Anglican Unscripted Episode 72, May 18, 2013 May 18, 2013
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican Church of North America, Anglican Church of Tanzania, Anglican.TV, Church of England, Church of Nigeria, The Episcopal Church.Tags: Boko Haram, gay marriage, Jacob Chimeledya, Valentino Mokiwa, Wallace Benn
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Episode 72 of Anglican Unscripted brings even more news about the Anglican Church (Communion) around the world. Kevin and George talk about stories from Tanzania and Nigeria, who are dealing with internal conflict and Muslim-on-Christian violence.
It is also time to give an update on the Temporary Same Sex Liturgies the Episcopal Church passed at General Convention last year and who is using them and who is not.
AS Haley updates all the major legal cases around the country and discusses the late breaking news from The Falls Church.
Peter Ould talks about the growing conflict and investigation in Jersey. It is hard to tell if the biggest issue is jurisdiction or lack of trasparency.
Finally, in the blooper real at the end of the episode (after the credits) one of our contributors reveals a hidden talent. #AU72 Comments to AnglicanUnscripted@gmail.com
No election in Newcastle: The Church of England Newspaper, May 5, 2013 May 5, 2013
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Women Priests.Tags: Diocese of Newcastle, Kay Goldsworthy
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The Rt Rev Kay Goldsworthy
The Assistant Bishop of Perth’s bid to become the first woman elected to the episcopate in the Anglican Church of Australia has fallen short as the Diocese of Newcastle failed to elect a new bishop at its 12-14 April 2013 meeting of synod.
The Rt. Rev. Kay Goldsworthy was among five nominees that included two local clergy and the Assistant Bishop of Canberra & Goulburn Dr Stephen Pickard and Dr Peter Stuart Assistant Bishop of Newcastle to succeed Bishop Brian Farran. Four women priests have been appointed assistant bishops in Australia—Perth, Melbourne, Canberra & Goulburn and Brisbane – but none have been elected.
In a note to the diocese after the election, Dr. Stuart said: “sometimes the Synod elects quickly and sometimes the process takes time. Synod elected Bishops Farran (2005) and Holland (1977) in one sitting. Synod elected Bishop Herft (1992) over two Synod sessions and refereed the decision to elect a bishop in 1972 to the Diocesan Council which elected Bishop Shevill.”
The Synod “resolved to begin the process afresh” he said, though the candidates may place their names in nomination a second time.
Melbourne archbishop testifies before Parliamentary commission on abuse: The Church of England Newspaper, April 28, 2013, p 6. May 2, 2013
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Melbourne, Philip Freier
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A culture of denial had hindered the Church’s handling of child sex abuse cases, the Archbishop of Melbourne told a parliamentary committee last week. On 22 April Dr Philip Freier said that “as you look backwards you can see broadly as a culture we’ve not readily listened to children when they’ve made complaints.
“There have been opportunities for people who wanted to breach the trust of children to do that, and often for children’s accounts of that trust being broken, being disbelieved,” he said adding that some victims were “even punished for having raised a question about the conduct of an adult.”
The diocese had received 46 complaints of child sex abuse since the 1950s, the Archbishop said, and had paid out $268,000 in compensation to 10 victims since 2003, but only reported 12 of the 46 complaints to police.
Dr Freier told the committee of the reforms instituted by the Church since the implementation of a professional standards practices regime in 1994. In his concluding remarks he spoke of the church’s abhorrence for abuse and its zero-tolerance about the issue. The archbishop apologized for the pain and misery that such abuse has caused both victims and the broader community and welcomed the Inquiry as a way in which that confidence might begin to be restored in the church.
Bishop to the Forces for Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, April 21, 2013 p 7. April 22, 2013
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Ian Lambert
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The Assistant Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn Ian Lambert has been appointed as the next Bishop to the Australian Defence Force effective 1 July 2013. “I am thrilled to receive the invitation to serve both the Church and the Military in the capacity of the Anglican Bishop to the Defence Force. I am confident in Christ, that this is God’s call, and I pray that the grace of God will enable us all to work and minister together for His glory,” he said.
