While the bishops were making history Wedneday, the deputies were up to their hips in the quicksand of legislation. With little debate they swiftly approved a denominational health plan and a pension plan for lay employees.
They also approved a resolution urging the president of the HOD to appoint deputies under age 30 to legislative committees at the next convention. Younger deputies — only 2 percent are under age 25, and just 3 percent between 25 and 35 — had been cranking that their elders say they want to attract young people and want to hear their voices, but they don’t put them in positions of responsibility.
Earlier this week, both houses approved the addition of a lengthy list of names commemorated in the church calendar. The current book of saints we remember is Lesser Feasts and Fasts. The new edition, to be called Holy Women, Holy Men, will be used on a trial basis for three years. Among the proposed additions: Bach, Handel and Purcell; W.E.B. DuBois; Christina Rossetti; and Frederick Douglass.
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HOD president Bonnie Anderson warned Wednesday that we may be called into a special session Thursday evening (after working all day) to keep pace with the tsunami of legislation. I’m already envisioning another dinner on the run from Subway. I’ve eaten so many meals there I’m starting to feel like Jared, their poster boy for weight loss.
The budget was unveiled this afternoon, and it’s grim, as anticipated. The drafters have cut $23-million (you read that right), and there’s scarcely a program that escaped the knife. Some had their funding cut by 100 percent. The annual “asking” from dioceses is scheduled to drop from 21 percent in 2010 to 20 percent in 2011 and 19 percent in 2012. The 0.7 percent of the budget for the Millenium Development Goals, which disappeared in an earlier draft, is back.
You can’t amend the budget to restore funding to your pet project unless you name what else you’d cut to find the money, i.e., who else’s pet project you’d cannibalize. So we will likely howl with pain, hold our noses and approve it. It is not a pretty sight. – Judy Stark
