The recent news about the suspension of a Permission to Officiate for Lord Carey is less than 24 hours old. As yet, the facts about the case are slim but there is still enough material in the public domain to hazard some guesses as to what might be going on. We can build our attempted reconstruction on other information that has been in the public domain for some time.
The new evidence that has emerged, making the suspension of Lord Carey necessary, has appeared in the process of the Makin review on the case of John Smyth. This evidence suggests a serious safeguarding failing on the part of Carey over his dealings with the case in the past. In the course of few short days, this new material has been reported to the National Safeguarding Team and, through a freshly constituted Core Group, a demand for Carey’s PTO to be removed has been made. The speed of the process and the manner of bringing it rapidly into the public domain, reminds us of the Martyn Percy case. The media are informed as the same time as the ‘accused’. This feels heavy-handed. A fair-minded person might question whether this ‘blitzkrieg’ approach to church discipline can ever be justified. Could not some notice be given to the target of a enquiry when information is about to be shared with the media? Carey, a man in his mid-80s, has had to concoct a statement for the Press with no notice or chance to examine or even know what he is accused of doing. Unlike his accusers, he has no communications department to help him.
Lord Carey has ‘no memory’ of having known Smyth at any point. There is, however, reported to be a cross fertilisation between the two men in Bristol in the early 80s. Smyth was apparently an independent part-time student at Trinity College when Carey was Principal. Given the fact that at the time Trinity was attended by a number of former Iwerne campers, Smyth would have been known to them. No doubt he would have been the object of some discussion and gossip over his sudden departure from the Iwerne scene. It would be strange if none of this got back to the Principal. Smyth would have spent his time at the college attending the occasional lecture and presumably was in touch with at least one of the staff to supervise and support whatever studies he was engaged in. In time, the precise nature of Smyth’s attendance at Trinity will emerge and we will have a better understanding of the nature of the link between Carey and Smyth at that point. It is known that Iwerne Trust and David Fletcher took active steps to warn organisations about Smyth. The Stileman Report says: ‘John Smyth tried to join a number of organisations (eg The Stewards Trust and the Above Bar Church Church in Southampton) but DCMF and others warned them off.’ It would seem likely that Trinity was also given some kind of warning. We are led to conclude that Carey is likely, one way or another, to have known something about Smyth’s past and his reputation as a Christian leader. We can however believe that the Ruston report about Smyth’s Winchester activities was still then kept under wraps and only known to individuals high up in the Iwerne network. Carey never became involved in that network or befriended its leaders.
In 1983 Smyth was a highly socially confident individual with all the trappings of his class background and position. He was a professional man of the world, possessed wealth and knew a massive number of people in the world of socially aspiring evangelicals. These were precisely the things that Carey did not have. If the safeguarding failure that Carey is charged with took place while he was at Bristol, then we can see how that Carey could easily have been manipulated by Smyth. Something could have leaked out about the Ruston report (1982) which would have required Carey to take immediate action as the head of his college. One scenario would be that Smyth had a meeting with Carey where some accusation was made. Smyth could then have proceeded to name-drop some of the powerful figures in the con-evo world that Carey looked up to and were actively shielding Smyth. We are here admittedly in the realm of pure speculation, but this is one possible scenario that makes sense of the limited information we have at present.
A safeguarding failure by Carey could also have taken place in Lambeth Palace and would have followed a similar pattern. Carey was still extremely susceptible to being ‘played’ by others more powerful than himself. We here allow our speculation to closely follow fact here, because the IICSA evidence shows in detail how this happened in the case of Peter Ball. Carey allowed his judgement to be manipulated by Peter Ball and his brother in a private meeting without witnesses. They seem to have used techniques of persuasion that had, no doubt, been used on many others as Ball rose up the church hierarchy. The dysfunctional world of Lambeth Palace at that time has also been shown up by the IICSA hearings, and it is true to say that Carey was failed by the lack of effective staff around him. Bad safeguarding decisions that were made at Lambeth in the 90s seem partly to be a personal failure of Carey himself, but they also flow from his inability to find staff who would challenge poor decisions. It is one thing to be guilty of making such decisions; it is another not to be be able to recognise that this is happening over a period of time.