Educated at the Royal Military College Duntroon, Bishop Lambert was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Australian Corps of Transport – and in 1984 while attending a character leadership course led by an army chaplain accepted Christ. Leaving the army with the rank of major, Bishop Lambert was ordained in 1995 and served as a parish priest until his consecration last year as assistant for the region of the South Coast, Monaro and Snowy Regions in the diocese of Canberra and Goulburn.
Australian Anglican Indulgences: Get Religion, April 3, 2013 April 3, 2013
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Gambling, Get Religion, Press criticism.Tags: indulgences
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An Australian bishop’s veto of a gaming industry proposal to donate funds to a church social service agency to hire additional gambling addiction counselors has been met with incredulity by the Sunday Telegraph.
In a story entitled “Unholy fight over gaming as Bishop refuses money from clubs” the Sydney-based newspaper’s editorial voice spoils an otherwise interesting story. It does not appear to comprehend that the Anglican Bishop of Armidale Rick Lewers is taking a moral stand that the gaming industry cannot buy redemption.
This is not a bad article in that there is an attempt to present both sides of the story. We do hear from the bishop and the casinos — but the context is missing and the story framed so as to paint the bishop as a prig. The article begins:
A BISHOP has refused thousands of dollars from clubs to pay for more counsellors to help problem gamblers.
Clubs around Tamworth and Armidale, in the state’s north, want the local Anglicare counselling service to put on extra staff as demand grows across the region. After nearly two years of talks, the clubs have agreed to give a percentage of their takings – up to $30,000 a year – in return for access to additional counsellors. However, the talks unravelled last week after the Anglican Bishop of Armidale, Rick Lewers, canned the idea as he felt it would compromise his ability to speak out about gambling.
Instead, Bishop Lewers wants gamblers to consider joining their local church to socialise instead of spending hours “pouring pension money” into poker machines.
The construction of the lede determines the trajectory of the article. Proposition A holds that clubs, private gaming establishments, have created a need for gambling addiction counseling services. Proposition B is that these counseling services are provided by Anglicare– a church-run social services agency.
Fact A is the news that the casinos and Anglicare have been in talks about providing addiction counseling services and that the casinos would donate “up to $30,000 a year”. Fact B is the bishop’s refusal to take the funds. Fact C is the explanation that the Bishop believes he would be compromised by taking casino money.
Assertion A by the Telegraph is that the bishop does not want to help gamblers and B he wants to steer them away from casinos so that they may join “their local church to socialize”.
Standing in back all of this are the assumptions that the casino industry can atone for its sins by giving money to the church — Australian Anglican indulgences — and that the church should be a good sport and take the cash. The implications of the construction of the lede are that the bishop is opposed to a good deed because of petty concerns about pumping up church attendance — perhaps pulling in the punters to the church hall for bingo rather than have them use the slot machine at the casino.
The Telegraph does give the bishop three paragraphs to explain his position — that gambling is a social evil; the church’s social service agency will help anyone with a gambling addiction problem; the church would welcome the opportunity to minister to those with gambling problems on casino grounds; taking money from the casinos — who facilitate the addiction — in order for the church to help them break the gambling addiction is morally compromising. Well and good.
The article then moves to comments from the casino industry criticizing the bishop’s moral qualms. It then closes with a jab from a casino executive that seeks to puncture when he believes to be the bishop’s moral pomposity.
ClubsNSW CEO Anthony Ball said: “The real losers here are the people who have a problem with gambling or alcohol who would have really benefited from the range of initiatives .”
By crafting the article in this fashion — premise, assertion, side a, side b — the Telegraph is telegraphing its agreement with side b’s closing statement from the casino executive.
A church complaining about an unfriendly article that treats its leaders as moral humbugs for standing on an unfashionable principle (gambling is socially harmful and, oh yes, a sin) is neither new nor extraordinary. What is exceptional about this story is the unsubstantiated assertion that the Bishop wants people to go to church not casinos to socialize. Nor does the Telegraph seem to comprehend that it is reporting on an issue present in literature, the movies and in newspapers across the globe. American readers may remember the New York Times report last year about Mexican churches and the drug cartels.
