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Memo To Bishop Charles E. Bennison: IN GOD'S NAME GO
EDITORIAL
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
August 17, 2010
On his first day back on the job, Bishop Charles E. Bennison was greeted at the downtown Diocesan headquarters in Philadelphia by pickets, including among them Black clergy outside Church House.
The return of the hated and despised Bennison is not going easily for the Sociopathic One.
Any normal person would have scarpered with his or her pension a long time ago, but not Charles Bennison. He craves power more than money or sex. The whole world could despise him and Bennison would step back into his job like Stalin risen from the dead.
Bennison says he will concentrate on listening. "I have learned a great deal, and my listening has been very productive," Bennison said in a statement emailed to Episcopal News Service by Ceisler Media and Issue Advocacy, a Philadelphia media relations firm.
But a bishop like Bennison will only listen to what he wants to listen to, nothing more or less. He will act only what he instinctively believes is good for him and his reputation. Nothing else.
In November of 2005, Bennison said to the diocese, "If you feel I am not leading you effectively, tell me, and if I feel it is God's will I will resign."
It is now 2010 and after many trials and hundreds of thousands of dollars paid out in legal fees and for his salary and benefits for doing nothing, one has to ask, how many times does Bennison need to hear that he is not wanted: The Standing Committee, Diocesan Council, rectors of cardinal parishes, women, blacks, assorted attorneys including Michael Rehill for heaven's sake - they all want him gone.
There have been calls to shun him and to withhold parish money from him. There are calls from the Standing Committee that he should resign, but still he stays and now he has the power to destroy anyone who stands in his way. Still he refuses to go. Based on past history, he can and will continue the diocesan trajectory downwards.
Memo to Bennison: GO AWAY. RESIGN, RETIRE. YOU HAVE NO CREDIBILITY LEFT IN THIS DIOCESE.
IN GOD'S NAME, GO.
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