National Episcopal Church leaders tried unsuccessfully last month to keep a Shadyside parish from suing Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. over property issues, advising it to wait until after last weekend's consecration of gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson to avoid additional conflict.

Duncan leads the church's minority conservative wing that opposed the Robinson confirmation. The lawsuit seeks to prevent him from transferring church property ownership in the event of a schism. It was filed Oct. 24 by Calvary Episcopal Church, upsetting some national leaders with its timing.

Church leaders have declined to comment on the merits of the suit.

The Rev. George Werner, president of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies, said that while national church leaders have met to discuss contingencies should a schism occur, the Calvary suit was an isolated act and not part of any national church strategy.

"The Episcopal Church is not in any way, shape or form involved in that suit," said Werner, the second-ranking officer in the church.

"The official policy of the presiding bishop, the chancellor and myself is we're 100 percent about trying to reconcile, to keep the doors open and unlocked."

The Rev. Harold Lewis, rector of Calvary, filed the suit along with the parish's senior warden. Lewis said that he and the parish's attorneys kept the national church apprised of the Common Pleas Court suit.

"We informed them out of courtesy of what we were doing," Lewis said.

When the suit was filed, the Rev. J. Robert Wright, historiographer of the Episcopal Church, said it could be a prototype of future efforts to keep church property intact in the aftermath of any split in the denomination.

Further fueling the dissension have been conflicting comments from participants at meetings between national church officials and lawyers and clergy representing various dioceses.

A meeting in North Carolina last month between David B. Beers, chancellor to the church's presiding bishop, and the bishops and chancellors from the 20 dioceses that make up Province IV, mostly the southeastern United States, pointed that out.

In an interview, Eugene N. "Nick" Zeigler, chancellor of the South Carolina Diocese, quoted Beers as saying that if a majority of parishes within a diocese seceded from the national church, any remaining parishes would be recognized as the legitimate Episcopal Church.

"That would be catastrophic," Zeigler said. "I told him, 'The star of the west is getting close to Sumter,'" a reference to the shots fired that started the American Civil War.

Beers declined comment.

Werner, former dean of Downtown's Trinity Cathedral, said Beers has been clear at every meeting about the national church's intentions.

"What has been said to people in these groups is that a diocese is a geographic area, and if a group in a previously constituted diocese decides to leave or break away, it's our job to reconstitute the diocese," Werner said.

"That's not a threat, just a fact of life."