There was an opportunity to tell a great story here — but lack of knowledge and prejudice prevented that from happening.
First printed at Get Religion
Doping scandal rocks Australian sport: The Church of England Newspaper, February 24, 2013, p 7. March 18, 2013
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Crime, Gambling.Tags: Phillip Huggins
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A report released last week by the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) that found “widespread” use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes, match-fixing and links between sport and organized crime has prompted the Anglican Church to call for a ban on sports gambling.
On 8 Feb 2013 Bishop Phillip Huggins, chairman of the Diocese of Melbourne Social Affairs Committee said a moratorium on betting on major sports, including football, rugby and cricket, should be considered by the government.
A suspension of sports betting would give the leagues time to “complete the clean-up now under way, and would remove any possibility that the winter games of the [Australian Football League] and [National Rugby League] would attract unsavoury speculation.”
At a 7 Feb 2013 Canberra press conference, Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said “multiple athletes from a number of clubs in major Australian sporting codes are suspected of currently using or having previously used peptides, potentially constituting anti-doping rule violations”.
“It’s cheating but it’s worse than that, it’s cheating with the help of criminals,” he said.
The 47-page report found “clear parallels” between doping amongst Australian athletes and the case of cyclist Lance Armstrong. These links underscored “the trans-national threat posed by doping to professional sport,” the report said with the “difference” that “Australian threat is current”, covers multiple sports and “is evolving.”
Mr. Claire added that “links between organised crime and players exposes players to the risk of being co-opted for match-fixing and this investigation has identified one possible example of that and that is currently under investigation.”
No names were mentioned in the ACC’s report, Mr. Clare said, as police investigations were on-going.
The “alleged linkages between organised crime and sport require a strong united response aimed at restoring integrity,” Bishop Huggins said, adding “the word ‘play’ is used in relation to sporting ‘games’. These words speak of an innocence and integrity we all want to recover, both in sport and in our community.”
Diocese reviews plan to make redudant half its city parishes: The Church of England Newspaper, January 20, 2013, p 6. January 25, 2013
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Newcastle
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The Diocese of Newcastle (Australia) has begun a consultation on re-organizing the diocese, with one proposal making redundant nine of the city’s 15 Anglican churches.
A copy of the draft report leaked to the Newcastle Herald last month recommends closing the congregations due to falling attendance and rising costs. Several of the congregations are in areas that have seen a shift in population with a flight to the suburbs.
Nine congregations would be closed, and the remaining seven reorganized into “tiers”. Tier-one churches are churches with a congregation of more than 450 and capable of sustaining a ministry and administration team, tier-two churches have a congregation of more than 250 people with two full-time staff and tier-three churches have more than 150 members and one staff member.
‘‘Churches falling below these benchmarks may not be sustainable in the longer term,’’ the report stated. Only one parish, Christ Church Cathedral, with an average Sunday attendance of 250, would qualify as a tier one church under the scheme.
Selling redundant building and redeploying assets to serve middle class families with children was a more rational use of church assets, the report said. ‘‘The opportunity for the Deaneries lies in a consolidation of the wealth of resources to help tap into the emerging young professional class of families and couples.’’
However, the Assistance Bishop of Newcastle, the Rt. Rev. Peter Stuart, said the leak of the report was unfortunate as it gave the impression he proposals were diocesan policy. The report “does not represent the views of the Diocese but contains preliminary data which will be the subject of consultation in parishes beginning in January,’’ the bishop said.
In 2010 the diocese launched a five year plan to revitalize the diocese, updating the way it undertakes mission and ministry in the Twenty-first century.
Brisbane’s first woman bishop appointed: The Church of England Newspaper, December 9, 2012 p 6. December 12, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Women Priests.Tags: Alison Taylor, Diocese of Brisbane
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Alison Taylor
The Venerable Alison Taylor, Melbourne’s Archdeacon for International Partnerships and Vicar of St John’s Church Camberwell, has been appointed by Archbishop Phillip Aspinall to be the next Assistant Bishop for the Southern Region of the Diocese of Brisbane.
