UNITED STATES. The empty suit met the man with few brains...and lo and behold, they turned out to be one and the same person: TEC's new fearless, "Don't worry be happy" Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry. The newly anointed PB took his first tentative leadership steps this past week, wading into the cesspool that is called the Episcopal Church. He suspended his COO Bishop Stacy Sauls and two other top officials this week at national headquarters in NYC without saying why. He announced the suspensions just as he emerged from brain surgery and is currently recuperating in North Carolina.

Speculation ran rife that it might have something to do with the bugging devices found under a table at the last Executive Council meeting in Linthicum, Maryland. But no one will say. The PB did say there would be a video conference on Monday, December 14, but none was forthcoming.

When VOL inquired as to why the PB had not issued the promised statement, we were referred to the statement issued by the PB of the previous week which announced the suspensions but nothing more.

It is a baptism by fire for the recovering PB! He is barely a week into the job and heads are rolling. One hopes that White Privilege is not meeting racism so soon on the job. We wait with baited breath for the other shoe to drop. You can read what we know in today's digest.

But this has not stopped the PB from constantly talking about White Privilege and racism (whenever he's awake). But why do we never hear him rail on about Christians today who are under attack from the culture as well as from the ineptness of our own leadership?? ISIS Sharia Law judges recently began ordering the execution of children born with Down Syndrome, and young girls are kidnapped to be used as sex slaves. The silence from leaders like Curry on matters such as these is deafening.

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In a development that few Episcopalians of four or five years ago could have imagined, the Episcopal bishopsof the most powerful and financially secure dioceses have begun to turn on their own once-strong but now severely weakened parishes. Having driven out all the dissenters at enormous expense to their coffers, these dioceses are increasingly trying to make up their losses by sacrificing valuable real estate -- even if it means turning out previously loyal congregations from their hard-won property. And -- who could have foreseen it? -- the parishes most harmed by the continuous litigation were precisely those with the most valuable properties.

So writes curmudgeon blogger and Anglican canon lawyer Allan S. Haley.

More than any other lawyer, Haley has catalogued the millions of dollars spent by TEC's lawyers on litigating for properties built and paid for by parishioners. This litigation is a stench that goes right up to the nostrils of God.

He goes on to point the finger at one Bishop J. Jon Bruno (Diocese of Los Angeles) as a prime example who for nine years waged war in the California courts against four dissident congregations to prevent them from keeping title to their own parish properties. Using the notorious Dennis Canon, he was singularly successful in having California courts impose an irrevocable trust on the local parishes' real estate so that when they voted to withdraw from the diocese, they necessarily forfeited all rights to their property.

Haley writes, "But his victories came at a tremendous cost: the Diocese had spent more than eight million dollars as of last year and was still incurring more costs to subsidize two of the remnant congregations in their newly recaptured sanctuaries. Bishop Bruno negotiated sales of two of the properties: the parish of All Saints Long Beach was allowed to purchase their property on a long-term contract, and he sold the church of St. David's in North Hollywood to a private school."

He documents Bruno's venality in the scandal of two parishes -- St. Luke's in the Mountains and St. James the Great in Newport Beach, the latter of which is still ongoing with the present remnants of St. James now suing the bishop for seizing, closing, and attempting to sell the property to a developer. Bruno faces presentment charges as well. He has spent more than nine million to date to wrest the property away from its present parishioners and its redoubtable Canon Cindy Voorhees and sell it. The remnant are not going down without a fight. As Alley notes, "The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has been given the gift of eternal litigation."

But Bruno is not the only bishop hanging churches out to dry. In the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, one of the diocese's older parishes is the Church of the Ascension, just north of the Magnificent Mile, which began as a mission in 1857 and by 1869 had become one of the Church's leading Anglo-Catholic parishes. It maintained that tradition faithfully, becoming renowned for the extent and beauty of its liturgy and music until the advent of the Rev. David Cobb in 2014. No friend of the Church as it had established itself, the Rev. Cobb promptly sacked Ascension's leading musicians, slashed the budget for the choir, and began reducing the number of paid services.

