THE devil is not often mentioned in Church of England liturgy. Like “He Who Must Not Be Named” in the Harry Potter books, he appears only at significant moments: at the baptismal renunciations, at the climax of the Litany, in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s temptations. This Sunday’s Common Worship collect is a contemporary version of the BCP’s for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. The Prayer Book context makes more sense, because the collect skilfully anticipates the prescribed epistle from I John 3. Together, epistle and collect call believers to purify themselves, linking the destruction of the devil’s work to Christ’s Epiphany and our hope of eternal life. These connecting threads are lost in Common Worship.

As it happens, I have been rewatching the Harry Potter films recently. I have been struck this time round by just how dark they are. Evil and good are intertwined. Evil, in the form of Dementors and the Death Eaters, prey on life. Harry’s character is marked both with the love of his dead parents and Voldemort’s scar. In the beginning and at the end, Harry has to choose, to purify himself. There is an evil potential within him: he would have flourished in Slytherin House.

Some churches will be keeping this Sunday as Safeguarding Sunday. In the light of the Makin report (News, 8 November), we could all seek a greater awareness of impure habits and behaviour. The perversions of John Smyth, which have led to this week’s resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, did not come from nowhere. Smyth’s narcissistic pathology was subtly reinforced by class, family, and the harsh, self-torturing spirituality fostered through the “Bash” camps of Iwerne Minister, where generations of public schoolboys were subjected to the savage preaching of Smyth and his ilk. I have known people who found faith and friendship at Iwerne Minster, and are lastingly grateful for what it gave them. But there are others, as we now know, who were groomed and seduced for a gratification that would never own that it was sexual.

I knew some of those influenced by Smyth and his circle when I was at Cambridge. They were the smart and charming young men who went to the most prestigious colleges and were destined for top careers. While we are right to be appalled by Smyth’s sadism, we should not assume that the righteous among us are invulnerable to the lash of the snake. This week’s collect calls us to self-examination. Those from the Evangelical networks who hid the facts about Smyth must have thought that they were doing the right thing. They were terribly wrong, and they must now try to work out why. His victims are owed much, but justice should not mean revenge. As we now know, many abusers are victims of past abuse. Those of us who are involved in safeguarding must always be sensitive to the question: who guards the guardians?