The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.  Wittgenstein

I first became aware of the above aphorism some twenty years ago and, like many people, have puzzled away at the implications of its meaning.  I now recognise that these words are very important to take on board but I regret that they were never explained to me early on in my life. They would have been especially useful at the time when I began to study the Bible at university.

Like many theological students of my generation it was not unusual to study the Bible in the original languages.  Hebrew represented a personal challenge. I battled with it for over two years before giving myself permission to drop it six months before my final exams.  Greek was compulsory but New Testament Greek did not hold any terrors for me. I had begun my journey with this language at the age of 14.   Why is the Wittgenstein quotation important in connection with the study of ancient languages and the Bible?  It is helpful because, understanding the quote properly allows to contemplate the fact that ancient languages limit a reader to the cultural limits of these languages.  Hebrew and Greek like every other language are restricted in what they can express.  Every language, including our own, has blind spots which limits it in what can be articulated.

This point about the limits of every language came home to me as I was writing my recent piece on narcissism.  I found myself using the Narcissistic Personality Disorder ‘language’ as a tool to assess the behaviour of some senior churchmen.  I suddenly became aware that the categories of NPD had simply not been available to me twenty years ago.  In other words, I could not then describe the actions of certain churchmen by availing myself of these distinct words and concepts.  My reading about NPD had extended my means of expression.  In the process ‘the limit of my world’ had changed and been enlarged. 

The insight about the way that new languages and words allow one to think new thoughts has reverberated into the way I think about the Bible.  The original authors of the bible text were constrained by the limits inherent in the languages they were using.  There were of course many things that they could say; equally there were many things that they could not say.  Hebrew, for example, has few, if any, abstract words.  It presents its version of truth and divine revelation especially by narrating events, conversations and feelings. 

When I was at school and learning Greek, I had to translate passages of English prose into ancient Greek.  The English passages chosen for this task often consisted of extracts from one or other of Edmund Burke’s speeches to Parliament in the 18^th century.  Like many of his contemporaries Burke was trained thoroughly in the Classics and so was apt to speak in a style reminiscent of the rhetorical language of Demosthenes from the 4^th century BC.   Thus, his English prose was eminently suitable for translation into Greek.  This is something that it would be difficult to do with more modern speeches in Parliament.  This simple point is that that ancient Greek and indeed many other languages cannot embrace the nuance of meaning in much of what we say in 21^st century English.  Our cultural and linguistic horizons have been allowed to grow exponentially from ancient times. 

Returning to the English Bible we need to help a reader, not acquainted with ancient languages, to have a keen appreciation of the way that translation sometimes is impossible to do adequately.  The choice of a word in English may suggest a nuance of meaning that simply did not exist for the original audience.  One of the tasks of good expository preaching is draw out these issues.  In the ‘gay debate’ it has, for example, to be pointed out that there no word in Greek in existence which can translated as ‘homosexual’ in the New Testament.  There are words which describe male prostitution.  A simple neutral word conveying the idea of an individual identifying a preference for their own sex, perhaps in a life-long commitment, does not exist.  One approach to the ‘failure’ of the Bible to address this issue directly is to distort the text and mistranslate passages to speak of things that are not there.  This is dishonest. An alternative approach is to relax into the Biblical text and its supporting culture, trying to pick up the rhythm of the language used which, even in translation, can be heard.  We all need to hear what the Bible does say rather than what we would like it to say. When we read it in this way, we find absolutely no support for modern notions of infallibility or claims for precise historical accuracy in Scripture.  The fundamentalist ‘debate’ is a discussion that would have made no sense to anyone living before the 18^th century.   Just as I was unable to think the ideas around narcissism before I had studied the concept, so the educated person of the early 18^th century simply could not have grasped the ideas of modern politically motivated fundamentalists.

In summary, we can see that the Bible, because of its location in time and culture, is unable to offer decisive backing to many of the modern theological debates that we have today.  Having accepted that Hebrew and Greek set limits to what can be thought and expressed, we are free to explore what these ancient languages, when well translated, actually do attempt to communicate.  I have mentioned the use of story and narrative as a way of communicating truth and this can be done in all languages.  For the Hebrew writer especially, God is largely revealed in the events of history and certainly not in the speculations of systematic theologians.  A second way in which the Hebrew Bible works in a way that we do not always fully appreciate, is through the use of picture or symbol.   Because of our preference for propositional truths about God, a strong cultural bias on our part, we have become desensitised to the many non-propositional statements about God.  God is a consuming fire, he is a still small voice, he is heard in the sound of the thunder.  Such statements may lack precision and eligibility for credal formulae but they have immediacy and connection with the way that most people think and experience.  To take any one of the symbolic statements about God and press it hard to reveal ‘truth’ would do it violence.  Our cultural preference for measurable truth as against image and symbol has meant that we often miss much of what the Hebrew Bible is in fact telling us.  Many people use the Bible only as a mine for proof texts to support whatever is their current passion or preoccupation.  They do not allow it to speak in its own form and idiom because this is so far away from ‘respectable’ theological language.

Wittgenstein’s quote, with which we began this reflection, does two things.  It encourages us to recognise that Scripture is limited, compared with modern culture, in what it can say.  It cannot be said to be the final word on God or theology because language and culture have expanded immeasurably since it was written.  Secondly, if we take the Bible seriously as in some way revealing God’s word, we should be prepared to enter into what it does say.   Allowing for all the limitations of language and the way that ideas are filtered through particular cultural constraints, let us celebrate the richness of the world that is found there in the text.  Let us enter imaginatively into the pictures, the vividness of the description of human joys and sorrows that are encountered.  In short let the Bible be the Bible without claiming for it something that it cannot be, an infallible guide to every scientific, ethical or historical question.  It is what it is, limited in some ways by the constraints of its languages and cultural worlds.  While biblical words and meanings are limited in what they can say, God himself can still be heard in these words.  Other ideas and insights of twenty first century can be added.  This mixture of ideas, the old and the new, can be joined together to reveal truth and reality for our time and culture.

From time to time it is helpful to be exposed to an issue relating to church power in a setting entirely different from our own. After the bomb shells affecting the Church of England in the past two or three weeks, it is salutary to be reminded that struggles over power are found in churches all over the world. ,

The views expressed in this post are entirely those of the author. No court has reviewed allegations that the Rev. Robert H. Malm committed perjury in the relevant legal proceedings.

Some time ago, Stephen graciously allowed me to share my story of non-sexual abuse on this blog. With his permission, I’d like to bring you up to date on this matter.

By way of brief recap, in December 2018, the rector of my former parish, the Rev. Robert H. Malm (“Bob”) of Grace Episcopal in Alexandria Virginia, contacted the police. He allegedly complained that I had threatened him via postings on a family member’s blog, located at http://www.gracealex.net.  Among his accusations were that various words, taken out of context, constituted threats against him and the church.

