Quote of the week

The bellicose Rev. Don Armstrong:

I feel that T-19 has sort of sold out to TEC and itself has become a symptom of the problem, fighting but staying, feminized but claiming orthodoxy....

Kendall Harmon? Feminized? Is Don Armstrong calling Kendall a girlie-man? Pretty childish.

Recall Armstrong decided not to stay in The Episcopal Church only when he feel under a cloud of charges of financial misdeeds. Misdeeds that appeared to entangle the Anglican Communion Institute. Armstrong helped form the ACI and was its executive director. The mission of ACI was to reform TEC from within. I don't recall anyone during that time ever called Don a girl. Not that should be considered an insult.

Transitions

ACI Appoints Treasurer - written by The Anglican Communion Institute

Former ACI Executive Director served to stand Ecclesiastical Trial in Colorado

Actually, I don't recall ACI exactly giving notice to the executive director that his services were no longer needed.

Armstrong distracts from ACI's message?

Tom Roberts: "Elves- I recommend #54 from Armstrong+ be relocated to a top level post.
Unless you wish to have this thread diverge from its own top level."

The subject of the thread? "The Anglican Communion Institute: questions we avoid at our peril".

It all depends on what the meaning of "our" is. And who's asking the questions.

Among other things, Armstrong wrote:

The goal of the Diocese of Colorado has been and continues to be my own ruin as a human being, the destruction of my family, and the end of the ACI. Collateral damage is Grace Church–but what is that to an already dying institution. This is obvious on every level to anyone with half their brain tied behind their head.

The ACI had written:

It is simply the case that the recent actions of the House of Bishops bring to the surface differences between large sections of TEC and the AC that may well prove irreconcilable. They also reveal divisions within TEC that may well prove equally intractable.

How do we square these statements?

Statement 1:

I am the President of ACI. I was the President of SEAD. ... I am aware of our actual work at ACI, and 90% at least goes by my eyes, and it is work that happens out of the generosity of those contributing. No stipends are paid, and this costs Grace Church nothing in the strict sense. We have a web site, and that is paid for by Grace Church, as I understand it. [link]
...
When at SEAD I planned and ran over 15 conferences and 3 House of Studies. We kept a tight financial ship and of course ‘made no profit’ — we were a not for profit organisation. But we succeeded admirably, to my mind. The problem was how to keep up that kind of pace, without any donor base beyond a few kind and generous Bishops. [link]
...
Someone once put it nicely, 'six guys and a web-site.' We counted on donations to support travel and subsistence, and this was handled by the Executive Director. [link]

- The Rev. Prof. Chris Seitz, President of the Anglican Communion Institute

Statement 2 [link]:

AI and ACI are both ministries of the parish but are managed with separate accounts that are audited annually with the rest of the parish ministries.

ACI/AI are funded by private donations–and all money raised for these ministries is always spent specifically for the purposes for which it was raised. None of this has been for salaries, but for conferences and publishing, in most recent years for the sort of work Chris Seitz has described.

Since 2003 until just this past Fall, Grace Church has funded the ACI from its own monies to maintain its independence and so that it would be free from political pressures that outside fund raising naturally involves.

No money disappeared into these ministries, but was used for the purposes it was intended.

The ACI/AI has [sic? have?] granted scholarships for a number of theological and educational ventures over the years, but those funds are separate from the working money given for ACI. In other words I raised money specifically for the purpose of supporting these other various educational ventures–which included clergy and lay continuing education, seminary education expenses for third world students, writing projects and the like.

-The Rev. Donald Armstrong, Rector, Grace Church and St. Stephens, and Executive Director, ACI

Statement 3 [link]:

They just walked away from 85 percent of their funding.... I don’t know what ACI is without that.

- Alan Crippen, spokesman for Grace and Armstrong, President John Jay Institute for Faith, Society and Law Colorado Springs, Colorado

Very often an organization's Board does much of its fund raising. I would be interested in knowing if the friendly bishops on the Board of Directors of the ACI used monies from their diocesan discretionary funds to support ACI. And if they asked for audits of how donations to ACI were used.

The ACI said in its statement severing ties to Grace:

ACI is not now and was never incorporated. Its “board” has been a loosely-knit network of sympathetic consultants within our work on behalf of the Communion. There was and is no budget, no compensation, and no formal structure.

Not sure why "board" is in quotes. The "Board of Directors" are prominently listed on the ACI website:

Board Members

The Most Rev'd Dr George Carey (former Archbishop of Canterbury)
The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez (Archbishop of the West Indies )
The Rt Rev'd John W. Howe (Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida)
The Rt Rev'd Alpha Mohamed (Bishop of the Rift Valley)
The Rt Rev'd Edward L. Salmon, Jr (Bishop of South Carolina)
The Rt Rev'd James M. Stanton (Bishop of Dallas)
The Very Rev'd Dr Paul Zahl (Dean of Trinity School For Ministry)
The Rev'd Dr George Sumner (Dean of Wycliffe Seminary in Toronto)
Professor Russell Reno (Creighton University)
Mrs Elizabeth Cooper (Charleston. SC)

UPDATE. Don Armstrong says more about ACI's funding:

... the vestry did not want to leave dangling $170,000 that had been spent by ACI since 2003 and thus categorized it as a loan–when in fact by resolution in 2003 the vestry had previously decided to fund ACI with money restricted from the diocese by parishioners–and by the Diocese’s own determination had to be used beyond the parish. So ACI owes the parish nothing. All ACI funds were spent for flying the ACI team literally around the world ....

