The McDaniel Memo

This is from The Living Church website:

Inter Office Memo
09/16/2005

From: Kathleen McDaniel
To: B Adams
Cc: Gael Sopchak; Paul Kowalewski; Paul Curtin; pkapcio@eric.mower.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 10:40 PM
Subject: Suggested Next Steps

Skip –

After our meeting with Peter Kapcio and conversations with Paul Curtin, we (Gael, Paul K. and I) have discussed the following and want you to have this information to think about:

1. We believe the board retreat should be cancelled. In its place, we should call the Board together on Monday to specifically bring them up to speed on the current issues in Owego. As corporate directors they will need to be very firmly ‘in the loop.’ We are fairly confident that several of the members (John Shaffer, Tom Bloomer, John Chaffee) haven’t a clue as to what is going on with the various Owego issues and others (Christine Day, Ralph Osborne) only know David Bollinger’s side. It is vitally important to get everyone on the same page. We will not be able to deal with other issues as this topic will hijack anything productive we had planned.

2. It is still our belief that a letter from Paul C. should go out to the clergy this Friday. The letter should state:

a. righteous indignation over David’s action to publish a privileged and confidential lawyer-to-lawyer communication throughout the diocese;

b. allegations of criminal activity were irresponsible, liableless and baseless. Irregardless of this, an independent investigation into these allegations is taking place;

c. once resolution has been reached, you will communicate the findings of that investigation to the clergy.

Paul C. will bring a draft of this letter to our meeting on Friday for your review.

Please note that the purpose of this independent investigation is to respond directly to David’s attorney’s request for disciplinary action against a member of your staff. It was the decision of the Executive Committee that this investigation be handled independently by the church attorney. The results of this investigation should be available fairly quickly (hopefully within two weeks) at which time the conclusions will need to be communicated by you directly with the clergy.

3. We believe that we are past the point where an admonition to cease and desist is an effective step in dealing with David. Substantial damages have been done and you need to take stronger action to ensure this does not escalate any further. In order to accomplish this, we believe that a canonical inhibition needs to be administered so that a proper process can be followed without David’s interference. Reinstatement would be contingent on successful completion of:

a. A psychological/psychiatric evaluation (you may want to include other physical, spiritual, emotional evaluations as you deem appropriate);

b. the financial (fraud) audit;
c. an assurance that a pastoral relationship between you and David can be reestablished;
d. some formal process of healing and reconciliation within the congregation.

We believe that t is absolutely critical that we keep a separation between the emergence of an alleged victim and David’s actions regarding Gael. While a pastoral response to the alleged victim and the congregation is clearly in order, that has nothing to do with David. The actions against Gael and his subsequent communication with members of your college of clergy have everything to do with David.

We understand, of course, that ANY action against David will be viewed as punitive on your part by a number of clergy. We do not see any way for this to be a win-win situation. However, given David’s activities of the past month, it is highly unlikely that he can be trusted to behave appropriate—rationally—if he remains in the parish.

If you want Gael and me to communicate a change of plans with the Board we will do so immediately. Because Bill McNeiece will be unavailable most of Monday, we would like to contact him first to see if we can accommodate his schedule, if possible. If not, we will ask that the meeting begin at 1:30 p.m.—assuming that is okay with you.

Skip, none of us can begin to comprehend how incredibly difficult all this must be for you. We do hope you know that you are held in prayer by us and many, many others.

Kathleen