by Martyn Percy

In a famous scene from The Matrix movie, there is moment which offers a tantalizing insight into drugs that have the power to awaken any pill-popper to three quite different hidden realities. A red pill inducts the consumer into a world of secret right-wing truths. A white pill will persuade the user that the situation of the wider world is rather better than you had imagined. A black pill, once digested, tells you know just how doomed we really are.

It is hardly a hidden reality that the story of the Church of England in the 21^st century has been largely shaped by a cocktail of black and white pills. In just 25 years there have been countless prophecies of doom, with alarm bells ringing to announce the next imminent crisis (i.e., pensions, vocations, ageing-dwindling congregations, soaring costs, abuse scandals, etc) that are of the black pill variety.  And there have been legions of initiatives that are white-pilled, and purport to reverse every negative trend.  The result is a church addicted to prescriptions and remedies in ever-higher dosage that boasts every shade of grey.

At the same time, there are a handful of commentators who only see red pills, as though the Church of England was being taken over by a small handful of right-wing ideologies. Personally, I doubt this very much. The Church of England and the wider global Anglican church is simply being consumed by process. Executive managerialism has become the parasite of eating the organism from the inside. What the church once consumed is now consuming it from within. This is a church being hollowed out by processes it neither comprehends – nor can expel.

The last time the Papal office and the Archbishop of Canterbury role were both vacant simultaneously was 334 years ago. Canterbury was vacated after the then-Archbishop was refused to swear allegiance to William and Mary and the office vacant between February 1690 and May 1691. The Papacy was also vacant following the death of Pope Alexander VIII in February 1691, with a new Pope not elected until 161 days later.

Modern conclaves tend to be rather quicker.  Cardinals will hear about the death of a Pontiff within moments of his passing.  The cardinals can gather fast, and the demands of a media age probably means they get down to business quickly.  Even with over 130 voting members of the conclave, the selection of Pope Leo XIV took just four rounds of voting over two days to emerge as the chosen candidate. The white smoke is an emoji to signal the new era.

The process for choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury could hardly be more different. Having agreed to resign in November 2024, the process for selecting a successor to Justin Welby has quickly lurched from tragedy to farce. There is a dispute over the nominated electors from Canterbury Diocese, and a further dispute over the rules to elect the electors. The likelihood of a name emerging by the autumn seems slim, even though there are only 17 people on the committee to make this decision.  The committee is another aspect of the Church of England’s Grey-sphere.

If a picture is worth around a thousand words, then the images of all the cardinals gathered in identical kit for the funeral of Pope Francis and then for the conclave to elect Pope Leo XIV are telling.  And certainly, when compared to the last Lambeth Conference for Anglican bishops gathered from across the world.

The conclave and its attendant public liturgies presented an impressive regiment of imperial uniform (red robes eerily resonant of Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale). Unity and uniformity are dress coded. The Anglican gathering, in contrast, looks more like a liturgical garage sale and charity shop rummage. Little matches. Disunity and diversity are dress coded too. Bishops wear what they want.  Some bishops – notably Sydney Archdiocese – decline to wear liturgical attire at all, if it can be avoided.

In contrast, the pictures of the funeral for Pope Francis could have been lifted from a well-choreographed scene in the Star Wars movies. The zoned marshalling in St. Peter’s Square represents an expression of imperial ordering. Yet at the same time, framed by ordinary mourners expressing their gratitude for their Pope and Father in God.

At the Conclave in Rome

The Lambeth Conference

The contrast between a conclave (the term means, literally, ‘a locked room’) to elect a Pope and the committee set up to choose a new Archbishop of Canterbury are as night and day. The former is rooted in two millennia of prayer-soaked practice. The latter is a secular process with an added spiritual gloss. Yet the committee will be just as secret.

The body charged with choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury represents a hangover from an English colonial civil service culture where key decisions and appointments are made behind closed doors in some private smoke-filled room of a London club. Take away the smoke and the club for 21^st century sensibilities, and you’re essentially left with the same process. True, there is a nod to democracy (though the nominees given the task of electing are currently the subject of dispute). Yet as a committee, there is more opacity than one might encounter at a conclave.

