by Richard Scorer
A mandatory reporting law imposes a legal obligation on specified individuals or groups, usually known as “mandated reporters”, to report known or suspected cases of abuse to the statutory authorities. We don’t currently have such a law in England and Wales, where it remains entirely legal, for example, for a priest to discover that a child or vulnerable adult is being raped, and to do nothing about it. IICSA (the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse) said that this needs to change, and recommended that a mandatory reporting law be introduced to cover ‘regulated’ settings, including churches. IICSA’s proposal has been criticised as inadequate (in my view justifiably), but the principle of mandatory reporting is right, as Justin Welby agreed in his evidence to IICSA. However, a further question is whether there should be a religious exception to mandatory reporting to uphold the absolute seal of the confessional; this issue has provoked more controversy.
Some church groups have responded with a flat rejection of any exception to the confessional seal. In response to the recent government consultation on mandatory reporting, The Society (aka Forward in Faith, representing traditionalist, conservative Anglo Catholicism in the Church of England) argued that “Confidentiality is an essential ingredient of Confession because we regard the conversation to between Christ and the penitent and it must therefore remain ‘sealed’ by the sacrament. To qualify it in certain circumstances would be to undermine the sacrament altogether and would represent a major theological problem for us.……….We therefore regard the retention of the Seal of Confession to be a matter of religious freedom and conscience…..these are deeply held matters of religious faith and conviction, based on many centuries of practice throughout the world”.
Of course, clergy work in a pastoral role and as such, wish to be persons to whom confidences can safely be entrusted. The question is whether clergy should be entitled to claim absolute confidentiality, including in respect of information about abuse. This question has to be answered in the light of the known recidivism of sex offenders: a failure to act on information will frequently put others at risk. Professionals handling sensitive information do not generally enjoy absolute confidentiality. As a lawyer, my clients enjoy the protection of legal professional privilege in our dealings, and I have a duty to uphold this. However, this is not absolute. For example, if I know or reasonably suspect that a client might be engaged in money laundering, I have a legal duty to report this to the authorities, and I can go to prison if I don’t; this duty overrides client confidentiality. Similarly in many jurisdictions mandatory reporting laws apply to the medical profession, indeed the earliest mandatory reporting laws in the 1960s were specifically aimed at physicians. The question, then, is whether clergy should be treated as an exception if the religion deems that the seal of the confession applies.
There are numerous problems with Forward in Faith’s approach. To begin with, at least so far as the Church of England is concerned, an appeal to ‘centuries of practice’ is a rather doubtful basis for a defence of an unqualified seal. Historically, the confessional seal in the Church of England arises from Canon 113 of 1603. Canon 113 (‘Minister may Present’) concerned the suppression of evil-doing by the presentment to the Ordinary by parsons, vicars or curates of crimes and iniquities committed in the parish. The canon concluded with a proviso relating to the seal of the confessional:
“Provided always, That if any man confess his secret and hidden sins to the minister, for the unburdening of his conscience, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind from him: we do not in any way bind the said minister by this our Constitution, but do straitly charge and admonish him, that he do not at any time reveal and make known to any person whatsoever any crime or offence so committed to his trust and secrecy (except they be such crimes as by the laws of this realm his own life may be called into question for concealing the same) under pain of irregularity”.
As the ecclesiastical lawyer Christopher Grout has pointed out, the wording of the proviso to Canon 113 is important. The proviso applies only for the ‘unburdening of (the penitent’s) conscience, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind’; this wording suggests that it applies only where penitence is genuine. Also, for the proviso to apply, the sins confessed to the minister must be ‘secret and hidden’. This suggests that the proviso may not apply if what was confessed to the minister was already known to him or – at least arguably – others. It also seems that the proviso may not have been legally binding upon the minister (‘we do not in any way bind the said minister by this our Constitution’), although a breach would result in disciplinary action (‘pain of irregularity’) . Most importantly, an exception to confidentiality exists insofar as ‘they be such crimes as by the laws of this realm his own life may be called into question for concealing the same’. Interpreted literally, this ‘high treason’ exception permits the minister to reveal what he or she has been told if it is the type of crime concealment of which could itself constitute a criminal offence for which the lawful punishment is execution. Because the death penalty has been abolished in the UK this exception is no longer applicable, but its inclusion in the proviso indicates that the seal of the confessional was not recognised as inviolable in 1603. This reflects the political reality of the time, in which Protestant England was under mortal threat from Catholic Spain. But if church law could accommodate an exception to the seal of the confessional in 1603 and for hundreds of years thereafter, because public protection required it, it can obviously do so again.
