By Michael Gryboski, Editor Monday, March 30, 2026

An Episcopal Church court has granted a new hearing for a priest accused of stealing $300,000 from a Texas church, striking down an earlier decision against him.

Last year, Edward Monk filed an appeal with The Court of Review of The Episcopal Church over an earlier decision from a diocesan hearing panel that found him guilty of misconduct.

The Court of Review issued a ruling last week in the case of The Rev. Edward R. Monk v. The Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, concluding that the hearing panel had violated canon law.

Specifically, the majority opinion cited the hearing panel’s “arbitrary exclusion of the Rev. Monk’s counsel from the hearing itself, and the improper use of the criminal prosecutor to present selective grand jury information from an undisclosed expert forensic accounting report that had not been provided to the Rev. Monk or his counsel in advance of the hearing.”

“Those canonical violations were highly prejudicial and require us to order a new hearing,” reads the Opinion of the Court. “These errors were highly prejudicial to the Rev. Monk and deprived him of the right to present his defense.”

The opinion was not unanimous, as four Court of Review members — Delbert C. Glover, the Rev. Giovan Venable King, the Rt. Rev. E. Mark Stevenson and the Rev. Marisa Tabizon Thompson — signed a dissenting opinion.

The four members believed that because Monk “failed to participate in the hearing,” he was “entitled only to a much less exacting level of review than that applied by the majority.”

“Under that more limited standard of review we find that, despite the Panel’s many procedural failures, the ultimate result was not ‘clearly wrong’ so as to require reversal,” reads the dissent.

“Nevertheless, while much must be discounted, enough remains that we cannot form a definite and clear conviction that the Panel made a mistake in finding that the Rev. Monk misappropriated funds, misled his parish about his behavior, and violated the canons as alleged.”

Monk, who had served as rector of St. John's Episcopal Church of Corsicana since 2003, became the subject of a police investigation in July 2024 after parishioners reported suspicious financial activity.

In December 2024, Monk was arrested and charged with stealing over $300,000, fraudulently using the identity of an elderly individual and credit card abuse of an elderly person.

For their part, the Dallas-based diocese put Monk on administrative leave in August 2024, with the priest being charged with six counts of mismanagement of the local church's funds and fraud.

The counts included withholding information from church accountants, misusing a credit card for which a parishioner was liable, misusing the ministry fund of St. John's Church, failing to document the purpose of expenditures, and misappropriating church funds for personal use.

In late May of last year, a diocesan hearing panel concluded that Monk violated Episcopal Church disciplinary canons by allegedly defrauding his congregation and financial misconduct.

Monk appealed the hearing panel decision last December, arguing the hearing had been a "sham" and that he was not given enough of an opportunity to defend himself from the allegations.

"This long train of abuses culminated in the sham hearing of May 27 from which the [hearing panel's] order issued," stated the appeal document.

"The hearing panel insisted on conducting the hearing in a manner that both deprived respondent of his right to effective counsel at the hearing and placed his canonical and constitutional rights in the criminal proceeding in grave jeopardy."

News Source : https://www.christianpost.com/news/episcopal-court-orders-new-hearing-for-priest-in-300k-theft-case.html