The top leaders of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral were preparing to oust their now-suspended dean, the Very Rev. Philip C. Linder, triggering a chain of events that led to the dramatic intervention by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina, the bishop said in a statement Friday.
“Those of you who are puzzled or angered by my decision to suspend the Dean are asking many questions, some of which can only be answered with replies we are unable to give you for privacy reasons,” Bishop W. Andrew Waldo said in the letter posted on Trinity’s website.
“What must firmly be said, however, is that your wardens and chancellor came to me with a call for a special vestry meeting, signed by themselves and 16 vestry members, to consider the dissolution of the pastoral relationship between the Cathedral and Philip Linder.”
Waldo said he ordered Linder, 50, not to speak to parishioners of the historic downtown congregation while the dispute was under mediation, an order Linder violated, Waldo said. The root causes of the conflict between the vestry and Linder have not been made public and remain unclear.
Those with more experience with such conflicts will have a better basis for judgment than I have, but an order to a rector of 10+ years not to talk to parishioners seems on the face of it to be an invitation to trouble. Such gag orders are very difficult to obey on both sides and are contrary to the spiritual support the gospel commands us to offer one another.
Well, my former TEC priest is currently under such as order (a suspension pending review) by his bishop, to have no contact with the vestry or any parishioners – so the congregation will have to wait and see – and he’s been the priest at this parish for about 13 years.
It honestly sounds like the terms of a typical inhibition for violation of pastoral directives.
It also smacks of something else when a priest is forbidden to speak.
desert padre
Obviously some specific event has precipitated the current crisis. Why the secrecy about what’s actually going on?
#5,
Exactly. To mix expressions : “What’s the elephant in the room that
dare not speak its name ?”