A historic church that counted among its members some of Pittsburgh’s key political powerbrokers of the 1800s will be the centerpiece in a battle over property in the Episcopal Diocese.
Until the issue is settled, Trinity Cathedral, Downtown, will attempt to serve two dioceses, something Episcopal Church officials said has never been done before.
Parishes that voted this month to leave the national church and align with another Anglican province and those who chose to remain in the Episcopal Church aren’t rushing to court to divvy up about $43 million in assets, but that day is coming, observers said.
“The position of the national church has been to encourage dioceses to litigate, rather than settle,” said Valerie Munson, assistant director at the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy in Minneapolis.
[blockquote] Historian Jeremy Bonner, who authored a history of the Pittsburgh diocese, believes the oldest churches will be less attractive to the continuing Episcopal Diocese.
Most of the historic churches are located in rural settings and have small endowments. They are more likely to be a burden on resources,” he said. [/blockquote]
This quote hit me in the face like a shovel! It pretty much sums up what is really important for some people. These some people who can make this an ugly mess. God, and our faith in Him must come first.
I’ll take a contrarian view on this one. Suppose you were one of those TEC “fence sitters” the new TEC bishop from Virginia was coming to minister to. Would you want to spend years forming a “shadow congregation” just so you could talk about litigation week after week, be asked to contribute to it and get consumed by that?
No one will be able to afford anything after the lawyers take their share to argue this…and it is true that old churches are expensive to run and often situated in long ago strategic locations.
If TEC was at all converted to Jesus Christ…it would find a way forward that would use resources to increase the gospel, not undermine it for generations…hold up a cross in front of KSJ and watch her babble.
I admit that this is going to be nasty when it finally hits the fan in the courts. I also find it interesting how quickly people blame the lawyers for making money off the deal. As a former mentor and confessor used to say, “There be more priests in hell than lawyers.” I pray for the souls of everyone involved.
Well it is unfortunate but I know the path these faithful who have aligned themselves with the So Cone will feel. This looks much like my diocese here in San Joaquin. But, we just had our 49th Convention after we have aligned ourselves with the So. Cone and I cannot stress enough how good it was even with all the turmoil of the lawsuits & inhibitions that KJS & +Lamb have waged against us we still are a very ahppy and growing family of like minded traditional Christians. We are serious about carrying out the Great Commission and expanding God’s Kingdom keeping our vision solely on Jesus Christ.
It may seem daunting now for those in Pittsburgh but staying the course and keeping your focus helps to get through what 815 and the shadow of 815 that will be set up for those who have chosen to stay in TEc will do and wage against those who have chosen to stand for Jesus Christ and the Word of God.
Be of good cheer faithful servants, your souls are in tact as you fight the good fight for Christ in Pittsburgh.
It’s always interesting to be quoted as an authority, just so long as readers appreciate where one is coming from. To be clear, I very much doubt if Harold Lewis has much interest in, say, St. Paul’s, Kittanning (which certainly falls under the rubric of historic). Most of our oldest churches are rural not urban, because the Presbyterians had something of a lock on Pittsburgh in the early 19th Century.
In July 2007, I had a revealing conversation with Joan Gundersen in which I asked her how she would deal with the situation if the congregation of St. Stephen’s, Sewickley, walked away leaving their property in Episcopal hands. “Once we are able to focus again on God’s work and outreach,” she told me “there are plenty of unchurched people in Pittsburgh for Episcopalians to reach out to. It is hard to attract people to a church that seems to be in the middle of a bar room brawl, and in which part of its membership is denouncing its own denomination as heretical.” She also noted that her parish of Church of the Redeemer (located in my neighborhood), was experiencing a mini-baby boom.
As against such optimism, the last progressive plant in this diocese was St. Brendan’s, Franklin Park, in 1987, and rebuilding under the realignment paradigm will be noticeably different. St. Stephen’s would lose not 50 percent of its membership, but 85 percent to 95 percent. With such membership losses for a church property of that size I do not believe that “rebuilding” will be a realistic exercise. Of course, I could be wrong.