However, when the police declined to take action, Bob decided to file a request for a protective order with the courts. Apparently, he believed that by doing so he could shut down online criticism of his conduct. He did so with the full knowledge of diocesan officials, to whom he described me in various emails as “sick,” “twisted,” and “dysfunctional.”

To the surprise of many, the trial court ruled in Bob’s favor, despite the fact that he clearly had not met the legal requirement of an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm.” Indeed, Bob’s entire time in the courtroom consisted of recitations of irrelevant issues, including him asking me whether I had resigned from the parish vestry. (I did, but only Bob appears to see any connection between that and his claims that that he was threatened.)

I immediately appealed the ruling, and was represented by counsel. During the appeal, Bob was represented by Jeffery Chiow, a Washington DC-based attorney and former parish vestry member. Jeff pursued a strategy predicated on inflammatory rhetoric, including referring to me as a “domestic terrorist.” He also made various inaccurate statements of fact to the court, including that I had:

• Never been licensed to practice law.
• Never served as a police officer.
• Violated the initial court order.

Jeff also attempted to subpoena my mother, dying of COPD, in violation of the law in her home state, which does not permit discovery in cases of protective orders absent prior leave of court. His help was to drag her, complete with oxygen tank and wheelchair, into court, where he hoped to conduct a day-long deposition. However, the relevant local courts quashed the subpoena. Meanwhile, Mom’s attorney shared his view that “this attorney is coming at you with a personal vendetta.”

Meanwhile, numerous emails came to light during discovery, suggesting that Bob had been very active behind the scenes, engaging in what I would describe as a smear campaign. But tellingly, Bob refused to specify in writing which online posts he believed to be threatening, even after the court ordered him to do so. Bob also contacted the police department, asking if there were some way they could force me to quit blogging about our conflict. To the bishop, Bob sent an email telling him that his wife and one of his daughters took the matter far too seriously — an odd assertion for someone who claims to have been threatened.

Most significantly, Bob lied during discovery. (Before you ask, yes, this would be defamatory were it not true.) In his written responses to my attorney’s interrogatories, or questions that must be answered under oath, Bob claimed that my mother, or someone purporting to be her, had repeatedly contacted him to schedule appointments, only to no-show. Leaving aside the fact that Mom loathes Bob and would have no reason to do so, that begs the question: How did a woman, dying and unable to use a phone or email, or to leave her home, contact Bob? I can assure all involved that this simply didn’t occur; nor did anyone claiming to be Mom contact Bob. This is perjury, pure and simple. Yet Bob knowingly signed the statement, required at the end of responses to interrogatories, stating under oath that his answers were true. Moreover, he used a parishioner, Jane Rosman, to notarize the relevant affidavit.

The appeal dragged on interminably, causing my Mom immense anxiety and consternation, evidenced by panic attacks, vomiting and more. I promptly informed the diocesan bishops of Bob’s actions, but did not even get the courtesy of a response.

I also filed a Title IV disciplinary complaint, only to be told in writing that Bob’s conduct is not “of weighty and material importance to the ministry of the church.” Oddly, this letter was marked as “confidential,” despite the fact that such matters are NOT, under the canons, confidential apropos complainants. This leads me to speculate that church officials either are painfully unfamiliar with canon law, or that they wish to reserve solely unto themselves the right to share information about the conflict —something that the previous bishop diocesan, Shannon Johnston, did in a letter to the parish, in which he inaccurately claimed that the matter had been previously investigated an resolved. Clearly, it has not been resolved, and the diocese previously declined in writing to investigate, so one wonders how the bishop was able to make this statement.

Late in the process, I received a settlement offer from Bob and the parish—surely a rare thing when allegations of abusive conduct are involved. (In my many years of practicing law, I never once encountered this situation. Clients were either threatened, or they weren’t, and the cases proceeding accordingly.)

The proposal offered to drop the matter if I would agree to have no further contact with Bob, and cease my online criticism of him. The former was amusing, for I had informed Bob in writing in 2018 that he was to have no further contact with me, either directly or through others. Why Bob’s attorney suddenly concluded that I might want communication with Bob escapes me, and may himself may have difficulty explaining why he felt this necessary.

Notably, the settlement proposal also rambled on for several pages about my removing blog posts, not publicly criticizing Bob’s conduct or that of the church, and more. In exchange, Bob would agree not to make any publicly derogatory comments about me. This I found to be comical, as Bob’s efforts to convince people that I am a “domestic terrorist” had been conducted almost entirely behind the scenes; thus, from my perspective this clause would allow Bob to continue his misconduct unabated.

Finally, after devoting more than $25,000 to legal fees — money I had saved for retirement — and concluding that neither Bob nor his attorney were prepared to conduct themselves in an ethical manner, I dropped my appeal.

As a result, the current protective order remains in effect through January 24, 2020. The provisions require me not to have any contact with Bob or his family — hardly an onerous requirement! I also must remain 1,000 feet away from Bob, his home, and the church during this time. As a result, I protest on various street corners in the city, often carrying a sign decrying Bob’s perjury.

I also continue to blog noisily away, and there is a new disciplinary complaint pending against Bob Malm. My bet is that the diocese will yet again find an excuse to wash its hands of the matter. The Episcopal Church says it wants to be a welcoming, inclusive church, but the fact that it is willing to permit retaliation by clergy against those who complain about possible misconduct speaks to a church that is anything but inclusive and caring.

But the real news is the damage this conflict has wrought on all involved. In the case of the parish, more than one-third of pledging units have left the church, while Sunday attendance is down 17 percent. The assistant rector left abruptly, two years before the end of her contract, possibly due to her unhappiness with Bob’s conduct.

In the case of my family, the harm is profound. My mother’s anxiety, depression, and anger, all a normal part of dying, are greatly exacerbated as she moves into the final days of her life. My same-sex spouse, Mike, received into The Episcopal Church just 15 months before this conflict broke out and married to me there, has renounced Christianity. I have left organized religion, and try though I might, I find I cannot stand to set foot in a church for any reason. Indeed, I attended the Easter Vigil at the church of my childhood, and while people were delightful, and found myself throughout the service fighting the urge to run out the door, never to return.

Many friends from church have abandoned me, and that is fine. One’s true friends remain friends, while those who lack empathy may feel that they have to choose sides, or that they know enough based on Bob’s representations to choose to end our friendship. That is their choice, and while I miss them, I wish them well and believe I probably am better off without friendships predicated on my rector’s approval. I also am sadder but wiser, now recognizing that it is possible for many to be happy, even when within an abusive system.

It also seems jarringly hypocritical that, just the day before I wrote this, Bob and Jeff likely attended the Easter Vigil, where they no doubt recited the baptismal covenant to “respect the dignity of every human being.” How one can reconcile committing perjury in court and bullying a dying woman with this promise escapes me, and I suspect I am better off not knowing the answer.