In this hastily written piece about George Carey’s loss of his PTO, we speculate that this event follows the emergence of new paperwork from either Trinity College Bristol or Lambeth Palace. One of the things that we hope Makin’s enquiry is uncovering is just how many other distinguished church people had information about Smyth but chose to keep quiet. Is the NST process going to be deployed against everyone who could have acted to protect the innocent from Smyth’s predation in Africa, or is the NST going to focus on elderly retired prelates or church leaders who are out of favour? We certainly hope to see impartial justice principles at work in this whole process. So far we have yet to see fairness and justice being afforded the highest place.
“…it is true to say that Carey was failed by the lack of effective staff around him”.
IICSA only tended to hint at how the bureaucracy at Lambeth functioned. There were a few instances (I don’t have the references to hand or the time to unearth them) where it was evident that certain officials were sensitive about the risk of upsetting Carey.
It seems to me that the question is not only whether Ronald Gordon, John Yates, Frank Sargeant or Richard Llewellin were ineffectual (which might not have been the case), but whether there were legacy systems or other wider systemic failures in the operation if the bureaucracy which inhibited effective decision making or, at any rate, the free flow of information.
The issue with Lambeth is that the current bureaucracy originated with a small number of chaplain-secretaries (or ‘scarves’ as they were known as far back as the seventeenth century), which was a shadow of the bureaucracy as it existed prior to the Reformation. Successive archbishops were progressively overwhelmed with correspondence as time passed: even as late as the 1950s archbishops were handling much of this burden themselves and it was often falling into ever greater arrears: not every archbishop was as efficient at Fisher. The emergence of Anglican Communion and Synodical responsibilities during and after Fisher’s time greatly magnified the load, hence Runcie’s creation of the office of bishop at Lambeth (which did not obviate the increasingly problematic neglect of the work of the Commissioners).
So my guess is that, absent Carey’s apparent failings, much of the problem of dealing with Ball derived from systemic problems with the Lambeth bureaucracy: of what was still a relatively small, personalised coterie or retinue – a court, if you like – handling a vast burden of correspondence from all quarters of the globe, and frequently having to form policy on the hoof.
At his age, even a person with a phenomenally good memory can find that events from many years ago can’t be properly recalled. And many people’s memories really aren’t that great!
I recall Lord Carey saying that the Church of England was “under siege”. I wonder whether that influenced Stephen’s choice of title. Stephen’s “hunches” have proved to be correct on other recent non-Smyth threads. The possible Bristol connection is very interesting but can it be supported by the chronology?
Was John Smyth a “part-time student” at Trinity College, Bristol in the early 1980s? The reason for asking is that he was called to the Bar in 1965, became Queen’s Counsel in 1979, and from that date onwards would have been busily, if not wholly, practising at the senior level of the Bar while in his early forties. Wikipedia also indicates that he was a recorder from 1978 to 1984. All of these dates take on an extraordinary significance in relation to the understood dates of the abuse: late 1970s to early 1980s – while he held judicial office!
Lord Carey was Principal of Trinity College, Bristol from 1981, and became Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1987. The Ruston report, as I recall was dated 1988. By then Lord Carey had left Bristol. Of course overlaps can happen.
So, was John Smyth at Bristol as an “adult” student in the 1980s? Not impossible, but difficult to reconcile with his professional and judicial commitments. Any further information about this would be very helpful.
Many thanks for this.
Another ‘angle’ would be the records of the Department of Justice (for the old Lord Chancellor’s Department). The Rushton Report was produced in 1982 when Smythe was still holding judicial office.
Although the Guide to Judicial Conduct was not published until 2003, the long-established convention was that the highest levels of conduct and probity were expected of everyone holding a judicial appointment. Prior to the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 the person monitoring judicial behaviour was the lord chancellor (although the heads of divisions would also have a role), who would exercise his discretion. The raised eyebrow of the lord chancellor would be as serious a matter for any judge as the raised eyebrow of the governor of the Bank of England for a City financier before 1986. This all made sense: after all, it was the lord chancellor who then appointed almost every judge and magistrate.
Some chancellors exercised their discretion in a liberal manner; others were stricter: for instance in 1998 Lord Irvine of Lairg ‘persuaded’ the controversial chancery judge, Sir Jeremiah Harman (‘Harman the Horrible’), to ‘retire’ after the latter had failed to produce a judgement more than 20 months after a case had been heard before him, and he had been forced to admit that he had forgotten some of the salient facts (note, however, that he retirement occurred at about the fifteenth anniversary of his appointment, presumably allowing him to claim his full judicial pension; the Harmans are a famous banking/legal family).