A redrafted canon and proviso which removed the words in brackets and sought to strengthen the principle of the seal of the confessional was proposed in 1947 by the Archbishops’ Commission on Canon Law but was never promulgated. It appears that legal advice was received that a new canon in this form was unlikely to receive the Royal Licence, because the implication of this more absolutist canon was that clergy would now have the privilege of not being obliged to disclose information received in the confessional, if called to give evidence in court, and it is very doubtful that such a privilege ever existed under English secular law. Rather than risk a refusal, it was decided to retain the proviso to the old Canon 113, whilst repealing the rest of the code of 1603. Resolutions were passed in the in support of the seal of the confessional at the Convocations of Canterbury and York in 1959, but Acts of Convocation have moral force only, and are not law. Historians have observed that the canon of 1603 represents a watering down of pre Reformation Roman Catholic ecclesiastical law in which secrecy was seen as the essence of confession, and it clearly is. It is certainly a weak foundation on which to build an argument that in the Church of England the seal of the confessional has always been inviolable.
As Canon Judith Maltby pointed out recently in a letter to the Church Times, the Forward in Faith paper is also thin on evidence. As Maltby noted, it entirely fails, for example, to grapple with the evidence amassed by Dr Marie Keenan who worked with clerical sex offenders in Ireland; evidence which relates to the Catholic Church, but which has obvious implications for debates about the confessional seal in any religious context. Keenan spent decades interviewing clerical sex offenders and unpicking the cognitive distortions underpinning their offending, and the ways in which the culture of the Catholic Church itself contributes to the problem. Keenan found that eight of the nine clerical sex offenders who participated in her main study had disclosed their sexual abuse of children in confession. The confessional, it transpired, was their main place of respite and support from their “emotional conflicts and loneliness”. Several of them explained to her how they used the confessional to cope with their abuse of children, and thus to facilitate it. As one told her: “The only ones who would have sensed what I was going through were my confessors – they were carefully selected by me, and time and time again I recounted my temptations and falls, my scruples and shame. They after all were bound to a strict code of secrecy. I was known personally to them all. They were my lifelines.”
As Keenan sets out, for these clerical sex offenders, the confessional became a secret conversational space, not only of forgiveness but also of “externalising” the issues “in safety”. One said: “After each abusive occurrence I felt full of guilt and at the earliest opportunity I sought to confess and receive absolution… There were times of guilt, shame and fear that I would get caught but I used confession to clean the slate. I minimised everything in this area… convincing myself that I would never do it again, especially after confession.”
Tellingly, one recalled: “In all the times I confessed to abusing a minor, I can only remember one occasion when I got a reprimand or advice not to do this again.” Thus “in a strange way the sacramental Confession let us off the hook rather lightly, and perhaps allowed us to minimise what was actually happening… Not confronted adequately, we experienced only a short duration of guilt and no sense of responsibility for how we hurt others, only the alleviation of our own guilt and shame.”
Keenan observed: “Receiving confession played a role in easing the men’s conscience in coping with the moral dilemmas following episodes of abusing, and it provided a site of respite from guilt.” She concluded that these offenders’ stories “give rise to important observations regarding the function of confession”. It was “notable that only one confessor on one occasion, among the many times that the men disclosed their abusive behaviour in confession, pointed out the criminal nature of the sexual abuse”. Thus, Keenan concluded, “the very process of confession itself might therefore be seen as having enabled the abuse to continue not only in how the men used the secrecy and safety of the confessional space to resolve the issues of guilt, but also in the fact that within the walls of the confession, the problem of the sexual abuse of children was contained”. She also observed: “While the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) makes clear that the seal is a fundamental aspect of the theology of the sacrament of confession, and it is not the function of the confessor to judge the confessant, nonetheless no pathway existed for this important information of abuse by clergy, which was emerging in the confessional, to flow back into the system, to alert the church hierarchy to a growing problem… The fact that the problem was individualised at the level of the confessional is an important feature of abuse by clergy.”
Keenan’s research is multi-layered and nuanced, but it certainly suggests that far from creating an opportunity for abuse to be discussed and challenged, the confessional can operate as a forum in which abuse is forgiven and the slate wiped clean. Far from creating an opportunity to tackle clerical sex abuse, the seal of the confessional can be an enabler of it. This research, and the known cases in which a failure to act on disclosures of abuse in the confessional allowed further abuse to occur (I wrote about some of the Catholic cases in my book Betrayed) cannot be ignored; those who seek to defend an unqualified seal need at a minimum to engage with the evidence, something the Forward in Faith document entirely failed to do.
What should the Church of England do now? IICSA has recommended mandatory reporting, and the government has endorsed the idea in principle, although its insistence on a further consultation after an 8 year public inquiry suggests a desire to delay implementation. The Labour Party has long been committed to mandatory reporting, as has Keir Starmer personally since his Victim’s Law report in 2015. So mandatory reporting is almost certainly coming. And IICSA was categorical in rejecting any religious or confessional exception to it. As its final report observes:
“Some core participants and witnesses argued that a mandatory reporting law ought to provide exemptions for some faith-based settings or personnel and, in particular, in the context of sacramental confession. As the Inquiry has already noted, the respect of a range of religions or beliefs is recognised as a hallmark of a liberal democracy. Nonetheless, neither the freedom of religion or belief nor the rights of parents with regard to the education of their children can ever justify the ill-treatment of children or prevent governmental authorities from taking measures necessary to protect children from harm. The Inquiry therefore considers that mandatory reporting as set out in this report should be an absolute obligation; it should not be subject to exceptions based on relationships of confidentiality, religious or otherwise”.