Meanwhile, I have again filed a disciplinary complaint with the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia over Bob’s perjury, only to have the case dismissed in writing on the grounds that Bob has not been criminally convicted of perjury. That’s a shocking proposition — is one to conclude that any clergy conduct is acceptable unless it results in a criminal conviction? Moreover, more than one priest has been defrocked in the diocese over conduct that is illegal, but for which there has not been a criminal conviction, including adultery with a married parishioner. So why the double standard?

I also note with some wry amusement that while the diocese again insists that I must treat the matter as confidential, the diocese itself violated the confidentiality provisions of Title IV, which went into effect January 1, 2019. These provide that the identity of the complainant must be treated as confidential. Surely, Bob could have readily surmised that I complained, but some effort to comply with church canons would have been reassuring.

Looking forward, I plan to continue to oppose Bob’s misuse of the legal system. I will not renounce my right to speak publicly about my experiences, regardless of the outcome of the current church disciplinary case. My attorney and I also are in touch, and I am evaluating further legal action against the church.

Mom’s days are rapidly dwindling, and she is, in her words, “fading fast.” It saddens me that she is unlikely to see resolution before she dies, but there is nothing one can do about it.

Will I ever return to organized faith? I don’t know, but I doubt it. The sad reality is that clergy misconduct often is like jumping headfirst into an empty swimming pool — one may be able to address some of the harmful outcomes, while remaining unable to turn back the hands of time to repair the underlying trauma.

One of the things that commentators like myself have been looking for over the past few days are reactions to the IICSA report from the House of Bishops.  I personally do not follow individual bishops on Twitter so I have been relying on Gilo and other tweeters to tell me what is going on.  Gilo yesterday noticed one tweet which stood out from all the others.  It was from the Bishop of Bristol, Viv Faull.  It hits the reader between the eyes because in no way is it one that has been written by a diocesan communications officer.  It clearly comes from the heart of the Bishop herself.

The tweet from Bishop Viv can be read by anyone who has twitter on her bishop’s account @Bishopviv1.  It first of all refers to her time in the Gloucester 90-94, a period when our paths slightly overlapped in that I was at that time an incumbent working in the diocese.  She would probably not remember me but I remember her well, not least because women clergy were still then fairly unusual.  The retrospective story we hear now, 25-30 years on, is that these women clergy needed enormous amounts of stamina and resilience to survive in this role. 

Viv Faull next appeared on my mental horizon when she became Dean of York.  I did some digging into her story for this blog when the saga of her confrontation with the bell-ringers at York Minster became public news.  I looked at her story as an example of power and conflict in a large church organisation.  The episode took place at the same time as other cathedral sagas at Exeter and Peterborough.  It was possible to blog on all these stories, as the reviews and reports that were prepared are helpfully published on-line.  A commentator like myself can become informed by taking the trouble to search out these detailed documents.  The York saga was less easy to disentangle from afar.  The basic facts were that Dean Faull dispensed with the services of the entire band of the Minster bell-ringers over a safeguarding matter.  These bell-ringers responded vigorously by organising a boycott which effectively shut down the bells at York Minster for several months.  Without going over the details which I do not have to hand, two things happened.  The Dean, in spite of a great deal of personal vitriol directed against her, eventually won out.  Most of the bell-ringers returned, at the same time submitting to a new strict safeguarding scrutiny.

My readiness to wade in at the time to commenting on this episode at York was partly due to my having a source of inside information.  He was in close touch with the events at York Minster.  From him I learnt that Dean Faull’s cause was a totally just one.  She was completely in the right to take on a nest of vested interests, embodied by the bell-ringer fraternity and their supporters.  Her predecessors had failed to act over known problems and these problems had become more serious over the decades.  Out of this episode I learnt that Dean (now Bishop) Faull is a person prepared at great personal cost to stand up for what is right and provide decisive leadership when it would be so easier to give in and preserve ‘peace’ by covering over the cracks of disagreements.

I give this somewhat prolonged introduction as a prelude to our understanding the purport of the twitter post put out by the Bishop Faull post IICSA.  She refers to what she wanted to say to the Archbishop when, as a deacon in the early 90s, she put up with humiliations and the slights handed out to women clergy at the time.  Without it being spelt out, we must take from her comment that she is closely identifying herself with victims/survivors.  Like them she once found herself at the wrong end of belittlement, ignoring and humiliation on the part of established church authorities.  The two words that I myself selected from the IICSA report, ‘clericalism’ and ‘tribalism’, are also picked out by Bishop Faull.  Referring to these words, she says: ‘These silenced and marginalised me.  It still does.’

Twitter posts limit the those who use them to a relatively small number of words.  It is difficult to imagine how Bishop Faull could have presented more powerfully in her tweet several issues.  First, she appears to be identifying totally with the experience of abused survivors, even though the abuse she personally suffered was in a different context.  Secondly, she is showing herself willing to describe the evil of a culture that ‘silences and marginalises’.  From her experiences in the 90s she can understand the way that institutional power operates against the weak.  The IICSA report would have reminded her strongly of the ways that church authorities have to silence you.  In previous blogs I have spoken of techniques like deference, charismatic power and patriarchal authority.  No doubt Bishop Faull will, at some point, give further commentary on these few words.  Even in their present paucity they give great hope to abuse survivors.

Today as a supporter of abuse survivors, I sense an atmosphere of hope for the future.  It is not just that a member of the House of Bishops has broken ranks by coming out with strong support for the victims of institutional humiliation.  It is that the particular bishop who is doing the supporting is one who truly understands.  She has been there; she remembers all the humiliation and pain of being part of a despised group.  Thus, she can truly represent them to the House of Bishops.  She is of course probably not the only bishop currently ‘breaking rank’ and demanding that the response to survivors is not dictated by communication experts and impression managers.  But, in Bishop Faull, survivors potentially have a new powerful champion who has a track record in firm decisive leadership.  She is one who has suffered not only as a humiliated member of the women clergy, but also as the misunderstood attacked leader.  The ex-Dean of York, is in my book, a worthy ally for the cause of all who long to see the church authorities begin to walk along the path of honesty, justice and transparency.  Will things ever be the same again in the Church of England and the House of Bishops?  The few words written in a twitter feed by a single Bishop suggest that they won’t.  Let us hope that I am right.

The IICSA report on Chichester Diocese and the case of Bishop Peter Ball finally appeared today (Thursday).  file:///C:/Users/Owner/Desktop/inquiry-publishes-report-diocese-chichester-and-peter-ball.htm The rehearsal of events in and around the diocese was a damning and sad indictment of a dysfunctional culture in both the Cathedral and in the upper echelons of the Diocese and the national Church.

I have not read the whole report.  This is partly because much of it seems to be a rehearsing of many of the facts that we have already heard during the IICSA hearings of last March and July.  Also, this blog with its self-imposed word limit, allows me only to look at a few issues.  Two words, however, struck me fairly early on in reading the document.  They sum up many of the issues around the use and abuse of power that operates in the church.  It is the problem of a church and its difficulties with managing power that is at the heart of this blog’s concern.

