A checklist has been drawn up that makes it virtually impossible for an openly gay person to become a bishop in the Church of England.
At the same time as the Church of Scotland was opening the door to gay ministers, the C of E’s House of Bishops met in secret to discuss, among other things, legal advice on how to continue to exclude homosexuals from the episcopate in the wake of the Equality Act 2010.
A press spokesman confirmed that the Bishops discussed “issues concerned with episcopal appointÂments this week, and commissioned further work”. It is understood that the bishops were unable to agree.
I have a question:
Holtam is quoted by the Church Times:
[blockquote]Mr Holtam knew that he was being considered for Southwark, not least because he and Mrs Holtam were questioned by the Bishop of London about her preÂvious marriage. But, he said this week, “I didn’t apply, I wasn’t interviewed, there was no debrief, and so I know nothing.†[/blockquote]
However, in the redacted letter from the late Dean Slee posted by Andrew Brown on the Internet available here Slee writes about the day after the CNC meeting:
[blockquote]….my mobile erupted with texts when I turned it on after 4:00 pm. Just about every journalist I know, and several I do not, wanted to speak to me. They were all on the scent. The BBC rang and left three voicemail messages as well as a text. They did not get replies from me for the most part and those who did got: “You know I am not allowed to talk to you”.
34. At about 9:00 p.m. I was cooking supper and carelessly picked up the house phone next to the cooker when it rang. It was Ruth Gledhill who asked if I had seen the next day’s Telegraph. I turned on my computer and had just accessed the website when Jeffrey John rang and asked if it was true. I told him it was.
35. I cannot remember when Nick Holtam contacted me – that night [I think it was that night], or possibly early the next morning. He had the story off the Web as well, but from a blog site.[/blockquote]
How can Holtam’s statement be regarded as truthful that he was not debriefed, much less that he knows nothing? He had telephoned a member of the CNC while the matter had not been publicly announced and the CNC members were still bound by confidentiality, his friend Colin Slee, who had asked him previously if he could put his name forward.
Then, I suppose, there is the question of his interview with the Bishop of London!
What is the motivation for compiling notes like this except for posterity? And if for posterity, then obviously to generate sympathy for one’s own positions. So this is not a neutral report from a camera lens, but one intended to show the ABC and ABY in (it is hoped) a bad light. For others it will show them trying to find a way to keep the unity of the church–such as it is–under difficult circumstances. Slee charges the ABC with leaking confidential information. Will this be followed up and by whom? Was this the actual point of the memo — to underscore that Slee was not the leaker and to blame the ABC himself? What a mess.
The description of how Rowan William snarled in the meeting is amazing. Is there a possibility he might be as, oh, as “bishopy” if a candidate didn’t believe the Creed? Or if the candidate for bishop didn’t think it was right to allow Muslim clerics to do prayers in his cathedral or allow Muslipalians to remain as laymen? This is another expression of chemically purified clericalism. A bishop can’t do it but any number, millions, of laymen *can*. He hasn’t yet got it — bishops are made out of laymen. If you have no laymen you get no bishops. Null and void starts early and ripens when some laymen become clergy. Then it looks like a “crisis” with tears (!) in meetings at the level of Lambeth Palace. Maybe the tears will trickle down.
Just a few more comments:
1. I assume the note from Slee was produced for the enquiry into the leak from the CNC about the turning down of Jeffrey John and Nick Holtam. I doubt if Slee intended to ever release it, but it is clear that his executors apparently have no such qualms.
2. Unless I have missed it, nowhere in the document does Slee unambiguously deny that he is the source of the leak, which is strange. I have noticed that people who are innocent will just come out and say ‘I didn’t do it’ whereas those who are subsequently found to be culpable, often hedge things about and phrase things: ‘there is no evidence that ties me to this’ or ‘here are other ways it may have happened’. Slee’s piece reminded me of this sort of reasoning, combined with ‘well with your behaviour , you deserved it anyway’.
3. It is clear that Slee was a prime suspect , and whether he was the source of the leak or not, it looks like Slee admits in this note breaching confidentiality by talking to John and Holtam about the CNC and confirming what was in the Telegraph story. He had no right to talk to candidates outside official channels until confirmation by the Crown of the appointment. They should have been referred to the CNC secretary – the usual channel in the meantime.
4. Slee’s letter to the ABC appended to the notes in which he threatens and seeks to blackmail the ABC into accepting John/Holtam reads as pretty disgraceful. It tells you all one needs to know about Slee, and he doesn’t come out of it well.
5. Signor Sarmiento over at Leaky Anglicans in St Albans and presumably the same source at The Bleed, seem to be pushing this as hard as possible with the usual squeaky commenters and journalists. Toys are being thrown out of the pram over the decisions of the HOB meeting, and in order to attempt to influence the upcoming General Synod meeting in relation to women bishops. It is quite possible that, like the vote over the Covenant, these dirty tricks will have a backlash with the opposite effect to that intended.
6. The Church Times and the late Dean Slee omit to mention that far from being honest, one of the reasons Jeffrey John was found unsuitable was that he not been truthful about his domestic arrangements – see here. Is Jeffrey John behind all the above mischief?
7. Nick Holtam’s comments quoted in my first comment in the Church Times put me in mind of Dean John’s concept of truth. If the ABC accepted him as a sop to liberals, it hasn’t worked. The ABC has just put a further inclusive church activist into the House of Bishops.