Archdeacon Taylor will become the fourth woman assistant bishop in the Anglican Church of Australia joining Genieve Blackwell Assistant Bishop of Wagga Wagga in the Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn, Barbara Darling Assistant Bishop of the Eastern Region of the Diocese of Melbourne, and Kay Goldsworthy Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Perth.
Appointed to the steering committee of the Anglican Alliance for Development, Relief and Advocacy in 2009 by Dr. Rowan Williams, Archdeacon Taylor has also served as chairman of Australia’s Anglican Overseas Aid agency.
The Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr. Philip Freier welcomed the announcement saying: “Alison Taylor’s ministry in the Diocese of Melbourne has encompassed a breadth of experience as vicar and archdeacon. I am delighted that her leadership, developed within the Diocese of Melbourne, now takes her on to this senior role in Brisbane.”
Archdeacon Taylor will be consecrated Bishop in St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane 6 April 2013.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Call for Royal Commission on child abuse in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, November 25, 2012 p 7 November 29, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Julia Gillard, Peter Jensen, Phillip Aspinall
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Anglican leaders in Australia have welcomed Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s creation of a national Royal Commission to investigate institutional responses to instances of child sexual abuse.
“The Diocese of Sydney expresses its unqualified abhorrence of child abuse, wherever it occurs,” Archbishop Peter Jensen said on 12 November 2012.
“While the terms of reference have yet to be decided, we will work and pray for an outcome that will result in a safer society for the most vulnerable,” Dr Jensen said.
The Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Dr Phillip Aspinall, voiced his support for the Commission also. “Of the nearly 3.6 million Australians who call themselves Anglican, statistically, one in four women and one in eight men are victims of abuse, so it is something that affects our Church on many levels,” he said.
A spokesman for the Primate said: “A decade ago Brisbane Archbishop Dr Phillip Aspinall called for a national Royal Commission into child sexual abuse. His call was dismissed by the Prime Minister of the time, and also rejected at a state level. Archbishop Aspinall believed then, as he does now, that the evil of child sexual assault needs to be addressed nationally, without fear or favour, respecting only the facts.”
On 12 November, the Prime Minister told reporters that she had asked the Governor General to charter a Royal Commission with wide-ranging powers to investigate church, charitable and state child care institutions as well as the responses of child service agencies and the police to allegations of abuse.
The formation of a Royal Commission comes amidst mounting media pressure in Australia to investigate child abuse committed in institutions such as orphanages, hostels and foster care homes. Last week a senior New South Wales police official accused the Roman Catholic Church of covering up child abuse in its institutions and protecting paedophile priests.
“The allegations that have come to light recently about child sexual abuse have been heartbreaking,” Ms Gillard said at a Canberra press conference.
“These are insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject.”
“Australians know… that too many children have suffered child abuse, but have also seen other adults let them down – they’ve not only had their trust betrayed by the abuser but other adults who could have acted to assist them but have failed to do so.
“There have been too many revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil.
“I believe in these circumstances that it’s appropriate for there to be a national response through a Royal Commission,” the Prime Minister said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Age no barrier to a full life, daredevil clergyman says: The Church of England Newspaper, November 18, 2012 p 7. November 21, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: St George's Cathedral Perth, Tim Harrison
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St George’s Cathedral, Perth
An 85-year old clergyman has rappelled down the side of the 131 foot bell tower of St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in Perth to demonstrate that age is no barrier to leading an active live.
The Rev. Tim Harrison, an assistant priest at the cathedral and chaplain to the local Royal Marines and Airborne Associations, said the last time he had rappelled had been in 1944 during the Second World War.
He told the Sun-Herald, “All my life I have put my faith in Jesus Christ – but for the last ten minutes it has been with the Mick upstairs,” referring to the abseiling instructor from outdoor activity specialists, Adventure Out.
“It is a question of trust. You trust your gear and you trust your mate, and that also goes for life. I have had some good mates and I have had some good gear.”
