Five retired bishops chided two members of Executive Council whom the bishops said “carefully failed to give us the information we requested.” In a brief letter the bishops again repeated their request for the amount of money spent last year on property disputes and the source of the funds.
 
“We are concerned that there could be a violation of federal pension fund laws,” the Rt. Rev. William Wantland, retired Bishop of Eau Claire, said in an interview with a reporter for The Living Church. “If they are using endowment funds, some of those are restricted.
 
“Are we seeing Executive Council in the act of pulling a Charles Bennison on the church?” Bishop Wantland asked. “Bishop Bennison was brought up on charges by his standing committee for refusing to disclose full financial information. No one is saying Executive Council is using money illegally, but how do we know? We need assurances that the gifts of faithful Episcopalians in previous generations are being used for the purposes for which they were originally intended.”
 
Last summer four bishops – the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison, retired Bishop of South Carolina; the Rt. Rev. Maurice Benitez, retired Bishop of Texas; the Rt. Rev. Alex Dickson, retired Bishop of West Tennessee, and Bishop Wantland wrote  to Executive Council asking if any of the $25,000 that the Church Pension Fund had contributed to the House of Bishops’ task force on property disputes had been expended, the total amount of money expended on property disputes last year and whether any endowment funds had been used to fund litigation. A fifth bishop, the Rt. Rev. Milton L. Wood, retired Bishop Suffragan of Atlanta, signed a follow-up letter sent after the first received no reply.
 
Last month Josephine Hicks, chair of Executive Council’s administration and finance committee, and John Vanderstar, chair of council’s national concerns committee,  responded to the bishops. They declined to give any financial data, but assured the bishops that the church was receiving extraordinary value for the funds it had expended.
 
“We understand that David Booth Beers normally charges $600 per hour, but gives The Episcopal Church a 15-percent discount, or a reduced charge of $510,” the bishops wrote. “Without regard for the value of that charge, and without regard for the money spent by dioceses or parishes, how much money has 815 2nd Ave/Executive Council spent on litigation, and where did the funds come from?”
 
Steve Waring
 
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