Title IV Complaint Against Bishop Dede DuncanProbe For Conduct That Is Unbecoming of a Clergy Person and Refusing to Admit A Person To Postulancy Based Upon Marital Status
Rev. Andrew Salvetti (Universal Life Church)The first issue that I had with Bishop DeDe was when I applied and was accepted to Bexley-Seabury Episcopal Seminary. I got a very good, 2/3rds scholarship to study there. I had felt a call to be a priest in the Episcopal Church. I was told by several priests that the Bishop was firm on people not starting seminary before being in the ordination process. Out of respect for DeDe, I deferred my admission. I was received by her into the Episcopal Church in August 2017. I thought one year would be plenty of time for the Episcopal Diocese of CNY to admit me to postulancy. I was very wrong.
There were other current postulants that started the seminary without being in the ordination process. DeDe was redoing the ordination process. There was a requirement for me to go to one church for one year and have the vestry and the rector sign off on me. I also needed to be very actively engaged and be in spiritual direction. I met all these criteria. The next step was discernment teams. I was told by the Canon to the Ordinary that this process of discernment teams took five or six months. This was a lie. The discernment teams typically met two or three times. I have a suspicion that DeDe told her Canon to tell me that piece of information to slow me down. I met with the COM Chair. We did an interview. It was a few hours long. The COM met and made some decision about me. All I knew was that it was regarding the timing of my moving forward. I told the COM that I wanted to go to VTS and my fiancée, now husband, who was about to graduate from Cornell, was going to look for jobs in Washington DC. This was why we were in a time crunch. DeDe wasn’t going to be rushed or told what to do. The Canon to the Ordinary was talking about a January 2020 start to seminary. This was going to be well after we would need to move. This was intentional. I showed them my hand of cards and they spun the situation so that I would have relocated before they could truly consider me as a candidate for ordination. This was very frustrating but tolerable.
There was this whole situation with my same sex wedding. We were going to have it at a neighboring Episcopal congregation, since it was more picturesque. Ethan wanted to get married outside and St. James in Skaneateles is located right on the edge of th e water. We made arrangements to have our wedding there. Our rector made a decision without us that Rev. was going to do our marriage prep. We never wanted or agreed to this. Steve was the one who did our marriage prep. We were bringing Rev. to St. James. He was going to do everything. We were literally just renting the space. St. James also had done a multi -millionaire dollar renovation. Their parish hall had a panoramic view of the lake and was very nice. Ethan and I asked if we could have our wedding reception in the hall. The rector said yes. Then there was this misunderstanding about the building use fee. They said we needed to pay a vestry person $100 to be present. This wasn’t explained very well. It sounded like they were going to be providing some intrusive oversight. This made my husband uncomfortable. What they were really going to do was just be there for liability and insurance purposes, and to lock up the building. Ethan and I asked to be taken off the calendar. was also the Chair of the COM. She had sent me a cryptic message about
meeting about the “timing of my moving forward”. She got real bent out of shape that we took our wedding off the wedding calendar. Rev. sent me and Ethan a nasty email saying we were disrespectful to and explained more about the purpose of the building use fee. I thought Rev. and I had a good relationship. I saw her once a month at youth ministry gatherings. I sent her back a very apologetic e -mail explaining myself. Then next morning, Ethan and I asked if we could be added back to the wedding calendar. I had misread how upset Rev. was with me. She told me no. I went through the roof. Apparently, she shared later that it was because she was going on sabbatical and was going to be covering. was frail and she thought was doing our marriage prep. I am a survivor of priestly sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. I sent a very angry e-mail in the heat of the moment. Clergy being selfish and falling short of their own self-proclaimed ideals of loving-kindness is a gigantic trigger for me. Then I apologized for the angry e-mail I sent. I had tried to call Rev.before sending the e-mail, but it went to voicemail. I was so upset that I forwarded the correspondence to the Bishop and the Canon to the Ordinary. I thought they would be sympathetic to me.
I was very wrong. DeDe started looking into whether she could ban me from St. James and every other parish except for St. John’s in Marcel lus, NY, which was my home parish. She included the chancellor in this. I wrote a very heartfelt letter to DeDe, explaining myself. She told me she wanted to have a meeting with everyone, but I needed to apologize toandfirst. I read her e -mail quickly and I thought it said, something to the effect of, I still think you can be a priest. But it was more of - sorry you are disappointed, but maybe if you continue in one of our congregations you will find what you are looking for.