The moves threw the congregation into turmoil. Bishop Jeffrey Lee was forced to intervene. The Rev. Cobb eventually departed after having been voted a generous six-figure "severance package," and an interim priest was assigned, but the damage to the Church's musical and liturgical infrastructure was by then a fait accompli. The Church found a replacement organist and choir director, but one whose permanent residence is in London.

Now Bishop Lee wants to turn the Anglo-Catholic parish into an Affirming Catholic parish, and to that end he is bringing in retired Bishop James Jelinek of Minnesota, 73, to transition the Church from Anglo-Catholicism into "affirming Catholicism." (Bishop Jelinek, by all reports, managed this same feat during his recent tenure at St. Paul's Church on K Street, in Washington, D.C. "Affirming Catholicism" is to Anglo-Catholicism as anti-matter is to matter: in contrast to the traditions from which Anglo-Catholicism springs, it endorses the liberal agenda of ordinations to the priesthood of all and sundry, regardless of gender, identity, or sexual orientation -- and sees itself as a counter-movement to "biblical fundamentalism.")

You can read Allan Haley's fine piece in today's digest or here: http://tinyurl.com/os2yyev

*****

Numbers crunching in TEC continues, and a VOL reader and subscriber sent in some interesting observations taken from the official numbers coming out of TEC.

All statistics are dated 2014 unless otherwise noted:

AGE AND RACE:

90% of Episcopalians are white.

62.1% of all Americans are white.

31% of Episcopalians are 65 or older.

14.5% of all Americans are 65 or older.

79% of Episcopalians do not have a child under 18. (Think about that. No children, no future.)

CONGREGATIONAL AVERAGE SUNDAY ATTENDANCE (ASA)

60 is the median Episcopal ASA.

70% of Episcopal congregations have an ASA of 100 or fewer.

4% of Episcopal congregations have an ASA of 300 or more.

53% of Episcopal congregations lost 10 percent in ASA (past 5 years).

18% of Episcopal congregations gained 10 percent in ASA (past 5 years).

CONGREGATIONAL MEMBERSHIP

150 is the median Episcopal church membership.

60% of Episcopal congregations have membership of 200 or fewer.

14% of Episcopal congregations have membership of 500 or more.

40% of Episcopal congregations lost 10 percent in membership (past 5 years).

24% of Episcopal congregations gained 10 percent in membership (past 5 years).

47% of Episcopalians say the Bible is not the Word of God.

51% of Episcopalians seldom or never read Scripture.

18% of Episcopalians primarily look to religion for guidance on right and wrong.

79% of Episcopalians think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

74% of Episcopalians favor same-sex marriage.

SOURCE: New FACTs on Episcopal Growth and Decline
The Office of the General Convention
Episcopal Domestic Fast Facts Trends 2010-2014

The Diocese of Eastern Oregon elected a new bishop this week. He is Patrick Bell, and he will be the diocese's seventh bishop. Bell said he was raised Episcopalian and attended Whitworth College, a Presbyterian school in Spokane, Washington. As a young adult, his faith turned toward evangelical Christianity. He received a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California and served as a Pentecostal minister. In time, he said, he returned to the Episcopal Church.
"I realized I wasn't a fundamentalist," Bell said.

Neither Whitworth nor Fuller are "fundamentalist" institutions, but the two Episcopal seminaries he did his Anglican studies work -- Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois -- are decidedly liberal Episcopal institutions. It appears he turned his back on biblical theology while at these seminaries. Had he gone to either Trinity School for Ministry or Nashotah House that would not have happened!

The diocese he is taking over has a TOTAL ASA of just over 900 people! There are single parishes in the dioceses of Dallas and Texas that are bigger than that. In time the Diocese of Eastern Oregon will be forced to fold its tent into the Diocese of Oregon. In the meantime, Bell will be keeping his day job, as the bishopric of Eastern Oregon is only a half-time position. Bell said he will be in the diocese two weeks per month and maintain his residence in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where he is presently the rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church.