The abseil was organised by Amana Living, a local community care provider in Western Australia to mark the state’s Seniors which seeks to challenge negative stereotypes about aging.
“Driving around Australia gets a bit boring the third time round, so what are you going to do with yourself,” Mr. Harrison asked.
“This reminds me I am still quite young – although I am a bit stiff. Maybe same time next year,” he told the newspaper.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Australia rejects gay marriage: The Church of England Newspaper, October 21, 2012 p 6. October 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: gay marriage, Peter Jensen
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The Australian parliament has rejected gay marriage. On 19 September 2012 the House of Representatives rejected the private members bill by a vote of 98 to 42. Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition Conservative leader Tony Abbott voted against the bill.
The Archbishop of Sydney welcomed the vote, rejecting claims made by its supporters that gay marriage was “inevitable.”
Dr. Peter Jensen said it was now up to the church to be clear about what marriage was. “The problem is that we have become so confused about the nature and purpose of marriage that it is easy for those with unbiblical ideas to trade on this confusion and to distort the meaning of the fundamental institution of human society.”
Citing the centrality of a mother and father to the propagation and rearing of children, Dr. Jensen said “the solid platform on which a family is built is the public exchange of certain promises – promises of exclusive, life-long faithfulness – consummated in the marriage-bed.”
He added that “at the heart of our difficulty is the exaltation of the individual self and the idea of freedom being the capacity to choose as we will. If the self is the most important person in the world and the desires of the self have the right to be satisfied, it is not surprising if sex becomes unsatisfying and marriage very difficult to create and sustain.”
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Appeals court doubles ex-youth worker’s jail time: The Church of England Newspaper, October 6, 2012 p 6. October 11, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Newcastle, James Michael Brown
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The New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal has doubled the jail sentence of a former youth worker of the Diocese of Newcastle following an appeal by prosecutors.
In April the Director of Public Prosecutions in Newcastle, Australia announced his intention to appeal the sentence of James Michael Brown, 60, a former youth work and member of the staff of St Alban’s Boys’ Home in Aberdare. Brown had pled guilty to charges that he molested 13 boys aged 11 to 17 between 1974 to 1996, committing 38 counts of sodomy and 60 indecent assaultss. On 2 March 2012 the East Maitland District Court sentenced him to a term of imprisonment of from six to ten years.
On 18 Sept a three-judge appeals court panel doubled Brown’s sentence to a term of 12 to 20 years imprisonment. The original sentence had been “manifestly inadequate to reflect the seriousness of the offending over 22 years upon 20 victims,” the judgment said.
In a statement released after Mr. Brown’s arrest in 2010, Newcastle Bishop Brian Farran confirmed he had worked for the diocese in the 1970s and early 1980s in a variety of duties, including youth work and as a carer at the St Alban’s Home. The diocese had assisted the police with their inquiries and was ‘‘strongly committed to addressing the issue of current and historical child sexual abuse in the church,” the bishop said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Australian Christian leaders appeal to MPs to reject gay marriage: The Church of England Newspaper, September 16, 2012, p 5. September 20, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Marriage.Tags: Australia, gay marriage, George Pell, Peter Jensen
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The Anglican and Roman Catholic archbishops of Sydney have endorsed a public letter urging the Australian parliament to reject calls to widen the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.
The statement endorsed by Dr. Peter Jensen and Cardinal George Pell and by over 250 other Orthodox, Anglican, Catholic and Protestant clergy comes as parliament in Canberra on 10 Sept 2012 takes up four bills that seek to amend the Marriage Act to permit same-sex weddings under law.
Marriage is the “lifelong commitment and faithful union of one man and one woman. As such, marriage is the natural basis of the family because it secures the relationship between biological parents and their children,” the preamble to the statement declared.
“As Christian leaders” those signing the statement affirmed their “commitment to promote and protect marriage. We honour the unique love between husbands and wives; the vital place of fathers and mothers in the life of children; and the corresponding ideal for all children to know the love and role modelling of a father and mother.’