This is right. As the Australian Royal Commission also concluded, the free practice of religion is not an absolute right and can be reasonably abridged to protect the “fundamental rights and freedoms of others”; and mandatory reporting is a paradigm case of protection of the vulnerable needing to take precedence over a religious right (and rite).
In this context, rather than a die-in-the-ditch approach, the Church of England and other religious organisations need to think creatively about reforming church law on the confessional to accommodate the reality and necessity of mandatory reporting. In IICSA some senior Church of England figures seemed open to this, others not. The most sensible position was articulated by Canon Dr Rupert Bursell, a distinguished ecclesiastical lawyer who also happens to be a child abuse survivor. He pointed out that reporting requirements already exist in relation to terrorism and money laundering, with no exemption for information imparted in the confessional and, as he put it, these duties exist “whether the Anglo Catholics (ie in the Church of England) like it or not, and whether they are aware of it or not”. The same principle, he argued, should apply to child abuse. Church of England guidelines on clergy conduct published in 2015 state that if the penitent discloses a serious crime, but refuses to report it to the authorities, the priest should withhold absolution. This approach is sometimes presented as a solution by those seeking to preserve the confessional seal in the face of mandatory reporting of child abuse, but of course it is no solution at all, since mandatory reporting means exactly that: the priest has to report, irrespective of whether absolution is granted or not.
A more progressive approach is the one adopted by the Anglican Church in Australia, a country which has strong secular mandatory reporting laws in most states and territories. In 2014 and 2017 the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia passed new canons, the first of which created an exception to the principle of confessional confidentiality in relation to a “grave offence” (meaning child abuse) by providing that the church minister
“is obliged to keep confidential the grave offence so confessed only if he or she is reasonably satisfied that the penitent has reported the grave offence to the police and, if the person is a church worker or a member of the clergy, to the Director of Professional Standards or other relevant Church authority”.
The second canon expanded the definition of “grave offence” to include abuse of a vulnerable person, and expanded the exceptions to confidentially to include non-criminal conduct that is reasonably believed to put a vulnerable person at risk of significant harm. The canons are only effective at diocesan level if passed by diocesan synods; my understanding is that all Anglican dioceses in Australia have adopted the first one, and most have adopted the second. Personally I am not entirely persuaded by the language of the canons which leave the decision on reporting to the minister, albeit with the benefit of legal advice if required. In IICSA I criticised Church of England safeguarding procedures which were insufficiently directive in requiring reporting, using the word ‘should’ in relation to reporting instead of ‘must’. The same point could be made about these canons, which are designed to leave the reporting decision to the conscience of the minister. But the bigger point is that these canons disapply the seal when it comes to knowledge and reporting of child abuse, and as such remove any direct conflict between church law and secular mandatory reporting.
This is to be commended, and I hope that other religious organisations will follow suit. The idea that the seal of the confessional is sanctified and justified by centuries of tradition entirely misses the point. Clerical sex abuse of children has been going on for centuries too, but has only recently been exposed. Its exposure means that centuries of tradition – if it can even be characterised as such, which in the Church of England is doubtful – are no longer a reliable guide to future action. When the seal of the confessional stands in the way of action to protect children, this is simply a religious privilege too far; churches would do well to recognise that reality, and engage sensibly in a process of change.
To Nonconformists such as myself, the very idea of the Seal of Confession seems entirely incredible. We – and I’m sure this isn’t just true for my own Baptist denomination but for others such as the Methodists and the URC – have been told for many years that we cannot promise confidentiality if a disclosure should be made. We are given guidelines and procedures to follow if such a disclosure is made, and if necessary believe that we (not the Minister alone but on or two nominated individuals within the congregation) are obliged to involve the statutory authorities – obviously after careful thought rather than as a “knee jerk reaction”. I certainly do not believe that our secular laws should grant any “leeway” to faith communities in such matters; indeed, and has stated above, inaction and silence may appear to permit an offender to offend again.
Some thirty years ago, at Spring Harvest`, I recall the service leader stressing very clearly before a time of ministry and prayer that there were ‘certain sins’ about which there could be no hope of confidentiality in confession, and that the staff were obliged to call in the police. He didn’t need to spell out what he was referring to. It’s a pity some folks at Soul Survivor didn’t follow the same principles.
My wife, as a teacher, was similarly expected to report suspected abuse; no question about it. It only seems to be certain strands of the church which have a problem. All I would say is ‘render unto Ceasar what is his, and to God what is his’ – and get real.
My Christian formation was in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, at an Oxford movement church; so I practiced confession & don’t dismiss it lightly. It’s perhaps harder for those from ‘lower’ traditions to understand the gravity of breaking the seal, of interfering with a sacrament.
As I understand the history, as Richard says, it has evolved considerably since the early church. Requiring an offender to report as a condition of penance,& withholding absolution until that is done, should already happen and is a helpful step towards MR. There’s no equivalent when it is the victim that confesses; as I did, thinking that it was my sin, rather than my father’s, or the men that sexploited me. That is an issue to take seriously too; would I have confessed at all if I hadn’t known it would be kept secret? Very unlikely; the men were sadistic and violent and I was terrified of what they would do if I told, as well as the shame.