One wonders how long the fiction is going to be maintained that dioceses like Eastern Oregon, Northern Michigan, Bethlehem, and Easton have a future. They are all running on fumes.

USA TODAY reported this week that a Detroit gay Catholic couple got the Episcopal Church to do the dirty deed and marry them. Because the Roman Catholic Church forbids same-sex marriage, Bryan Victor and Thomas Molina-Duarte made their wedding vows this summer before a Protestant minister in a Detroit Episcopal church. Those in attendance included many family members, including Victor's uncle, who is a Catholic priest, and a Macomb County pastor. The Rev. Ronald Victor did not officiate but was there because, he told his nephew, the Catholic Church "needs more examples of gay holiness."

So sodomite behavior now qualifies as "holy"! Since when?

*****

CANADA. The Diocese of Niagara and its bishop Michael A. Bird have been accused of caring only about money -- again, according to Anglican blogger Samizdat!

The diocese, still smarting from being denounced as greedy, has decided to give Guelph residents who are upset with the sale of St. Matthias two months to come up with a plan more to their liking. The Diocese made the announcement in a news release this week.

Diocesan spokesman Rev. Bill Mous said that "the diocese cared deeply about Guelph," a piety which has not convinced at least one citizen, who announced in a letter to a local Guelph newspaper that the diocese "cares only about money," that Mous's words "ring hollow," that the community "does not feel cared for," and that the diocese has "cast a dark shadow on the reputation of the Anglican Church everywhere" -- not an easy thing to do considering the completion.

Two contract extensions in spite of the fact that the City councilors unanimously said no to the rezoning application. Two extensions in spite of the feelings of the neighbors who want the church to remain a church, and two extensions in spite of the hopes and prayers of local congregations who are longing for usable worship space. Preserve a church as a church? Why do that when you can reap an extra million dollars by selling to a developer who specializes in high-density construction?

The angry citizen's editorial boils the controversy down to this:

"The words of Bill Mous, spokesperson for the Diocese, ring hollow to anyone who has a stake in the neighborhood surrounding the church property. The Diocese 'cares deeply for Guelph'? This community does not feel cared for. It seems the Diocese cares deeply about turning a huge profit by rezoning institutional land to R-4 specialized. And the Diocese cares deeply about running the community out of money so that citizens lose their right to object at the board.

"It's a sad comment on Anglican officials who lack a social conscience and try to bafflegab their way out of any responsibility for the upcoming demolition of a church that other congregations would be thankful to be able to purchase at fair-market value for institutional land. Diocese decisions have cast a dark shadow on the reputation of the Anglican Church everywhere and the Synod clearly worships the almighty dollar rather than the Almighty."

The Quebec Anglican Church is on the brink of going out of business. It is being challenged by the exodus of parishioners. The Rev. Yves Samson says that without radical change, the Anglican Diocese of Quebec could soon be extinct.

"If we want to keep going on (the old) track we will all die," Samson says in an interview after his French and English sermon to a room full of near-empty pews at St. James Anglican Church.

Several Protestant churches across Quebec have closed rather than turn bilingual.

Samson's church is Anglican in name only. The 10 people who showed up to mass on a recent Sunday included Baptists, Presbyterians, and Unitarians.

The Anglican Diocese of Quebec includes three of the province's main cities --Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, and Quebec City.

The Anglican Diocese of Quebec produced a gloomy report in 2014 about the future of its parishes, which span an area larger than France.

Almost half of its churches have fewer than 10 regular services a year, and close to 80 percent of its churches have a regular attendance of fewer than 25 people.

Forty-five percent of its churches ran a deficit in 2012, and a stunning 64 percent of congregations said last year that within five years they would be closed or amalgamated with other churches.

"We see a grim portrait of our future in this diocese," the report concluded. "We need to act quickly on urgent and radical change in our ethos and structures."

