The listing dates from last October, when that litigation was well under way. "The first contact would be with the Rev'd Canon William Bower". Er, how long will it be before Canon Bower raises the delicate matter of the dodginess of the position and the impending foreclosure? Later rather than sooner, I would expect, if Canon Bower, who is quite elderly, has even been made aware of it. My wife, who used to work in employment law, suggests that to bring a new hire into California under false pretenses is a violation.
In 2020, a prudent part of the jobseeking process is to use web searches, on either the candidate or the potential employer. If a candidate has ordinary good sense, he'll do a web search on the parish, and if he does, he'll certainly come up with this blog. I can't imagine that anyone worth hiring for that position would seriously apply after looking at the circumstances outlined here and in plenty of other sources on line. On the other hand, the applicant pool in "continuing" denominations these days is likely well below second tier.
The listing goes on,
The ideal candidate would be a single man and a high church Anglo-Catholic. We will consider a married priest - the concern is with the high cost of living in the Hollywood area.This raises two intriguing questions. The first is the "high cost of living in the Hollywood area" vis-a-vis what the parish is able to pay its priest. In late 2011, I briefly served as parish treasurer, and I had more or less full exposure to its finances. In the years prior to the 2012 round of litigation, the parish paid the rector $65,000 per year, plus health and pension benefits, plus a car, plus a housing allowance. This would certainly allow a family to live comfortably in the area.
But by 2020, the cost of litigation has clearly depleted parish resources, with the commercial property, previously owned free and clear, now subject to mortgage and potential foreclosure, and a new trial coming up in March. So there are major new lawyers' fees coming up on top of those already incurred.
And this is a result of continued reckless conduct on the part of the "Bush group" vestry, which seems to be living in an alternate universe where you can default on mortgage payments and not expect serious consequences. I've got to wonder how much money the parish has set aside to pay a priest, or even if it's capable of doing realistic planning in this area.
There is a small rectory on premises suitable for a single person or a married couple (not suitable for children).An informed party tells me this rectory is termite-ridden and subject to the same maintenance issues as the rest of the property. And this goes to the issue of how the "Bush group" clique treats people. During the 2012-14 litigation, I heard numerous reports of Mrs Bush and the wardens shouting at their then attorneys in public. (Those attorneys withdrew from the case when they'd gone unpaid for more than a year.)
I think one dynamic in all these relationships is that the Bush clique selects people who have few alternatives in finding either clients or employers. Thus observers of the current litigation are puzzled that the "Bush group's" attorneys appear to be condoning actions like defaulting on a mortgage and coming up with unsupportable legal strategies to justify them.
I think any priest the vestry hires would be subject to the same dynamic -- he'd be a lower-tier candidate in an already lower-tier applicant pool in a bad job market, and once hired, he'd have little alternative to taking whatever the vestry handed out -- including maybe getting paid next month, maybe not. But they'll still let him stay in the rectory! His only options would be to pack up and leave or complain to the state, which would have the same effect.
But there's a bigger problem that I think even the visitor yesterday bypasses when he raised the question whether the parish could survive foreclosure of the commercial property by selling the Della Robbia. The church building is a small, aging property subject to repeated emergency repairs. Notwithstanding it received a complete new roof in 2011, the roof had major new leaks in 2017. Plumbing disasters are routine. This is compounded by the "Bush group's" history of disregarding contractors' advice, which results in new flooding, leaks, and the like.
And I'm still haunted by remarks that then Bp Moyer made in his early 2011 episcopal visit to the parish, that the facility is small and parking-constrained. He understood immediately that if the parish were to become the success that people envisioned as a result of the upcoming ordinariate, it would need serious expansion. As of now, parking alone will prevent it from growing much beyond its current size of several dozen. But even if it retains its commercial property income -- and multimillion-dollar lenders aren't going away -- the facility will require major renovation that even that income won't accommodate.
I really don't see any reason to have much sympathy for any priest that vestry hires. For that matter, I don't have much sympathy for that vestry, nor for its current bishop, nor its comic-opera "continuing" denomination.