But undoubtedly I would have been safer sooner if there had been effective MR, other victims might have been saved, and surely that has to be the most important factor here. Especially with Keenan’s research demonstrating the enabling role of confession. We can all agree that God doesn’t want children to be abused. So surely God does not collude with a practice that enables abuse? The seal cannot be used to make God an enabler, surely that would be heresy?
I don’t trust this government to act well, but I hope and pray that MR does come with no religious exemptions.
Surely there is no such thing as a sacrament, if our faith and practice is based on the Bible. The Bible says nothing about sacraments. The idea that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are sacraments imports a meaning into the biblical text: it does not derive such a meaning out of the biblical text.
Similarly the Bible says nothing about priests as commonly understood — as some kind of intermediary between God and his people. There is in the Bible no mention of any priest to whom confession should be made. The biblical understanding is that all christians (true christians, that is) are priests, because we all have direct access to God.
Surely the ideas of sacraments and priests are man-made (perhaps devil-made) ideas that have no basis in the Bible or in the teaching of the first apostles. And surely “churches” (so-called) that believe in sacraments and priests — and practice accordingly — are merely advertising their radical divergence from true and original faith and practice.
Matthew 15:18-19 and John 20:23 seem relevant here.
I do hope your Bible is printed on scrolls, rather than bound into a book, and that your church doesn’t meet in a dedicated building? Because otherwise, you aren’t conforming to New Testament practice. There’s no warrant for Sunday Schools or separate meetings for children, either.
And if you want to be truly biblical, you’ll enrol widows into an order of ministry of their own.
Your first paragraph is mainly correct; it reminds us that practically no church tries (or pretends) to conform to New Testament practice. That is surely something to be regretted. — and to be amazed at.
I’m not entirely sure about the scrolls, as I think I’ve read that codices (i.e. books) were common from early on, though I can’t remember how early. But it’s pretty irrelevant anyway, as the New Testament is silent on the subject, so there is no scriptural mandate for any specific method of recording scripture. You’ve raised a red herring there.
You seem to be saying that we can happily ignore what the New Testament has to say about how to do church, but presumably you’d be horrified if someone suggested that we ignore what the New Testament has to say about doctrine and morals and behaviour. The scriptures are there for our instruction: it’s not for us to pick and choose which bits we obey and to ignore the bits we find inconvenient. And we will of course each be answerable for our choices and for our actions at the Day of Judgement.
I’ll have to check, but I think you’ve misunderstood what the NT says about widows. My recollection is that the reference is not to an order of ministry but to a list of those who the church would support financially because they had no family to support them (if a widow did have a family, it would be their responsibility to support her rather than the church’s responsibility). That seems eminently sensible, does it not? And presumably any church which has members who need such support would organise it in that kind of way, wouldn’t they?
The New Testament is not entirely silent on the subject of scrolls: see 2 Tim 4:13, where Paul asks Timothy to ‘bring my scrolls, especially the parchments’. If we’re being rigorist about sticking to New Testament practice, we might infer that we too should stick to scrolls.
The instructions regarding widows are puzzling. If enrolling widows was only about giving them financial support, why restrict it to those over 60 who had never remarried, and who were known for their good deeds? A fifty-year-old widow, or one who had been widowed twice, or who had been recently converted from a pagan lifestyle, might equally be in danger of starving. It’s interesting, too, that the instructions regarding widows are immediately followed by instructions re elders. It suggests to me that widows had some kind of leadership or ministry role in the church.
I’m not at all saying that we should ignore what the NT says about the way we do (or be) church; but we need to bear in mind that the NT describes a number of different ways the early Church was organised and carried out its ministry. Even more variety is hinted at. Every church adapted the Good News to its local culture – and the letters and descriptions we have don’t represent all the variety that existed.
So I am impatient when some Christians dismiss the practices and theology of other Christians as ‘unbiblical’. Every iteration of church I have ever come across – and it’s a lot – has had a number of customs and beliefs which can’t be derived from the Bible. The ones quickest to claim they are ‘Bible-based’ are sometimes the worst – but then they’re the ones I know best.
We’re all doing our best to follow Jesus in a world very different from that of the 1st century, so let’s go easy on each other.
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What we learn from 2 Tim 4:13 is that Paul (and presumably other people) had scrolls (“books” – ESV) and parchments. What we don’t learn from 2 Tim 4:13 is that Paul was talking about scriptures: he may have been, he may not have been. What we also don’t learn from 2 Tim 4:13 is that Paul was giving any suggestion, let alone a command, that there is any restriction on, or required method of, the format in which the scriptures are held and read. You’re not as rigorist as that; I’m not as rigorist as that. Anyone who is as rigorist as that cannot rely on the scriptures to support his/her position. I’ve never come across anyone as rigorist as that: have you? As I said before, you’ve raised a complete red herring here – or perhaps I should have said a straw man rather than a red herring. Either way, it has been (IMO) an unhelpful contribution to the discussion.
