[Magdalen] Please pray for Ascension, Chicago - annual mtg tomorrow

[Scott Knitter]

We'll have our annual meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m. (which means we'll
only have about half an hour, really) to vote for vestry members and a
warden. But right now we've got a lot of angry parishioners as the
result of the rector's firing of the parish administrator and the
longtime organist and choirmaster. I've just read notes summarizing
various non-vestry-member parishioners' comments to the vestry from
last Wednesday evening's meeting. There are accusations of
misrepresentation/lying on the rector's part, a systematic reduction
of the Catholic nature of our liturgy and music, a corporate-style
layoff giving a cold and disrespectful ending to the long tenures of
our topnotch musicians, and more.

A vestry member who is an attorney drafted a resolution (which I
gather did not survive a vote of the vestry; not sure if it will be
moved at the annual meeting) distancing the vestry from the rector's
actions based on his not having worked with the vestry to make these
decisions, and she quoted several passages from canon law that she
believes were violated.

My position: I don't like the way these changes were done (a kick in
the head to those who have worked so well for so long) but I do
understand the need for a new rector to be able to make staff changes,
and he waited a year to do so. The parish administrator job in
particular needs to be done by a non-parishioner who can be held
accountable and let go if necessary. The parishioner who has been in
the job has, fortunately, done very well and with integrity, but he
should have figured his time in the job was limited as there was a new
rector.

I also don't like the way our search and this layoff processes have
been gamed from the background by the bishop and his staff. I'm still
a bit gobsmacked at the blatant manipulation of the search committee
(which didn't work) in the form of a vestry/search committee "retreat"
that served as a bully pulpit to a captive audience for the interim
rector to make his pitch for the vestry to set aside the search
committee's recommendation and hire him. The first diocesan liaison to
the search committee botched her assignment to game us at the
beginning (by lying to us that there were very few applications so why
not consider hiring the interim...we saw through that and demanded and
got a different liaison).

The politics behind all this are of course not surprising but are no
less a pile of crap for being standard operating procedure.

So I get why changes would be made; the way they are being made is a
dog's breakfast; and I feel rather sick about all this right now. I
don't want to leave and don't expect to. But I feel a bit distant from
the rector right now and wonder if things will play out in a way I
feel I can defend and sign up for as a supporter.

I don't look forward to the annual meeting at all, but of course I
need to be there to cast my votes on whatever comes up for a vote.
Lord, have mercy and guide us, heal us, and reunite us.

-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA