By A. S. Haley, Anglican Curmudgeon.
The Episcopal Church (USA) has spent, and further committed (in its adopted budgets) to spend, a total of $42,675,466 on suing fellow Christians in the civil and ecclesiastical courts over the first eighteen years of this century. When one adds in the estimated additional amounts spent by individual dioceses on such litigation, the total amount exceeds Sixty Million Dollars.
Can’t believe it? Well, then, read on — you have been warned.]
Since September 2010, when I put up an analysis, based on ECUSA’s monthly statements and their annual audited statements through 2009, I have kept track of how much ECUSA and its major dioceses has spent on attorneys’ fees and other costs associated with all of the 90 or so lawsuits against former Episcopalians to which it (or one of its dioceses) has been a party. In 2010, it was only 60+ lawsuits, as catalogued here (see pgs. 23-26), but the Church continues to sue everyone who leaves it, whether the law is against it or not. In order to give as complete a picture as possible back then, I also included the latest ECUSA budget projection of legal expenses through the triennium 2010-2012.
One has to realize that ECUSA does not make it easy to discover the amounts it spends on litigation — the leadership at 815 Second Avenue would obviously prefer that those who sit in the pews every Sunday and contribute their pledges not be aware of just how many millions have been squandered on ECUSA’s scorched-earth litigation policy.
I am fully aware that those are fighting words to all those who support the current administration at 815 Second Avenue: “Prove it!” they say. Well, in the course of this post, I intend to do just that. So please suspend your judgment until you have digested the entire piece, and checked out all the links to my sources — which are uniformly from ECUSA’s own published financial statements and official minutes. I am a lifelong Episcopalian myself, and I am utterly ashamed and outraged by what the Presiding Bishop and her cohorts are doing in our Church’s name.
The amounts the Church spends due to its litigation policies come in a number of different categories. Not all the categories are shown in the same financial documents.
4 Comments. Leave new
When a denomination is apostate, it loses sight of what our Lord has taught and assumes the way of the world. The ECUSA is on life support and the sooner it implodes, the better off Christians will be. I have no sympathy for the denomination’s leadership.
And how much are individual churches spending on suits against their denominations? Give us the total spending, not just that of the side you disagree with.
We don’t know how much FPC is spending. 22 families and one non member are funding their suit against the PCUSA off the books, so the congregation doesn’t have to be told the cost, or even who is funding it.
Anyone have an ethical problem with having outsiders funding suits against the PCUSA, and remaining unidentified to the congregation supposedly in charge?
Even 2,000 years ago, the Holy Bible warned us about this type of thing.
Google ‘ Maryland Episcopal Bishop charged in hit and run drunk driving fatality’ for more info. The church, and its insurers, could be dragged into this criminal case as it proceeds through discovery and the court system.