An Episcopal Looks at Episcopal Priest Barbie(Lesson For Catholics)

Yesterday I posted that what many of the American Catholic "Progressives" want is to be American Episcopal Church with perhaps Virgin Mary thrown in. As I posted I find this to be a disaster. This is nothing new. When I was in college and went to "retreats" I was fed that propaganda a lot. Mr Mead takes a look at this at Faith Matters: Will Barbie Save The Episcopal Church?

I think he is largely correct that Anglicanism will survive in the United States not just thought e TEC. The UK has similar problems in Anglicanism but they know their history and they I don;t think in the end will cut of their bond with the Global South and Africa where Anglicanism is healthy. Africa in the end will save the day.

However I wanted to point out this part:
................General Seminary is on the brink of collapse. According to the article, this flagship seminary has suffered from stagnant or declining enrollment for thirty years. It has roughly $100 million in deferred maintenance on its buildings. It has an annual operating deficit of roughly $3 million out of a total budget of $8 million. It pays its bills by drawing down its endowment. Not living on the interest, but eating the principal. Now it appears that the endowment-eating process is approaching its natural and inevitable end, and the seminary is hoping to get into the hotel business to stay alive by converting part of its operating plant into the “Desmond Tutu Center” which will be used for conferences and, when no conferences are scheduled, will rent rooms out to tourists. But the Center didn’t open on time (surprise! surprise! administrative incompetence in the Episcopal church!) and the seminary is $2 million to $4 million short of what it needs to operate next year.

The ever active rumor mill, for what it’s worth, says things are even worse than the seminary admits. I have no idea; but after decades of incompetent, spendthrift denial the seminary leadership can hardly be surprised that nobody trusts that it either knows or tells the truth today.

This crisis did not come out of the blue. It has been growing steadily for thirty years, during a period in which the virtually the entire leadership of the Episcopal church busied itself by industriously looking the other way — and issuing public statements telling public officials and various other people that they didn’t understand moral values and were doing their jobs wrong. $100 million in deferred maintenance and the endowment is being chewed up year by year: did they think Jesus was coming again before the buildings would finally collapse? Were they waiting for the Rapture? For a new Miracle of Cana that would turn the red ink black?

No, they were doing the ecclesiastical equivalent of dressing Barbie dolls. They were dressing up and performing as bishops, deans and trustees — playing church. As long as money can be scraped up somewhere, the show can go on. The trustees and leaders of GTS are no worse than the rest of the church. Cathedrals and parish churches are falling into disrepair all over the Episcopal church: business as usual. Endowments are being eaten out. Eyes are averted from inevitable, onrushing doom.

A whole generation of Episcopal leaders neglected their duties to God and their fellow believers, reveling in salaries and status while blatantly failing to perform the vital tasks with which they were entrusted. And we laypeople cannot escape condemnation. We voted these bad shepherds into office. We enabled their behavior by failing to supervise them properly and to take decisive action as the inadequacy of the church’s leadership became glaringly obvious. Out of indifference, culpable ignorance or a misplaced sense of charity, we tolerated accumulating failure until its consequences have become unavoidable and perhaps irreversible. Judas Iscariot is not the only person who betrayed our Lord with a kiss.

Meanwhile the basic model of church life is clearly falling to bits. Our shrinking congregations cannot pay salaries and fringe benefits that would enable priests to carry the cost of a three year postgraduate degree program. Nor can they maintain the buildings and physical plants of the past. These trends were perfectly plain 25 years ago. Nothing was done. They were even more obvious ten years ago. We got better at denial. The Episcopal church has stood unmoving in the road for thirty years, waiting patiently for the oncoming truck.

Even for a purely secular institution this is a miserable and unworthy performance. It is pathetic, dishonest and undignified. For people who claim to be on a mission from God, charged with the unspeakably weighty responsibility of bringing the Word of Christ to a needy world, it is an unfathomable disgrace and discredit. But the Church Pension Fund is the about one financially solid organization left, so at least the incompetent spendthrifts who have ruined the church will all retire well. It will be their successors who pay................

How did this happen? Needless to say the American Catholic Church has its financial woes and problems with filling up Seminaries. The financial woes of course come partly from lawsuits dealing with the sex abuse crisis which was of our own making. However it appears we are rounding the corner on both issues.

Why is the General Seminary not only almost bankrupt but has trouble getting potential Priests. It appears married Priests and embracing the Gospel of Maureen Dowd is not enough. Yet progressive Catholics ignore this. They ignore in the Episcopal Church the Orthodox Diocese are doing pretty well and in fact have growth.

At the end what "sells" is the Gospel handled down to us by the Apostles. Not the gospel of Dowd or the NYT or Newsweek, or the liberals on the On Faith Washington Post page.

So Anglicanism will survive in the USA and I suspect it will thrive once it the TEC is out of the picture and a new structure is put in place.