The Supreme Court of the province of British Columbia has ruled in favor of the Anglican Church of Canada and against that of a group of dissenting parishioners who have aligned themselves with the Anglican Network in Canada.
The lawsuit arose out of a controversy regarding the use of the building that the dissenting parishioners had been meeting in when they still considered themselves part of the Anglican Church of Canada.
According the news reports, a group of parishioners from St. Mary’s Church in Mechosin B.C. voted to leave four months ago.
“Following the departure, the Bishop of the Diocese of British Columbia had the locks changed and an alarm installed at the church, prompting the group to go to court and ask for an injunction preventing the diocese from interfering in their worship.
But B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marion Allan refused to grant the injunction, ruling that to give control of a church to a group that voted to leave would accelerate the schism in the Anglican church by adding a layer of legal complexity to the theological debate.
‘To grant the injunction . . . would strike a blow to the authority of the Bishop of the Diocese of British Columbia and pose a serious threat to the hierarchical structure of the Anglican Church of Canada,’ she wrote in a judgment released Thursday.
The group is currently using the church building, and will continue to do so until its issues are resolved either by trial or an agreement between the Church and breakaway group, the judgment said.”
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