The Patrimony That Won't Die!

As I noted earlier this week, three bishops in the Patrimony of the Primate, including the Primate Emeritus himself, have made a declaration to the court that the ACA bishops who allegedly dissolved the Patrimony in January 2012 never had the authority to do so. In a 2012 declaration, however, retired TAC Arshbishop Louis Falk said,

I was aware that Archbishop Hepworth was retiring as of April 15, 2012, and that his named Successor, Archbishop Samuel Prakash of India, stated his intention to dissolve the Patrimony in his administration and upon his assumption of duties on April 16, 2012, which Archbishop Prakash in fact did. A unilateral abolition of the Patrimony, however, without consulting the United States Bishops, such as myself, who had voluntarily set aside our voting rights in matters that did not pertain to us, is an act that I see to be Ultra Vires (beyond their competence). In any event, if the Patrimony automatically dissolved on January 1, 2012 upon the erection of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter in the United States, as I understand to be Bishop Strawn’s position in this matter, then Archbishop Prakash would not have been required to take the action he did on April 16, 2012, because there would be no Patrimony or Primate in existence to dissolve.

Abp Falk says Prakash did in fact dissolve the Patrimony, but I can't find any reference to this on the TAC website. The closest thing I find to it is the October 2012 Statement by a TAC Tribunal expelling Abp Hepworth from the TAC College of Bishops, a gesture perhaps more comic-opera than Orwellian, though there are certainly elements of both. The Tribunal imposed a sanction

THAT all licences for any EPISCOPAL or PRIESTLY function within any affiliated church of the TRADITIONAL ANGLICAN COMMUNION, be with immediate effect withdrawn.

However, I doubt that the Patrimony of the Primate was ever an "affiliated church", being in effect Hepworth's personal creation. But let's assume that treating the Patrimony as still in existence is something utterly outside Hepworth's ecclesiastical competence, and this is anathema. What's the TAC to do? Expel him again?

And of course, the TAC itself is the outcome of the highly controversial 1991 Deerfield Beach Consecrations, felt by other "continuing Anglican" denominations to be uncanonical themselves.

Speaking as a Catholic observer who was formerly Episcopalian, I've got to say that the "continuing Anglican" movement comes off as pretty much of a canonical wild west in any case. I can't imagine Strawn or Marsh seriously complaining that Abp Hepworth has done something uncanonical!