What can’t be addressed by the next incumbent of Lambeth Palace is the unresolved nature of the Church of England’s identity. Since 1834 many Anglicans have bought into the myth that it has two pedigrees. On the one hand it is Protestant Reformed. On the other hand, it is Catholic. Some Anglicans go further, and entertain fantasies of reunion with Rome, forgetting that the core theology of the Church of England is Reformed Protestantism, and that the Head of the Church is the reigning English monarch, not the occupant of the Vatican.

This confusion of identity cuts no ice at the proverbial Church-Crufts Show. Anglicanism is a hybrid; a mongrel denomination that is sartorially and liturgically Catholic (sometimes), but theologically and organisationally Protestant (sometimes). Anglican Bishops dressed in purple are left stranded in the middle, trying to hold together two slowly bifurcating tectonic plates. Today, most English Anglican Bishops enjoy unchecked executive power, but with almost no pedigree of theological nous. Their real authority lies in pastoral praxis, but few have the energy to inhabit that aspect of their role. Bishops are often found to be desk-bound bureaucrats, firing off emails and issuing shiny-white-pill policy documents with fanciful vision statements, warding off the panic attack side-effects of corporate black-pill addiction.

The next incumbent of Lambeth Palace could do worse and take an honest and serious look at the identity issues that have lain unaddressed since the Church of England divorced itself from Rome in 1534.  Anglicanism is essentially a branch of Protestantism.  True, and unlike other Reformed churches, Anglicans kept their bishops and some of its clergy and churches continue to adapt their liturgies and clerical dress codes from Rome. Others do not, and opt for a more ‘happy-clappy’ style of worship. There is no central power or authority in Anglican polity to counter the exercise of such freedoms and unable to police its diversity.

There is no liturgical uniformity.  There is no central system of canon law. Many Anglican Provinces do not require affirmation of the thirty-nine articles of faith. Some Provinces have outlawed liturgical practices and clerical attire that became fashionable through Victorian ritualism. Theologically and organisationally, Anglicanism is essentially a Protestant expression of Christianity. Some Anglican churches will avoid using the prayer of confession in liturgy. Others have liturgies of baptism that feel more like a service of exorcism.

What the Church of England needs is serious authentic clarity. It is time to stop pretending that global Anglicanism is like Roman Catholicism, and in the same global orbit. It isn’t. This current process to choose a new Archbishop of Canterbury cannot possibly inspire confidence or attract affection, trust or faith. The committee is a crystallisation of the confused mindset that reflects the state that the Church of England finds itself in. Like the black-white pill cocktail, a committee-led process is bound to produce yet another shade of grey.

The next Archbishop cannot come from a conclave. Nor, alas, can she or he emerge from the kinds of democratic, open and transparent election processes that some other parts of global Anglicanism have adopted for electing bishops.  An elitist English Anglican establishment will always shy away from egalitarian ecclesiology. But if the Church of England were to own its Protestant identity more explicitly, it might find that a genuinely democratic synod would attract far more public support than some secretive committee ever could.

PRESS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE: 14^th May 2025

Survivors of Church Abuse Demand Action from the Archbishop of York

The ISB Survivors Group has today issued the attached open letter to the Archbishop of York.

We are survivors of abuse within the Church of England. We are the very individuals who were promised independent reviews by the Church, following the Independent Inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA). Many of us had already begun our reviews through the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) — until the Archbishops’ Council abruptly dismissed the ISB Board Members, halting the process and denying us the justice we were due.

Our group includes IICSA core participants, survivors of Bishop Peter Ball, and victims of John Smyth, amongst others. Some of us have been battling for our complaints — including those against senior bishops and Archbishops’ Council members — to be heard for over 30 Years.

It has now been almost two years since the dismissal of the ISB Board. No meaningful or credible alternatives for resuming our reviews have been proposed. While the Archbishop of York has agreed to meet with us, he continues to refuse discussion of the very issues we need to address.

For 23 months, we have been left without any independent support. The Church’s proposed

“independent” support included individuals closely connected to the National Safeguarding Team (NST) — a blatant conflict of interest. The “independent” advocate assigned to survivors worked directly for the Church of England. One other complication is that the Archbishop of York’s own behaviour would be subject to scrutiny in the very reviews that he is effectively preventing from progressing.

