Cariboo diocese will wind up affairs in next 12 months; arbitration may determine who owns church buildings
https://archives.anglican.ca/link/official7576
- Date
- 2000 October 15
- Source
- Anglican News Service
- Type
- Press release
- Text of motion
- QUESNEL, Sunday, October 15, 2000 -- Barring a miracle, the Anglican Diocese of Cariboo will pass into history sometime in the next 12 months.
- Faced with crippling lawsuits brought trial by Canada's Department of Justice, the diocesan synod has approved a resolution authorizing its bishop, James Cruickshank, and its executive council to formally wind up the affairs of the diocese during the next 12 months.
- It has also asked for a binding arbitration procedure to determine what assets are owned by the diocese and available for settlement of the lawsuits.
- Government lawyers have argued that all church properties in the diocese are subject to seizure. But the diocesan chancellor, Bud Smith, said the diocese may hold properties in trust for the parishes, and may not have the legal authority to surrender them.
- Government officials, including the Minister of Indian Affairs, Robert Nault, the Minister of Justice, Anne McLellan, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Herb Gray, have said it is not the government's intention to force any church to bankruptcy. But the Department of Justice has launched 12 of 14 legal actions currently facing the diocese, and its legal costs, more than $350,000 to date, have drained all its assets.
- "The land and the buildings are the only remaining assets in the diocese," Mr. Smith told the synod, "but before we can offer any of them in settlement, we have to be clear who owns them," The diocese has proposed that the question of ownership be resolved by a process of binding arbitration, but he has not yet had a response from the government.
- If it is determined that the diocese owns the buildings, Mr. Smith said, they will be turned over to the government.
- A third resolution was characterized by Archbishop David Crawley, the senior bishop of the church's western region, as "a kind of faint hope clause." It authorizes the bishop and executive committee to negotiate a settlement with the government, provided that any such settlement must be sustainable from resources within the Diocese of Cariboo and "must be deemed by the bishop and the executive, in consultation with victims of abuse and survivors of St. George's Residential School, to be of direct benefit to those victims and survivors."
- The Diocese of Cariboo straddles the Thompson and Fraser Rivers in interior British Columbia and runs from the small community of Spuzzum, south of Lytton, north to Prince George. Its 17 parishes include only nine that are self-supporting. Many church buildings are small and relatively poorly equipped. Relatively few have washrooms, for example. Priests are paid a basic living expense, or stipend, of approximately $27,000 a year, plus a housing allowance.
- It is a point of great pride in the diocese that it has steadily increased its self-reliance over the past nine years. There was spontaneous applause when the synod heard that this year, for the first time, parishes have contributed more money to ministry beyond their borders than the diocese has received in external grants from the national Anglican Church.
- But finances remain a struggle. So the members of the synod reacted first with disbelief, then with laughter, when told that a government lawyer had demanded a list of the diocese's "paintings and jewellery." Later, one of the members suggested, to general hilarity, "Maybe we should ask the Sunday school kids to do a lot of paintings and send them in."
- The synod had also expected to deal with a resolution allowing clergy in the diocese to bless same-sex marriages. In view of the likely dissolution of the diocese, that motion was withdrawn. Members said it would not be responsible to take such an action when they could not be sure they would be able to follow through on it.
- Instead, the synod has requested its churches to "continue to secure open and full participation and membership to all seekers," and to "respond appropriately" to the pastoral and sacramental needs of gay and lesbian persons.
- In other business, the synod acted to ensure support for four meetings of the diocese's Council of Indigenous People, and support their participation at the Lytton healing gathering in July next year.
- - 30 -
- Indian residential schools - Anglican Church of Canada
- St. George's Indian Residential School (Lytton, B.C.)
- Contact: Doug Tindal, Director of Information Resources, 416-924-9199 ext. 286; 905-335-8349 (residence); www.anglican.ca
- Subjects
- Anglican Church of Canada. Diocese of Cariboo
- Anglican Church of Canada. Diocese of Cariboo - Finance
- Bankruptcy - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Church buildings - Anglican Church of Canada
- Anglican Church of Canada - Trials, litigation, etc.
- St. George's Indian Residential School (Lytton, B.C.)
- Anglican Church of Canada - Residential schools
- Reconciliation - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Indigenous peoples - Canada - Anglican Church of Canada
- Church and state - Canada - Anglican Church of Canada
- Same sex unions - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Homosexuality - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada