Read it all. Blog readers with additional documentation or clarifying information on this are encouraged to email the blog host.
Read it all. Blog readers with additional documentation or clarifying information on this are encouraged to email the blog host.
My ordination process–some two decades ago–was in the Diocese of Oregon. While I do not know Bishop Itty, I have friends in the diocese, and I heard about this development late last week. I obviously don’t have true insider’s knowledge, but what I pick up from my contacts has a bit of a different spin than the one put forward on the linked blog post–to wit: that the energy behind the perceived “coup” comes from the ideological left, which, from what I am told, was never happy with Bishop Itty’s election, let alone his episcopate, and that the mounting support is coming from more conservative elements.
A glance at the Diocese of Oregon website shows that the retirement of the Bishop’s Canon for Mission and Canon for Finance and Administration are pending as well. No date is mentioned for the CFO, but the Canon for Mission is retiring on Easter Monday (same time as Bishop Itty goes on sabbatical). Looks like a house-cleaning. More here: http://www.diocese-oregon.org/index.shtml
With Itty they got what they voted for and nothing more. This tells as much about the Diocese that elected him as 815 who intervenes, and Itty himself who pines for greener pastures.
As the Bishop’s family has moved to Long Island is the Bishop living, some of the time, with them in Long Island and not in his diocese?
Diocese lost about 5 percent of members from 1996 through 2002 and lost about another 8 percent from 2002 through 2006. Plate & Pledge increased about 30 percent from 1996 through 2002 which covered inflation plus more than a bit. But Plate & Pledge increased by about 2 percent from 2002 through 2006, woefully short of inflation. Standing Committee has put together a rather comfortable golden parachute. My guess is that Itty will bail out. Statmann
Like +Shimpfky did from ECR?
Let’s see: +Itty is still in his 40s. He was on the staff of 815 before his election in Oregon. He is President of Church World Service and a VP of the National Council of Churches. In both cases, I’m sure it is a big asset that +Itty is ethnically from India and thus can be a poster boy for diversity in the so-called Protestant “mainline.”
It does sound like perhaps his heart was elsewhere than in doing the work of a bishop. But there has to be more to this story, as has long been suspected ever since his suspicious early retirement was first announced. It will be interesting to see how this all continues to play out. But as Oregon is a notoriously liberal state, you have to wonder if whoever replaces him eventually might not be even more liberal than +Itty. Meanwhile, the awarding of golden parachute severance packages for bishops who drive their Standing Committee to desperation has become a widespread practice. The offer in this case may not be as utterly ridiculous and reprehensible as that offered the incompetent, tyrannical +Joe Doss in New Jersey a number of years ago, but it confirms a dangerous pattern or bribing bishops into early retirement.
David Handy+
I don’t like this whole thing one Itty bit.
One might predict he was placed there to let him ripen a year or two; kind of like Nevada was the on-deck circle for KJS? Anyway, with him named for one place and living in another, no big deal. It sounds so exalted to say “Titular Bishop of Oregon”. And he doesn’t have to live there!