We are exhausted by the Church’s failure to act and by what we perceive as manipulative stalling from both the Archbishop of York and the deeply discredited National Safeguarding Team. The re-abuse and cruelty needs to stop.

Our lives have already been shattered by horrific, sadistic, and systemic abuse. We will not tolerate continued mistreatment from an institution that professes to follow Christ.

Media Contact:

Name: Marie-Louise Flanagan – independent press spokesperson

Email: marie-louise@step2mediation.com

Phone: 07498 847665

An Open letter to The Archbishop of York and Archbishops Council

Dear Archbishop Cottrell,

STRICTLY WITHOUT PREJUDICE

We are in receipt of your communication sent to Dame Jasvinder Sanghera in early February and after much consideration individually, as well having met as a group, are now ready to reply. All of us agreed that the best word to describe your letter was “abusive” and that consequently need to say that we find that it impossible to see Jesus in you.

Your abusive letter has made us realize that if we were to engage any further with you, even with the assistance of others, or to engage with your fellow members of the Archbishops’ Council, their agents (let alone your utterly discredited and menacing national safeguarding staff), that there is a substantial risk that it might be seen by others as a sign that it was perhaps safe for them to engage with you in any way. However, it is very clear to us, having read and deliberated upon the contents of your letter, that there is a very high risk that you potentially expose us to experiencing substantially worse further trauma that would cause us (already victims of sexual and spiritual abuse from your organization) irreparable and in some cases even mortal harm.

Archbishop Cottrell, we see you as a diabolical monster bent on causing us further harm and after receiving your letter we shall not communicate with you, your colleagues or agents any further: quite simply we do not believe it would be safe for us to do so. Consequently, we strongly advise any other vulnerable man, woman or child also to keep away from you and your discredited organization – one that seems to delight in its core business of causing everincreasing violence against those who are vulnerable.

You use the word “robust” to describe safeguarding in your church, however your often repeated use of this word merely means to us an escalation in the abuse that we continue to receive from you and your business organization. For many of us, we see in you an individual worse than Bishop Peter Ball or John Smyth –  indeed some of us wonder whether your desire to harm us is based in a similar perversion of Jesus and His love.

Christians are supposed to show the Light of Christ but in you, Archbishop Cottrell, we see merely darkness – no doubt your insistence to meet with Dame Jasvinder Sanghera and Mr Reeves “on a private and confidential basis” would also be held by you in the dark – a refuge to which you are perhaps unseemingly more inclined than the Light of Jesus.

Finally, as for your “apologies to all survivors for the trauma they have experienced” and that you wish to “seek to find a way forward to minimize any further trauma to the group” (failing to mention seeking to address the substantial harm you, your colleagues and business agents have already caused), from our own experience we simply do not believe a word of it and never will – nor arguably should anyone else. 

We suggest that you appoint a TRULY Independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to move things forward URGENTLY. 

Yours sincerely,

The ISB SURVIVORS GROUP

The past 48 hours in the news cycle make life very hard for a blog writer trying to keep up.  A matter of hours ago the only Pope being discussed was the one who had died on Easter Monday, and whose funeral had created the powerful image of two leaders having an informal meeting in St Peter’s Rome.  For all its importance, that image of Trump and Zelensky seated facing one another in the Basilica has been swept away by many new images from Rome, cheering crowds and signs of enthusiasm from Catholics all over the world.  Many non-Catholics, including myself, have been delighted to see the juggernaut of extreme right-wing ideas, as embodied by the MAGA forces of Trump, brought to a halt momentarily.  This continues the trend shown in the welcome election results in Canada and Australia.  The democratic instincts of ordinary people, which include a body of conservative men voting in the conclave in Rome, have reassured us that a worldwide drift towards fascism is not after all the will of the mass of people.  We can after all look forward to a future where liberal humane values exist and democratic instincts, despite the way they create untidiness in society, still prevail.

Pope Leo has indicated that he will, in his choice of name and his past record, be likely to keep many of the emphases of his predecessor alive.  This will include care for the poor, refugees and those marginalised by unjust systems, whether political or economic.  As has come to be expected of the majority of senior church figures of every denomination, his record of care for survivors and the pursuit of justice on their behalf is not flawless.  There is an incident recorded in Wikipedia page for Leo which indicates a preference to preserve the reputation of the church institution over the imperatives of justice.  This ‘scandal’ will be mulled over by many people. I mention it, not as a way of suggesting that the appointment should not have been made, but rather to observe that every single Papal candidate in his past will likely have some safeguarding lapse buried, but not forgotten. 

