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| This an allegory for Jefferts-Schori's leadership. |
VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - Presiding Bishop and HOD President Face off over TEC Budget:
Presiding Bishop and HOD President Face off over TEC Budget
Litigation costs are forcing church's hand in how it will spend money now and in the future
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
January 31, 2012
A power struggle and simmering rivalry which has been going on for a number of years between Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies president Bonnie Anderson erupted this past week when the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church met in Maryland where the two parties offered different visions of the mission of the church.
Executive Council received two different budget proposals from its Executive Committee with one setting the diocesan asking at the current level of 19 percent, and requiring cuts of almost $6 million from the $140 million 2010-2012 budget adopted by the General Convention. This is the position favored by PB Jefferts Schori.
The other lowers the diocesan asking to 15 percent and requires cuts of almost $21 million from the current budget. HOD President Anderson favors the 15 percent asking.
Both budgets were ultimately scuttled and a third budget was sent to Program, Budget & Finance.
"We have created something different and unique. There are increased funds for justice ministry in this budget that we will present to PB&F," Said Jefferts Schori at a press conference.
Anderson ripped the national church's current spending habits, "Let's reduce the amount that we ask dioceses to send to the Church Center. Let's study the best use of the building at 815 Second Avenue with an eye to freeing up for mission the $7.7 million dollars that is earmarked for facilities cost and debt repayment during the next triennium. Let's expect that dioceses and their networks know best how to build up God's church and support ministry where it is most effective. And as we change the budget, let's acknowledge that we also need to change our models of accountability and responsibility to be mutual and respectful of the entire people of God, not just those with ecclesial power."
VOL reporter Mary Ann Mueller confronted the Presiding Bishop with this charge at a press conference following to which Jefferts Schori retorted, "I believe that all members of The Episcopal Church have ecclesial power meant to be used in service of God's mission."
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| Bishop and Mrs. Robinson. He divorced his wife. |
Behind Anderson's charges are the horrendous millions of dollars being spent on lawsuits to reclaim churches that have fled TEC's grip. TEC mortgaged 815 2nd Ave., for $60 million to continue the lawsuits and now must earmark millions for repayments. The reason for all this goes back to the consecration of the libidinous homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson whose behavior brought about the tear in the Episcopal Church resulting in the formation of the Anglican Church in North America. Sin has consequences and it is catching up with The Episcopal Church big time. Aspects of mission are being downgraded for payments that MUST be made. Banks offer no mercy.
Chief Operating Office Bishop Stacy Sauls commented, "This meeting, as you might imagine, is the source of no small amount of anxiety for the staff as we consider the budget... Managers and team leaders are engaged in conversations about how to take whatever budget comes from General Convention and dream, create, adapt, and act. But I do ask you to be sensitive to their legitimate needs in this time."
He also asked for "a serious discussion of far-reaching structural reform leaving nothing off the table and no question unasked."
INTERPRETATION: The money is not coming in to cover all the crazy stuff TEC wants to pass and sponsor which the world and most of the laity in the Episcopal Church ignore. Canon lawyer A. S. Haley noted those challenges calling them "significant and substantial."
Kirk Hadaway, the church official in charge of congregational research, and Matthew Price of the Church Pension Fund raised the alarm saying that 72% of Episcopal congregations were in financial stress as of 2010 (compared to 58% of other denominations for the same year) -- the highest level in the past decade, by far... The question is how long will it be before the other 28% succumb and find they can barely raise enough funds to keep the doors open and salaries paid.
In order to get her way, Jefferts Schori blindsided the HOD president by going directly to the House of Deputies through the House of Bishops with a video of her plans and her take on the budget.
This so incensed Anderson that she fired back a public letter in which she said that the Office of Communications email sent to all the bishops had mischaracterized her response to the video's release and asked the bishops to forward the video message to their diocese's deputies.
She noted angrily, "In my nearly 25 years as a deputy, I don't ever recall the Presiding Bishop speaking directly to the House of Deputies outside of a joint session or without giving the House due notice, while at General Convention. I don't ever recall a Presiding Bishop corresponding directly with deputies outside of the General Convention, without the knowledge of, or in collaboration with the President.
"I was surprised because I thought that the Presiding Bishop, her staff, and I had worked through some important issues of internal communications last fall. I had talked with both Bishop Sauls and the Presiding Bishop and asked that we proceed in a more collegial and cooperative manner. I thought we had agreed to do so.
"But while the General Convention Office was holding the video, it was released by the Office of Communications to the whole church just hours before the Presiding Bishop and I were scheduled to arrive in Baltimore where we could have resolved the situation in person.
"I told her that I am concerned about the use of church wide resources to lobby General Convention on only one side of a legislative issue.
"Despite this productive conversation, upon direction from the Presiding Bishop, the Office of Communications sent the second email, this time to bishops, that mischaracterized my request that the video be held, thus putting me in a difficult position and making it necessary to spell all of this out."
Canon lawyer and former Eau Claire bishop William Wantland told VOL that Jefferts Schori's actions were "sneaky but legal." There is no limitation on a Diocesan Bishop speaking to the Diocesan Deputies, he said.
In the end money, or the lack of it, will determine the course of action TEC will take. The two women, who both share a liberal theological worldview will find that whatever they decide, events will overtake them and determine the course of TEC's long spiral downward.
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