In the introduction the report spoke of ‘clericalism’ and ‘tribalism’.  Both words speak to us of ways of avoiding fear and vulnerability.  Clericalism operates as a system to benefit one particular group; it will always seek to protect the clergy and promote their interests as much as it can.  It operates like a masonic network and it will naturally always privilege the special rights of the clergy over the laity.  In some settings, clergy will use a coded language to shut others out from their ‘in’ conversations.  The use of these techniques to cement the clerical caste together, is no doubt to make the clergy feel secure.  To be important as part of this group, is to rise more easily above anxiety. 

The tribalism that the report referred to is a variant of the clericalism.  The ‘tribes’ that were identified in the Chichester diocese context were to do with churchmanship interests.  Fellow clergy were seen not as colleagues, but as members of a friendly tribe or a hostile one.  The other side, the ‘them’, might be either lay people or members of a type of churchmanship disapproved of by your group.  The Chichester Diocese for a long period has attracted to itself clergy practising a fairly thorough-going version of Anglo-Catholicism.  This has its own set of cultural and theological idiosyncrasies.  Ranged against this Anglo-Catholic group are a considerable number of members of the other Anglican grouping, those identifying with the conservative group REFORM.  The close juxtaposition of these two versions of Anglicanism, made sometimes for a fractious diocesan culture.  It was all too easy for an incumbent with a loyalty to one or other of these groups to put that loyalty above the needs of a survivor.  A victim of abuse might well not find a sympathetic pastoral response if he/she named a perpetrator who was part of the same tribe to which the would-be helper owed allegiance.   In some cases, such rejection by a priest could lead to the abused individual taking his or her life.

The description of this culture of clericalism and tribalism in the Chichester Diocese is chilling to read about.  No doubt there are tonight many individual consciences that are being stirred to consider whether they could have done anything more to make a difference.     An episode recorded in the report describes the atmosphere at one stage in part of the Cathedral congregation.  This also appears to have been fed by similar tribal elitist assumptions.  During the 90s, and early years of this century, there was some confusion about the precise boundaries in safeguarding responsibilities at the Cathedral.  One notorious abuser, who acted as a steward in the Cathedral, succeeded in avoiding challenge or confrontation over decades.  This was, in part, due to a failure of communication between Diocese and Cathedral.  No doubt, the similar dynamics of tribalism and rivalry between the two were playing their part in this situation of poor communication.  The Diocesan Safeguarding Officer was denied easy access to Cathedral records and other information.  When she finally spoke to parents of boys who had been abused, these same parents found themselves shunned and ostracised by members of the cathedral congregation.  In a comment the report notes that some of the shunners were those who associated socially with the senior clergy at the Cathedral.  Again, we appear to be observing a pattern endemic in the story of church abuse.  The victims often become the enemy because they are upsetting the status quo.  The forces of clericalism and tribalism seem to rally round to support a perpetrator rather than the victims.  It is hard to see how this collusion to defend a guilty party (including Peter Ball) can be broken unless the responsibility for investigation is taken right out of the hands of people thinking tribally.

There are many other points in the report that I am not of course able to cover in a thousand words.  But the criticisms, whether of Archbishop Carey, the central Church authorities or the various officers in the Diocese of Chichester, all seem to come back to the fundamental issue of self-protection and fear.  For Archbishop Carey, there seems, as I have suggested before, to have been a large dose of naivety spiced with a strong instinct to protect and preserve ‘his’ Church.  The same mistakes which allowed so many offenders to roam the Diocese of Chichester unchallenged for so long, hang on this desire to protect the institution and especially those who served it as clergy.  As I suggested in my previous blog, the instinct to do anything and everything to protect an institution will be particularly strong when the same organisation is the one that which gives you self-esteem and identity.  This ‘institutional narcissism’, as we described it, will be especially strong among the top officials of an organisation.  From America we have been hearing a lot about ‘no collusion and no obstruction’ on the part of the White House when faced with the facts of the interference by the Russian state in the American elections.  Any admitting of Russian interference in the elections would have the effect of undermining the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency, quite apart from uncovering criminal behaviour on his part. In the narrative of the IICSA account we catch glimpses of another organisation – the Church- that is overwhelmed with fear rather than confidence.  This observation could be made about the entire Church of England at present rather than just the Diocese of Chichester.  The narrative of secrecy, cover-ups, failures of communication is a language of fear and even the collapse of confidence.  Once again, we beg the Church to come out of such behaving as though it is scared of the truth.  We implore it to face openly the traumas of the past and work with men and women of goodwill to build a new future of honesty, truth and openness.

Some months ago, I decided to offer to the International Cultic Studies Association a paper on ‘institutional narcissism’ for their gathering this July in Manchester.  The proposal was accepted on the basis of a three-hundred-word synopsis.  Since then I have been trying to work out exactly how the paper should run.

The outline of my idea is this.  Narcissism (in its full-blown version, Narcissistic Personality Disorder NPD) is the result of a deficit in the sense of ‘self’.  This is caused being at the wrong end of neglectful or over-indulgent forms of parenting when young.  The narcissist is someone who is hungry for attention and needs his/her inner core ‘fed’ by others. Along the way he/she will develop a variety of strategies to achieve the manipulation and milking of other people for his own purposes.  Some of these techniques are deployed while adopting a stance of overweening confidence and strength.  Another variant of NPD will seek to control others from a position of pathetic neediness.   The confident overt narcissist is one that is often found at the top of successful organisations or religious institutions.  This is why the disorder is so important to understand for those who study the dynamics of religious organisations.   Every time we encounter power abuse or dysfunction in a church – a common problem – it is always worth looking for the tell-tale signs of narcissistic behaviour among those in charge.

My personal thinking about narcissism in the church has now moved on further.  It is no longer just about narcissistically inclined people using their position of power in the church to achieve a feeding of their inner core.  I have now come to see that this bolstering of inwardly fragile personalities is not only achieved through dominating relationships.   Every reader of this blog will be able to think of people who use their position of being ‘in charge’ as a way of holding their inner self together.  My newer insight is to see that the institutional structure of the Church is itself a narcissistic feeding point.  Whenever I speak about institutional narcissism (IN), I am referring to the fact that the institution (here the Church) is the source of numerous ways of propping up and bolstering individuals.  It does this by providing a variety of titles, rituals and institutional rewards for those who serve it loyally.

 About thirty years ago I was persuaded by my parish sacristan to attend a Glastonbury festival.  Parading through the streets of the town wearing a cope gave me the strange feeling of being on a stage.  This analogy of being an actor in a drama made me wonder about what is going on when every eucharist is effectively treated as a stage play.  In Catholic teaching the priesthood offers the individual the chance to become in some sense Christ himself, an alter Christus.  In whatever way you expound this theological position, this teaching is probably not a healthy one for a sufferer of NPD.  The upper ranks of Anglicanism and Catholicism also provide many other opportunities for being a ‘superior’ person.  I am not of course suggesting that every Canon, Dean or Bishop is guilty of using their position to claim inappropriate power over people.   Sadly, some do.  I have described in previous posts the related idea of ‘acquired situational narcissism’.  This is a variant of NPD and what I am calling IN which suggests that becoming famous or important through status or celebrity can change a person, allowing them to internalise the damaging traits of narcissistic behaviour.