Other judges have left their fate to their own discretion. For example, a highly controversial KBD judge, Sir Henry McCardie, shot himself in 1933 when he was under threat of blackmail owing to his very large gambling debts.
So, what did Rushton and his colleagues say to the authorities about the serious allegations concerning Smythe, and did that information get to the chancellor, Lord Hailsham?
Hailsham was a distinguished lawyer, but could oscillate between prudery and indulgence. Harman was preferred by Hailsham who had known and liked his father, the Appeal Court judge, Sir Charles Harman (Etonians, all of them). By 1982-84, Hailsham was well past his prime – he was 77 in 1984 – and his administration of the LCD was faltering: indeed, most of the initiative had passed to Sir Derek Oulton, then permsec (aka clerk of the crown in chancery).
Another question: What did Hailsham know about Smythe? If he knew about the abuse, did he order or suggest to Smythe that he resign his recordership? Did he also suggest that Smythe be bundled out of the country?
There might be evidence relating to this in the PRO.
Hailsham, incidentally, was a sincere and devout Christian. Definitely not an evangelical, however, but would have been anxious about any harm befalling the reputation of the Church. I heard him preach the Latin sermon at St Mary’s, in what I took to be perfect Latin.
Quoting Lee Furney from a Twitter post last night. ‘It’s deeply concerning that John Smyth was an independent student at Trinity College, Bristol in 1983 where George Carey was principal, but Carey has no recollection of this high profile ‘Christian’ leader. This came after Smyth’s abuse was exposed in 1982.’
I correspond with this Lee from time to time so he is reliable as far as I know. Note also the date of the Ruston report in 1982. There is no mistake on that one. These clues may or may not end up being important but they are interesting and worth drawing out. We still do not know the nature of the safeguarding failure. It must be serious.
Thank you. I see where the error about the Ruston Report came from. After typing 1982, I quickly checked on Google, and then took the date from the ‘Archbishop Cranmer’ entry dated 1988. This does, indeed, give the date of the report as 1982. But I think it is fair to say that this was very much kept under wraps for a significantly long time.
What next, I wonder? It seems that Lord Carlile’s recommendations are not being followed here or in the Core Group relating to Dean Percy. Surely in both cases this is an issue of natural justice.
John Smyth was high profile among the Iwerne network, but was he high profile anywhere else? It was a very closed world, and it was not George Carey’s world.
He was high profile as the youngest QC.
Also as Mary Whitehouse’s QC. The Gay News and Romans In Britain cases, for example, were all over the Press for months.
Being high profile as the youngest QC would only make an impression in legal circles.
Correct. Though it is not to be sniffed at, far from it.
However, being in 2 cases that were constantly in the headlines is another matter.
Indeed, Dr Shell! The Gay News case prompted this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM-mcovVirc; dramatised, based on the court records but interspersed with interviews by some of the principals, though not Smyth himself, who was here depicted by Terrence Hardiman. Smyth was fortunate that the controversial Alan King-Hamilton was the judge; arguably only Michael Argyle would have been better.
It is painfully ironic that in 1982 counsel for the prosecution of the Romans in Britain was engaging in private acts with unwilling youths which were arguably more obscene (by dint of the violence perpetrated) than those being simulated on the stage of the NT. On that basis it was perhaps fortunate that the prosecution collapsed as ignominiously as it did.
Yes. The Gay News case was of considerable import being the first blasphemy case in living memory (nor have there been any since) and also one where the 3 court decisions sensationally flipflopped, ending in vindication for Mary Whitehouse. Around 10 years ago Richard Dawkins was still bigging up the merits of the offending poem in a demo opposite Parliament.
JS had to pull out of the Romans in Britain case through stress and pulled out of the Iwerne board the same time (1981). He later claimed he had been on sleeping pills for an extended period, which is believable given how high profile the case was.
Janet: Don’t be under any illusions. The top level in legal circles easily equates to the high table in any Oxbridge College. Smyth would have mixed with, or among, judges of the High Court, Court of Appeal and Law Lords – as the last were then known. These are people with a presence and influence in the much wider world. Smyth appeared as late as 1985 in the Court of Appeal, around the time of his move to Africa, so no public scandal can have prevented that.
I don’t know enough to offer a Church comparison.
