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BUFFALO DEAN TERMINATED
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
BUFFALO, NY-- The Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Very Rev. Allen Farabee was terminated by the vestry this week, ending a six-year reign which saw the parish plummet from a high of 754 communicants in 1998, to a low of 305 in 2002.
Dean Farabee submitted his resignation after he learned that a task force set up to review his performance decided not to renew his contract. After a five month examination of Farabee's performance they reported their findings to the vestry who voted unanimously to terminate him. A source told Virtuosity that when the parish leaders were solicited to provide written comments for the Dean's evaluation they ran 100% in support of termination.
In a letter to the people of St. Paul's, Farabee noted, "that you wish to go in a different direction than I can lead you."
"For some time I have felt encumbered by the administrative and pastoral responsibilities of the cathedral and have been unable to commit myself to those things for which I am best suited."
But Farabee may well have done himself in. He had no gospel to proclaim and the cathedral was slowly withering and dying.
On Easter Sunday 2002 Farabee preached a sermon in which he bemoaned the closure of the only gay bathhouse in Buffalo saying it was "an alcove of safety in a hostile and threatening world. More than 3000 members paid annual dues and visitors came from all over the world. The information network of safe places alerted men who might be coming to Buffalo: go to 653 Main Street and you will find a place of hospitality and welcome, a place you can be yourself, a resting place for body and soul."
This writer along with a number of media at the time poured scorn on the idiocy of the Dean's remarks, reminding him that gay bathhouses were the primary medium through which AIDS was transmitted by men having unprotected anal sex first in San Francisco and then across the country.
When he preached his Easter day sermon this writer remonstrated at the time, wondering aloud if the dean had not totally lost his mind. "Does Farabee know how many of those 3,000 men are still alive today and not lying in shallow graves their bodies wasted by AIDS all because they falsely believed they could find a "safe place" for the outworking of their sexual desires at 653 Main Street, Buffalo? Of course he doesn't," wrote Virtuosity.
Farabee never completely recovered from his stupid remarks said a former parishioner.
The cathedral then went into free fall.
In 1998 (the year Bishop Michael Garrison was elected) there were 938 communicants; 754 in good standing. In 1999 the number of communicants dropped to 780, and then in 2002 with a change in the church's format, the number of active members dropped to 515 with Communicants in Good Standing dropping to 305.
Spiritual torpor had set in. Noted one former Standing Committee member in the diocese, "Our once great Cathedral is currently in the process of exhausting it’s endowment in order to try to appear vibrant. Churches are dying all across the area."
Farabee was a career Episcopal priest who sought the office of bishop "several times" by his own account, the most recent that of Bishop of Washington. He failed.
It was clearly time for the dean to depart.
The departure of Dean Allen Waldo Farabee will not mean the cathedral will become more biblically orthodox, sources tell Virtuosity. "They are in a neck and neck competition for perversity and blasphemy with another downtown church, Trinity Episcopal Church," wrote a parishioner.
All the bets are on a woman to replace Farabee, say sources.
Canon Stephen J. S. Smith, a canon at the cathedral was laid off this spring owing to their financial woes. His sacking is being blamed on conservatives not rendering unto Caesar.
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