"(The church) is no longer here today," Samson said. "Anglophones are dying out."

In his Christmas message, Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz tells us that "as I read the Christmas story, I am always taken by the way we portray the innkeeper," an odd fascination for an archbishop, since in the Biblical account of Christmas, there is no mention of an innkeeper. Still, the important thing about Christmas isn't that it is an event of cosmic significance around which all history pivots -- because God himself entered time as a baby -- but that Canada must accept more Syrian migrants.
And for that we need an innkeeper.
The other problem is that Hiltz completely forgets about the little drummer boy.

*****

AUSTRALIA. The Anglican Diocese of Bathurst is liable for a $40 million loan from the Commonwealth Bank and may have to sell property, including schools, churches, and other land and buildings, to meet its outstanding debt.

The diocese covers about a third of NSW and oversees 34 parishes from the central west to the Queensland border.

These parishes may face a levy to help cover the money owed.

The Anglican Development Fund, a corporation under the aegis of the diocese, borrowed $40 million from the bank, which it on-lent to two start-up schools, one in Dubbo and one in Orange.

From May 2008 to December 2011, Macquarie Anglican Grammar School and Orange Anglican Grammar School together were advanced more than $28 million.

However, the development fund defaulted, still owing a large part of the loan to the bank.

This was due in part to enrolments not meeting expectations and staffing problems at the two schools.

In a judgment handed down in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday, Justice David Hammerschlag said, "The schools were overladen with debt, could not sustain themselves, and were incapable of repaying the borrowed monies ... such was the parlous position of the schools that some of the loans were described as emergency loans."

The only security taken by the bank for the loan was a letter, known as a "letter of comfort" from the bishop undertaking responsibility, on behalf of the diocese, for the loan.

He said there was church trust property available -- both real and personal -- that could be used to pay off the debt. These include churches, cemeteries, rectories, and halls throughout western NSW. Many have belonged to the diocese or its various organizations since the 1800s.

A spokesman for the diocese declined to comment. A spokesman for the bank said, "We acknowledge the Judge's decision today and will be considering the implications of his findings."

*****

CONTINUING CHURCH NEWS

The Trinitarian newspaper reports that the Anglican Catholic Church has amended its marriage canons to define without equivocation that Christian marriage as "in its nature a union permanent and lifelong...of one natural, biological man with one natural, biological woman." In addition, regarding human sexuality, the canonical changes make clear that any attempt to change a person's original, biological sex "also rebels against God by rejecting His image and His design" and that "God intends males to mate with females and females to males and any individual's contrary choice is a violation of God's plan and, therefore, of natural law." The canonical changes make it clear that natural law transcends civil law.

IN OTHER NEWS, the ties between the ACC and the Anglican Church in America and the Anglican Province of America which have drawn closer over the last four years recently took a giant leap forward, reports the Trinitarian. Archbishop Haverland said members of his church could take Holy Communion at an ACA or APA church when an ACC is not nearby. This places the ACC in de facto communion with the two Continuing Churches.

Marianne McCravey Morse, 71, wife of the Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse, died in Nashville, Tennessee on Sunday, December 13th. She served beside her husband in his ministry as a pastor in Presbyterian churches in Georgia, Pennsylvania, California, and Tennessee, and as a professor in the Old Testament Department at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. She was the devoted mother of four children and a grandmother of nine. The funeral service with Holy Communion will be celebrated at 2:00 PM on Saturday, December 19, 2015 at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church with the Most Reverend Royal U. Grote officiating.

*****

ENGLAND. The Equality and Human Rights Commission announced that the issues raised by Digital Cinema Media's (DCM) decision not to show a Church of England advert about the Lord's Prayer in cinemas will be examined as part of a major Commission report.

This report, examining the adequacy of the law protecting freedom of religion or belief, will be published early next year. The DCM decision has generated significant public concern about freedom of speech.

The Commission, the national expert in equality and human rights law, has also offered its legal expertise for the purpose of intervening in the case should the Church take legal proceedings against DCM.

Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Rebecca Hilsenrath said, "We strongly disagree with the decision not to show the adverts on the grounds they might 'offend' people.

"There is no right not to be offended in the UK; what is offensive is very subjective and this is a slippery slope towards increasing censorship."

*****

A former Church of England priest has handed himself in to authorities in India to face claims he abused a boy there in 2011. The Rev. Jonathan Robinson, 73, is accused of abusing the 15-year-old boy in the capital Delhi at a youth hostel. The boy was from an orphanage that Robinson founded in Vallioor in the south of India, which has now been shut down. Robinson denies the charges, and a submission given on his behalf to court has said that the alleged victim was "threatened and forced" into claiming he abused him.

The vicar was on Interpol's wanted list for four years. However, Indian authorities recently took him off in hopes that Robinson would voluntarily come forward. He has been granted bail. A full trial is expected early in 2016.

The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, has called for a Christmas mobile phone and tablet switch-off as a new survey showed a quarter of the UK admitted to checking emails on Christmas Day.

Sentamu said Britain must put the heart back into Christmas by putting digital devices to one side for the holiday. This was in response to a survey commissioned by Traidcraft as part of its Show You Care campaign, which revealed that 24 per cent of UK adults check emails on Christmas Day and 66 percent, two-thirds of the population, believe Christmas has lost its true meaning.

Sentamu, who has nearly 60,000 followers on Twitter, said, "Christmas is a day of good news, a day of great joy and a day to give thanks. I would encourage all those not working on Christmas Day to focus on connecting with family and friends, to enjoy this time with loved ones. I love using social media and email because of the instant connection with the world they bring but have a 'phone fast' from work on this day."

Welcoming the climate deal reached in Paris this weekend, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the global church must be a key partner in tackling climate change. "I warmly welcome the agreement that almost 200 states came to in Paris on Saturday, setting a clear and ambitious path towards tackling global climate change.

"Earlier this year I, alongside many other faith leaders, endorsed the Lambeth Declaration on Climate Change. The Declaration recognized the COP21 negotiations as a pivotal moment in the urgent global challenge to tackle climate change.

"As faith leaders, we urged those participating in the negotiations to apply the best of our world's intellectual, economic and political resources to reach a legally-binding global agreement to limit the global rise in average temperatures to 2 degrees C. The commitment made by world leaders to hold the increase in global temperatures to 'well below' this level is welcome and courageous progress.
Those most affected by climate change are the poor. In our prayers and actions we must demonstrate our love for them through sustainable and generous innovation.

"One of the Anglican Communion's marks of mission says that we are 'to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth.' The global church -- extraordinarily led on the issue of climate change by Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch -- must be a key partner in tackling climate change. As the Body of Christ, his church is called to be incarnational. Each of us has a role to play, if we are to help achieve what has been agreed in Paris."

*****

NEWS OF THE WEIRD...AND JUST PLAIN STUPID

The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art is being sued for displaying paintings featuring Christ as blond-haired and white. Justin Renel Joseph, 33, of Manhattan filed a suit with the Manhattan Supreme Court citing four paintings showcased by the museum as being "racist" for depicting Christ as an "Aryan" male.

Joseph, who is representing himself in court, called the famous paintings an "offensive aesthetic whitewashing" of the true appearance of Christ who had "black hair like wool and skin of bronze color."

According to court papers: The implication that someone who possesses physical features like the plaintiff could not be the important historical and public figure of Jesus Christ ... caused the plaintiff to feel, among other things, rejected and unaccepted by society.

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*****

We are heading down to the wire, and we urgently need funds to round out the year. We also need support as we enter the New Year, as I will be traveling in January to both Canterbury, England to cover the Primates' meeting and later to Charleston, SC for the annual Mere Anglican conference and the Global Anglican Leadership Institute, of which I am a member. Thousands of you access VOL's website each day to read stories you don't find anywhere else. Please consider a tax deductible donation to keep us going into the New Year.

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Advent blessings,

David