It doesn’t necessarily follow that such a person appearing at Trinity would have caused much of a stir, especially if he was part-time and non-residential. It would depend if people at Trinity at the time were aware of his background and what it signified. I was interviewed at Trinity in 1983 or 1984 and would have spent 24 hours there, I think – the journey by train from Eastbourne not being an easy one. The ordination course wasn’t university accredited then and the atmosphere nothing like that at Wycliffe, where I was interviewed subsequently and did my training. Even Wycliffe would have been very different from an Oxbridge high table.
We don’t know of course what this latest accusation is, or whether it relates to Lord Carey’s time at Trinity.
I’m only responding here to the assumption that because Smyth was well known in legal and Iwerne circles, he must also have been well known enough for his arrival to have made an impact at Trinity. I moved in evangelical circles for many years , read the Church of England Newspaper and Church Times assiduously, worked in Christian publishing and bookselling, and trained with Iwerne men, and as far as I can recall I’d never heard of Smyth until 2 or 3 years ago.
I’m not trying to make any other point.
Janet: My apologies. I missed the context of your comment.
But it’s still an extraordinary scenario, knowing what we do, in the context of the earlier Ruston report.
Alumni of Trinity Bristol (but from an earlier time) include Revd David Jackman of Proclamation Trust, who was one of those informed about JS’s activities. David Flint the Radley teacher who was a JS backer was at Bristol University 60ish years ago. (Radley HM Dennis Silk was the godfather of Simon Doggart.)
We gather that Trinity student numbers expanded under George Carey, and even among this multiplicity of students a semi-distance-learner like John Smyth would have been far from the most visible.
David Jackman, later of Proclamation Trust, was an alumnus of Trinity College Bristol. He was in 1983 the minister at Above Bar Church, Southampton, which JS (being quite local) tried to join. I expect that it may have been at this point that David Fletcher filled in David Jackman about the reasons why JS joining would not be a good idea. Whereas no-one could take exception to JS embarking on a course of Christian study.
Are leaders allowed to make mistakes? Certainly as a society, we have great difficultly in accepting mistakes made by our political leaders. But what about church leaders?
Personally I hate making mistakes. I particularly dislike not remembering things too, although there are many mistakes I would like to forget.
To lead is to fail. It is impossible to try something and never to get it wrong. Failures and mistakes weigh more heavily on us than successes.
Never to fail is never to have tried.
All that said, if we are frequently getting things wrong, we may have to choose a different job.
But the question arises as to how to deal with mistakes. Serious ones.
The higher your position, the more people will look at what you did (wrong). The effect is exponential.
It’s not so much that history is being rewritten. It’s just that now there is a lot more access, even transparency in obtaining data. Freedom of information extends beyond the legal framework by some distance.
Covering up. The code of silence. The prohibition of overt leader criticism. These methods of dealing with mistakes have died and not exactly gone to heaven.
It’s probably better to make a clean breast of things and pledge (and actually) change. That’s the ideal. But of course we still see the continuing denials and memory lapses.
As we get older, we think a bit more about legacy, about what we did. Unfortunately this creates additional pressure on us and our admirers (such as they are) to keep the door on past failures firmly closed. It can be shattering to have a lifetime’s construction pulled off its pedestal in front of you. Indeed we are often seeing a whole army of supporters leaning against the door to keep it shut, while metaphorical walls are tumbling down.
However with Carey, and what we know about the inner workings of the Church of England, I suspect he is not the central character in the story, but will be sacrificed anyway in the hope that enquires stop there.
They won’t of course.
Regarding making mistakes. The Aviation and Rail both have investigation branches (AAIB and RAIB) where they:-
“producing reports that explain the circumstances and causes of accidents and serious incidents, without attributing blame”
They found this was essential to get honest responses from those involved. They didn’t want a plane crash to happen twice for the same reason. So rapid learning took place as people felt free to express what they had done wrong – things not done maliciously but mistakes.
Processes and training have changed in churches seem to have changed massively since the 80’s. Was the word safeguarding used back then?
Jon is right about the existence and value of independent investigation branches to avoid repetition of dangerous mistakes. Sometimes someone is culpable too. With the C of E top brass, there seems historically to have been a desire to maintain the required narrative at all costs. I’m sure that’s why the abuse stories were suppressed. There was also a culture of leader devotion and a reluctance to believe complainants. Institutional historic leaders are paying the price now. It barely compares to the broken lives of many we’ve heard from here.
Regarding the word “safeguarding”, unfortunately I sense it is losing its efficacy or its power to reassure those it is meant to be protecting.
Most ordinary volunteers subjected to compulsory training think it’s about opening ladders properly!!!!