It is with the expectation that, at best, every candidate will have had a mixed record over safeguarding, that we can look back over the reign of Pope Francis and forward to that of Pope Leo.  Many eulogies have been made over Francis but repeating them is not the task of this blog.  What I find interesting is in the way that the good in Francis could be combined with aspects of failure, even evil.  Seeing only the good in someone is always going to create a one-sided, even distorted picture.  This would be the same for any of our lives.  Failing to even comment on serious failings in a person’s life may create an unhealthy situation.  The process of grieving is unlikely to be completed if there is a family myth which members are desperate to preserve at all costs.   To take an imaginary situation which will reflect what most clergy have witnessed.  Grandpa’s cruel behaviour towards his wife over 40 years of marriage has to be hushed up.   The family are not just rallying round to protect the family from the taint of scandal.  They are also aware that any discussion of Grandpa’s unacceptable behaviour will show up a part of the family in their failure to do more to challenge this behaviour and protect Grandma.  Listening to eulogies that are effectively ‘fake news’ is painful and in some way corrupting in equal measure.

Those who will study and scrutinise the life and reputation of Francis have plenty of material to assimilate and discuss.  The question as to whether he struck the right balance in relating to the dictatorial regime of Argentina, when Archbishop of Buenos Aires, will be a topic for historians for many decades to come.  For the purpose of this reflection, the focus is not on his skill in managing to negotiate a path through the tortuous path of Argentinian politics, but whether he served the cause of the victims and survivors of clerical abuse – a situation of enormous shame and harm to the work of the Catholic Church in every part of the world.

I write about child abuse in the Catholic Church with absolutely no desire to sound triumphalist by comparing it with the record of other communions, like the Anglican Church.  No church of any denomination emerges particularly well from the hundreds of cases that have come to light over the past 25 years or so.  While one can argue about the extent of the problem in comparing Catholic and Anglicans, the important question is perhaps which Communion is further ahead in actually dealing with the problem more effectively.  The death of Pope Francis and the new arrival of Pope Leo has brought to the surface once more the cry of survivors and their demand to be heard.  These suggest that late Pope said many of the right things about abuse, spending time with victims and expressing sorrow over their suffering.   Somehow, he seldom seems to have followed up his words with decisive action.   The BBC website carried a story about a woman called Alexa MacPherson who suffered sexual abuse from a RC priest for as long as six years from the age of three.   The priest was eventually sentenced by a court to a period in jail.  What horrified Alexa when she examined the paperwork connected with the case as an adult, was the way that the Church had used its power and influence to obtain favours from the justice system to mitigate the sentence of the offending priest.  The case was one of many that involved the intervention of Cardinal Bernard Law.  Cardinal Law, always anxious to protect the reputation of the institution above checking the poison of clerical abuse, was allowed to find refuge in Rome, being put in charge of a prestigious parish.  He died in 2018, effectively exonerated from his gross failures of care.  Francis did not ever take any action against him but allowed him to remain in post despite his notoriety in the eyes of the public.

 In writing this reflection, I would not want to claim that the record of Catholic bishops and priests is either better or worse than that of Anglicans.  Both hierarchies are guilty of causing terrible suffering to children and vulnerable individuals by a combination of incompetence, sloth and wilful neglect.  To say that the powerful were in the business of preserving the less powerful and the institutions that they worked for is probably not far off the mark as a generalisation.  Where there is a contrast, and this applies to the Catholic Church under Pope Francis, is the attitude shown by senior UK Catholic leaders when faced with the appalling crimes of some of the priests under their oversight.  There were, it is true.,Anglican bishops, such as Eric Kemp of Chichester, who wrapped protective blankets around clergy clearly guilty of crimes.  Their capacity for creating a toxic dangerous culture for the young only stretched to the boundary of their dioceses.  The potential harm that a Pope can do, with a flawed sense of the importance of sticking up for potential victims, is enormous. Francis seems to have been successful at saying the pastorally sensitive words to the survivors, but he seems much less competent at confronting and disciplining those guilty of appalling crimes of abuse.