Why restrict it to those who never remarried? For the reason I gave in my first post: if they were married, the responsibility was the family’s, not the church’s. Why restrict it to those over 60? Perhaps because the under-60s were expected to provide for themselves, but this would be unreasonable for the over-60s? I’m guessing here. Why restrict it to those who were known for their good deeds? For obvious reasons: for those who deserved it and were not sponging and/or playing the system. I don’t find the instructions regarding widows puzzling at all; and I don’t understand why you do.
2 of 2 follows – if it lets me!
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You’re wrong to say that the NT describes a number of different ways the early church was organised: scholars like to think so (as they would) but the NT doesn’t support them. A clear exception to my assertion is the church among Jews in Jerusalem, who/which cannot be a model for us for reasons of geography and history: (geography) no church outside Jerusalem even then had local access to the Temple, and (history) that Temple lasted only another generation before it was destroyed, so that it was no longer available to anyone. If you seriously assert that the NT describes a number of different ways the early church was organised I’d be glad to see them listed/described. I see no ground whatever in the NT for your comment “Even more variety is hinted at”. I dare say you’d like that to be true but I challenge you demonstrate it. Ditto your next two comments: “Every church adapted the Good News to its local culture” and “the letters and descriptions we have don’t represent all the variety that existed”. How do you know that? As regards the latter comment you can only be guessing, because you concede that we lack evidence. And our obligation is to obey and practice what the scriptures teach and model for us; our obligation isn’t to obey and practice what isn’t taught or modelled in scripture!
“So I am impatient when some Christians dismiss the practices and theology of other Christians as ‘unbiblical’.” I grasp that you are impatient but your “So” is unjustified: you haven’t given adequate reason for your impatience. My guess is that you don’t like the idea of us changing our ways of doing church to bring them into line with the NT: it would be too great an upheaval.
“Every iteration of church I have ever come across . . . has had a number of customs and beliefs which can’t be derived from the Bible.” That must be the experience of us all. I doubt that there is any church in this country (and probably not in other countries either) which conforms with the NT model – this being largely because no church makes any such attempt. And no individual church on its own wishing to comply with the NT model can actually do so on its own, because it would require all the compliance (obedience) of all the christians and all the churches in the locality.
I dispute that in fact “We’re all doing our best to follow Jesus in a world very different from that of the 1st century” when what we’re all doing our best to do is ignoring what the NT tells us about how to do church. It would be much more accurate to say “We’re all following Jesus in the way that we choose, the way that suits us, never mind what the NT says.” Going easy on each other means not rocking the boat, letting things carry on the way they are, not pointing out inconvenient truths, and making sure we don’t tell people what they don’t want to hear.
How would you then describe the one way in which all New Testament churches (other than the one in Jerusalem) were organised?
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The only churches we have information in the New testament about are (a) the churches founded by Paul (and we know that that he taught and practised and organised things in the same way in all the churches he founded) and (b) the church in Jerusalem (and what we know of this church fits in very well with how Paul organised things in the churches he founded, with the sole exception of meeting in the Jerusalem temple).
Paul’s churches met in houses once a week on a Sunday for a common meal and worship and ministry in which everyone contributed according to the gifting given to him or her by the Holy Spirit. The Lord’s Supper, which today (and for many centuries past)is wrongly thought of as a separate rite, was integral to the common meal — as was the case in the original supper, attended by Jesus in person, which is often known as the Last Supper. The bread and wine which they ate and drank in memory of Jesus was the same bread and wine which they ate and drank as their common meal.
Since everyone took part in the meeting(by “took part” I mean “spoke up and contributed”) , and since they all ate a meal together, we can conclude that house churches were unlikely to have had more than a couple of dozen members at their weekly meeting, very likely fewer. Each house church was regarded a part of the church in the local area, or to put it the other way round, the church in a particular area or town met in small groups in houses. We know of no larger meeting than the weekly house church meetings. Whether the entire membership of the church in, say, Antioch or Corinth or Ephesus,or In Galatia or on Crete, ever met all together at one place at the same time we have no idea — we have no record. But it seems most unlikely and very impractical. And if it did it certainly couldn’t have been a meeting at which everyone contributed. [The meetings that Paul held in the hall of Tyrannus was not a house church meeting, nor was it a meeting of the church in Ephesus; what they did at those meeting was not eating and drinking and worshipping and ministering in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.]
2 of 2 follows (I hope)
2 of 2 — it does let me!
That is just a brief summary of the model of church presented to us in the New Testament. It is a consistent model; it is the only model we have. There are no alternative models or approaches given in the NT. We have no idea how churches found by other apostles operated, because the NT doesn’t tell us. I assume that they did church much the same way as Paul’s churches did, being led and inspired by the same Holy Spirit. But I don’t know that because the NT doesn’t say. It could be that the reason that no record has come down to us of how churches founded by other apostles organised themselves is that they did things differently than Paul did, and the Holy Spirit didn’t want us to follow those alternative models. But that’s pure guesswork and could be wrong — I expect it is wrong. I expect those other churches did things the same way as Paul’s churches did.