This gets even more peculiar, The Lead, often briefed by Signor Sarmiento, has got further involved. A less redacted scan of the Slee memorandum, has been posted by John Chilton here. What is the involvement of The Episcopal Church in fomenting trouble in the Church of England you may ask? I imagine pretty much the same mischief-making we saw in TEC’s involvement through its agents in St Albans in trying to swing the last Synod Covenant debate.
A few other things are worth noting from the fuller version of the Slee memo:
1. Slee mentioned also discussing the CNC and the leaks with a member of TEC, the Chaplain to Presiding Bishop Schori at paragraph 38.
2. The extraordinary ‘victim’ mentality which believes that the small group of Inclusive Church activists who cluster around and are led by Jeffrey John have a ‘right’ to be made our bishops, whether it is Nick Holtam, or Jeffrey John. If they don’t get their own way they play merry hell, leak information, make mischief with TEC’s assistance and then complain that other people by denying them their right to be a bishop or not agreeing with their nominations have made them or their partners ‘ill’.
3. It is worth noting Slee’s claim that someone at Lambeth Palace [Appendix 1 letter Slee to ABC 13.09.2010] said to be Jeremy Harris had promised even after the Reading attempt that John would be made a bishop:
[blockquote]I have been aware, for example, that one of your staff [I recall it was Jeremy Harris], told Jeffrey he would be put back in a bishop’s job after he had been Dean of St Albans for five years or so[/blockquote]
What breathtaking arrogance of Lambeth Palace to promise any such thing. What arrogance of Jeffrey John and his friends to believe that he should be made a bishop over the heads of less troublesome, less mischievous and more theologically grounded candidates.
4. I note the claim of Slee’s daughter [apparently the source of the documents] that some of the stress of his ‘treatment’ by the Archbishops [ie not getting his own way after all his bullying] had contributed to his death from Pancreatic Cancer. What is known of pancreatic cancer is that its origins along with a group of 4 cancers including breast cancer is thought to be partly and principally genetic and partly environmental, perhaps related to diet and lifestyle. While stress is a factor in cancers, in the case of pancreatic cancer, the build up is over years, and the appearance of the cancer is invariably swift, with death usually not long afterwards. Slee died not long after these events, so it is likely that these events did not affect in any way his prognosis.
I say that as someone who for over a decade has voluntarily raised funds for research into pancreatic cancer and been a trustee of a cancer charity, taking interest in the research into this terrible disease. There is some wonderful work being done, particularly in the area of gene therapy to enable the cancer-producing cells to be ‘switched off’. Breakthoughs are going on and help may not be far off, but not soon enough to help Dean Slee. His family should not blame anyone for what happened to him; the condition will have been on its way long before anyone became aware of it. Medical research is not ‘sexy’ in terms of funding, but I would commend contributing to it strongly to anyone.
btw I wonder who the Latin lay hothead from St Albans was who recommended that Jeffrey John punch the Archbishop of York on the nose? Simon?
I am actually shocked – which takes something after serving in the COE for well over a decade. The intense politicization of the Crown Nominations Committee, the promoting of party candidates by their own friends, the liberal use of the media as a tool to apply pressure by several parties despite having given an oath of confidentiality. The COE is much more like TEC than I had ever imagined.
“What is the involvement of The Episcopal Church in fomenting trouble in the Church of England you may ask? I imagine pretty much the same mischief-making we saw in TEC’s involvement through its agents in St Albans in trying to swing the last Synod Covenant debate”.
It all certainly illustrates how they’re “in cahoots”. Schemers and frontrunners, having nothing to do with the Kingdom of God, and they should be ashamed of themselves, from the top down.
PM, you obviously know a lot about pancreatic cancer from your own research and fundraising positions. One of the other health care types can write in if they’ve seen different, but, even in a near stress-free environment with the best, up to the minute medical treatments I’ve not seen anyone yet survive more than a year past diagnosis. Whenever you(ie anyone) vaguely hear of a survival around 18 months, it’s because the disease was caught early, surgery was an option, and the surgeon was a good one.
New, even somewhat successful medical therapies would be a welcome change.
Not to mention that the causes of PC are multiple.
Pageantmaster, Driver8,
Do I read this article correctly, that the real thrust of it is a complaint, that a criterion has been covertly adopted by the CNC which prevents an “openly gay” person from becoming a bishop in the Church of England? In other words, the crux of the article is an accusation that the CNC is acting contrary to anti-discrimination legislation? [I note that further down, the author admits that there are loopholes in that legislation as it applies to CofE anyway, but let’s put that to one side for the moment]
If so, what is suggested should be done about it? For example, a demand that quotas be set for the appointment of x number of “openly gay” persons as bishops in CofE by 2020? Even if you do that, how do you exclude people who aren’t really gay, but pretend to be so in order to get into the quota?
:o)
If not that, then doesn’t this really amount to a complaint against the secrecy of the process? After all, unless the process is made accountable, with notes taken at meetings etc, how is anyone ever going to prove that the process has been non-discriminatory?
I am not taking a position either for or against secrecy, I am just trying to see what this article was trying to achieve.
It has interesting implications – as others have already observed, there are indications that (to parody the article):
[blockquote] “A CHECKLIST has been drawn up that makes it virtually impossible for an orthodox evangelical or orthodox anglo-catholic person to become an ordinary in the Church of England”. [/blockquote]
When did the liberals discover something that the orthodox have known about for years? ;o)