A couple of minor errors in this account.
Trinity College was actually the amalgamation of three colleges (hence the name), not two.
Clifton College, not Tyndale Hall, was considered to be the ‘public school college’. Students of Tyndale Hall were from the ‘lower orders’.
Carey came to Trinity in 1982 and drew a lot of students attracted by his then charismatic reputation. He left in 1987 to become Bishop of Bath and Wells. Whether Smyth was a student there in his early days should be easily confirmed or disconfirmed by the college.
The ‘us and them’ class speculation in this piece is just nonsense that does nothing to further understanding. The recollection of students then was in fact that Carey was frequently absent from the College on General Synod and other wider church business, and it is not at all unlikely that he would have no recollection of a part-time student. In Carey’s time Trinity was, for a while, the largest training college in the Church of England and he encouraged all and sundry to study there, whatever their background.
Apologies for getting things wrong. It happens when books leave your possession and you misremember. I understood that Jim Packer was made unhappy by the ‘class’ issue in Bristol and that was one of the things that drove him off to Canada. It would be good to quote accurately rather than from memory. Thank you Froghole for having things at your fingertips. I must give myself longer to write my pieces but sometimes the need is to put something out while the news is still warm. I am removing the entire paragraph from the blog
Stephen: I think it was a different, and well-informed, James who had the information about Trinity Bristol (about which I know little). Though this seems a good summary account: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/7eba3adc-9a95-3122-8577-162525a1a17b#:~:text=A%20men's%20missionary%20and%20theological,renamed%20Tyndale%20Hall%20in%201952.
I suspect that Carey was keen to pick up much of the custom that would formerly have gone to Brasted (closed 1972), Kelham (closed 1973), etc., i.e., theological colleges which had provided training to ‘working’ men. Clifton had been founded to provide missionary training for home and overseas missions, and again Trinity may have benefited from the closure of St Augustine’s missionary college – the old central college for the Anglican Communion – in 1967 and its final abandonment by KCL in 1976. All this might be seen in the context of Trinity having a poor endowment.
Further to James’s remarks, I understand that Trinity was formed by a merger of Clifton and Tyndale with Dalton in 1972. I don’t know about the class status of any of these bodies, though Dalton provided training for women. Clifton was often, confusingly, called Clifton College – a similar name to the famous school nearby. There is also a Baptist seminary in Clifton.
Best wishes,
James
Sorry – I should have made it clear that the missionary college at St Augustine’s had closed during the war, and that its afterlife as the central college was to provide educational provision for students from overseas; whether that was a function ever performed by Clifton is moot, and perhaps doubtful.
In any event the 1970s witnessed a wave of closures (the colleges mentioned, plus Wells, Lichfield, Birkenhead, Ripon Hall, etc.), which presumably made it possible for Trinity and other survivors to pick up some of the residual business though of course most of the shuttered seminaries did not cater to evangelicals.
From a seemingly reliable source, I now have to accept that in September 1983 John Smyth started a 10 month course as an independent student at Trinity College Bristol, where George Carey was Principal. I confess that I find this difficult to reconcile with his continuing to practise at the Bar and appearing in the Court of Appeal as late as 1985. Others may be able to verify accurate dates.
The date of the Ruston report, 1982, must be significant in the chronology both as to admission at Trinity in 1983 and appearance in the Court of Appeal in 1985, the reasonable assumption being that nothing about wrong doing had emerged to prevent either of those things happening.
Let’s hope that Keith Makin is given unfettered access to all records and to be able to come up with an impartial report with answers to these anomalies.
No anomaly that I see.
If the Trinity College course took 10 months, that takes care of the academic year 1983-4.
After which there was apparently some time at Regent’s College, Vancouver. This would need to be nothing more lengthy than the annual Summer School in order to fit in chronologically.
After all, the move to Zimbabwe was August 1984.
The 1985 Channel 4 ‘Scum’ court-of-appeal case therefore involved a temporary return to the UK – but that was something he did frequently after settling in Africa. I suppose he retained UK citizenship?
I thought my comment was clear that the anomaly was the total non-emergence (I chose my words carefully) of existing known facts from 1982 which, if they had been made public, would have surely prevented admission to Trinity in 1983 and appearance in the Court of Appeal in 1985. The implications of both ought to be obvious.