“Marriage thus defined is a great good in itself, and it also serves the good of others and society, as it has done for thousands of years. The preservation of the unique meaning of marriage is therefore not a special or limited interest, but serves the common good, particularly the good of children.’
They called upon Parliament to “protect this definition of marriage in Australian law, and not change the meaning of marriage by adding to it different kinds of relationships.”
On 16 June 2012 Dr. Jensen released a statement urging Anglicans to lobby their MPs to vote against the proposed amendments to the Marriage Act. He stated the “parliamentary success of this revolutionary re-definition is not inevitable. It will help however if in the near future Christians who wish to stand for marriage, as instituted by God, would thoughtfully and courteously let their views be known to their Federal parliamentary representatives.”
“We should speak up for the sake of love,” he said, “however hard it may be and whatever pressure we may face, we do not love our fellow Australians if, knowing God’s grace and his written will, we do not speak up and point them to God’s plan for the flourishing of human relationships.”
The first votes on the amendments are likely to take place by month’s end.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Newcastle dean defrocked: The Church of England Newspaper, September 16, 2012 p 7. September 20, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Andrew Duncan, Brian Farran, Bruce Hoare, Diocese of Newcastle, Graeme Lawrence, Graeme Sturt, Gregory Goyette
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Graeme Lawrence
The Bishop of Newcastle (Australia) has defrocked three priests for misconduct, including the former Dean of Newcastle, the Very Rev. Graeme Lawrence.
On 10 September 2012 Bishop Brian Farran announced he had accepted the recommendation of the diocesan Professional Standards Board and removed Dean Lawrence, the Rev. Bruce Hoare and the Rev. Andrew Duncan from the ministry. The Rev. Graeme Sturt was suspended from the ministry for five years, while cathedral organist (and Dean Lawrence’s partner) Gregory Goyette was banned from working in Anglican churches.
“There will be people in Newcastle who will be extraordinarily angry with me, but unfortunately the processes must be followed,” Bishop Farran told the ABC. “The Professional Standards Board considered some very disturbing material and determined that some of the respondents engaged in sexual misconduct, including misconduct when the complainant was a child,” he said.
The five men had been brought up on charges before the Professional Standards Board for sexual abuse and misconduct and on 15 Dec 2010 the board found that Dean Lawrence and Mr. Goyette had engaged in sexual relations with a 17 year old man at a church camp in 1984, and that Mr. Sturt had observed the act and recommended their dismissal.
Dean Lawrence and Mr. Sturt asked the New South Wales Supreme Court to review the proceedings, charging the standards board failed to observe procedural fairness.
On 27 April 2012 NSW Justice John Sackar held the civil courts did not have the authority to intervene in the church’s internal deliberations by issuing an order granting a permanent stay on the proceedings of the standards board, as the standards board was not a statutory tribunal subject to government oversight. His ruling dismissing the cleric’s appeal did not address the merits of the charges of abuse brought before the standards board, but held the board’s proceedings had not been arbitrary or capricious.
Dean Lawrence, who served as Dean of Newcastle for 25 years until his retirement in 2008, was a member of the Anglican Church of Australia General Synod Standing Committee task force that in 2003 created the recommendations for the current professional standards proceedings.
The 2003 Sexual Abuse Working Group recommended that the church change clergy disciplinary proceedings from an adversarial procedure involving a prosecution for an offence before a tribunal, to panel review process that looked at the fitness of the church worker to hold office. The Standing Committee subsequently accepted these recommendations, which were subsequently adopted by the 2004 General Synod.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Australian church apology for forced adoptions: The Church of England Newspaper, September 9, 2012 p 3. September 12, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: adoption, Diocese of Brisbane, unwed mothers
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The Diocese of Brisbane has offered its apology to those harmed by forced adoptions.
The diocese “sincerely apologises to the mothers, fathers and babies, now adults, who have experienced hurt, distress and harm as a result of past forced adoption practices in homes which operated in the name of the Church. We are aware that these practices occurred at St Mary’s Home at Toowong and the Church of England Women’s Refuge in Spring Hill,” the statement printed on the diocesan website said.
