The Constitutional Crisis: Cracks at the Top

Now that we have the reports from the third and final day of the meeting in Salt Lake City of ECUSA's Executive Council, we are finally able to fill in the picture of what is going on among the Church's elected and appointed officials. The picture is neither pretty nor reassuring.

First and foremost, the Executive Council continues to tiptoe through the tulips, and to ignore its role to act as a watchdog for the whole Church during the 154 weeks out of 156 when General Convention is not in session. As documented in the series of posts called "ECUSA's Attorneys -- a Runaway Train", the litigation in which the Presiding Bishop has embroiled the Church on her own continues to drain the latter's resources -- but as far as Executive Council is concerned, it has no oversight role to play. We find out that in approving a reduced budget for 2011, the Council approved the Church taking out a new loan of up to $60,000,000, and securing its note by mortgaging its headquarters at 815 Second Avenue, as well as by pledging unrestricted endowment funds.

The new loan is necessary because the Church has already borrowed $46.1 million, the note for which falls due at the end of this year. Of that amount, nearly $10 million was used to acquire land for a new site for the Episcopal Archives in Austin, Texas, and the balance was used for improvements at 815 Second Avenue -- a good part of which has now been rented out to third-party tenants.

To read more, click here.

To read Part IV of "The Constitutional Crisis", click here.