese. Then presumably by declaring itself free of the Diocese, it attempted to make its property free of that trust. And Justice Powell concludes it could not accomplish that step without betraying its fiduciary duty to keep the property available for the use of Diocese, and those loyal to the Diocese.

All right, but what about the relationship of the Diocese to The Falls Church all the time the latter was a member of the former? Was not the Diocese a fiduciary as well, in relation to The Falls Church? Did not The Falls Church rely upon the Diocese and its bishops to uphold the “doctrine, discipline and worship of [the national] Church” as that Church received them from the mother Church of England?

And what happened to that trust? The national Church and its Dioceses breached it in 2003, and breached it further in 2006—well before The Falls Church ever took its vote to disaffiliate in response to those breaches of trust.

Haley asserts that "even though the first trust is not civilly enforceable in the courts, it nonetheless furnished the quid pro quo for the creation of the second. And when that first trust ceased to exist, the Virginia Supreme Court had no justification for continuing to enforce the second trust."

Here, Haley's analysis is in my opinion simply untenable; Jones, again:

The neutral principles method, at least as it has evolved in Georgia, requires a civil court to examine certain religious documents, such as a church constitution, for language of trust in favor of the general church. In undertaking such an examination, a civil court must take special care to scrutinize the document in purely secular terms, and not to rely on religious precepts in determining whether the document indicates that the parties have intended to create a trust. In addition, there may be cases where the deed, the corporate charter, or the constitution of the general church incorporates religious concepts in the provisions relating to the ownership of property. If, in such a case, the interpretation of the instruments of ownership would require the civil court to resolve a religious controversy, then the court must defer to the resolution of the doctrinal issue by the authoritative ecclesiastical body.

The First Amendment "requires that civil courts defer to the resolution of issues of religious doctrine or polity by the highest court of a hierarchical church organization." (Id.) Implicit in Haley's "first trust" theory is precisely the kind of doctrinal scrutiny forbidden by the First Amendment.

The Constitutional Dog that Was Not Allowed to Bark: Decision for the Diocese and TEC in Virginia

For various reasons, I didn't have a chance to address yesterday's decision of the Virginia Supreme Court in Falls Church v. Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA until today. Now, I had sharply criticized the initial opinion of Circuit Judge Randy Bellows, in part because I believed--and still do--that "the Viginia statute, as applied here, eliminates the flexibility relied upon by the Supreme Court in validating neutral principles, and, what is worse, requires the trial court to parse polity carefully (and, I think in a manner that is heavily slanted in favor of legally mandated congregationalism)."

The Virginia Supreme Court avoided that issue by finding that the statute's implicit prohibition of trusts in favor of a diocese or a national church had been legislatively repealed, and that the Falls Church, the Diocese and TEC had created such an implicit trust. While I agree with the court's analysis to the extent that the course of conduct between the parties clearly established a trust relationship, the Supreme Court assumed, as noted by the excellent concurrence by Justice McClanahan, that under the prior statute "any express trusts purportedly created by the Dennis Canon were ineffective in Virginia." (Id. at 36, McClanahan concurring).

As Justice McClanahan noted, though--far more eloquently than my own formulation in 2008--that "the manifest problem with former Code 57-7, as construed and applied to hierarchical churches, was that it treated those churches differently than local congregational churches by allowing only the latter to hold property in trust in Virginia." (Id. at 38) As Justice McClanahan explains, "Virginia's historic animus toward the accumulation of wealth by churches generally and hierarchical churches in particular, was the origin of that disparate statutory treatment." (Id. at 39) As a result, "[s]uch application of former Code 57-7 violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by conferring a religious preference to local congregational churches." (Id.) By doing so, Virginia had itself violated the "fundamental limitation of the Establishment Clause, [that] neither a state nor the Federal Government can pass laws which prefer one religion over another." (Id.) By allowing one form of denomination (congregational) to possess property in a manner barred to another form (hierarchical), the State unlawfully discriminated against hierarchical churches.

Justice McClanahan goes on to note that the statute as applied therefore frustrated the efforts of the Episcopal Church to avail itself of the constitutional right guaranteed in Jones v. Wolf, which held that:

Through appropriate reversionary clauses and trust provisions, religious societies can specify what is to happen to church property in the event of a particular contingency, or what religious body will determine the ownership in the event of a schism or doctrinal controversy.

Because its polity was of a kind legally disadvantaged under Virginia law, the Supreme Court found yesterday, the trust was "ineffective" until the legislature repealed that statute; as Justice McClanahan writes in her frankly unanswerable concurrence, that interpretation was unconstitutional before the repeal, and remains unconstitutional now.

By finding in TEC's favor on the implied trust theory, of course, the Virginia Supreme Court has insulated this finding from further review; the Diocese and TEC are not aggrieved, although they won on a subsidiary legal theory and not on the most plain and simple theory. Ultimately, they will be made whole, as they should be. The exhaustive majority opinion does a very good job of explaining why, even if one did not credit that an express trust was effectively created, the circumstances clearly established a constructive trust.

But all that is (or rather should have been) unnecessary. In Jones, at p. 618, the United States Supreme Court emphasized the minimal burden of establishing a trust:

Under the neutral principles approach, the outcome of a church property dispute is not foreordained. At any time before the dispute erupts, the parties can ensure, if they so desire, that the faction loyal to the hierarchical church will retain the church property. They can modify the deeds or the corporate charter to include a right of reversion or trust in favor of the general church. Alternatively, the constitution of the general church can be made to recite an express trust in favor of the denominational church. The burden involved in taking such steps will be minimal. And the civil courts will be bound to give effect to the result indicated by the parties, provided it is embodied in some legally cognizable form

(emphasis added)

TEC followed that decision to the letter. That should have been an end of the matter, whatever one thinks of the theological issues dividing the parties. The fact that Virginia purported to nullify that action, when the Supreme Court of the United States had held that "the civil courts will be bound to give effect to the result indicated by the parties," choosing one of the forms specified by the High Court, shows that even this opinion did not go far enough in its reasoning, although it ultimately reached the right result. It is a paradigmatic case of T.S. Eliot's dictum that "[t]he last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

"A Pretty Shameful Day for Washington"

In the interest of the right to unrestrained access to firearms, and the right to shoot people with anonymity and impunity, the United States Senate filibustered the Manchin-Toomey bispartisan compromise on gun regulation. The law in fact forbade a national registry, of course, but what the hell. Background checks are bad, right? Guns should flow freely across borders, with no limitation.

Because, after all, what's the worst that could happen?

Let me note the Honor Roll of the Republicans who crossed party lines to support the compromise bill:

*Collins (R-Me);
*Kirk (R-Ill);
*McCain (R-Ariz.); and
Toomey (R-Pa).

And the dishonor role, Democrats who crossed party lines to oppose the bill:

Baucus (D-Mont);
Heitkamp (D-ND); and
Pryor (D-Ark.).

Harry Reid voted against on the final tally so that, under the rules of the Senate, he can re-introduce the bill later in the session.

Oh, the assault weapons ban and magazine restrictions failed too, thanks to the bold defenders of the rights to riddle Bambi, varmints or, what teh hey, schoolchildren, with bullets. Because the Second Amendment requires it, right? Just ask noted liberal Antonin Scalia:

nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.” [citations omitted]

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment ’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

Moreover, as Justice Scalia's majority opinion explicitly stated, "We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive."

So the Second Amendment can only be preserved by defeating legislation that the Supreme Court majority that overruled 70 years of case law to expand the Second Amendment found did not violate their expanded conception of Second Amendment.

Today was yet another awful example of Mark Twain's dictum that "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."