The situation in the Church of England after the Singleton Report has left many of us feeling seriously concerned about the future. We have seen in the Report such things as the massaging of figures of abuse cases as a means of protecting the image of the Church. More seriously, since then, it is credibly alleged that some bishops have actively ignored and shunned survivors and their complaints. The bishops are also reported to have been involved in cover-up and a deliberate concealment of facts. In summary, the Singleton Report and what has come out since has shown that even men of God are prepared in some circumstances to tamper with the truth in order to protect the institution they serve.
For a situation to arise where there is so much cover-up and concealment in the Church, we need to ask whether there are some compelling reasons for some bishops to act in this way. I want in this post to try and look at the church situation from the perspective of the bishops themselves. Through their eyes we must try to understand why they have allowed apparent dishonesty to enter the Church at this time. Some of what I will write will be speculation, but it is speculation that is based on fifty years observing the church. As a clergyman I have noted some of the changes that have taken place which have made the church far more vulnerable to historical and social forces.
The most pressing issue that the bishops face is the financial future of the Church of England. We are not talking about the imminent bankruptcy of the Church Commissioners (far from it!). Neither are we talking about potential insurance claims against the church from abuse claimants over the years. What we are talking about is the sustainability of the parish system across England. Providing even a minimal presence of the church in every area of England through the parish system is enormously expensive. Although parishes are theoretically expected to pay through their parish share their own costs, there are many areas where it is difficult or impossible to find the £50,000+ cost of each stipendiary priest. The system is, for the time being, functioning but there are, no doubt, behind the scenes planners and managers looking ten to twenty years in the future. They will be asking whether the Church should be planning for an orderly withdrawal from some rural and urban areas. These will also be the parts of England where clergy are less willing to serve. The conversations that are taking place behind closed doors might shock and alarm current church members. It is hard to believe that the future and viability of the comprehensive parish system is not somewhere under active discussion. Whatever is being said, the Bishops will be privy to these discussions.
Alongside the viability of the parish system, financial calculations are also being made about how many stipendiary clergy the Church can afford to train and provide employment for over their entire career. If the parish system is drastically pruned, will there be posts for all the newly ordained cadre of clergy of today? The costs of training are also high. When I was ordained nearly fifty years ago, the costs of my training were met by the local education authority. For me the whole process lasted six years and this included a year studying the Orthodox Church, funded by a private trust. The costs of ordination training now all fall on the Church itself. It is not surprising that the numbers of ordinands in residentiary training decrease as the costs go up. Part-time courses are the new norm. Why do these costs of training matter in the present post-Singleton age? From the bishop’s point of view a clergyperson is not just an employee but also an individual in whom a considerable investment has been made. Losing a stipendiary person from the workforce of the church, whether through retirement, resignation or a disciplinary process is a serious matter. If young, the church loses much of the original investment in their training as well their future availability. Sacking a member of the clergy, especially early in their career, will only be done by bishops in extremis. This apparent reluctance by bishops to discipline errant clergy has been part of the current tension between sexual abuse survivors and the diocesan bishops. They sometimes appear overprotective of the ordained individual.
There is also a cultural and legal factor in the reluctance of bishops to discipline clergy when they stray. This is the historical legacy of the freehold. Clergy who were incumbents used to possess a legal status which made them almost un-sackable. Philandering, drunkenness and immoral behaviour were, in the past, not sufficient to require removal from office unless they also involved illegal behaviour. Even now under Common Tenure, the clergy have substantial privileges and rights through their employment. It is hard to remove them from office without going through a lengthy and expensive process which is the Clergy Discipline Measure. From a bishop’s perspective such processes involve an inordinate amount of energy and time. When a bishop is seen to misbehave, the legal machine is even more unwieldy. In fact, no bishop has yet been removed from office for malfeasance apart from Peter Ball. In the situation today where some bishops face police questioning for safeguarding failures, the Church will find it quite hard to set up an adequate disciplinary response to the cases. The mechanisms for an internal investigation into a serving bishop’s behaviour exist but they have never been put into operation in practice. What seems to happen is that the church legal authorities do not want to explore the option of putting a serving bishop through the disciplinary process. Thus, they prevaricate and push the rules of procedure so that nothing in fact happens. No doubt the senior clergy hope that any complaints against other senior clergy will eventually go away if ignored.
