The official report noted that the sales had provided "vital" if "short-term" funding at a time when some dioceses were struggling and clergy were being asked to tighten their belts to pay for a £9.5 million pension shortfall.

The report says that without the sale of parsonages and other charitable assets, dioceses would have been hundreds of thousands of pounds in deficit by the end of 2004.

"We've left those parishes and have found common cause among ourselves," Renshaw said. "We are having a hard time accepting the theological changes that the majority of Episcopalians are taking. We've decided that we're no longer part of the Episcopal Church in America, but we're aligning ourselves theologically with the greater Anglican Communion."

Supreme Court Justice Jeffery A. Tait ruled Wednesday that two of the seven complaints in the suit against the Central New York Diocese of the Episcopal Church could stand. The diocese had asked Tait to dismiss the case.

However, as has become plain, the resolutions of Convention overall leave a number of unanswered questions, and there needs to be some careful disentangling of what they say and what they don't say. This work is to be carried forward by a small group already appointed before Convention by the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC. And I have also written directly to every Primate to ask for a preliminary reaction from their province.