Thank you for confirming the latter date. I also assumed that Smyth had returned from Zimbabwe to appear, but did not feel confident to say that. Unless I am mistaken Smyth cannot have resigned or retired from the English Bar at that date unless he enjoyed some alternative right of audience here. He would have been, and doubtless was, known to the Lord Chancellor.
Is any of this, or the use of the word anomaly, contentious?
I was a full-time ordinand at Trinity College Bristol from 1981 to 1984, and then stayed on researching there from 84 – 86. I went into the college only once a week in the latter period, but in the early period I was there five days a week. We lived a mile away in our own home.
This blog is the first time that I have discovered that John Smyth had any connection with the college. Had I known at the time, I would have searched him out and welcomed him, remembering him from Iwerne days. So I am certain that I never heard anything about his presence. I also only discovered the allegations against him from this blog in recent years.
Secondly, I did vaguely hear that the college had been formed from from three previous colleges, one of which had been under the Bible Churchman’s Missionary Society, and that was why the name Trinity had been chosen. There was no hint of separate parties or groups in the college that I was aware of by the time I was there.
George was a splendid principal. The thing that impressed me about him was that whenever he was moving round the college and bumped into a student, he would engage them with “How’s Mary” or “How are your children getting on in school now” or the like. He had a great capacity for information about and love for his students.
He also introduced me to the difference between being a homo-ousian and a homoi-ousian in his Church Mystery classes but please don’t get me started on that…! (Where do you stand on this, gentle reader?)
Good grief David, I’m not awake yet! If course, if Carey seemed to know all his students…. Mind you, I still think he wouldn’t necessarily remember them for ages afterwards.
Sharp work early doors, English Athena!
Personally, I can remember detail from 35 years ago, but not what I read yesterday morning.
Well, I have a really good memory. But I have gradually come to realise most people don’t. If, and I say, if, Carey did nothing about abuse that he knew about, that is shameful. I came to hate the good men who did nothing worse than the bullies. But he is 84, the evidence is hardly fresh, and neither is his memory. The moment is never past for discovering the facts. And that can help victims. But I’m concerned that Carey is simply being picked on. You know, “quick, look busy”!
You are indeed fortunate! However for most people older memories are easier to recall than current ones. I wasn’t simply being self-deprecating. Most of us even if we haven’t recognised this in ourselves, will have endured endless stories repeated by an elderly relative. She recalls the ancient detail, but not that she told us the same thing recently.
Memories which have greater (sometimes emotional) significance are also more robustly stored in the brain, and less easily forgotten.
It’s hard to see how Carey couldn’t have remembered Smyth, especially in view of the other comments here of his profile at the time.
This makes the situation pretty certain. JS 1983-4 was affiliated but not physically based in Trinity Bristol, otherwise he would have been seen – and there are those who would have recognised him (as he will have known). GC contemporaneously was highly busy, what with a burgoning college and travelling.
Whether there is a penitential element motivating his decision to sign up for a course; or the desire to keep his Christian development going in the absence of Iwerne; or the desire to increase respectability via qualifications – are interesting questions.
The death of JS’s mother Ursula Lucie Smyth (nee Ross) in 1983 is an important background feature.
typo ‘burgeoning’
Somebody should just email Trinity administration and ask if he was registered then.
If the College denies it, that should settle it.
If the College stonewalls, well ….
Of course, it would have been perfectly possible to be registered as an independent student and hardly ever seen. That’s pretty common, even or especially today.
Well volunteered James!
David Pennant has said above that he was a student at Trinity at that time, already knew Smyth and would have welcomed him, but didn’t know he was there. It certainly suggests that Smyth wasn’t there very much.
Although tempting, it might breach data protection and confidentiality rules. The proper course is to leave Keith Makin to check out all the sources. He is duty bound to do so as the C of E has stated that it has taken this action based on information which has arisen in the course of Keith Makin’s investigation.
One cautionary note. It’s by no means established that the ‘issue’ necessarily involves Lord Carey’s time at Bristol.
That point is correct. The flurry of justifiable semi-panic among UK (and not just UK) Christian leaders that attended the Zimbabwe camps 1986-93 would have peaked during George Carey’s primacy 1990-. Supposing that Lambeth Palace had been informed about all this in the early 1990s, then the issue could be how they dealt with the information then, rather than anything to do with Trinity College Bristol.
I’ve fished Carey’s “memoir” out of the bookcase! I’ll let you know!
