...in an effort to stem the tide of parishes pulling out with their property because of the national church's departures from Anglican orthodoxy, the property canon of the church was changed.
This was done at the 1979 Denver General Convention of the church. Any changes to the church's canon law had to be aproved at two successive general conventions. The first approval previously had passed in 1976 so the second reading of the proposed property canon change had to pass if the liberals/modernists were to stop the traditionalists from leaving with their monies, buildings and considerable trust funds.
Like many state legislatures, there is a large amount of church legislation that passes through a logjam on the last day and night of the legislative session. This is apparently what happened to the property change canon. Of course, this was part of the scheming and maneuvering on the part of the liberals.
According to the two canon lawyers appointed by the church to compile and annotate all canonical changes effected by the General Convention, Messrs. White and Dyckman, "there is no record of it (the proposed change) having passed both houses". These words were contained in a 1981 or 1982 copy of White and Dyckman's Annotated Constitution and Canon of the Protestant Episcopal Church of North America (the official and legal record of all proceedings of the convention) that I personally possessed and used almost daily in my work. A priest (later a bishop) who was physically present at the general convention and who closely watched to see whether or not this specific canonical change passed told me that it did not pass.
In the period of 1984 to 1987, I must have quoted this specific passage of White And Dyckman to hundreds of inquiring Episcopalians, either in person or by letter and telephone. All of these inquirers were concerned Episcopalians who were trying to understand the ramification of the canonical change and how to respond as well as those parishes which were contemplating leaving the Episcopal Church.
In 1989, I mentioned this to a bishop in Ft. Worth. When he asked me to show him the citation in White and Dyckman, I learned to my utter amazement that it was no longer in the issue of White and Dyckman. It has been expunged from the latest version the bishop possessed. If I recall correctly, it was a 1985 edition. How then did this canonical change "pass"? Why was the explanatory note of the annotators expunged from subsequent editions of the annotated canons and constitution? In the years since this chicanery, almost all parishes dutifully, if not under pressure, slowly handed title to their property over to the diocese. Some fought it in the courts. A few won, but most lost these battles because the courts were reluctant to become embroiled in theological disputes preferring instead to rule upon neutral principles of law.
It would seem to me that right there is a strong basis for churches challenging the Denis Canon.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. However sympathetic one is (as I am) to questioning validity of the Dennis canon, one must still view skeptically an assertion that, in effect, 'the evidence for my position existed but I can't show it because it no longer exists'.
I wish Lawrence Thompson could do better than assert that the "words [that 'there is no record of it (the proposed change) having passed both houses'] were contained in a 1981 or 1982 copy" of the official White & Dyckman annotation "that I personally possessed and used almost daily in my work." Why so many past tenses? What happened to his own "1981 or 1982 copy"? Do *no* such copies exist? Surely, if the annotation of the 1979 General Convention existed as Thompson asserts, it must still be available somewhere. I hope it does, but Thompson's wording makes me skeptical.