I know of no church organising itself in the one way that the New testament models. It would be interesting to interrogate people about this. My guess is that some would say that they do follow the NT in their church practice, when clearly they don’t, and if they do say that they are deluding themselves. Some may say that they don’t need to follow the NT in their church practice, to which I would ask “Why don’t they feel such a need?” Why do they believe that the NT is silent on how to do church when it gives clear teaching in so many other things? What about the NT’s comments on how they did church in the early days and on how Paul told them they ought to do church: do they seriously think it is OK for us to ignore those parts of the NT?
I don’t know what answers you would get if you did ask such questions — but it would certainly be very interesting. And it would probably reveal more about people and their motivation than they would like, I would guess!
And of course changing the way we do church to the way the NT tells us would put an enormous bomb under the way we do church now and the way it has been done for centuries. I’d love to see that, but most churchgoers (and perhaps most christians) would hate it, because they prefer the comfort of doing it the way we are used to. It would be a revolution greater than the 16th century Reformation,; and greater, probably, than the practices of the Anabaptists, who went further than the Protestant reformers in seeking to return to biblical way,s and for that were persecuted not only by the Roman Catholics but even (most regrettably) by some Protestants.
It is, at the very least, debatable that Paul ‘practised and organised things in the same way in all the churches he founded’. In 1 Cor 9:19-22 he explicitly says that he adapts his approach according to the people he is working with. Paul was a master strategist, had a brilliant mind, and was sensitive to the cultural nuances across the Roman world. He varied his approach to have the maximum impact in whichever city he was preaching the gospel and founding a church. He usually went to the synagogue or place of prayer first, and stayed until he and his new followers were thrown out. But in Athens he went to Mars Hill, the Greek equivalent of Hyde Park Corner.
Scholars are agreed that most churches were small and met in believers’ houses or workshops, but there is no reason to think they wouldn’t have met in bigger places if the size of the church required it and bigger venues were available. As you say, believers and enquirers met in the lecture hall of Tyrannus daily for two years. And Jewish believers, like Paul and all the apostles, would be well used to having special buildings set aside of worship.
It’s not at all certain that churches met around a dining table. That wouldn’t have been possible in Tyrannus’ lecture hall, nor in cities where women didn’t freely mix with men. It seems from 1 Cor 14:34-35, for example, that wives were not sitting with their husbands, and if they had questions they called them out across the room, or from the gallery to the floor (if meeting in a synagogue-style building, where women sat in the gallery behind a screen).
As for the organisation of churches, we are told that Paul appointed elders in every church he founded. Some at least of these elders received a stipend, as we have already seen. There were also deacons and apostles, who don’t seem to have been limited to the original 11 plus Paul plus Matthias. The term may have been applied to itinerant evangelists. What role did these apostles have when they visited local churches? And how do we square the authority of overseers (presbuteroi/episkopoi) and deacons with Paul’s hierarchy of gifted roles in 1 Cor 12:27-28?
Let me explain my thinking re the scrolls and parchments. In 2 Tim 4:13 Paul gives Timothy a command to bring his scrolls and parchments. You’re right that we don’t take this command as applying today, because 1) it was addressed to a specific person in specific circumstances, and 2) the world has changed, and we have other methods of sending letters and producing books.
But, in disregarding this verse, we are interpreting it according to its context, and ours. The same applies to 1 Tim 5:23, where Paul tells Timothy he should stop drinking water only, and drink wine. Many Christians, including some of my own family, have believed that being teetotal is part of their faith., and they pretend that verse doesn’t exist.
Now, all the NT epistles are written to specific people in specific contexts. Some interpretation is required to decide which of their content applies to us, and how, and when. I’ve given two examples above that we feel free to disregard. But whenever there is interpretation, people are going to differ in how they interpret. So much depends on the lens through which we read, our background, our unexamined assumptions, our knowledge of other scriptures, and our understanding of the times in which the writers lived.
So, there is room for faithful Christians to understand and apply the scriptures quite differently. As has happened with the various ways of doing and organising church around the world, and so much else.
I agree with everything you you say, except for your last sentence. And I wouldn’t say we disregard those other verses — I think that’s an u fortunate/misleading choice of word.
If you don’t agree that there are various ways of doing and organising church around the world, what do you see as the one way of doing church? Or, do you regard those who organise church differently from what you are used to (sacraments, bishops, confessors) as somehow ‘not church’?
I’ve now replied (earlier) to your first question.
My short answer to your second question is “Yes”. My longer answer is that what I am used to (or what any of us is used to) is wholly and entirely irrelevant. What IS relevant is what the Bible teaches us and models for us — on this particular topic it will of course be the New Testament rather than the Old. So your question would be better rephrased as “Do you regard those who organise church differently from what the New Testament teaches us and models for us as somehow ‘not church’?” To which I would reply “Yes”. Our duty is not to decide what is the right/best/preferable way to do church: it is to obey what the Holy Spirit says is the way to do church.
