But here are some thoughts.
- The visit from Mrs Bush came almost six years to the day from the first seizure of the parish by the dissident group and the ACA in 2012. This occurred in the context of a temporary restraining order from a judge enjoining the parish from holding a meeting and granting the ACA control of the property. The curious thing is that the letter from Tyler Andrews, relatively new to the case, threatens an equivalent injunction, but none has so far occurred.
- The dissidents and the ACA in 2012 came armed with the injunction. This time, they didn't have one. Instead, Mrs Bush came with some of her few remaining adherents -- Mr Omeirs now seems to be unavailable for such efforts, and the Kangs have long since dropped away. Even Bp Williams seems to have been too busy, when in 2012, Bp Strawn appeared with Canon Morello.
- So what did Mrs Bush and her small coterie expect to accomplish? They handed out a packet of letters, and they uttered some brief objections to the meeting before being encouraged to leave. The parish then proceeded to revise its bylaws in a way that will complicate the ACA's legal situation. How was this worth the time and mileage for anyone in this group? Even the letter from Mr Andrews doesn't seem to have had an effect on the advice the parish has received from its counsel.
- Let's add to the mix that by Mr Lancaster's account to Judge Murphy, he hadn't been paid by the Bush-ACA group since 2015, when Citibank moved out and stopped paying rent. The Bush-ACA group doesn't seem to have money to spend on attorneys -- it's hard to see how the attorneys who argued the appeal with the Appellate Division of LA Superior Court were paid, and it appears that Mrs Bush is being very careful about spending more from her personal resources.
- My wife thinks that one reason she and the ACA didn't come armed with an injunction this time -- even though Mr Andrews has threatened it -- is that my wife estimates that an ex parte hearing to obtain one would cost in the neighborhood of $10-20,000, but especialy in light of Judge Jones's reversal on the arguments of the 2012 injunction, their chances of getting it would be iffy.
- Mrs Bush and her group no longer have standing to sue as a putative "rector, wardens, and vestry". The ACA would need to be the plaintiff itself in any further legal action. Interestingly, Mrs Bush's stated objections to the May 6 meeting don't seem to have involved any denial of her particular rights or those of a putative vestry; she appeared to speak, insofar as she was coherent, only on behalf of the ACA, although Bp Williams was not there to back her up.
- For the ACA to bring suit against the parish, apparently mainly for past actions regarding Fr Kelley and whatever the elected vestry may or may not have done under legal authority, would in effect require the ACA to reprise legal issues it raised unsuccessfully in 2012-14 -- that as the "highest ecclesiastical authority", its rights supersede those of the parish's founding documents under neutral principles of law. However, the state court of appeals established that legal precedent means the issue must be resolved according to neutral principles of law, and this has already been litigated.
- The ACA might still bring a suit, but, as I discussed this with my wife, it would require many, many hours for new attorneys to review six years of litigation, at least half a dozen cases, and an enormous cache of documents to familiarize themselves with the case. My wife points out that when Mr Lancaster left the case, he took a great deal of institutional knowledge with him, which new attorneys would need to re-learn before they even brought suit.
- The cost of this would be hundreds of thousands. The queston is where Mrs Bush could come up with this money -- she's well off, but broadly speaking, she's still middle class, and she's 88 years old. The ACA, by the admission of Bp Marsh's colleague Bp Hewett, is on the verge of collapse. Even if it had a realistic chance of seizing the St Mary of the Angels property, this would be many years in the future, at a time when the ACA might reasonably be expected not to exist in anything like its current form.
