Professional regulation for clerics
From Mr Alan Stanley
Madam, — Professor David McClean sets out clearly (Letters, 17 January) the compelling reasons that clergy should not become employees. Having been a self-employed member of a regulated profession for all of my working life, may I commend that way of being to the Church of England as a way of ensuring good professional standards both of practice and care for the clergy.
As members of the health-care, legal, teaching, and accountancy professions, and many more will recognise, membership of a professional register is a prerequisite of practising, but is not tied to whether the registrant is employed or self-employed, or an “office-holder”.
Besides practising, I spent some time working in the area of fitness to practise (FtP). FtP is a system designed to protect the public, using a whole range of options where a professional is judged to have fallen short. These can range from advice, through compulsory continuing professional development, to, ultimately, erasure from the register.
The whole is there to support a professional in trouble. In my own area, the regional postgraduate dean was often the first point of support. It still baffles me why the Church of England makes such heavy weather of clergy discipline when such good examples of fitness to practice exist so widely. The Church does not need to invent its own system: it need to humility to learn from others.
ALAN STANLEY
Apple Acre, 2 Rein Court
Aberford, Leeds LS25 3BS
Madam, — Professor McClean adds welcome context to the discussion about clergy employment status. Improvement is sorely needed in the protections against weaponisation of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM), vexatious accusation, institutional process slippage, and significant financial loss in mounting meaningful defence, even before the roughly 80-per-cent outcome of No Further Action decisions.
Within what Professor McClean terms “legal entitlement to many statutory employment rights” — note: not entitlement to all — the current version of office-holder status applied to clergy seems to deny us any formal duty of care. Injustices routinely result, and no redress for process slippage is feasible in that existing framework.
The Sheldon report “I Was Handed Over to the Dogs” exposed the gravity of the situation: about 20 per cent of CDM-ed clergy experienced suicidal thoughts or moral injury, including many innocent vulnerable ministers. When will the missing piece be put in the employment-protections jigsaw? The Charity Commission was steered by Church House towards thinking that this was in hand. Is it? I nearly died because it wasn’t in place. How long before someone else does?
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED
Survivors need change, not ‘extravagant contrition’
From the Revd Dr Stephen Cherry
Madam, — In writing about the expression of remorse by senior church leaders, Dr Eve Poole (Analysis, 17 January) has identified a very significant issue. Unfortunately, however, her analysis does not get to the root of the problem. This is because she, like most Christian commentators, allows the theology of divine forgiveness to frame her understanding of interpersonal human forgiveness.
Contrition is an important part of the sinner’s approach to a merciful God because it reflects sincerity of regret for the sinful action or omission, but it also reflects the self-awareness of the sinner who realises that they have, so to speak, self-harmed in the process of sinning. The contrite penitent is both sorry for what they have done and sorry for themselves. It is apt for both to be offered in faith and trust to the mercy of God.
When we are responsible for actual harm inflicted on others, then reports of our inner feelings are far less important. Complete absence of them can betoken a callousness and disregard, but cranking them up doesn’t offer anything useful to a victim or survivor.
Indeed, to suggest that it might do is to fail yet again to recognise the priority of the needs of the abused and to suggest that the feelings of those in positions of power are of paramount significance.
What we need now is not effective remorse or “extravagant contrition”, but profound ecclesial repentance. This, sadly, is a subject on which Christian thinking is incredibly thin, besides being muddled by inappropriate modelling on the theology of divine forgiveness of individual sinners.
Ecclesial repentance must mean actual change in the real institution which cuts to the core of the problem: the abuse of power. That isn’t going to be a quick fix, but until it is sorted out, victims and survivors are right to maintain their stance of unforgiveness towards the powers that be, and remain unswayed by words or gestures of remorse, however “extravagant”.
STEPHEN CHERRY
King’s College
Cambridge CB2 1ST
From “Survivor Y”
Madam, — I am one of the underlying complainants in the process under the Clergy Discipline Measure which resulted in David Tudor’s prohibition from ministry for life. It is a huge relief that the seriousness and long-lasting effects of his sexual behaviour towards me when I was a teenager have now been acknowledged, and that the highest currently possible Church of England penalty has been imposed.
I welcome the fact that “an independent Safeguarding Practice Review will now take place to ensure lessons are learned from this case.”
Sharing this now is very scary, but it is absolutely nothing compared with what others who have bravely spoken to the BBC and Channel 4 have been through. I am writing as an adult, with support, whose abuse has been admitted. Unlike them, you do not have to put the word “alleged” in front of “victim” when referring to me.
The Chelmsford diocesan decision to change policy so that all area deans were appointed honorary canons had consequences that must to be apologised for and learned from. It should also be noted, however, that discovering that Mr Tudor had been given the title “Canon” was what triggered me to think that the Church must be missing information that I thought that it had been given in 1987.
I fear that the news of so many historic safeguarding failures may discourage other victims of abuse from making disclosures, without which the Church cannot act. It has been a long and complicated process, but I have generally felt well supported through it since making contact with the National Safeguarding Team.