I’ve said enough today — probably more than enough. I’ll look tomorrow at what you’ve posted here.
This is a reply in the wrong place. It is a reply to your post of 6 October at 10:57am. That post has no red arrow for me to click on to post my reply. So I’ve put it here, in the wrong place.
I still haven’t replied to your post of 30 September, but I do intend to – some time.
My misplaced reply
Janet, you’re really not very careful with how you relate scripture to what we do and what we ought to do. You pick on certain scriptures but then use them as if they say something very different.
In 1 Cor 9:19-22 Paul is speaking of his approach to people (as you say): he is NOT talking about how they did church among the believers. So this scripture is irrelevant when considering what the NT tells us about how they did church and how we are to do church.
1 Cor 14:34-35 says nothing whatever about seating arrangements; it does NOT say that wives were sitting apart from their husbands, nor does it imply it. That idea is purely guesswork: it is certainly NOT exegesis of the text.
And we know that they met in houses, NOT in some larger, more formal building, because the NT makes this clear. The synagogue is never presented in the NT as a model for how the churches should do their meetings nor for how they actually did them. It does seem to me that your approach is to read into the scriptures what you’d like to find there (so-called eisegesis) rather than taking from the text what it actually does say (which is exegesis).
Paul explicitly says in 1 Cor 4:17 that his ways and his teaching were the same in all the churches that he worked with. It is therefore NOT “debatable that Paul ‘practised and organised things in the same way in all the churches he founded’ ”. That he did it that way is stated explicitly in 1 Cor 4:17. How he approached people varied (as he says, and as you say) according to their characteristics, but once they had been converted the way they did church was the same in all the churches he founded.
You are mistaken in your understanding of the lecture hall of Tyrannus: the meetings there were not the regular weekly meetings of the church for worship, expression of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and eating the common meal. 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 (speaking about the regular weekly meetings) give a completely different picture from what was done in that hall The meetings there were for dialogue (argument back and forth) [Greek dialegominos] about the gospel that Paul was bringing. Dialegominos/dialegomai is nowhere used in the NT to describe what the house churches did in their regular weekly meeting.
Your final question could give rise to a very interesting discussion. But ultimately the NT doesn’t give any clear answer to it – so we can’t define any authoritative answer which we must all obey. Clearly everyone had certain ministry gifts (some spoken, some performed), whereas most people weren’t elders/overseers nor deacons.
Leigh, I have been pretty patient, but I object to being told that ‘you’re really not very careful with how you relate scripture to what we do and what we ought to do. You pick on certain scriptures but then use them as if they say something very different.’
There are many different valid ways of reading, interpreting, and applying scripture, with the help of the Holy Spirit. Yours is sometimes different from mine: that doesn’t make it wrong.
I have been reading, studying, and trying to live by scripture for some 60 years and I know it fairly well. There is so much we can learn from it which is implicit rather than explicit. For instance, we can infer from 1 Cor 14:34-35 that wives were not sitting next to their husbands, because if they had been there would have been no need for them to call out in the assembly when they wanted to ask their husband a question. This is confirmed also by external historical evidence.
As for 1 Cor 4:17, this seems to refer to standards of Christian behaviour and the core gospel teaching, rather than details of church organisation. I have already pointed you to Paul’s declaration that he varies his approach according to his audience, so that he might win more of them. The fact that in some passages he emphasises roles such as elder and deacon, while in others he stresses a hierarchy of charismatic gifts, suggests at least that it would be unwise to be too dogmatic about his uniformity of approach.
As for ‘church’, I suspect we might be defining it differently. I take the term to mean ‘those who follow Jesus’, whereas I think you are thinking of Sunday gatherings for worship. Thus, I would include the gathering of Paul and his followers (i.e., Christians) daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus as one manifestation of church, as would be the meeting of Christians by the riverside to pray (Acts 16 – it’s interesting that, although Paul, Silas, and Luke were staying with Lydia, they continued going to the place of prayer. It’s of course possible that they were also meeting in her house in addition to the riverside.) Meeting in someone’s home or workshop to worship and share the eucharist would also be church, but by no means the only form of it.
Do you hold the view that we are only allowed to do things as the New Testament explicitly describes them being done? If so, I would again take a different approach. But then, we’re back to scrolls and parchments.
Re widows, you are assuming that any widows who had remarried and been widowed again would have surviving family who could support them. This won’t always have been the case. And why should a woman left all on her own, but who had two husbands who had both predeceased her, be any less deserving of the church’s support than a widow who had been married only once? It doesn’t make sense, if these instructions are only about supporting the poor. However, the same stipulation is made of overseers (aka bishops) in ch 3; and in 5:17ff we see that elders as well as widows could expect to be paid an honorarium by the church. And we see that widows are expected to show hospitality, help the ‘afflicted’, and devote themselves to doing good. The comment that widows ‘must be well attested for [their] good works, as one who has brought up children’ is puzzling because it seems to contradict 5:3, which stipulates that a widow who has children should expect them to make some repayment. And while v. 10 suggests that having had children is a requirement for being ‘put on the list’, v. 3 implies that some widows had not children – as we would expect.