An Australian Senate inquiry found forced adoptions were widespread across Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s for unwed or unfit mothers. In February the senate recommended church agencies, the government and other entities involved in coercing unwed mothers to give up their children for adoption offer an apology for their actions.
Up though the 1970’s, Australian adoption practice favoured a “clean break” practice that kept the names and locations of birth parents and children secret, so that the adoptive parents were free to raise the children as if they had been born to them. The practice was gradually ended however, with the enactment of adoption reform laws in the 1980s.
The Brisbane statement said the senate “inquiry heard that mothers’ consent to have their babies taken for adoption was often coerced and, in some cases, was not obtained at all. Often fathers were excluded completely from this process. It heard that mothers were denied access to information about their babies, including birth records and information about their child’s survival or well-being. Those adopted babies have often not had access to accurate records of their birth and parentage.”
It was “with deep sadness and regret, this Diocese acknowledges that mothers suffered emotional trauma and abuse in these adoption processes. We apologise that they were subjected to shame, isolation and humiliation while in the care of homes operated by the Anglican Church. The Church acknowledges that the resulting grief and loss for both parents and children is ongoing and significant.”
The diocese apologized for its “failings” and would “assist those who suffered harm while in our care in the past.”
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
57 Communists – McCarthyism from The Australian: Get Religion, September 10, 2012 September 11, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Get Religion.Tags: Brian Farran, Diocese of Newcastle, Graeme Lawrence, The Australian
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I have in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.
One thing to remember in discussing the communists in our government is that we are not dealing with spies who get 30 pieces of silver to steal the blueprints of new weapons. We are dealing with a far more sinister type of activity because it permits the enemy to guide and shape our policy. …
This brings us down to the case of one Alger Hiss, who is important not as an individual anymore but rather because he is so representative of a group in the State Department. …
Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisc.) Congressional Record, 81st Congress, Second Session, Vol. 96, Part 2, 1954-1957.
One month after Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, Senator Joseph McCarthy began his now famous series of speeches on Communist infiltration of the U.S. government. He told a Wheeling, West Virginia Republican Women’s Club there were 57 Communist spies in the State Department, repeating this charge in a speech to the Senate on 20 Feb 1950.
Exaggeration, hyperbole and guilt by association were among the tools used by Sen. McCarthy in achieving his political ends — and he was also helped by the fact that there had been Communist spies in the U.S. government — Alger Hiss being one.
My mind turned to Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism as I read a story this morning in The Australian, the largest daily newspaper in Australia and a part of the Rupert Murdoch media empire. The article entitled “Fears Anglican abuse linked to Catholics” is filled with exaggeration, hyperbole, guilt by association and the omission of key facts. But yes, there are abusers in this case — though not 57 of them.
The news behind this article is the September 2012 announcement from the Anglican bishop of the Diocese of Newcastle, Brian Farran. Acting upon the recommendation of the diocesan professionals standards board he had defrocked three clergy, suspended one priest for five years, and banned a lay employee from further employment in the church for having engaged in sexual misconduct with a teenaged boy.
Here is how The Australian reports this story:
NSW police are investigating allegations four Anglican priests, including the former dean of Newcastle, had sex or were involved in group sex sessions with a teenage boy aged as young as 14.
The establishment of the inquiry, which was referred to police by the church itself, means detectives are now involved in two separate investigations into alleged child abuse by church officials in Newcastle during the 1970s and 80s. The second, Strike Force Georgiana, is investigating the Catholic Church and has charged six priests with pedophile abuse.
While neither police investigation is looking specifically at any connection between members of the two churches allegedly involved in pedophile abuse, detectives believe such relationships may exist. One source within the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle said: “It’s possible there are links. There’s no strong evidence of it, but it’s possible …
“There’s certainly been a strong network up here and they infiltrated the church.”
It is not suggested any of the four priests currently under investigation were involved.
The article then goes into details of the abuse, quoting graphic extracts from the professional standards report. This is followed by:
Each of the four priests has previously denied the allegations against them while a previous police inquiry was suspended after the state Director of Public Prosecutions found there was insufficient evidence to lay charges. Mr Goyette could not be contacted yesterday.
