Clergy Discipline Measure – Some critical reflections

In 2003, I left the Church of England for what turned out to be a pre-retirement post in the Episcopal Church in Scotland. It was in the days before Common Tenure for the clergy had been introduced. Before CT a vicar or a bishop had rights and privileges of freehold and this made him/her almost unsackable. The Church had, some years earlier, succeeded in setting an age limit forcing clergy to retire at 70. By 2003 there were only a small number of clerics who had been appointed before 1975 that could hang on in their posts until a date of their own choosing. The history of the Church of England might well be different if one particular diocesan bishop, appointed in the early 70s, had been forced to retire at a seemly age.

Common Tenure, as a structure for managing the terms of employment for incumbents and bishops, has now become almost universal in the Church of England. Here and there you will find vicars who were appointed under the old rules and thus still enjoy the considerable privileges of the freehold system. The vast majority of clerics now hold their posts subject to the conditions set out in the new legislation. I do not propose to spell out all these terms. Suffice to say, CT represents a considerable weakening of the old freehold system. The clergy are promised, in return, a degree of support by those who employ them. Each clergyperson is also to be supported by members of the senior Diocesan staff and assessed on a regular basis. But alongside new systems of support come new methods for maintaining discipline among the clergy. The rules and procedures of the so-called Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) came into effect in 2006.

The process of writing about and supporting survivors of church abusive power has brought me into touch with CDM in several of its aspects. It was referred to several times in Matt’s Ineson’s story. I had not realised, until reporting Matt’s account for the first time, that it is possible for anyone to take out a complaint against a cleric using a downloadable form. Matt used the legislation to make complaints against several bishops for their numerous failures to pass on his disclosures of sexual abuse. This ability on the part of anyone to make a complaint about a bishop under the terms of the CDM was something new to me. One of the comments on my post about Matt corrected me on my assumption that CDM complaints against bishops were hitherto unheard of. One had been used against Bishop Wallace Benn around 2011.

Looking at CDM with the fresh eyes of someone who has only recently encountered it, I am struck by several things. The first thing is that it constitutes a complete legal structure but all of it is managed within the institution of the Church. There are no outside referees like an ombudsman. At the heart of the system is the bishop of the diocese. He has the power, according to a helpful flow-chart issued by the Diocese of Exeter, to declare a case of complaint to be of insufficient interest or substance to take further. Even when the complaint is taken to the next stage the bishop still has the power to take no further action. It is only with the bishop’s consent that the most serious cases come to a tribunal for assessment. These will be the cases that are serious but do not fall under the orbit of criminal law. At each stage the accused/respondent has the right of appeal.

The making a diocesan bishop into a judge/jury over some difficult and intractable situations of misbehaviour by clerics would seem an almost intolerable burden and responsibility. To go back to a point made in an earlier post, how can the chief pastor of the diocese successfully or easily fulfil this role? Do bishops on the eve of their appointments realise how difficult and costly this contradictory role, simultaneously caring and judging, is going to be?

Further points have been raised by others. The fact that the church has created a self-contained legal structure for itself means that the church has to fund a new class of lawyers to service it. Specialist lawyers never come cheap and so, if an accused individual has to face a church tribunal, who pays for his/her defence? What safeguards are in place to protect the individual from bullies and mischief makers that are to be found taking advantage of the system? The unhappy experience of a former Bishop of Gloucester right at the end of his ministry sends a chill through the heart of every serving clergyperson in the Church of England. Every case of false accusation helps to undermine the situation of real victims who look to the church for justice and redress.

The question of financing CDM cases leads into a final thought – the question of delay and time. In the case of a respondent waiting to hear the result of a case against him/her, how long is reasonable? Months of waiting to hear a case will put an almost unbearable strain on the clergyperson and their families. Reading through the pages of legislation that deal with all the issues from original complaint to final resolution suggests that months/years may well have passed. Large sums of money will also have been spent.