We have set out various background reasons why the House of Bishops seems unable to resolve the crisis of the post-Singleton church. There are obviously discussions and debates that are secretly going on to which I am not privy. These will be attempting to resolve the crisis of trust with the rest of the Church. One main point of difference between bishops and survivors is the issue of mandatory reporting of all abuse cases. While survivors and their supporters back this idea, many bishops firmly resist it. It is resisted, we suggest, because the bishops see that an outside body might require the church to remove from office some of their expensively trained staff, putting at further risk the fragile parochial system. The retention of clergy discipline to an internal church body will allow the bishops to keep control of the process. It is an open question whether it is reasonable to ask survivors to trust bishops and their staff to have this control when the Singleton Report clearly showed what a lamentable job was done by bishops in 2010. Can the bishops really be surprised that many people do not now trust their competency or even their honesty in these areas?
Many profound thoughts here. I’m going to have to come back to it, but I know you’re not making excuses for the Bishops. But my first reaction is to mutter sulkily, “stuff it, lies are lies, enough with their reasons for it”!
By the way, a single stray clergyMAN has escaped your vigilance!
Very good post, but I want to raise one point that I think you may have forgotten. It is in my mind because I have just read the Guardian article on Lord Carey’s PTO, & the reactions to it. Micah talks about ” doing justice, loving mercy, & walking humbly.” I would suggest that for Bishops ( as for the rest of us) , sometimes the first 2 seem paradoxical. How do you balance ” there for the grace of God go I in that failure of care in the exercise of my duties” & that brother priest has said ” I am sorry , & will be more careful next time” ( loving mercy) vs justice for the survivors ( Jayne Ozane at Synod: ” How do we say sorry?). I’m beginning to think that the clue lies in ” walking humbly”…. which in this context suggests deep and even deeper listening, to all the wounded, and to God in this. Personal humility might allow an individual to say: ” I was wrong, so for the greater good & the sake of not giving offence to others I shall step down/aside of my own volition…..and such humility also allows us to empathasize more fully with the perspective of others, and seek to find a way to move forward in community and communion with them, without each needing to defend their own patch/position/actions of ” right & wrong” in such a strident, black & white manner. Something to think through.
Andrea, when you attribute the attitude ‘there for the grace of God go I in that failure of care in the exercise of my duties’ to bishops, are you referring to their dealings with abusers or with clergy/bishops who haven’t acted on disclosures? There is an important distinction here.
Dealing mercifully with a priest/bishop who hasn’t acted on a disclosure is one thing – especially if the lapse occurred decades ago when abuse was less understood and there was no safeguarding training. That might be termed a ‘failure of care’ or a ‘failure to exercise my duty’, although it is still likely to send a bad message to survivors of that abuser and to perpetrators.
Dealing ‘mercifully’ with abusers is different altogether. Abuse isn’t a failure of care, it’s predation, and it’s addictive. Perpetrators rarely stop abusing the vulnerable until they are forced to stop. They are clever, manipulative, and entirely capable of pretending to be repentant when they are anything but. I think the appropriate model here would be the models of church discipline St. Paul presents, where the offender is excommunicated. This protects the vulnerable in church, sends a clear message that abuse won’t be tolerated, and gives a sharp warning to offenders of the need for genuine repentance.
If done in the right spirit, this fulfils the requirements of justice, mercy, and humility.
I am talking about those who fail to Safeguard, of course, rather than those whom intentionally abuse. As you say, I think the the two things are quite different. I’m sorry if I was not clear.
I can see this may be at least partly the reasoning behind the bishops’ failure to enforce discipline where needed. However, the need to conserve the church’s investment in its clergy doesn’t play out into looking after those they have. I know far too many clergy whose health has broken down through being inadequately supported in difficult posts, or through overwork.
In recent years there has been a trend towards appointing bishops who stick their necks out (with a very few exceptions). I think some of them are simply too cowardly to take appropriate action.
And finally, the church just seems too chaotic to get its act together. I think all these are factors.
I’m frequently reminded of Scott Peck’s book ‘People of the Lie’, which is a psychiatrist’s view of evil in the human personality. According to Peck evil has 2 defining characteristics: lies and laziness. Laziness here is taking the easy way out, not bothering to do what is good and right, or to think yourself into someone else’s shoes. I see evil at work in the church.
Me too! Every time I speak to someone new, I find more evil. I met several new people on holiday, and spoke to someone I knew in a new way. People are aware of what goes on. But they can’t do anything. Or don’t try.