The UK government report on crimes of child abuse (ICSA) tried to bring into the open the record of Anglican and Catholic attempts to hide away the incidence of child abuse within their structures.  Both Churches had their stories of pain and cruelty committed against young innocent individuals, but the Catholic Church showed itself far less cooperative in releasing documents and generally sharing information which would assist an important Government body to have a full picture.  The Church hierarchy believed that such cooperation would contravene Canon Law and that such non-cooperation was permitted on the grounds that the instructions of the Vatican have the protection afforded to any foreign state.  This refusal to cooperate belied the words of Francis who, in May 2019 had said there needed to be “concrete and effective actions that in involve everyone in the Church” regarding its approach to child sexual abuse. 

It now remains to be seen whether the new Pope will deliver on the implied concern of his predecessor over the need to act in respect of child abuse.  Will he put the need for providing justice and healing for those in pain or will he continue to prioritise the glory and privileges of the Catholic Church?  History will eventually tell us which path is to be followed.

by Anon

Damon is an apprentice devil tasked with learning to undermine and weaken the Church of England and wider Anglicanism. Lucius is a senior devil mentoring apprentices overseeing the work on all denominations. Lucius refers to the Church of England as the ‘English Patient’. Lucius is particularly keen to encourage the Church of England’s peculiar ecclesionomics, bloated ecclesiocracy and unaccountable episcocrats. Lucius draws on C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, published in 1942. These letters are published by Lucius for the benefit of new apprentices. – Lucius.

One Swallow Does Not Make a Summer

Dear Lucius

I am getting very concerned about statistics. Or rather, what Anglicans seem to be reading into them.  There was some recent research appearing to show a resurgence – even a resurrection, it alarms me to say – in younger people coming to church. Apparently the trend is most notable amongst young men. 

I know I shouldn’t panic, because if the figures are to be believed (which is debatable), the upturn in numbers is only slight, and anyway confined to Pentecostalism, Catholicism and some fashionable Ultra-Reformed churches. These churches are not my responsibility. But I do worry that the talk of growth is stimulating Anglican morale, which concerns me.

Could you give me some sort of guidance on how to tackle this?  I’d like to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand, and I think I need some strategic advice on what tactics to deploy if we are to undermine any apparent recovery.

Your Servant, Damon

Dear Damon,

You need not worry. One swallow does not make a summer, and these new numbers are, as you say, barely relevant to the primary focus of your work, which is the Church of England – the one we call the ‘English Patient’. If anything, the best thing to do now is to encourage English Anglicans in their belief that things are getting better.  The mirage will soon vaporise, leading to an even deeper decline in trust and confidence.

Sometimes it is helpful to see figures and statistics in a broader context.  I think you are aware that, recently, over 700 clergy wrote a letter to complain about their appalling pensions.  The English Patient’s finances are in a dreadful state. Most dioceses run massive annual deficits. Many cathedrals cannot break even. However, the episcopacy taxes the parishes even more, despite fewer people paying the quota.  It leads to an ever-deepening crisis of resentment and mistrust, which your predecessor did so much to cultivate. A few extra young people, if indeed there are any, won’t turn that tide.

You may recall that overall, the bloated ecclesiocracy and unaccountable episcocrats are just not trusted by the faithful.  Your English Patient is actually very poorly, but thankfully for us, in total denial about how unwell, what the sickness is, and how to restore their health.

Happily, they are clueless. More modish marketing and communications, evangelism, youth initiatives, vocation drives and stewardship schemes are all being pushed hard.  This is good news for us, because it deepens the alienation and despair, and also means the English Patient loses trust and confidence in all the remedies the leadership keeps on promoting.

It is also important to remember the scale of your problem.  We only need one apprentice to work with your patient, English Anglicanism, because it is so very small. But it continues to believe it is a Very Important And Big Long-term Enterprise (VIABLE). Helpfully for us, your English Patient imagines itself to be eternal, so the gaps between fantasy and reality keep causing your patient to have even more doubts.

You might like to look at the Roman Catholic Cycle of Prayer and compare it to the Anglican Cycle of Prayer for comfort and context. We have a very large team working on Roman Catholicism.

