[William] Franklin has maintained an office at the diocesan headquarters in the Town of Tonawanda since Feb. 15, and he estimates he already has visited in some form or another about half of the 63 congregations in the seven- county diocese.
He’s attended weekend worship, weekday dinners with clergy, deanery committee meetings and, of course, those Friday fish fries ”” all in an effort to meet people.
“With the clergy, I just want to know their own journey of their life, and then I want to know what people’s hopes and dreams are for the diocese and for the region,” he said.
I didn’t think it possible, but they found someone who had LESS experience in parish and pastoral situations than KJS. The Titanic has another hole in the hull…
There’s nothing like beginning one’s episcopacy under a cloud, is there?
Bishop Franklin has inherited a train wreck from Bishop Garrison. During 2002 through 2009, the diocese lost 31.8 percent of Members, lost 34.2 percent of ASA, and lost 29.7 percent of inflation adjusted Plate & Pledge. I ranked it at 94 of 95 diocese considered. And Money will conttinue to be a major problem with only 8 of its 60 churches having Plate & Pledge of more than $150K in 2009. Even more dismal was the 35.2 percent decline in Marriages and the 48.8 percent decline in Infant Baptisms. Add to all of the above the 30 percent poverty rate in Buffalo and the fiscal mess in New York State. Statmann
Once again Statmann intrudes his dour, bleak, and utterly divisive rhetoric into this joy-filled and triumphant thread.
Why must he pipe such horrible and ghastly tunes in the midst of our inclusive and happy and highly successful church?
Well, unlike, Ms Schori, he really was the dean of a school of theology. Ms Schori stated that she was the dean of a school of theology which turned out to be an adult ed program at a church where she was assistant rector. That information has been scrubbed from the Wikipedia article about her. See [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katharine_Jefferts_Schori&diff=368357818&oldid=368356235 ]here[/url].
The article states that Franklin was “completely exonerated” in financial misdealings as dean of Berkeley School of Theology. Bull.
[blockquote]But a confidential audit supplied to The Courant reports that in recent
months Franklin has used Berkeley money to pay for personal expenses
such as a family trip and dry cleaning. In two instances, Yale auditors
found that Franklin took thousands of dollars in “loans” from the
school that were repaid only after he was confronted by auditors…
Franklin used $8,500 of Berkeley funds to pay for his daughter’s dental
bills not covered in the dean’s health benefits package.
Though Franklin’s contract stipulated that Yale would reimburse his
children’s undergraduate tuition only, Berkeley funded the tuition for
Franklin’s daughter to attend Harvard Medical School. (The medical
school’s annual tuition is currently $28,000).
In 1999, Franklin requested from his subordinate and received two
personal loans of $8,000 and $2,500 that were not approved by the
Berkeley Board of Trustees. The loans remained unpaid until auditors
confronted him in August of 2001.
Franklin used Berkeley funds to pay $933 in airline tickets for his
wife and daughter to join him in Colorado to attend the General
Convention of the Episcopal Church.
Administrators regularly issued hundreds of dollars from the petty cash
account without requiring receipts.
Employees’ Yale-issued American Express charges were paid directly by
Berkeley, in violation of the Yale policy, and employees were rarely
required to provide receipts during fiscal year 2000-2001. Of the $171,
606 in expenses auditors reviewed, they found documentation supporting
only $18,375.
Only about a quarter of Franklin’s American Express charges of $7,397
in the same time period had supporting documentation.
[/blockquote]
I am fully aware that the sacred Scriptures is irrelevant for most of the TEc, but we have this:
[blockquote]2 Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, 3 no drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and no lover of money. 4 He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way; 5 for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God’s church? 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil; 7 moreover he must be well thought of by outsiders, or he may fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. [/blockquote]
Franklin was assisting priest at St. Mark’s Church, Locust St., Phila, which has drifted to become a fairly liberal High Church place with seminars on the Emerging Church movement and the like. I have heard that parishioners found him to be very personable.
So glad I left the diocese, and the denomination. But I feel for the guy, as he truly is walking into a deteriorating mess. Lord have Mercy.