Facing financial difficulties, the 100-year-old institution recently laid off 33 people, including clergy — its first layoff in decades — as it struggles to balance its budget. It is suspending programs, asking some remaining staffers to double up on duties and closing its popular greenhouse, a move that has stirred community anger.
“We’re in a phase of significant tightening,” said the Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd III, who took the helm of the Episcopal cathedral as dean in 2005. He said the severity of the budget shortfall caught leaders by surprise. “We didn’t expect that we would have to do what we have done.”
Soon-to-be former employees say they are devastated. “It came out of nowhere,” said greenhouse employee Patricia Downey, her voice wobbly with emotion. “It’s been hard.”
“We’re in a phase of significant tightening,” said the Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd III.”
You mean there might not be an Extremely Rev. Samuel Lloyd IV?
I feel faint.
Manuel – another sherry now!
See my comment to Sarah Hey. T here is no tourniquet sufficient when an artery is opened. LM
Well, whatever Lloyd says, I can’t think much of his financial foresight. And while I might have thought that the greenhouse, whose origin lies in support for the Bishop’s Garden, may have had an advocate in the bishop himself, I am led to rudely comment that the incumbent seems a perfect creature of Washington: interested largely in power and sex.
Not surprising. The motto of the cathedral is “a house of prayer for all people.” Isaiah 56:7 They have interpreted this to mean a house of prayer for all people and their gods.
Maybe God is a bit upset.
Maybe He is, and maybe He’s mad at the whole country for overextending on their mortgages or using too much gasoline or any of a really quite long list of sins, upon which it may or may to behoove each of us to meditate and seek our own faults.
With Lloyd and Chane at the helm, to me….this is REAL “justice”.
I agree with those who are not surprised, but have to add that I’m heartbroken at the history of the Cathedral in recent years. It’s a magnificent building which should have continued as a great witness to Christian faith. I stopped sending my small contributions when I found that leadership there had essentially set up a house of worship for any and all faiths. I suspect that this, in microcosm, is at least a part of what has happened to the Cathedral’s finances.
I share Laura’s dismay. The cathedral grounds are a beautiful, prayerful place, not to mention the many chapels of the cathedral itself. It has better uses than merely as a bully pulpit.
I’m afraid I didn’t read the article before commenting. Evidently the immediate problem comes mainly from the Dean’s overambitious programming that relied too much on rising financial markets — questionable stewardship to say the least. The worst of it is the nature of the programs that they consider so important: “generous-spirited Christianity” is the unfortunate euphemism, I believe. I still think that, longer term, the loss of Christian donors will be the most important factor, both materially and spiritually.