On 11 DEC 2015 we reported that Bishop Stacy Sauls, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society’s Chief Operating Officer, with two other Church Center employees was placed on an administrative leave by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. After a 4 month investigation, on 4 APR 2016 +Michael announced the terminations of the other two employees for cause. At the same time he announced that +Stacy would not continue as the COO. There seems to have been question in some folks minds that Bishop Sauls may continue to work at the Church Center in another capacity. The Living Church website reports in a story dated 15 APR 2016, that the question of Bishop Sauls’ employment was cleared up by an email from Neva Rae Fox, the officer of public affairs for the Episcopal Church, stating that the bishop no longer works at the Church Center.
The photo is from the Episcopal News Service.
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Scandal?
This is not a scandal. This is acting so there is no scandal. This is doing what is correct after proper and careful examination and due process.
How can behaving in this way be seen as scandalous.
It is a scandal that some delight in it.
It is a scandal that some mock the US Episcopal Church because it has acted in the face of a serious breach of its operating procedures.
There is too much coverup and dissembling in organisations like churches that is intended to avoid revealing wrong doing and the reason given is often:
To avoid a scandal
In fact, the avoidance of facing up to what is happening, the very act of overlooking and sweeping things under the carpet is itself a deep and far more damaging scandal. As we see too clearly in the cases of abusive clerics.
I feel bad for everybody involved in this. Prayers are being said for all. The Church that we love and worship in does not need this scandal.
Has it occurred to anyone that most folks don't know exactly what he did to incur such sanction?
He wasn't sanctioned, he just didn't fit with the new Presiding Bishop's priorities in ministry and so is no longer the COO. He served at the pleasure of the PB. New administrations often involve a changing of the guard as well.
It's not necessarily a matter of losing confidence. Bishop Curry may have been intending to let Bishop Sauls go all along. But that action may have been delayed by his illness about a month after he took office, and then further delayed by the investigation itself.
Actually, the PB said that "given the needs for staff leadership in light of my priorities for the direction of the Church, Bishop Sauls will not continue as Chief Operating Officer of the DFMS."
Was he sanctioned until Title IV? No. But all of this happened on his watch with two folks he personally brought to 815. As the Navy would say, it's pretty clear there was a "loss of confidence in his ability to command."
How about bishop for the Episcopal Church in South Carolina?
Just read it for what it says -- Sauls is not employed at the Church Center aka 815 aka the Denominational staff. He can work wherever he can find a job or just live off his pension.