From what has been shared, the safeguarding failure, if that is what it was, is more likely to have happened in the Lambeth years when the reports of Zimbabwe were beginning to trickle back to the UK, as Shell suggests. The Trinity link may be a red-herring though Smyth’s attachment for a full academic year are avenues that I am sure Makin has explored. On David’s evidence it may not have been a residential membership at all. The involvement with the Africa mission may have required that some course of theological study be followed but Smyth may have followed a correspondence course for all we know. It may have been something to write down on his application form to get a visa to live in Africa, if such things were needed. That is all for enquiry and it may not be at all important. The important thing is the suggestion that Carey was guilty of some serious failure in the safeguarding area at some point in his career. Eventually the truth will become apparent.
Fully agreed, and, of course, as ‘outsiders’ none of us here has any standing in the matter, but there is the immediate concern about failure of natural justice in Lord Carey’s not knowing what is alleged against him, and his interests not being represented on the Core Group. His advanced age, 84, is also a factor.
These are the exact words used in the Carlile report setting out Lord Carlile’s recommendations (at Section B, paragraph 21). The words in brackets were a footnote added by him.
“The Core Group [or any other body with responsibility for deciding a case] should have, in addition to someone advocating for the complainant, someone assigned to it to represent the interests of the accused person and his or her descendants.”
Lord Carlile did not need to say that the nature of allegations should be notified to the accused person as, in that case, the accused person had long been deceased.
Unless things have changed, the above recommendation has been disregarded in the case of Lord Carey. This aspect is not within Mr Makin’s remit and is a matter for corrective action by the Church.
Similar representations, in almost identical circumstances, are currently being made on behalf of Dean Martyn Percy at Christ Church, Oxford. These are justifiable concerns for ‘outsiders’.
Some of us think he shouldn’t have been allowed back to officiate after the Peter Ball report. Then suspension now wouldn’t be necessary.
I don’t see the point of denying PTO to retired clergy and Readers who have not themselves committed (or are suspected of having committed) abuse. Abusers are denied PTO because ministering gives them the Church’s authority and can deceive the unsuspecting into thinking they are ‘safe’, and becoming victims. Those in post who are guilty of safeguarding failures, whether mistaken or deliberate, pose a risk because their lapses potentially continue to endanger others.
What is the logic behind preventing the retired from ministering? They don’t pose a risk personally and have no safeguarding responsibilities. I know some survivors disagree with me on this, but I don’t see the point in punishing emeriti in this way – especially if the failures were long ago when awareness was at a much lower level than it is now.
What I would like to see is a Truth and Reconciliation process where past crimes and failures are examined. This is the only way we are going to get at the truth and learn from past mistakes. I think that for most people guilty of safeguarding failures, the merciless scrutiny of such a process would be punishment enough.
It’s also relevant, surely, that the PTO now revoked by the Bishop of Oxford was limited to Lord Carey‘s officiating in the church where he regularly worshipped.
The ‘reason’ put forward in the statement from the Oxford Diocese for revoking the PTO – I’m sure in other circumstances the Bishop would have discretion – was the condition attached to the PTO when it was restored in February 2018 that it was “subject to no further concerns coming to light”. The diocese announcement states that this was done “on senior legal advice”.
Of course SMT Core Groups don’t have authority to suspend or revoke PTOs, although that impression might have been created.
This blog‘s ethos is all about justice and against injustice.
It isn’t, incidentally, a suspension which is something quite different, and we don’t yet know whether revoking the PTO was “necessary”. We will have to wait to find out.
A few weeks ago George Carey rather bravely criticised the episcopal bullies who were joining the anti Dominic Cummings hate mob, Now this. Could there be a connection?
This new development only emphasises the need to get the chronology of JS’s motivation in the early 80s right (one imagines he had already set his sights on Zimbabwe by the time he set about obtaining a qualification that would be useful to that end) and also to sort out who knew what in the UK when the Zimbabwe camps situation became worrying.
Now that the ‘Cast and Characters + Chronology’ document is being more widely used, we must from the start correct one aspect of that document’s chronology. The five lines which are put at the end of 1981 (deriving from the Stileman Report) belong instead to 1982, presumably the first half of that year. This (together with the assigning of *all* UK victims to ‘Winchester’) was the only major error I saw in the document.
A thought about PTO.
I first came across the concept in our diocesan handbook, and presumed that the list of retired clergy who had Permission To Officiate was simply that – a kind of emeritus status if you like.
As with all powers, it is capable of being abused as a weapon, a practice which I find deeply distasteful.