The Catholics have 3200 dioceses and 650 archdioceses, 225,000 parishes, over 400,000 priests, 50,000 permanent deacons, 650,000 monks and nuns, and nearly 3,000,000 catechists for their 1.3 billion followers. But it manages to get by with only 5,340 bishops. Believers who use the Roman Catholic Cycle of Prayer will pray for nine dioceses, daily.

The Anglicans have around 55 million followers (they’ll claim 80 million to big up their size, but that includes 25 million in England, where attendance is down to just over 0.5 million, and two-thirds of the laity are retired people). Your English Patient has too many dioceses and bishops for too few believers.

Global Anglicanism has 855 dioceses, which means believers pray for around two of them each day when using the Anglican Cycle of Prayer. Yes, Anglicans are small potatoes.  Globally, Roman Catholics outnumber Anglicans by over 25:1. In percentages, Anglicans constitute about 3.5% of what Roman Catholicism represents. Anglicanism is 96.5% smaller.

However, your VIABLE Anglican Communion has amassed almost 900 bishops, despite its small size. There is one bishop for every 0.25 million Roman Catholics. Yet there is one Anglican bishop for every 60,000 from your denomination. Not for nothing is your English Patient known as ‘Episcopalian’ outside England.  It seems that when it comes to bishops, they just cannot get enough of them.

These numbers should comfort you.   The global population of Roman Catholicism is rising. Global Anglicanism is declining. This is largely due to birth rates, but your denomination continues to invest in recruitment drives hoping to attract newcomers to the Anglican family.

It is helpful to our cause that your English Patient believes it is in recovery, and can reverse decline.  And they won’t take any lessons from other declining denominations, because they think they are a special case. Your English Patient lives in two parallel conflicting universes. One knows it is declining. The other has to believe it isn’t, and the recession is only some blip.

Even more helpfully, your English Patient thinks it is on some par with Roman Catholicism. This fantasy should be strongly encouraged, because eventually reality will dawn, leading to deeper collapses in morale, trust and confidence.

But best of all, Anglicans fight amongst themselves about why, who or what is responsible for their decline. They will fight even more about who, what, how and when is the best way to recover.

As we’ve discussed before, Damon, your best bet here is to encourage the church leaders who claim to have all the answers.  We are blessed that your English Patient has many such people within its leadership, with the ecclesiocracy and episcocrats constantly trying to apply the Midas Touch to their truly dire ecclesionomics.

Above all, it is vital that we do all we can to support the English Patient in their belief that they have the best-equipped persons to make their own diagnoses and prognoses, promoting and manufacturing their remedies and therapies.

The English Patient thinks it does not need a doctor, and if it is unwell, it will eventually shake off the aches, fevers and other symptoms and soon be on the mend.

You must do all you can to encourage the English Patient in their belief that they are exceptional and unique, and don’t need any outside interference or help from real experts.  That way, tens of millions of pounds can be spent on safeguarding, for example, or on other initiatives that are bound to be a waste of time, effort and money, since your English Patient always thinks it knows best. Just let them carry on.

One swallow does not make a summer, and all this talk of growth and resurgence is like a single spring day in the midst of a long, hard winter that shows no sign of ending.

As the population of England grows, vocations continue to decrease – because clergy have few rights, too much responsibility, little support, and pitiful stipends and pensions to look forward to. Volunteers for roles in parishes are also declining.

The ecclesiocracy and episcocrats have created a church where the bosses are secure, unaccountable, unregulated, and generally well-paid. But the clergy and volunteers are over-regulated, accountable for virtually everything, and have never felt more undervalued and vulnerable.

Even if a few more young people were hanging out with your English Patient, all the interminable fudging on sexuality and gender means they won’t stay long and throw their weight behind the institution. Swallows come and go.

So, Damon, there’s no need to worry. The best thing to do with the English Patient is to keep an eye out for any significant changes. But otherwise leave the leaders to their own devices and desires. They will inflict more damage on their church than we could ever engineer.  Keep affirming their egos that they are VIABLE and the best-placed people to resolve crises of their own making. They believe and act as though they are a law unto themselves. The longer this continues, the faster they will decline.

Your Mentor, Lucius.