A Journalist's Impressions of Executive Council
Diocesan Press Service. February 13, 1969 [74-10]
Marion Q. Wiegman, editor of "The Advance," magazine of the Diocese of Chicago
(Marion Q. Wiegman, editor of "The Advance," magazine of the Diocese of Chicago, was a visitor at the February meeting of Executive Council. The following article gives some of her impressions of the meeting.)
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- To the uninitiated a visit to a meeting of the Executive Council might bear a faint resemblance to Alice's Adventure in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. The more things seemed the same, the more they were different. The more different they seemed, the more they were the same. And, like Alice's adventures, the meeting, no matter how bewildering it might have been to experience, was stimulating and exciting to recall.
The feeling of unreality, of course, was heightened at first by the "surprise" February snow storm which caused everyone in New York to go around for days weaving a path around cartons of uncollected garbage and trash on slushy sidewalks.
For the Council members the storm meant that instead of a carefully prepared and leisurely-paced meeting in the comfort of Seabury House in Greenwich, they were crowded into the theater of the Episcopal Church Center for a postponed meeting, February 12-13, in which a two-day agenda was squeezed into a day and a half and a frenzied staff tried to supply duplicate copies of all the reports that had been carefully shipped to Greenwich.
The visitor's first reaction is surprise that the members of Executive Council recognize so poignantly that one of their unofficial functions is to be blamed for everything. As a corporate body, the Executive Council is like the Mayor of New York during an emergency, the umpire during a game, or the weatherman during a blizzard -- it cannot be right, no matter what it does.
What is surprising is to see and experience the travail that Council members endure in order to make the decisions for which they know they are going to be blamed. For men and women from distant states and Bishops and other clergy from busy Dioceses, this does seem like an act of supererogation.
Like nearly every Diocesan council and vestry that has ever met, the Executive Council is plagued these days with that nagging three-fold problem: a shortage of money, a surplus of problems, and a wide difference of opinion as to how the first two can be reconciled.
In his opening address the Presiding Bishop -- whose patience seemed limitless during the strenuous hours of discussion and debate that followed -- warned that the Council was faced with adopting a budget which "reflects the first really significant decline in monies available for the General Church's program in several years."
Reinforcing this unhappy news, Bishop Bayne reported that acceptances of Diocesan quotas this year are down 11.6 per cent. Pointing out the dangers of over-simplification in trying to analyze the reasons for this decline, Bishop Bayne does not feel it reflects poor stewardship at the Diocesan level. He warned against putting pressure on a Diocese "that is already having to resist all the pressures it can."
Vestrymen throughout the country would also feel right at home to hear Bishop Mosley comment that it takes a four to five per cent increase in giving every year for the Church just to stand still.
That the membership of the Council is no more monochrome than the Church it serves was revealed in the debate on: whether a capital gifts campaign would be feasible, whether suggestions for radical changes in the agenda for the Convention at Notre Dame are good or bad, and what grants should be certified in the General Convention Special Program, not to mention who should evaluate the requests for grants.
It was debate on these grants that kept the Council in session until nearly midnight at its Wednesday session, and it was in this debate that Council members proved how all-embracing the Church can be.
The debate got off to an early and heated start in a proposal to change the wording of one of the purposes of the program. The original wording was: "Programs of services to the poor, designed and controlled by those to be served, including training and skills necessary to assure effective conduct of such programs. The proposal requested that the phrase that comes after the word "served" be deleted on the grounds that it was confusing to applicants, and was approved, but only after long and heated debate by those who feel this was "a built-in insurance clause."
As to the grants themselves, totaling $469, 000 (all of which are thoroughly reported elsewhere), some members felt that grants were being made on the basis of an evaluation by too few people. Others said that Council was denuding itself of its power to grant or withhold funds and had abdicated its responsibility. At the other end of the spectrum there were those who thought that the Screening and Review Committee, having been appointed, should be trusted to carry out its responsibilities. As one member said:
"After all, I haven't the time to go personally and investigate all these applicants for grants."
