Diocese of Pittsburgh Analysis
After last night’s experiment in live blogging, a first for me, I have to say that I was generally pleased at the results. Although I was not chatting with a lot of people in real time during the course of the meeting, I do think that I gave a pretty fair sense of how it went. I want to take a few minutes here to reflect on what happened at the meeting, and in the ensuing conversation out on the sidewalk afterwards, which is, as usual in these cases, much more interesting than what was said inside!
I think that in general the meeting accomplished two things. First, it allowed a number of people from within District VII of the Diocese of Pittsburgh to speak to the leadership of the diocese and express their views. These are mostly, although not all, those who are in the minority in this particular diocese, meaning that they generally agree with the direction that The Episcopal Church has take in recent years, and would like to remain full members. Although as I said during the event, this was a bit frustrating for someone such as myself who has heard these arguments before many, many times and have learned that they are unlikely to convince anyone to change their views, nevertheless I must acknowledge the very real pain felt by many who were present. I am glad that they had the chance to express their views.
The second thing that happened at the meeting is that we were given a clearer understanding of the direction that the diocese is considering moving. Although the secular, legal aspects of the lawsuit involving Calvary Church and the diocese are not moving in a direction that the diocese would prefer, it is clear that they are not yet willing to back down. The idea of leaving all of the property and endowments of each parish and simply ‘going away’ was mentioned by Bishop Scriven, but probably, as Harold Lewis pointed out to me afterwards, only as an option that though a technical possibility, was not really likely to happen in reality.
With the move towards “leaving the Episcopal Church” that was stated in the document I quoted in an earlier post, it is clear that some sort of plan has begun to emerge about the direction that they think the diocese needs to move. The insistence from the panel that they do not have any real idea what that direction might be is, frankly, hard to fathom. If it was discussed, and in fact, as was stated, if the pros and cons of each of the proposed ideas was discussed, there must have been some talk about what a possible future could look like. For me, the reluctance of those involved to inform us either about the content of this ‘pro and con’ discussion or about what they see specifically as the future of the diocese is a signal to me that something is in the works.
The conclusion is that Diocesan Convention will have to make some sort of decision at its next meeting, but if my reading of the history of this diocese is accurate, that will be far more likely to be a tacit approval of a previously planned idea, rather than a real discussion of what the possibilities might be. Although I generally consider myself a centrist, my experience in this diocese is that they tend to simply play by the idea that the ends justify the means. On the one hand, they say that the Primates of the Anglican Communion have the right to interfere with dioceses of the Episcopal Church, but on the other hand they say that the General Convention of the Episcopal Church has no right to interfere with the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
What they are saying, really, is that since they are right anything that they need to do to move the Church in the direction that they want must also be right. Please go back and re-read my quote from St. Basil the Great below — what a sorry place for the Church to be in.
