Look, I worked for a big corporation for a long time. I went to “my office”, used “my computer” and called people on “my phone”. And as I left that job, I never even thought about packing up “my stuff” to take it with me to my next job.
Good luck to Father Mass Progeny and Mother Hostilium, but in New York, as in most places, you leave and the silverware stays in the drawer. The Vestry (provided the priest is competent) gets told this on day 1. We hold this “stuff” for the Episcopal generations to come. It’s the Bishop’s job to take the keys back, unless you want to reach a settlement and buy the stuff (and weren’t they trying to do just that?). But go ahead and try the legal route if you can afford it. This is one where I may even kick in a few dog biscuits to help Bishop Skip. What a pair of gits. And don’t even get me started on the “righteous right” over there on Limpville saying that this is “the good fight”. It’s stupidity, written in a 96 pt. bold font.
Update (4/17/2008): Binghamton Press/Sun-Bulletin Article
Ooh, I just love the spin in the article you linked. They consider themselves such martyrs, when they long ago abandoned being Episcopalians, if they ever really were to begin with. I feel for their children, but Anne+ and Matt+ have brought this upon themselves and have to face the consequences of their actions.
Lucky for them that their crowd believes God wants them to suffer and face humiliation. It’s all part of the Plan. If only we’d known earlier that they wanted this so badly, we could have probably swung round the Kennedy flat and provided some. Oh the humanities!
As for me, I was minutes away from offering Clumber Day Care for their children. We were gonna do Bible Study, heavy doses of science and logic, and recreational reading of Marcus Borg (shh kids, we don’t tell your parents about this, okay? It’s a surprise!), Heck, I was gonna book IT into the day care facility for a week to talk about her thoughts… Open the kids up to a variety of thinking. Then off to church - you know, one where the priest doesn’t know all the answers and believes that God’s heart is big enough to love us all - like children do. She might even tell them the story about the Vestry that fell off the tracks.