All of this suggests to me (and to some scholars) that the instructions regarding widows are not simply about a church welfare system, but about a classification of ministry which we no longer recognise.
Finally, v. 14 says that younger widows should marry and bear children. This contradicts Paul’s instruction in 1 Cor 7:8 – ‘To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am.’
As so often happens with the epistles, what seems straightforward on a casual reading proves to be more complicated when we read it with attention, and with reference to other scriptures.
Have we not perhaps strayed somewhat from the point at issue?
It seems to me that in one way there’s no problem. If an ordained priest feels that their office empowers them to offer personal confession and absolution, then it is reasonable for them to believe that should they absolve a penitent of their sin, it becomes as something that has never happened and they have a binding duty never to disclose it. I don’t feel that myself, but I’m not in that position.
On the other hand, the State may reasonably expect to exercise its powers of punishment irrespective of that absolution and thus to legally compel disclosure.
The resolution is simple. The priest is compelled as a religious duty to keep the seal of the confessional and to undergo whatever legal penalty the secular arm imposes. Why is that problematic? Missionaries who work in anti-Christian countries such as China face these issues every day. Why should ministers of the Church of England not do the same?
The sin doesn’t become ‘as something that never happened’ to the victim/s of that sin, even if the perpetrator is absolved. The confessor needs to bring this home to the sinner.
Your point, I take it, is that no-one could properly take the position of absolving the sin without reference to the victim. That’s a fair point, and not the one I’m concerned with here. I’m saying that if there is a situation in which the priest believes that their duty is to preserve the seal of the confessional (because of treating the sin as if it had never been or for whatever other reason), then that’s what they should do, irrespective of the secular law — and be prepared to take the consequences.
The religious duty you refer to (including the concept of “an ordained priest”) is not taught or practised in the New Testament. (In fact it is contradicted in the NT.) Anybody who does believe and practise it is not following the NT model but is following a man-made invention that grew up in the church many generations later, when the church was going wrong and downhill in all sorts of ways, till it ended in the disaster (and contradiction) of becoming the Roman Empire’s state religion.
Therefore no-one should think of themselves or of others as ordained priests (i.e. clergy) or as a layman/laywoman; nor should they think that any priest has a right or duty hear confession from a layperson. The division of christians into clergy and laity is clearly wrong, because clearly contrary to scripture. So both the priest hearing confession and the layperson confessing are acting in an unchristian way. The fact that they believe it is OK to do it doesn’t make it OK to do it.
So you are right to say that the resolution is simple: both should stop doing it.
A powerful piece Richard and supported by your experiences Jane. I am very sorry you suffered so in your childhood, much prayer.
Thank you 🙏
How attached to the confessional are those who administer it? I’ve had the dubious advantage of being the one being confessed to, in various roles over the years, and I’m no fan of it.
The frequent confession of male onanistic activities in prayer ministry, was one thing, the reporting to me of much more serious activities another. These varied from fornication and adultery (actual or desired) to things from the past which would have been criminal in this country.
The desire to unburden themselves seemed the most frequent motive, and I was rarely convinced they had much intention of repenting. At times the one confessing seemed to be enjoying his re-experiencing of the sin, in its retelling.
I never sought these confessions. They left me in a state of discomforted complicity; that what was shared In confidence could not easily be acted on by me, should I have seen fit.
It strikes me that clerics in this world of the confessional may not be comfortable with it either. Clearly some will still see it as an important sacrament. For the sake of mandatory reporting, which I support, how about this: the Church announces that it will abandon the previous seal but retain an exceptional opt out for those who insist it be retained, but a register of such churches and their ministers be published for all to see? This way, the majority (as I see it) who neither want the confessional seal nor agree with it, can be released from its burden, and attendees can be more sure of the relative safety of their procedures (as Andrew describes).
And we will all know which churches maintain the seal and who their ministers are. We can vote with our feet accordingly.
The opt out is a fudge of course, but the Church of England is well familiar with fudges. Should it turn out that people long for confessionals, they can always go back to them. But I suspect most people don’t want them anyway.
The misuse of confession by abusers is not confined to the Roman Catholic Church. Here is an excerpt from IICSA:
‘4. Robert Waddington was the Dean of Manchester Cathedral from 1984 to 1993, as well as a member of the governing body of Chetham’s School of Music, which provided choristers for Manchester Cathedral. Upon his retirement in September 1993, Waddington was granted permission to officiate in the Diocese of York.[1]
5. In 2013, Archbishop John Sentamu received an allegation of sexual abuse by Waddington in the 1950s. The male complainant also said that Waddington had told him – falsely – that he could not disclose the abuse, as Waddington had been “absolved of sinful child abuse in the context of the sacramental ministry of reconciliation”.[2] Although Waddington’s explanation was clearly inaccurate – it is only the priest who is bound by any seal – this case was a significant factor in the establishment of the Church’s working group on the seal of the confessional in 2014.[3]’
I seem to recall other examples, perhaps in Chichester Diocese, but have not yet tracked them down.