Institutional narcissism as an idea might be considered to be a less serious affliction than the normal kind.  The cult leader with NPD who ruthlessly exploits his followers sexually and financially to boost his flagging sense of self is clearly a menace and a danger.  The individual who enjoys ‘dressing up’ and being part of processions is not on the face of it a danger to anyone.  But IN does have a serious and harmful side.  Among the stories of survivors of clerical abuse are accounts of their interaction with bishops and other church leaders.  It is hard to find stories where such contact with church leaders have led to a positive outcome.  More typically, the story of an approach to a leader is followed at best by a long period of silence or active hostility at worst.  The survivor wants the bishop to set in motion a process for inhibiting an abuser or allowing some other process of justice to unfold.   Such an account of institutional misbehaviour can quite easily be felt to be a threat to the bishop himself.  Why should this be?  The usual answer to this is one that says that protecting the institution is a high priority for church leaders.  My observation is that the church institution and the bishop’s identity are so closely bound up together that an attack on one is felt to be an attack on the other.  Any weakening in the status of the whole church is a weakening of the personal power and status of each individual bishop.  The more the bishop has invested his ‘self’ into the role, the more pain he might feel when listening to a survivor’s account recounting his abuse episode.

Among the stories shared by survivors about their encounters with authorities in the church are accounts of lost files, ‘forgotten’ conversations and denials.  Instead of helpful pastoral engagements there has often been defensiveness and avoidance.  If there are stories of good positive encounters with church authorities, these have not yet been codified into examples of good practice and commended to the wider church by such bodies as the National Safeguarding Team.  No, the examples we have are those of individuals in charge feeling personally threatened and reacting accordingly.

Institutional narcissism, personal self-inflation through the use of acquired titles and rank, is an idea that I want to explore further.  It helps me to understand the tension that is felt by those in leading positions in the church and the difficulty they have in dealing compassionately with the cries of the abused.  A year ago, when Janet Fife wrote her response to the open letter of the Archbishops in connection with safeguarding, she challenged the formality in the way it was written.  She suggested to the Archbishops that, when talking about pain and abuse and referring to themselves as brothers, the use of formal titles was inappropriate.  Hiding behind titles and rank leads all too easily to a public disengagement that is a real problem for the church at present.  The people of Britain will never respond if they feel they are being spoken down to.  That also has been the normal experience of survivors as they meet head-on the all too common institutional narcissism of our national church and its leaders.

It is perhaps unfortunate for the Church of England and other public bodies that iPlayer was ever invented.  It allows the curious and those obsessed by detail to go back and watch small sections of a programme over and over again.  The Panorama episode on the Church of England last Monday was a case in point.  Certain things within it jarred for me and I needed to check out what had really been said as well as the demeanour of the person uttering the words. 

This blog piece has to assume that the reader saw the programme (or at least read my previous blog) as space does not allow me to run through the things said.  Three people were especially prominent in the programme, in addition to the valiant survivors who appeared.  One was the investigating Lincolnshire Superintendent, Rick Hatton.  The other two were Bishop Alan Wilson and Bishop Peter Hancock.  All three came over as having individual sincerity and honesty.  Each, in different ways, conveyed emotion and this drew the viewer in to feel with them the sentiments of sorrow they were experiencing.  The emotional connection between Superintendent Hatton and the viewer in particular was unexpected, but it made for powerful television.  The other two individuals mentioned also drew us into their personal emotional world.  We felt caught up in the way they had reacted as human beings to the horrors of sexual abuse by clergy.   However, this spell of identification was partly broken in the final few moments of the programme.  One of the bishops showed himself to be unable to answer a straightforward question about the statistics of abuse.  Suddenly the good rapport that Bishop Hancock had built up with the viewer over the programme was shattered.  His evasive response to the interviewer changed the way we related to everything he had previously said in the earlier parts of the interview.  Instead of being a man of feelings and integrity, Bishop Hancock suddenly showed himself as someone who was there to perform in front of an audience.  He was there not to speak for himself but on behalf of others. 

On the Twittersphere this question has been asked by several people.  Who was Bishop Hancock representing and who was he speaking for?  The evasiveness of the final moments of the programme showed that all his earlier answers were in all likelihood rehearsed and controlled by other unseen people.  Unlike all the other people in the programme, the Bishop’s words came to be revealed as the words of a corporate entity.  We were, in other words, hearing from, not a live independent human being but rather we were witnessing a stage-managed, damage limiting show.   The story of the Wizard of Oz immediately comes to mind.

Whenever an individual has the task of standing up on stage and presenting views for someone else, particularly when they are likely to be challenged at a later date, one can feel sorry for that person.  I felt sorry for Bishop Hancock on Panorama just as I had felt for Archbishop Welby when he spouted out nonsense about the Smyth scandal to Channel 4 barely three weeks ago.  Whoever are the hidden forces who pull strings behind the scenes, one feels an atmosphere of desperation in the system when half-truths and palpably false information are fed to the public.  In this age of Twitter, Facebook and email, information travels as fast as light.  How anyone can expect to hide truth in 2019 is a mystery?  The story of spiritual/sexual abuse in the Church is far too big to be buried in a flurry of misleading statistics.  The revelation in 2010 that there were only 13 cases of serious abuse to be examined in the entire C/E was palpably false information but it had the effect of damping down criticism of the institution for a period.  Control of information was then power for those in charge of the Church and they used it effectively to delay the day of reckoning that seems now to be very close.

The truth of the full extent of the abuse scandal within the Church of England is, for the moment, hidden from most of us.  The IICSA hearings did prise open numerous cans of worms and give us a glimpse of what appear to be outrageous manipulations of information which were used to protect the institution.  I am still haunted by what was revealed at the hearing about Chichester when a detective investigating the crimes of Bishop Ball was actively obstructed in the course of his duties by the then Bishop of the Diocese.  The IICSA hearings of last year lead us to suspect that next Monday’s reports and conclusions on the Diocese of Chichester and Peter Ball are likely to be fairly dire.  Somehow the horror of what churchmen (it does seem to be men) will do to try to protect the church from scandal and malfeasance has now limited power to shock.  It is a bit like the situation in the States where presidential lies have become so much the norm that no one expresses any shock at a new one.  But even the negative conclusions of IICSA towards the Church may be survivable if the Church finally comes to the realisation that it cannot prosper when information in this area is suppressed or manipulated.  The interviewer on Panorama upset Bishop Hancock (and presumably his minders) when she scratched at potentially the greatest scandal of all – the statistics of abuse across the whole Church. What was being discussed was sensitive information about the full extent of abuse in the Church.  Not being ready to share that information suggests that Church authorities know that it cannot yet be revealed without a great deal of spin and preparation.  The need for the application of extensive communication skills suggests that the news in this area is very bad indeed.  Some months ago, it was suggested to me by someone ‘in the know’ that the Church dealing with abuse scandals was a bit like fighting forest fires which keep erupting all over the place. 

