DCNY's Deplorable Act

Fr. Matt Kennedy reports below that signs attached to the former building of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd (CGS) directing people to the Shepherd's Bowl soup kitchen were taken down. Since the congregation of CGS left their buildings, St. John's Roman Catholic Church has agreed to house Shepherd's Bowl until CGS is in a more permanent place.

Fr. Matt entered negotiations with the DCNY for their buildings and maintained as good a relationship with the leadership of the DCNY as was possible given the circumstances. As I have written earlier, when our parish was negotiating for our buildings, I did not trust the leadership of the DCNY. This mistrust was based on the actions of the DCNY during Bp. Adams' tenure and our parish leadership adopted more of an adversarial stance in our negotiations. We had no illusions that we were dealing with people of good will with the exception of one representative of the Diocesan Board. As for the paid staff of the diocese, we have seen what they had done to Fr. Terry Johnson and Canon Allan Smith. We saw what they were doing to Fr. David Bollinger and we had a pretty good idea of the caliber of people we were dealing with.

I can't say that removing the signs to the Shepherd's Bowl is a new low since the DCNY had already established a bottom on behavior that is beyond belief for a supposedly Christian organization. No, the DCNY is an institution but hardly a Church based on their actions. They have successfully lost three congregations with two of them being among the top givers to the diocese prior to 2003. They now have at least four buildings for sale. It makes me wonder whether they are in the real estate business, because it is evident by their actions that they are certainly not in the gospel business.