I end this short reflection with a question. Has the Church of England created a monster in its system called the Clergy Discipline Measure? Is anyone actively looking to see if a more compassionate structure can be created? Anecdotal evidence suggests that CDM is a cause of a great deal of unhappiness as well as enormous amounts of work and expense for those who administer it. Is it just one more factor that causes many clergy to feel under stress, further lowering their already fragile morale? Perhaps those who have had direct experience of the Measure could write on this post.

About Stephen Parsons

Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.

5 thoughts on “Clergy Discipline Measure – Some critical reflections

  1. Nothing to do with discipline, but common tenure changes other things, too. A friend of mine developed a heart condition that meant he eventually needed surgery on his coronary arteries. Which did fix it, and return him to full health. But it was one of those stories where they weren’t sure, and he had various other treatments and was constantly off work. The church now only gives six months sick pay. So he was obliged to retire and live off savings. In the same diocese, about ten years earlier, a priest suffering from cancer was kept on until he died, after five or six years. I read some of it when it first came in. I don’t think it’s particularly good for clergy, either.

    1. Thank you Stephen.
      There is much I could write as someone who has complained against a diocesan bishop using the CDM but I’m hopeful that my evidence will be used at the next stage of the IICSA hearings and some of the failings will become obvious from that.
      I have another complaint that is currently less than 12 months old against a different, serving, diocesan bishop for failing to have due regard to safeguarding processes (refusing to pass on documents) but really don’t think it is worth my time and energy to make the complaint, given what I’ve already experienced about the process (and that I’m currently quite ill). I think it would be more effective if it was taken up by the media to warn the public about the church’s dysfunction, and that there still can’t be confidence in its safeguarding, rather than using the CDM.
      The NST are aware of this safeguarding failure and, I understand, could initiate a CDM complaint against the bishop; it will be interesting to see if they do so while they are still within the time limit. Notably, they failed to acknowledge the email I sent them about it, despite my request for them to do so, and they have failed to ask me for copies of previous correspondence about the issue. It all seems to point to a desperate attempt to conceal this recent safeguarding failure by a senior bishop.

  2. This article, of course, could just as easily been a part the one on low morale where it would serve as yet another reason .. Please keep up the good work.

    Two comments if I may?

    “Before CT a vicar or a bishop had rights and privileges of freehold and this made him/her almost unsackable . . .”

    Has the new system perhaps swung too far? The new system does not seem to contain any of the of the modern safeguards to employees (no redress against constructive dismissal to name but one ). I am given to understand that for unknown (probably historic) reasons, priests are not “employees”. (The use of the word “unsackable” is therefore perhaps not helpful.)

    “What safeguards are in place to protect the individual from bullies and mischief makers that are to be found taking advantage of the system?”

    That question becomes all the more pertinent when it is the bishop that is the bully and the chief mischief makers are members of the congregation with a (facebook and twitter aided) axe to grind as their priest tries to lead them into the ways of “Thinking Anglicans” and away from fundamentalist certainty?

    1. I think it went through the courts a few years ago. Stipendiary clergy are “office holders” and they mostly come under the self employed legislation. This has loads of implications when it comes to abuse. Bishops and Archdeacons can place increasingly impossible loads upon clergy, and then fold their hands piously and say nothing to do with them when the cleric becomes ill with overwork. Because they are self-employed, so it’s technically up to them to control their diaries. Most clergy work morning, afternoon and evening six days a week. If you divide those hours by the stipend, you probably get illegally low wages in most cases. But again, nothing to do with me, guv. It was always difficult to get rid of a cleric who never got out of bed in the morning, or preached heresy or whatever. This is how the church got its reputation for only being bothered about money or sex! Run off with the takings or the organist’s wife and you’re in trouble. But there used to be an “if in the opinion of the umpire” clause of ” behaviour unbecoming of a clerk in holy orders “. That has now gone. Leaving you with no way of getting rid of someone who is incompetent, lazy, a bully, or even a paedophile. So the tendency of bishops and Archdeacons to do nothing is exacerbated. I haven’t studied this part of the CDM, but I suspect that you would have to do them for criminal activity, and if found guilty, then sack them. And a fair amount is not actually criminal.
      Clergy are also unprotected from things like long periods of illness. A friend of mine was obliged to retire early and live off savings. The whole system is a mess.

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