Pastor applauds property ruling

<p>Petaluma Episcopal Church leaders were hopeful Monday that a state Supreme Court decision in a Southern California case would help them reclaim ownership of their 118-year-old church from members who split over the ordination of gay ministers.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>In a unanimous decision, justices ordered three Southern California parishes that left the U.S. Episcopal Church to surrender their church buildings and other property to the mother church.</p><p>The Rev. Norman Cram, pastor of St. John's Episcopal Church in Petaluma, said the ruling sets a precedent that entitles the church to recover the landmark building taken by members of the breakaway St. John's Anglican Church in 2006.</p><p>"I am humbly grateful that a legal path has been blazed towards our recovering the place of worship that has contained the Episcopal Church presence in Petaluma for over 150 years," Cram said.</p><p>A lawyer for St. John's Anglican, Rev. Lu T. Nguyen, said it was too soon to tell if Monday's ruling would apply to the Petaluma case. He warned the defendants in Southern California could appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.</p><p>"As with any decision, it's not final until all appeals have been exhausted," Nguyen said.</p><p>The state high court decision involved the St. James Church in Newport Beach, All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. David's Church in North Hollywood. All three parishes pulled out of the 2.1 million-member national Episcopal Church in 2004 and sought to retain ownership of their church buildings and other property.</p><p>Each church held deeds in their names to the property, but the court ruled that Episcopal Church canons made it clear that the property belonged to the individual parishes only as long as they remained part of the bigger church.</p><p>The 2003 ordination of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire set off a wide-ranging debate within the church and upset conservative congregations.</p><p>Since then, four dioceses and about 100 individual churches have split from the U.S. Episcopal Church, setting off bitter religious and legal feuds over church doctrine and division of property.</p><p>An attorney for the U.S. Episcopal Church said the California Supreme Court ruling will be influential in other similar property disputes, such as one in Fresno, where a pastor led the breakaway of 40 parishes in the Central Valley.</p><p>In Petaluma, the Rev. David Miller's 240-member congregation voted in December 2006 to "disassociate" itself from the national church, changing its name and aligning itself with the conservative Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in South America.</p><p>The Episcopal Diocese of Northern California sued in February in Sonoma County Superior Court, seeking possession of the 118-year-old church and other assets, such as bank accounts and endowments, now held by St. John's Anglican.</p><p>According to the lawsuit, the breakaway congregation has changed the deed to the Fifth Street property along with certain bylaws and articles, clouding building ownership.</p><p>The suit seeks to reverse the changes and clarify the title. The property has been held in trust for the mission of the Episcopal Church since 1891, the lawsuit said.</p><p>St. John's Anglican lawyers have argued the property is owned by the congregation and the diocese has no control over it.</p><p>The two sides are due in court on Feb. 11.</p><p>In the meantime, Cram has been holding Sunday night services for his 60-member congregation in borrowed space at Petaluma's Elim Lutheran Church.</p><p>"We look forward to the possibility of reconciliation with those who currently worship at Fifth and C, and we again welcome dialogue with them," Cram said in a written statement.</p><p>The Associated Press contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 762-7297 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com.</p>