Panorama indicated to us that control of information is a tactic of power still actively employed by the central Church authorities.  The originators of this tactic do not appear to be the bishops themselves but the highly paid Church House officials at the centre of things.   Unfortunately for them, their control of the levers of power was all too easy to spot in both the recent television interviews.    The interview of Archbishop Welby on Channel 4 was, like that of Bishop Hancock, unconvincing and somewhat contrived.  The bishops themselves both had personal integrity and human warmth but nothing could disguise the fact that they were speaking for someone other than themselves.  The Church cannot continue to go down a path of fielding individuals to act as spokesmen for the institution.  The public want, as far as possible, to encounter real human beings who can speak for the church.  The people of England relate to real people, people who, like them, are living lives of joy mixed with pain.  They will never want to identify with a group when they suspect that the information put out is being manipulated and managed before it is shared with them.  In short, let bishops be bishops, shepherds of the flock, not puppets being controlled by forces that are invisible and are not necessarily working for the good of all.

One of the notable things about last night’s episode of Panorama about child abuse in the Church of England was the official press statement put out by the Church after the programme.  It recognised that the screening of Panorama might be upsetting for some viewers and helpfully provided a NSPCC helpline for those affected.  We are left wondering why the Church has not accumulated the expertise and wisdom to set up such a temporary hotline for itself.  How is it that if, as is often protested, the needs of survivors are central to their concerns, the necessary skills and experience are not close to hand?  We might have hoped that from across the Church, a half dozen experienced people, with training in counselling and knowledge of safeguarding issues could have been brought together for this purpose. 

The ‘inconvenient truth’ about the Church’s response to safeguarding and child protection was hinted at again and again in the programme.  Without it being spelled out, we got the message that, for the Church hierarchy, victims/survivors of sexual abuse are a difficult problem; they are ‘damaged’ people; they have complicated needs and the Church has many other exciting and more important things to do.  Providing a proper response to survivors would be horrendously expensive, time-consuming and deeply uncomfortable for Church leaders.  The programme, at its conclusion, did not give us a clear answer as to whether anything has fundamentally changed in respect of the treatment of survivors.  The lead Bishop in charge of safeguarding, Peter Hancock, fielded for the home team, representing and speaking for the episcopal leadership and senior lay staff who run the Church of England from Church House. Hancock appeared to give a good account of the way that the Church is now approaching the issue of historic abuse.  ‘It was a mistake’, he admitted, ‘not to put out all the data that we had’.  This comment was in reference to the so-called Past Cases Review (PCR) which began in 2008 when the national Church was attempting to find out the extent of the problem of historic child abuse by church officers.  This comment followed one from Bishop Alan Wilson when he described his shock at finding out how figures of historic abuse cases had been ‘massaged’ downwards to the improbable total of 13.  Alan has become a friend and supporter to many survivors and so his voice provided a refreshing degree of scepticism to the official line being put out by central Church authorities throughout the programme.  The extraordinary understatement of the overall problem by the PCR has led inevitably to widespread scepticism about the Church’s official line ever since. 

The programme spent much of its time focussed on the Diocese of Lincoln.  Officially there were, in 2012, no historic cases needing to be re-examined.  But, a new employee in the diocese had found a list that had been prepared for the Review containing 53 names.  The police were called in. 

Panorama then followed the police account of Operation Redstone under the leadership of Detective Superintendent Mike Hatton.    As well as contacting the survivors of past abuses, the police uncovered evidence that two former bishops of Lincoln had in different ways chosen to overlook or supress evidence of perpetrators.  This enabled them to continue in office so that they could be a risk to other children.  Lincoln Diocese spoke of its regret and the word ‘mistake’ once again appears in the official statements. 

Things, according to Bishop Hancock, are now different.   The response of the church to survivors coming forward is now ‘compassionate, fair, appropriate and swift.’   This narrative of a fresh updated approach to survivors was contradicted by one of their number, Matt Ineson.   ‘The Church does not want to know’ was his reaction and this was true for him and other survivors that he was in touch with.   His experience of disclosing severe sexual abuse by a clergyman in the York diocese goes back seven years to 2012.  Being a clergyman himself, he had followed the formal procedures for making complaints.  He approached and disclosed to a number of senior clergymen, including the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.  Each of his eight submissions to clergy and bishops had been deflected in some way.  In the end he went to the police.  His abuser took his own life before coming to trial.

Bishop Hancock expressed his own regret at the way the Church had treated Matt and said that there was going to be review of his case.  Bishop Alan in a memorable image suggested that the church was like an ‘uptight institution hiding behind the sofa chatting to the lawyers’.  Bishop Hancock’s protestations of openness and a new beginning were also somewhat undermined when, in response to a direct question about the number of extant cases there existed, he refused to give any figures.  This was in contrast to his stated desire for the church to be transparent in all its dealings.  There still seems to be a strong sense of the church holding on to its secrets and privileges over against the clamouring of survivors and the public who want a new openness and a fresh start.

The programme concluded with a number of story-lines unfinished.  There was Matt’s story which still has many unanswered questions to be faced, particularly in respect of his official complaints against named individuals.  These remain unresolved.   There was also mention of a newly uncovered file in the York diocese mentioning a number of abuse cases that have not been examined.  We still were left with the feeling that for whatever reason, the Church remains defensive and highly secretive.  Any control of information, which still appears to be happening, is a power tactic.  If there is still secrecy and an attempt to bury the past, all such attempts to do this will likely fail.  Truth, as I have said before, has a habit of spilling out to the embarrassment of those who want to suppress it.  The secrets that are held in order to protect reputations have the capacity to wreak enormous damage on institutions.  The Church of England has much to lose if it does not get its house in order over safeguarding. 

On Friday last, there was a notable event with the publication of a new book about safeguarding entitled To Heal and not to Harm.  The authors, Alan Wilson and Rosie Harper are both slightly known to me so I was anxious to get hold of a copy.  As the book was not immediately available as a hard copy, I had to order my copy on Kindle.  What I write today is not a full review of the book but a restatement in my own words of what the authors have to say about the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  What they say seems so clearly to set out the problem of safeguarding and a proper response to survivors and how the church seems so often to get things wrong.