,, Bishop DeDe, the Canon to the Ordinary, the Canon for Transition and Development, the senior warden of St. James, myself and Ethan all went to this meeting with the Bishop at a fancy restaurant. We all met for tea. As soon as I walked in the door, DeDe was angry and aggressive with me. I pretty much walked into a trial. The Bishop was acting like she was holding court. I raised my concerns. The Bishop told me I needed therapy and asked me some very personal questions about my life in front of this group of mostly strangers. Then she decided all of this was taking to o long and rudely looked at her watch. She asked if we were going to be here all day to talk about this issue. She told me she already had too many priests. She told me that I hadn’t been Episcopalian long enough (even though she admitted someone to postulancy who became Episcopalian one month before me). I asked her about the ordination guidelines and policies, and she said they were all at her discretion and whatever she decided. She told me that “most bishops would tell you, ‘no, never’ but I am going to say ‘maybe’ but I need a few years to get to know you.” She knew Ethan and I were moving out of the state. She also said she had too many priests and not enough positions. She said it would be mostly part time work. I would have been happy to move somewhere for my first call. She told me I couldn’t be in the ordination process because I was engaged. When I pressed her on this, she said, “no, it is because you are getting married.” I am not sure if this meant she thought my life was scandalous because Ethan and I were living together before we got married. She was very icy to me when the
meeting was over, even though I thanked her for her time. It was an entire circus and kangaroo court.
DeDe also banned me from doing youth ministry in the diocese. I was no longer allowed to help with the youth ministry collaborative. She communicated this to Rev. . told me I should think about admitting myself to a behavioral health hospital. I found this to be extremely inappropriate, even if it was a tongue in cheek comment.
Ethan and I got married at St. John’s. did the wedding. It was very nice, despite all the drama. We had already sent around Save the Dates saying it was at St. Ja mes. When we sent out the wedding invitations, we had to clarify that it was going to be at St. John’s. Then the day after our wedding, complained to the entire congregation about our photographer. I kept going to St. John’s until Ethan and I moved i n October 2019. I started at Bexley Seabury as a non -ordination track student in August 2019. I asked DeDe if we could meet again then I told her to forget about it.
The time I put in at St. John’s, the vestry’s sign off, and the rector’s recommendation was all for nothing. When I moved to Charlotte, I was told I needed to do it all over again and this time, it was actually going to take two years. This was upsetting but there was nothing I could do about it. I ended up taking a youth ministry job at an E piscopal church in Mooresville, NC. It was starting to look like there was some hope. I asked DeDe what information was going to be shared about the wedding incident. DeDe said that she hadn’t been contacted. But then she turned around and dialed the numbe r of the COM Chair in the Episcopal Diocese of NC. This was very duplicitous.
I asked for a meeting with Bishop DeDe. I ended up meeting with the Canon. It was very rushed and was less than twenty minutes. It wasn’t very sympathetic. When I asked for a meeting with Bishop DeDe, I was told to stop contacting the diocese and to forward all further communication to the Chancellor. DeDe had her administrative assistant send this e-mail to tell me. She said she wasn’t going to meet with me because I wasn’t attending any of her churches and she had nothing to do with my wedding. She told me to talk to Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of NC if I had any concerns. Then I was fired from my youth ministry job about three weeks later. I am pretty sure she had something to do with it.
I was so mad and hurt, I went to confession at a Catholic Church to confess my reception into the Episcopal Church to recant. DeDe is a bully. She terrorized me and threw her weight around as a bishop. She threatened me with a lawyer because I caught her in the act of doing something shady. If she had really banned me from every Episcopal parish in her diocese except one, I would have done her the favor of never attending any Episcopal congregation anywhere ever again. The rector of St. John’s, was the one who told me she had been considering it before receiving my letter. He said he received an e-mail communication.
A big part of the reason why I left the Episcopal Church was because of her. She caused me a lot of spiritual harm with her mind games. She hurt my family. She is an out-of-control dictator with a huge ego. One of my seminary professors who is an ELCA pastor said, “Wow, that is so immature” when I told her DeDe wouldn’t meet with me and threatened me with her lawyer if I contacted her again. I wasn’t harassing her. I sent her maybe five e-mails over three years. She is a drama queen who is very full of herself. When I met with her at the tea party, she was like, “I hope you appreciate the time I am taking to be here because I have 11,0 00 members in my diocese.” She should get over herself.
I am speaking out because she is only going to continue hurting other people. I am not calling for her removal. An apology would be nice. I think the Presiding Bishop should know what happened. I honestly wish I had never met her or that our paths had never crossed. How dare she tell me there were already too many priests in her diocese. It was never about the money or comfort for me. It was about my call to the priesthood, which she completely disrespected.
I wasn’t at my seminary graduation. My chaplain residency ended in a wrongful termination. I have decided that the world just isn’t ready for a gay pastor yet. I am going to get a Master of Social Work degree instead. I haven’t been to an Episco pal church in a year, and I will never be back. It is because of people like Bishop DeDe Duncan-Probe. I am pretty sure my sexual orientation had a lot to do with her hesitancy around ordaining me or admitting me into an ordination process. She is a big pa rt of the reason why I no longer identify as Episcopalian. I say good riddance to several toxic situations I found myself in while I was Episcopalian. Bishop DeDe was responsible for most of these sticky situations.