Real estate, the best investment

Conservative Episcopalians started a two-day meeting today to work out their demands. They're pissed off about the installation of an openly gay bishop last year. But there's a hitch:

Conservative parishes do not want to officially leave the church because under secular law they would probably have to surrender their properties to the denomination.

"We've got a $12 million facility and we can't just walk away from it," said the Rev. Donald Armstrong of Colorado Springs, Colo., a delegate representing Midwestern and Mountain states.

Yes, in the Episcopal Church, the land and the buildings of church facilities belong to the diocese, and the diocese is legally bound to the national church. Unlike Lutheran churches, where individual congregations own their own land and buildings. So when my church, St. Francis, got kicked out of the national body in 1995, we kept the church -- and the adjacent apartment building, rents from which provides valuable funds for our programs.