HOME TRUTHS – church matters
The Archbishop of Canterbury ended up as the Passover lamb for the English-speaking world’s media this Easter.Well,someone must die for the people! Good Friday is a low news day because politicians have left town, and desk-bound journalists in London’s Wapping snoop around the airwaves for something ‘religious’ to print for the Easter weekend.
Luckily ++Rowan Williams made a point on air in a lengthy BBC interview to the effect that a society like Ireland’s, which was so intimately bound up with the life of the Church, would inevitably suffer when the Church lost credibility.
Good-oh! Soon the world was informed that the head of the Anglican Church had said that the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland had lost all credibility.
At this the head of the Anglican Church in Ireland was persuaded to join the fray and said public figures should be more careful about what they say. So there we have it! Church leaders should keep their mouths shut over Easter if they don’t want to be roasted.
You can listen to the original interview at www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2815
Sexual abuse scandals are devastating church institutions, particularly the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, today.The universal nature of this scandal proves beyond doubt that the problem is an institutional one and therefore a problem for leadership.
Yet church leadership, where it does attempt to confront the problem, almost invariably homes in on blaming individuals rather than investigating where the institution has failed.
In February all licensed clergy in the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane received a mandatory questionnaire from Archbishop Phillip Aspinall entitled ‘Safe Ministry Check – Choosing the Right People for God’s Ministry’.
Twenty-eight, many deeply personal questions were to be answered in writing and returned to diocesan management as a prerequisite for retaining a licence.
It has yet to be tested in court in Australia, but requiring such information in writing from people who are already employed (many retired
but still with licences to officiate at services) almost certainly infringes upon their civil rights and liberties.
The unfortunate choice of title for the questionnaire ‘Choosing the Right People for God’s Ministry’, addressed to people who are already in active ministry, is inherently offensive – particularly to those who have served the diocese for decades.
The Archbishop’s own job description includes the important element of chief pastor – the pastor of the pastors, a role which is in a conflict of interest with the requirements of his Ad Clerum (letter to the clergy) which accompanied the questionnaire.
There is no question that sexual abuse must be addressed.The problem in this case was the process.
Had this questionnaire come from diocesan management with a covering letter from the archbishop its injurious nature could have been mitigated.
Or if the archbishop had done the time- consuming work of pastoring his clergy and visited them individually to enquire about their personal lives, a greater purpose could have been served.
The truth of the matter is that the Christian churches have never had an adequate theology of sexuality, conflict or even incarnational love.
It would be far more to the point if the leadership gathered its resources – its people in ministry – and began to work out such a theology, so that the scandal and betrayal of sexual abuse could be dealt with at its source.