Throughout the debate Council was reminded that the purpose of the program, after all, is "to help the powerless and the poor find their own dignity," and that all grants are evaluated and recommended to Council on the basis of criteria that Council had accepted earlier -- criteria Council could change as it desired.
This led in turn to debate on whether the proposed grants met the criteria, a debate that went on and on while the clock moved closer to midnight and the fatigue lines deepened even in the faces of the Council's two youth visitors, Miss Brenda Perkins, 21, of Detroit, and Jeffrey Ditzel, 22, a junior at Alleghany College, Meadville, Penn.
Bishop-elect David Thornberry, reporting the following morning on the second most controversial subject, the agenda being recommended for Notre Dame by his ad hoc committee, told the Council that in building its proposed agenda for the Special Convention, is aware that much of the Church is rebellious. There is a strong reaction on the one hand, he said, to things as they are, and, on the other hand, an equally strong reaction to any change. This has led the committee to feel that old ways of organizing the Convention just won't do the job of "dealing with the gaps and the hangups in the Church. "
Using as its motto "Better at Notre Dame than Houston, " the committee hopes its proposed agenda will give a voice to all, that by having present representatives of the three neglected groups -- the women, the youth and the minorities -- at both the plenary sessions and in the smaller discussion groups, "Notre Dame can be a laboratory where the Church can have a freedom it cannot have within the traditional Convention structure at Houston." In closing he confessed that if "our proposed agenda at Notre Dame is a bust, it will be the biggest bust the Church has ever had. "
To those who questioned whether discussion of an "artificial presentation" should be equated in value with debate by delegates who knew there was to be a vote taken, it was pointed out that such presentations provide an opportunity for not only fruitful discussion but can clarify and reconcile controversial points of view.
Some members saw in the proposed agenda an opportunity for the "few to manipulate the many." Clifford Morehouse, however, calling the proposed agenda "a magnificent and workable plan, " thought the changes might provide an opportunity for the "many to manipulate the few."
As every vestryman or diocesan council member might expect, enthusiasm for a capital funds campaign was at something less than fever pitch. This was revealed in the debate on the preliminary report made by Mr. DuPont's committee charged with making a study of the feasibility of such a campaign.
While all agreed it was needed, and all expressed the hope it would serve to increase interest in and enthusiasm for the Church's program, Charles Bound (of New York) expressed the feelings of many when he confessed that he was disturbed by the tremendous funds being given by Episcopalians to other than Church and Church-related causes.
"I would just like to have the Church compete with my alma mater," he said.
As to whether the climate and timing are right for such a campaign, Bishop Burrill pointed out that in his experience the climate and timing are never right for a fund-raising campaign. He did urge that if a campaign is undertaken it be focused on one single objective rather than "being a grab-bag for a lot of unmet needs." He suggested theological training be such an objective.
In the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on American Indians ( one of the several non-controversial reports of the meeting) the chairman, Vine Deloria, Jr., pointed out that the old days of sentimentality about American Indians are over. He compared their present position to the Diaspora of the Jews and presented the committee's modest request for a staff person who would speak to the Council for the Indians.
As for the Indian "problem," he said, all the Indians want is the privilege of dealing with it themselves in their own way. When asked whether his committee included Eskimos in its area of concern, he replied that "an Eskimo is legally an Indian, just as, legally, an officer is always a gentleman."
The Council meeting even had its audio-visual :aide, so familiar to the well-run Diocesan or parish meeting. These came during lunch while members munched on sandwiches from box lunches. They included "Huey," the controversial documentary about the Black Panther leader, and "A Christian Challenge," a stained glass version of the Faith, produced by the Foundation for Christian Theology. It would be difficult to decide which of the two gave the visitor more cause for alarm.
Finally, some 26 working hours after convening, the Council members, warned they should allow two hours to reach any of the City's airports, adjourned a meeting which, perhaps, can best be summarized by these words from the Epistle that was used during the noonday Eucharist:
" . . . We are troubled on every side; yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." (II Corinthians 4:1-10).