Victims of abuse by clergy have criticised the Church of England’s close relationship with the insurer advising it on compensation claims.
They said the Church had cut contact and emotional support from them on the advice of Ecclesiastical – which has a senior clergy member on its board.
An independent reviewer said in one victim’s case “financial interests were allowed to impact practice”.
The Church said it aimed to separate pastoral care from insurance issues.’

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One of the studies was a national survey of more than 1,000 clergy. The other involved in-depth interviews with 35 ministers from five states. The research raises three critical areas of concern:

• Too much faith in miracles: More than three in 10 clergy in the national survey said they would strongly agree with a congregant who said, “I believe God will cure me of this cancer.” Eighteen percent affirmed the belief that every medical treatment should be accepted “because my faith says to do everything I can to stay alive.”
• Lack of knowledge: In the in-depth study, spiritual leaders showed little knowledge of end-of-life care, including the benefits of palliative care and potential harms associated with invasive interventions. “Many grossly overestimated the benefits of aggressive medical procedures at the end of life,” researchers reported in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. Three-quarters said they would like more training in end-of-life issues.
• Fear of overstepping boundaries: The default position of many clergy, even those who personally believed it was against God’s will to suffer unnecessarily, was to merely support the decisions of dying congregants and their family members.

But even such passivity has consequences, researchers said, in that it can enable congregants to seek potentially nonbeneficial treatments that are associated with increased suffering.

The larger problem was summarized by one study participant: “We have not done a good job…on preparing people to die–that they don’t need to live the last days of their lives under terrible and excruciating pain.”

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Over the past few months, the Bay Area has been waxing nostalgic over the 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love,” the 1967 season when “hippies” and tens of thousands of seekers, drifters and runaways poured into the city’s suddenly chaotic Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

To many Americans, the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, which the Summer of Love came to represent, may seem like an irrelevant little experiment involving LSD, tie-dyes, free love, shaggy hairstyles and rock bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

It was all of that, but the mind-blowing revolution that rocked the streets of San Francisco that summer may also be seen as a new religious movement that profoundly shaped the lives and spiritual expression of millions of Americans who never dropped acid, grew a beard, burned their bra, or set foot in a hippie commune.

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“The hearing panel has concluded that the scope and severity of Bishop Bruno’s misconduct … unjustly and unnecessarily disturbed the ministry of a mission of the church,” the ruling stated.

The panel concluded Bishop Bruno’s closure of the parish was motivated in part by animus. The decision to shutter the church throughout the dispute was done “to punish Canon Voorhees and the St. James congregation for what he views as their defiance of him.”

Bishop Smith disagreed with the panel’s conclusion, writing the hearing panel should not have exercised jurisdiction over the dispute. “Resolution of property disputes properly resides within local diocesan entities,” he wrote, explaining the dispute should not have been “adjudicated through the disciplinary process.”

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A panel of officials from the national Episcopal Church issued its recommendation on misconduct charges against J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, on Friday, July 21, nearly ending a two-year battle during which he tried to sell the St. James the Great church in Newport Beach and displaced its congregants.

Panel members voted 4-1 to suspend Bruno for three years, restore the congregation and halt efforts to sell the 40,000-square-foot building and surrounding property at 3209 Via Lido, which includes a rose garden where the ashes of 12 former parishioners are buried.

The decision comes after panel members presided over a three-day disciplinary hearing in March.

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I am going through a personal crisis. I used to love reading. I am writing this blog in my office, surrounded by 27 tall bookcases laden with 5,000 books. Over the years I have read them, marked them up, and recorded the annotations in a computer database for potential references in my writing. To a large degree, they have formed my professional and spiritual life.

Books help define who I am. They have ushered me on a journey of faith, have introduced me to the wonders of science and the natural world, have informed me about issues such as justice and race. More importantly, they have been a source of delight and adventure and beauty, opening windows to a reality I would not otherwise know.

My crisis consists in the fact that I am describing my past, not my present. I used to read three books a week. One year I devoted an evening each week to read all of Shakespeare’s plays (Okay, due to interruptions it actually took me two years). Another year I read the major works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But I am reading many fewer books these days, and even fewer of the kinds of books that require hard work.

The Internet and social media have trained my brain to read a paragraph or two, and then start looking around.

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Almighty God, whose blessed Son restored Mary Magdalene to health of body and mind, and called her to be a witness of his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by thy grace we may be healed of all our infirmities and know thee in the power of his endless life; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.

Today is #MaryMagdalene‘s feast, find more about one of #Delacroix‘s masterpieces here ☛ https://t.co/osImNlOse0 pic.twitter.com/sNSBh9Q6uV

— Musée du Louvre (@MuseeLouvre) July 22, 2016

Here is today's prayer from the Church of England https://t.co/TkV5geyNtk pic.twitter.com/zi6wlxoLCy

— Church of England (@c_of_e) July 22, 2017

Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;

To the end that [my] glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.

–Psalm 30:11-12 (KJV)