The Meeting

I am back from my meeting with the Bishop of Central NY, and I have to say that the meeting was both cordial and frank. I appreciated the tone of the meeting and the subjects that we were able to discuss. Our Senior Warden, Warren Musselman was present and he was also pleased with the meeting. The bishop did not shut down this DCNY blog, as I predicted that he might do, but he did say that at times I have given wrong information out here. I am always open to correction, and if anything is factually incorrect, I will publish a correction expeditiously.

He did express concern about the ways that I have portrayed him in the blog, and I did promise to be a bit more careful with my word choices in the future. We also talked about how our parish, St. Andrew's Church in Vestal has been maligned from two pulpits in this district, including, reportedly, by the present dean of the district, and he flatly said that that kind of behavior is wrong. Whether his opinion will stop the misuse of the pulpits in our district, I can't say at this point.

I also asked for a correction to the story in the diocesan newspaper that wrongly said that our parish withheld funds in 2004 from the diocese because of the diocesan position on General Convention 2003 (that story is below under the headline "Messenger Gets It Wrong"). He said that he would look into that. The truth is that we did not have funds to pay our diocesan assessment in 2004 and the upshot was that we were seated at the last diocesan convention without voice or vote.

So, we concluded on good terms, and now we await the actions of General Convention 2006.