This is a cold cruel and cynical answer – which I had heretofore avoided – to a question explored several weeks ago.
Do not just tell me that the canons say such-and-such and that legally the Episcopal Church gets to keep all money and property. That alone does not explain the motivation. That alone does not explain the extreme efforts to which the Episcopal Church has gone. That alone does not explain the Episcopal Church stipulating that no Anglicans at any point in the future can buy that property.
Why would any normal human being want to keep what someone else gave and paid for? Could they not change the canons? Could they not choose to be generous and let people keep? Could they not choose to be minimally decent and let people buy the property they already paid for?
Because they are losing money like crazy? Because seminaries and parishes and dioceses are no longer able to support themselves? Surely it is not that simple!
The executive committee of General Theological Seminary‘s board of trustees said April 19 that the school may have to sell some of its property to raise enough money in order to pay its bills after mid-November. …
The April 19 news followed a more general warning about the school’s financial future issued by the entire board after a March 29 meeting when it said it needed cash to service its debt and pay for the 2010-2011 school year. O’Pray told faculty, students and administrative staff that day that the seminary needed between $2 million and $4 million, seminary spokesman Bruce Parker said at the time.
Just one seminary needs another $2-4 million to stay afloat. Yowza. Wonder how many buildings built paid for and formerly occupied by orthodox Anglican parishes need to be sold to keep all these Episcopal seminary professors employed for another year?
For the record no it is not that simple. The Episcopal Church is not doing everything in its power to keep the property of departing parishes and dioceses simply to sell it off and pay the bills. Because if money was the primary motivation then the Episcopal Church is going about it all wrong. Millions spent each year on legal fees suing parishes and dioceses to keep said property? And refusing even to let those departing parishes to buy back the property? Indeed on one occasion selling the parish property to a Muslim group for one third what the Anglican parish would have paid?
The primary motivation has to be something like spite. Because it is costing the Episcopal Church millions of dollars each year to pursue this policy. Although one could argue that they spend millions of dollars to end up with a net gain of tens of millions of dollars. That will keep a fair number of clergy of non-self-sufficient parishes and maybe professors at non-self-sufficient seminaries going for a while.
Disclosure – I serve a small mission parish which is not self-sufficient. The issue is not self-sufficiency. The issue is simply what is the Episcopal Church going to do with all this surplus property it has no use for?
