Messrs Lancaster and Anastasia provided some insight into the ACA's strategy following the elected vestry's successful appeal. I would say that it's basically to try to define the issue as narrowly as possible and then quibble on the narrow issue.
Thus Lancaster's basic arguments were, first that the whole issue of the case (now that the ecclesiastical question has been thrown out) is the validity of the August 6, 2012 vote by the parish to leave the ACA. The judge simply didn't buy that; she said the vote was one issue, but the appeals court's opinion raised other issues, including the ACA's authority to remove and appoint vestry members.
Lancaster then argued that, since the parish did take a vote on August 6, 2012 to leave the ACA, the parish was thereby acknowledging the ACA's jurisdiction over it prior to that date.
This struck me as an interesting strategy, and now I regret I didn't become a lawyer. If, by Mr Lancaster's reasoning, I'm being raped and keep on saying "no", by repeating "no", I'm acknowledging that every action the rapist took prior to each repeated "no" had my consent. Otherwise, why would I have to repeat myself? The parish, of course, took repeated votes to leave the ACA and join the US Ordinariate. The August 6 vote was a "what part of 'no' do you not understand?" vote.
My wife and I both noted again a tendency Mr Lancaster has to talk down to judges. It didn't play any better with this judge than it did with the appeals court judges. And I got the same sense with this judge that I had with the appeals court: Lancaster's arguments aren't playing well.
We'll see how things play out in April.