To be brutally frank, I don’t think the leadership on either side will have much time to spare for the sparsely populated congregations (though I know David Wilson was much loved during his time as rector in Kittanning). It’s a case of [i]sauve qui peut[/i]. The same reasoning holds for Trinity Cathedral: big endowment, but mostly dedicated to maintenance; small congregation (as you can tell from the photographs) striving to do much with little.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
Having grown up in the Diocese of Pittsburgh I have fond memories of visits to the Cathedral. I have been watching the renovations with much anticipation. I would hope that Christian charity would prevail and allow the sharing of the premises.
I can think of several small town and rural churches that have little money and few congregants which would prove more of a burden than an asset to TEC. Besides, as the question has been raised time and time again, does TEC really want to be in the real estate business?
Why so much attention to property, anyway? This is a major drain and distraction to re-aligners, and to those thinking of joining them, as pointed out above. Why not just walk away? Brick and mortar are nothing in the big picture. I know of an Anglican church which started fairly recently in someone’s living room and is now large and flourishing. This is about the kingdom, not buildings.
I do not like pointing this out…. but frankly… the story is in the third picture down.
I’ve heard the various explanations for why this is the case at Trinity Cathedral. I know its complicated. But at the end of the day…. there are 10 people in probably twice as many pews….
Decline hits everybody sometimes, liberal and conservative (and I say that as an orthodox Anglican). If we’re not honest with ourselves about this reality – that is, we go around saying its all about the problem of heresy – we will doom ourselves.
Heresy is one reason for decline. Make no mistake. But its not the only reason.
[blockquote] Why not just walk away? Brick and mortar are nothing in the big picture. I know of an Anglican church which started fairly recently in someone’s living room and is now large and flourishing. This is about the kingdom, not buildings.[/blockquote]
Anecdotal evidence of one church that flourished, but there are probably 10 other home church starts that fail to that one that succeeds. Buildings are very important.
Important to some of us but not to all.
There is no question in my mind that the property question is starting to do the orthodox (amongst whom I count myself) harm. I know a fair number of Evangelicals here in Pittsburgh who testify to the miracles that God has worked in their circumstances (personally and congregationally) and yet they don’t yet seem ready to let God, rather than the secular court, give us our buildings, if that is indeed what he wants.
And, of course, they are not “our” buildings, any more than anything else we posses is “ours.”
RE: “and yet they don’t yet seem ready to let God, rather than the secular court, give us our buildings, if that is indeed what he wants. . . . ”
Oh I don’t know. It appears that they are willing to use one of the many tools that God has given them — a legal system — to receive their buildings if that is what he wants.
Might just as well say “and yet they don’t yet seem ready to let God, rather than the the contractors and builders, make us our buildings, if that is indeed what he wants.”
Well, as was remarked at Chapter last Thursday, my view is an essentially Anabaptist one as regarding property.
Obviously I hope TEC will lose in the Virginia cases and I accept that CANA entered into the process deliberately and prayerfully, but I remain to be convinced that the process is desirable. When the legal case for CANA is based – at least in part – on a statute passed to facilitate the division of churches over slavery, it doesn’t seem very appealing. Perhaps I’m too much of a purist for this fight.
One thing I do hope is that we can reach a point where the one-church communities (like Kittanning) can work out arrangements whereby the remaining and realigning groups can both use the property, perhaps with a committee composed of representatives from both factions to oversee maintenance issues.
If you look at the overall picture, both sides cling fiercely to institutional identity. It is a matter of siding with or pairing up with, for example, the Southern Cone, or TEC, or some other recognized major Anglican body. Both sides want the numeric and institutional strength, testimony, and credibility to go forward.
The reality is, that neither “liberal” nor “conservative” Anglicanism makes much sense without a solid, numeric, institutional Church structure. This has nothing to do with the necessity of sound underlying Faith, which is of course essential, but rather the very nature of a Catholic structure, Common Prayer, seminaries, and so on.
It maybe that to “bite and devour” one another will finally be to become a host of storefronts. But that will not be anything like Anglicanism.
In the end, a church must feel like a part of the Church — and that has a structural feel. Institutional instability and marginality is terminal cancer to Anglicanism. I’m not talking here about form over faith, but rather the nature of Catholic Anglican piety itself.