Anyone who has followed this blog over the months and years will know that one of the major issues on the part of abuse survivors is their claim that the Church authorities do not want to engage with them.  Instead of being an object for the Church’s care and concern, survivors have often felt themselves to be nuisances and made to feel somehow responsible for the problem that has come into being through the abuse perpetrated against them.  Defensiveness, avoidance, forgetfulness and even outright lying has come to mark many of the reported relationships between those in charge of the Church and the wounded victims of church abuse.  Some of this distancing obviously has to do with legal issues and the matters of criminality that have to go through the courts.  But whatever the official explanation, the Church has a poor record in doing the simple things like answering letters, picking up the phone and maintaining human contact with those who have suffered at the hands of members of the Church. Survivors constantly claim that to receive anything in the way of apologies or compensation from the Church, they have to have an enormous amount of perseverance.

Wilson and Harper’s retelling of the Good Samaritan story early in their book is utterly brilliant for the way that it sets out clearly the way many survivors encounter blockages in their dealings with the Church.  By likening the situation of survivors to the man robbed on the Jericho road, the reader is able to grasp quickly the main issues in the survivors’ difficult dealings with the Church.  Jesus tells the story with a very clear purpose.  He is not interested in the motivation or identity of the robbers.  He did not reflect on the importance of self-defence classes for travellers.  All that he was concerned about was the wounded man lying on the road and the way that those who passed by responded.

Our authors want us to see the man lying in the road as possibly like a victim of church abuse.  Nothing else is mentioned or thought to be of major importance in the story, except responding immediately to the victim.  Responding urgently to a situation of need takes precedence over everything else.  A failure to offer immediate help by the Church, which is what many survivors report, greatly adds to the pain and damage of the original abuse.  We may speculate on the thoughts that went through the minds of the first two on the scene of the attack, the Priest and the Levite.  What they might have been thinking is not far from the possible thoughts of church authorities when faced with survivors.  ‘This is too complicated’ – ‘facing up to this problem may affect the church’s reputation with the general public’ – ‘dealing with the legal issues will be terrifyingly expensive’.  The Bible of course does not tell us the thoughts of the priest and Levite but countless preachers have attempted to fill in this gap in the narrative.  But, whatever the motivation, we are left with the bare fact that two of the three passed by on the other side.  Two of the three were constrained by their involvement with the official religious life of their day, and we suspect from the narrative that issues such as ritual impurity from coming into contact with blood and a potential corpse played a part in their decisions.

The inability of the Church to take a straightforward approach to the needs of survivors has puzzled many people and indeed is one of the constant refrains of the book by our two authors.  The wounded man on the road needed time, care and ongoing support.  Not only did he need these things, but he needed them at once.  There was no time for a committee to meet to decide whether he qualified for a grant from a discretionary fund.  The wounded man needed the donkey transport to the inn on that very day.  If an institution like the Church recognises that such things as abuse can happen, then it needs to have mechanisms to respond and deal with it at once.  Problems do not go away when they are ignored.  They have a habit of coming back to haunt the institution with a greater vehemence because the victims/survivors have found no immediate reply to their pleas for help.

To Heal and not to Harm contains many tough and challenging insights about the danger of the church failing to respond to the needs of past and future survivors.  The retelling of the story of the Good Samaritan to suggest that Jesus cares above all for needy survivors is a stunningly powerful but simple message.  In a week’s time we are to receive the awaited report on the hearings of IICSA from last year.  The goings on in the Diocese of Chichester and in Lambeth Palace itself revealed in those hearings sounded very much like conversation among a convocation of Priests and Levites in Britain.  How best can we hide and protect the church and its interests from the inconvenient truths of past abuses?  We seldom hear the voice or feelings of the Samaritan in what is debated behind closed doors.  Of the Samaritan it is said that when he saw the wounded man, he was ‘moved with compassion’.  Compassion was then translated into instant appropriate action and Jesus spoke of this response by telling the lawyer, ‘Go and do thou likewise.’ Perhaps the Church needs to hear better this urgent command.

As the priest read the prayer of blessing over the elements on Easter morning, he used the memorable words from Prayer E in Common Worship.  Lord … help us to work together for that day when your kingdom comes and justice and mercy will be seen in all the earth.  As he read these words, I realised in a flash that the two words, mercy and justice, were precisely what survivors and victims long for, above all, in their dealing with the Church.  At the same time, those of us who care passionately for them to receive these things, whether we are believing Christians or not, are able to make a small contribution towards the coming of God’s kingdom.

Let us look at each of these words in turn.  Like most words in the Bible, ‘mercy’ has a variety of meanings.  Anything that is said will not be complete but we can attempt to sketch out the range of meanings.  At its heart the word has the meaning of responding to need.  One side, the side showing mercy, is in the position to provide help.  Mercy is offered in the form of material support, forgiveness or simply acceptance and love.  If we were to describe the main need of an abuse survivor, it would be for another human being to reach out in understanding and care.  Psychological wounds and hurts need soothing and binding up.  In a Christian context, mercy might be what an entire community could be offering.  It might involve offering a place of safety, a sanctuary beyond the hurts of the past abuses.  Also, as any reader of Scripture will be aware, mercy is a quality of God himself.  He reaches out to us and responds to our state of neediness, whatever form this might take.

The second word also sums up a crucial area of need for a survivor.  Justice is not necessarily about punishment and revenge.  Justice is needed so that a victim of wrong can see that the world has a moral centre.   When things go badly wrong, we all need to know that there are people and institutions who really care that there are such things as rules, consequences and recompenses to be paid.  If evil is never confronted and neutralised then it will be allowed to flourish and spread to the detriment of the well-being of all.  The existence of justice and right in society really matter.  The present betrayal of the values of honesty and fair-dealing in Trump’s America is a serious matter.  When one person at the centre sits lightly to the rules of truth and civilised respectful behaviour to others, it affects the whole of society. 

My previous blog post was hinting at the way that justice and mercy are not always found in Church structures in a way that would help survivors.  After the Archbishop’s interview on Channel 4, it was suggested by ‘Graham’ that there were 14 ‘points of dispute’ in the interview in relation to the Smyth affair.  The detail of Graham’s challenge is not here important.  It is also not being suggested that the Archbishop was in any way deliberately lying.  He was, however, as we suggested earlier, identifying with the narrative that is being put out by his advisers.  He is far too busy to check out all these statements for himself, but hopes that the advice he is receiving is accurate and truthful.  In a situation where the truths of the past are contested, we are left with a situation where survivors find very little to comfort or encourage them.  Whatever else, the institution is providing with this kind of narrative of what happened in the past, mercy is notable by its total absence.  Institutional defensiveness, whether justified by the facts or not, does not create a good ambiance for the experiencing of any kind of mercy by survivors.  Survivors look for mercy and justice but what they are offered feels to be a long way from this ideal.  The hard, defensive exterior shown by the Church in this situation has little in common with the hoped-for values of the kingdom articulated by Common Worship.