An Easter sermon you may want to miss

Quote:

Over the last year every aspect of my life and work has been put under a very expensive microscope.

I have been stripped bare and publicly humiliated.

Literally purged of every vestige of self respect and dignity I had worked a life time to achieve.

Six days later:

A defiant Rev. Donald Armstrong told his longtime parish Saturday he never stole money from the church.
...
During his presentation, he said the vestry never showed this level of concern about financial matters, and suggested former vestry members have turned against him because they’re scared the bishop will sue them for previously shirking their financial responsibilities.
...
If congregants loyal to the Episcopal Church win, Armstrong hinted a vestry member — whose Nebraska bank loaned the church nearly $2.5 million — might call the loan.

More:

"I have done nothing wrong so I actually sleep well at night," Armstrong told more than 300 people gathered for a lively, sometimes contentious, three-hour meeting in the sanctuary of Grace and St. Stephen’s Church in Colorado Springs.
...
On Saturday, Armstrong shot back that if the signers were so in the dark about how the parish’s finances were handled, then they also have to admit they failed their fiduciary responsbility as vestry members. He also suggested they signed the statement because they were afraid of the bishop.

"That’s a wrong thing to say!" shouted Connie Fischer, a parishioner of more than eight years, from near the back of the church. "He’s so arrogant,’ she added, referring to Armstrong.

Oprah-size Me

The Communion Laity and Clergy has issued a statement on the presentment of Don Armstrong (co-founder of the CLC) by the Diocese of Colorado Standing Committee. The CLC statement is covered here by The Rocky Mountain News:

Last week, a 12-member diocesan committee that includes two CLC members voted unanimously to support a "presentment" against Armstrong, the church equivalent of a civil indictment of wrongdoing. "They have witnessed the canonical process and support the presentment," said the CLC statement, referring to the two CLC committee participants. They are the Rev. David Henderson, rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Steamboat Springs, and the Rev. John Wengrovius, rector at Calvary Episcopal Church in Golden.

The article quotes Ephraim Radner (a CLC member) who then comments here and here. In between, Don Armstrong himself chimes in here.

You can't take it with you

UPDATE: Outline of the charges against Armstrong here.

Casper Star-Tribune reports:

Colorado's largest Episcopal church was left in chaos after leaders voted to leave the denomination and the bishop responded by dismissing the parish's leadership.The controversy at Colorado Springs' Grace Episcopal Church and St. Stephen's Parish is the latest to roil the Episcopal Church following the national denomination's acceptance of homosexuality.

The vestry of Grace Church and St. Stephen's Parish on Monday voted to bolt from the national church and instead join a conservative Anglican church based in Nigeria.But Bishop Robert O'Neill rejected the move, dismissing the local leaders and saying the Colorado Springs parish would remain part of the Episcopal Church.

"The fact is people may leave the Episcopal Church but parishes cannot," O'Neill said in a statement.The church's longtime rector, the Rev. Donald Armstrong III, who was suspended for allegedly mishandling funds, said O'Neill no longer has jurisdiction over the parish."He doesn't have an army. The courts will not interfere in an internal church dispute and the congregation is solidly behind us," Armstrong said.

Beckett Stokes, a spokeswoman for the Colorado diocese, said church law states that all parish property and assets are held in trust for the diocese. She declined to comment on Armstrong's reaction.

The leaders of Grace and St. Stephen's voted to join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a missionary diocese of the Church of Nigeria led by Archbishop Peter J. Akinola.

Colorado Springs Gazette:

The Colorado diocese responded Monday by claiming that the local parish is forbidden by Episcopal law from leaving the denomination, even if some members decide to. The diocese asserted its rights to the historic downtown church building, valued at $17 million. Even though the vestry no longer recognizes the authority of Colorado Bishop Robert O’Neill, he removed them from office and said he’d be in touch with parishioners about how to proceed with worship and protecting church assets after the disruption.

From the Diocese (pdf):

This action, taken by the vestry in consultation with Father Armstrong (still a priest of the Episcopal Church under inhibition by the Bishop), has been taken unilaterally and has no canonical or constitutional grounding or effect. "The fact is that people may leave the Episcopal Church but parishes cannot," Bishop O’Neill stated. "Grace and Saint Stephen’s Church remains a parish of The Episcopal Diocese of Colorado and will continue to be so for any and all who desire to be members of The Episcopal Church."