All who have been victims of abuse are individuals with unique survival stories that must be heard if, when, and how they choose to tell them. It is my prayer that anyone else affected by media coverage after this tribunal decision will also find support appropriate to their own individual situation.
There was, as you reported, “No Christmas let-up for Cottrell” (News, 3 January); but that also meant that there was no respite for victims, survivors, or their families from the trauma of learning more about the case at a time when most support lines were closed. I was very grateful to hear the Bishop of Gloucester’s sensitive comments on The World This Weekend. I completely agree that any further discussion of the underlying case needs to be part of the review process, not through the media.
I have found the Newcastle diocesan “If I Told You, What Would You Do?” resources very helpful. With reference to these, I would like to thank those who support me to use my voice, and ask that those who find it difficult to understand who I am right now still respect my choices.
Throughout my involvement in the CDM process, my motivation has been a search for restorative justice, not punishment. I have accepted the Archbishop of York’s offer of a meeting, as I think we have a lot to learn from each other.
“SURVIVOR Y”
Address supplied
Trailblazing career of Muriel Allen
From Professor June Purvis
Madam, — All of us who knew Muriel Allen will have differing memories of her, but Canon Angela Tilby’s commentary (Comment, 10 January), framed as “tough old boot”, raises many questions. Would such a phrase be used about a man from her background? I doubt it.
Muriel came from a poor, large working-class family in the 1930s, when there were few opportunities for girls of her class, and low expectations of what they could do. Yet, with grit and determination to succeed in a man’s world, she became the first woman governor of Kingston Prison, Portsmouth, in charge of male prisoners. At her promotion board, she had been expected to become a governor of a women’s prison, but she decided to test the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and ask to be appointed to a men’s prison.
As a mature student, Muriel studied for a history degree at the University of Portsmouth and inaugurated the Josephine Butler Memorial Prize. After she retired, she worked tirelessly for a centre for homeless families, raising as much money as she could and giving generously of her own resources here and elsewhere, so that there was little money left during her later years.
As a women’s-rights trailblazer, she is rightly commemorated in the plaque, with other Portsmouth women activists, in our Guildhall.
JUNE PURVIS
36 Carmarthen Avenue, Drayton
Portsmouth PO6 2AQ
The Moscow chaplaincy
From the Revd Rupert Moreton
Madam, — The statement has recently appeared on the Moscow Patriarchate website: “On December 15, the Revd. Canon Dr. Arun John . . . was licensed as the new Chaplain of St. Andrews’s [sic] Anglican church in Moscow by Archdeacon Dr. Leslie Nathaniel from the Church of England Diocese in Europe. . . With the blessing of Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, and at the invitation of St. Andrew’s church, the event was attended by a DECR staff member, Mr. Danil Arakelyan, who addressed words of congratulations to the new chaplain. . .”
Vsyo normal’no, as they say in Russia. But it isn’t normal. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, supported by Patriarch Kirill, has seen carnage unknown in Europe since the Second World War, when the Church of England had the sense to withdraw from Berlin.
This is not the Moscow of the 1980s, when, as a student, I attended the chaplaincy’s eucharists at the embassy. Some in the Soviet regime had at least some moral compass, and then the Orthodox Church needed quiet support. Now, it needs prophetic resistance. The appointment shows no understanding of the geopolitical peril and sensitivities in which we find ourselves — acutely felt here in Finland, where I was Chaplain (1998-2011).
Were I still Chaplain, I hope I would have the courage to resign in protest.
RUPERT MORETON
Ratatie 1, 81280 Uimaharju
Finland
Middle East: repentance
From Mr Stephen Collier
Madam, — It is good to read your coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but something is missing. Our country needs to acknowledge its part in causing the conflict. In 1948, our country had the mandate, the authority, the responsibility, and the power to bring about a just settlement in the Middle East. We made promises to the people of Palestine, but we broke those promises, we betrayed them, and, when the going got tough, we left them to their fate. Over the past 77 years, we have done nothing to put these wrongs right.
We must repent and take full responsibility for our actions and lack of action. Only then can we hope to be a part of the solution. Repentance must be national. We owe it to all those innocent children massacred.
STEPHEN COLLIER
9 Drew Gardens
Greenford UB6 7QF
Newton’s outlook
From Professor Kevin Walsh
Madam, — Quoting Coleridge’s description of “this miserable watchmaking scheme of things”, Canon Malcom Guite continues by suggesting that a Newtonian view of nature is “soulless” (Poet’s Corner, 10 January).
I quite agree that the word “Newtonian” implies a mechanical (“clockwork”) universe and the determinism that follows from it. Newton himself, however, while famously not a Trinitarian, did not believe that things like planets were motivated by “blind fate” and held a strong faith in there being divine presence in the universe — far from a “soulless” view.
KEVIN WALSH
Glencairn, Izane Road
Bexleyheath DA6 8NU
Brimstone and Trump
From Mr Peter Dillistone
Madam, — There may be a lot wrong with the Church of England at present, but having watched the inauguration of Donald Trump yesterday and heard the fire-and- brimstone support for him from the Church over there, I have to say that I am glad that I live in England.
PETER DILLISTONE
4 Ullswater Avenue
Stourport on Severn
Worcestershire DY13 8QP