Working together for the coming of God’s kingdom is something that Christians everywhere pay lip-service to.  It should also be possible for survivors to say to bishops, clergy and church lawyers who face them, that ‘above all we look to you for mercy and justice’.  If you want to show that you share these kingdom values, help us first of all to find a place of safety and support.  Then help us to know that the world and especially the Christian world is a place with a moral core, where rights are wronged and evil is named and dealt with.  We do not recognise that being undermined, receiving threats, put-downs and humiliations are in any way appropriate to our needs as abuse survivors.  Neither does this kind of treatment do justice to the meaning of the kingdom of God for which we all supposed to pray and work towards.  Mercy and justice must be celebrated by Christians in every context.  Above all, we expect to find it in the dealings between church leaders and survivors.  When these values of mercy and justice are not respected, one has to ask whether the core values of Christianity are in operation.

We are left with two simple words that contain within them almost everything that needs to be said about the way the powerful should deal with the weak, the damaged and the exploited.  Clearly what I have said about the needs of survivors could be applied to any group of needy people.  The needs of the world are massive and what the church can do is finite.  Somehow, I feel that the church loses its way when the needs of its own interests take precedence over these dictates of mercy and justice.  In every relationship between the church and individuals and groups who come for help, the question must be asked.  Are the dictates of mercy and justice being given their due place, so as to build the Kingdom of God for which we all long?

A postscript. Lambeth Palace is expected to be holding a meeting organised by the Archbishop’s staff to meet survivors today, the 25th April. The meeting is scheduled for 10 am to last for two hours and is entitled ‘Responding well to Victims of Abuse’. A problem is that one of the supporters of survivors originally invited has been uninvited. He will be turned away if he appears at the gate-house of Lambeth Palace. Whatever else is going on by withdrawing this invitation, this implies at the very least that the organisers appear to be trying to control the outcome of the meeting to suit their own agendas. Holding meetings with a potentially vulnerable group and then banning one of those who speaks for them shows that the two themes I have addressed in this post, mercy and justice, are not top of the Church’s agenda. Is Lambeth Palace showing itself to be a place that works ‘together for that day when your kingdom comes and justice and mercy will be seen in all the earth’?

The Church of England’s General Synod voted on 11 November, 1992 to ordain women to the priesthood. Why were the first women not ordained until March 1994? At 25 years’ distance it might seem that the ordination of the thousand or so female deacons into the priesthood could have proceeded within a few months. With my own silver anniversary on 23 April, I’ve been reflecting back on that process.

In order to get the legislation through Synod without splitting the Church, the House of Bishops made several substantial compromises. One of these was that all the women who believed themselves called to the priesthood, and who had already been through a selection process for ordination, would have to go through selection again. This time it was called a ‘discernment procedure’. In many dioceses ‘discernment’ consisted of little more than a chat with the bishop. I was in Manchester, however, where opposition to women’s ordination was strong. We had a more involved procedure culminating with an interview.

I knew it was going to be a hostile interview as soon as I walked into the room. The two interviewers (a Manchester archdeacon and a female deacon from another diocese) were sitting with their backs to the light, and far enough apart so that I couldn’t look at both of them at once. As the interview proceeded they alternated questions, so every question came from someone I couldn’t see, and I would have to turn to them to answer it.  Meanwhile the other would be observing me, but I couldn’t see them. It was a set-up calculated to put candidates off their stroke.

I was asked to recount the history of my vocation. My sense of calling dated back to when I was 9 years of age and my family were attending a Baptist church in the USA, so my answer required a little time and explanation. The interviewers listened with apparent attention. Then one of them said, ‘That can’t have happened.’ Incredulous, I asked, ‘Why can’t it have happened?’ ‘Because the Church hadn’t made its mind up then.’ I couldn’t understand how they could assume that God had no foreknowledge of the decision the Church of England would make, and had made no provision for it. I pictured God, on that November afternoon in 1992, being taken unawares and desperately scrabbling around to find some women to call to the priesthood. It was the more ridiculous because at my selection conference in 1983 there had been no pretence that my vocation was to the diaconate rather than the priesthood. So I replied to A and B, ‘Are you telling me God can only do what the Church of England decides to do?’ This did not go down well.

The whole interview was traumatic and for some days afterwards I was shaking and ill. Nor was I alone; women reported coming out of their interview and vomiting, or having repeated nightmares in the days and weeks following.  When we got the letter with our results, a number of women had been turned down on clearly spurious grounds. One mother was told having young children meant she couldn’t function as a priest; the same did not apply to her priest husband. Another, a lecturer at an ecumenical ordination training scheme, was told it didn’t give her a ‘sufficient sacramental base’ for priesthood – despite her also being attached to an Anglican parish. All but one of these had the decision reversed on appeal. Her case was particularly hard. Her interview was interrupted first by the fire alarm and then by a power failure. Before the discernment process began she had been promised an incumbency by her bishop, but now she was told she was unsuitable for the priesthood. The bishop’s reply to protests on her behalf was that to change the decision would ‘discredit the process’. , She was eventually priested after token ‘further training’.

When my report arrived, I found to my relief that I had been recommended for ordination. However, the report was so intensely negative that I didn’t see how they could have reached a positive conclusion. I could not have recommended for the priesthood someone with the qualities they attributed to me. I showed it to my spiritual director, an Anglican nun well versed in the ways of the Church of England. She said, ‘It makes me feel sick.’ She couldn’t understand the ordained female interviewer, whom she knew, taking part in this abusive process.

I was concerned that this very critical and unfair report would remain permanently in my file and affect future job prospects, so I asked the bishop to remove it. He refused. I am grateful to several clergy and lay people who then wrote to the bishop with an alternative – and more positive – view of my personality and abilities. One or two of these at least were retained in my file, as I discovered last year when I sent for it.

This was the background to my ordination as a priest on 23 April 1994. The ordination service was wonderful. It was personally healing and fulfilling, and the love and support shown for us was overwhelming. But we had been made to run the gauntlet to get there – and a senior diocesan figure admitted that the discernment procedure had been made brutal in order to placate our opponents.

Did I approach my ordination with hope? Well, I certainly hoped it wouldn’t be disrupted by protesters, and that I wouldn’t disgrace myself by falling down the precipitous chancel steps. And I hoped that eventually, as more women were ordained and moved into senior positions, the Church would become a juster and kinder institution. But I had seen senior women taking part in a process designed to hurt and demean their clergy sisters, and I had no illusions that simply promoting women would miraculously transform the Church. I had learned that the Church does not advance those who it fears will rock the boat by making a stand on principle. I had seen senior clergy play politics with the vocations of dedicated and godly women. And, not for the first (or last) time, I had seen a bishop refuse to do what he knew to be right, simply to avoid discrediting a Church procedure.

The iron had entered into my soul. I used to think that if we showed we were hardworking, capable, and didn’t make a fuss, the Church would eventually recognise that God had genuinely called us. We could then take an equal place alongside our male colleagues. I no longer believed that. I now recognised that we were dealing with bullies – and bullies must be resisted. Jesus told a story about an unjust judge who had to be inconvenienced before he would give a poor widow justice. When bishops put Church politics before justice and the kingdom of God, sometimes they need to be made uncomfortable until they do what is right.