Hi Janet. Maybe there is more than ” intentional ” wrong doing at work here. I’ve just pointed this out on a blog elsewhere, but I recently came across a psych paper suggesting that there was a higher than expected number of clergy who have difficulty with the capacity to ” mentalize” … i.e. imagine the perspective of another, which lies at the heart of empathy.
If enough people in power in an institution are like this, then ” group think” will surely ensure that a certain ” blindness” to others is the result?
Maybe we need to ask some more questions re our training/selection. Are we creating ( or preferencing) ” heart people” or ” head people”? Is the balance skewed?
Janet. Bear in mind that I was looking for explanations from the bishops’ perspective. I would expect bishops to be concerned about finance and deployment. If they are the sort to mistreat or ignore their clergy, then that would not be something they would be consciously admitting or even aware of.
Do you mean ‘not’ appointing bishops who stick their necks out? i agree with you that there is an apparent high degree of chaos in the church at present.
Stephen, yes, that’s a useful perspective. Perhaps you can be more detached since you don’t have history with any of the current crop of bishops!
“In fact, no bishop has yet been removed from office for malfeasance apart from Peter Ball.”
Stephen, I am not sure this is correct. Ball wasn’t “removed from office”. He originally resigned from his office as Bishop of Gloucester on the grounds of ill-health, having accepted a police caution on the same day, 8 March 1993 (Gibbs Report 3.5.30). He was able to accept a disability pension, and he had attempted to postpone his resignation to 1 April, as “it is worth four thousand pounds to me.”
Subsequently, following his imprisonment, he was informed that “After
consultation with the Bishops of Winchester and London, the Archbishop of
Canterbury has imposed upon you a penalty of prohibition for life with effect from
23rd December 2015” (Gibb report 3.12.2).
As a matter of pedantry, malfeasance is properly, under English law, “misfeasance” or “misconduct in public office”. Although Ball was imprisoned for admitting, among other charges, misconduct in public office (“the admission that he had misused his position and authority to manipulate and prevail upon others for his own sexual gratification” Gibb 3.11.10), Gibb doesn’t relate the grounds for Ball’s prohibition under CDM. I can’t imagine that it was “neglect or inefficiency in the performance of the duties of his office. [CDM 2003 8.1.(c)]. It must surely have been “conduct unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders.” [CDM 2003 8.1.(d)]
Incidentally, as one of the single cohort of deacons ordained by Ball at his single ordination service in Gloucester Cathedral, I am both glad that the CofE is not donatist, and also horrified by the forensic examination in Gibb of the behaviour of so many people associated with Gloucester Diocese in the early 1990s, who assured us parish clergy that everything that needed to be done was being done – properly and with integrity. I remember full well being told that Ball was accepting the caution whilst simultaneously refusing to accept the guilt that went with it, and that the “truth (to his innocence) will out.”
So much for putting our trust in princes…
Justin. Thank you for filling in the detail about Peter Ball. The ‘prohibition for life’ was probably what I picked up and I sloppily backdated it to 1992. That is when it should have happened. I think I am right that this was unprecedented.
Like you I was also a priest in the Diocese of Gloucester at the time of the caution and we were left trusting that there was some explanation to be had for the events at the time. I have to say that my ‘trust in princes’ has been sorely tried by the Singleton and IICSA revelations. I hope my faith in the C/E is not further undermined by the next stage of hearings of IICSA! It probably will be.
Stephen, your comment about potentially having your faith in the C/E undermined is interesting and I think is worth exploring further! What is more important: 1) truth or 2) faith in the church?
It can be shattering psychologically to realise one’s trust or faith has been misplaced but as a survivor of abuse I believe that the commitment to truth and healing makes this shattering of trust worthwhile.
My expectations that bishops won’t be truthful, or will deliberately mislead, if it seems expedient to them to do so, helps me relate to them and the church in a new way. When I now hear or read something spoken or written by a bishop, my instinctive response now is “What’s not true about this?” which I think is probably a much more healthy response than assuming what they say is true.
If only the rest of the church and society responded similarly…!
We need an organisation that does things like checking that everyone who should have a DBS certificate, does in fact have one. So when it became clear that the Diocesan had been cavalier about such things, everyone gets checked, and then, a couple of years later, everyone’s certificate gets checked again. I have heard of a Diocese that didn’t do them. In order to save money. These days, that is incomprehensible.