For one thing, whatever happened to the priesthood of all believers? There used to be a catch phrase, ‘every member ministry’.
Contrast that with an A4 page numbered list of regulations for Rural Deans that I happened to see in the late 1980s. What do you imagine number one on the list was? Encourage your flock to seek first the kingdom of God before career, income etc? Or Give an example to your people by loving your enemies? Some other command of Jesus, maybe?
No. The first thing on the list was ‘Any celebration of communion by a lay person is to be reported immediately to the Bishop’. This was clearly the most important thing for rural deans to do.
I feel incensed by this. How can anyone think that they have the right to dictate who may or may not break bread, when Jesus gave this to all of his followers on the night of his betrayal and death?
I prefer the attitude of encouraging all believers to have a go – ‘You can all prophecy one at a time’ to quote Paul (1 Cor 14:31), and I think God does too, as churches where this is done are the ones that are flourishing.
I rather think that lay presidency is literally illegal. Personally, the theology doesn’t bother me, but the illegality does. (I’m a good girl!) Maybe that needs changing. Why not? But until it is, I think we should toe the line. Why not do more with services of the word? And especially stop defining them by what they are not! The phrase “non communion service”, should be banned!
Talking about “Communion”, and I don’t intend any irreverence, has anyone noticed any difference following 3 months without it? What was your experience?
I haven’t been without Communion. I’ve been taking part every week in a service on Facebook, using my own port and bread. Having been ill for several years, it’s a real treat to be part of a congregation again.
Hi Janet, so for you individually the experience has been a little better than pre-lockdown owing to the availability of online church?
Much better. I also take part in interactive morning prayer and Bible study most mornings. I feel like I’ve been travelling in the desert and found an oasis.
I hear that there are quite a lot of us who are disabled, ill, or couldn’t get to church for other reasons who have been enjoying the sudden plethora of online services. It’s much easier, too, for those who have wanted to explore church but have felt shy of walking into what can be an intimidating building; and for those for whom church buildings carry memories of abuse or conflict.
Difficult, of course, for those who are not online.
This is really good news to hear! I was going to ask how interactive it was, but you’ve answered that too.
There is still the telly for those not online. Not interactive obviously but I see from English Athena and others of what’s available.
Speaking of TV, someone rigged up a screen in my mum’s bedroom before she died. Her church had its own TV channel and she heard them saying prayers for her. I was moved by this, as was she.
That’s lovely. Amazing f or a church to have its own TV channel!
I’ve missed the intimacy of communion. But mostly I’m missing seeing people, and the routine. I missed having no ministry, but I’ve been on telly! And I’ve been doing some stuff for the website. And we’re now starting to record webcasts.
Lay presidency is illegal in the Church of England. Other denominations have different rules; they also differ from the C of E in that their rules and regulations are not the law of the land, as ours are.
I doubt if there is anyone, clergy or lay, who keeps all the canon laws of the Church. Graham Leonard, when Bishop of London, used to celebrate using the Roman Missal which is definitely illegal. I’ve been told that by canon law every deanery must have a baptistery suitable for baptising adults by immersion, but I’d be surprised if any deanery has one.
The Church can be very touchy about lay celebration, as it can about people baptised as children being baptised again as adults. I can’t get het up about either of those things. I do see that those who preside ought to be trained to do it well, without introducing heresies, but I don’t see why Readers shouldn’t be able to celebrate. I certainly wouldn’t put ensuring that lay people don’t celebrate at the top of the list of duties of rural deans. Maybe that was an anomaly of a particular diocese?
Well, I can’t claim any authority, but I haven’t found anything in the Canons of the C of E about baptism of adults by total immersion. The Canons state that an adult is to be baptised and confirmed as speedily as possible so as to be able to receive Communion (Canon B24). There are no qualifications about the dimensions of the font, and the only stipulations are that it is not to be used for any other purpose and is to be set in spacious and well-ordered surroundings (Canon F1).
I know that there are some C of E churches with a baptismal ‘tank’ – very few, I believe, and I don’t readily recall any individual example. I’m sure that baptism by total immersion is not illegal, and is thus valid if the order of service and rubric are followed, but it is not prescribed. Very interested to know whether there is any contrary authority.
Thanks, Rowland, that’s interesting. I wonder whether I was misinformed, or whether that canon has changed in the 40 years since I was told that?
Oh, and Emeritus and PTO are not the same thing. To get PTO you have to have a DBS certificate. And that’s important.