And closes with a statement from the unnamed victim:
In a written statement, M said: “Making my complaint and having it heard has been a long and difficult journey. “I urge anybody else who has had similar experiences to speak out.”
What is wrong with this story? Where is the exaggeration, hyperbole, guilt by association, and omission of facts? Let me start off by saying I have been following this closely for two years and have written a half dozen articles on this story. So I come to this story encumbered with a degree of knowledge.
Let us begin with the lede. It reports that police are investigating the four Anglican clergy for child abuse — and they may be part of a clergy pedophile ring that includes six Catholic priests who are suspected abusers. And then we have an unnamed source within the Diocese of Newcastle saying that it might very well be possible that there is a clergy pedophile ring involving priests from the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Newcastle-Maitland
But then again, the third and fifth paragraphs tells us that there is no evidence of a clergy pedophile ring and the police had investigated the four Anglican clergy once already and had taken no action.
And — the Catholic Church has nothing to do with the actions of the Anglican clergy. Does The Australian work on the principle that any abuse story by any cleric must somehow be tied into the Catholic abuse scandal? As the story states there is no link between the Anglicans and Catholics, what else is this but Catholic-bashing?
What is omitted from this story are several key facts that provide context for this story. Two of the clergy and the lay employee — a cathedral organist — had filed a civil suit that was heard by the New South Wales Supreme Court. They argued the professional standards board process violated natural justice and their due process rights. Supporters of the accused have brought Bishop Farran up on charges for the way he has handled this case. The diocese also halted disciplinary proceedings for over a year while this issue was taken through the civil courts and has defrocked the accused clergy now that the Supreme Court has held that it will not intervene in the church’s internal disciplinary proceedings.
There is omission of the fact that the lay employee, Gregory Goyette — the former organist of the Anglican Cathedral in Newcastle — and the most prominent of the accused, Graeme Lawrence, the former dean of the cathedral are same-sex partners. What we have are five gay men (and Angl0-Catholics) being accused of being part of a pedophile ring by persons unknown. Is it because they are gay men and hence potential pedophiles? That is what I hear in the unnamed quotation in the lede.
By raising the spectre of a pedophile ring and omitting the legal battles and questions about probity of the professional standards board’s actions, The Australian crosses a line. Whether this is a subtle form of gay bashing (“Well, we know that all Anglo-Catholics are like that don’t we”, wink wink) or a case of improving a story — sexing it up — is hard to tell. But to me this smells bad.
One of the odd things about this is that Lawrence, who served as Dean of Newcastle for 25 years until his retirement in 2008, was a member of the Anglican Church of Australia General Synod Standing Committee task force that in 2003 created the recommendations for the current professional standards proceedings.
He was a member of the 2003 Sexual Abuse Working Group that recommended that the church change the clergy disciplinary proceedings from an adversarial procedure involving a prosecution for an offense before a tribunal, to panel review process that looked at the fitness of the church worker to hold office. His complaint to the Supreme Court was that he never had an opportunity to face his accusers or dispute the charges — and now he has been deposed by the process he helped create.
Also — here is what I am not saying. I am not excusing or condoning the behavior described in this article.
There are evil people in this world. Some of the clergy sexual abuse stories I have covered have sickened me, while stories on the cover up of abuse have left me ashamed. Yet in the evil and sickness that I have seen, I am always mindful that the perpetrators of crimes are still human beings — and deserve to be treated with fairness and dignity — even if they never showed this compassion to their victims.
In writing clergy abuse articles there is a temptation to paint the abuser in the blackest of terms. Monster A is as bad as Monster B who is just short of being another Charles Manson. Yet there needs to be nuance and clarity in reporting on these cases so that the truth can be told.
The bottom line in this article is that the whole truth has not been told by The Australian. It throws in a gratuitous and unproven assertion of a pedophile ring, omits important facts that provide context to the case, takes an uncalled for swipe at the Catholic Church, and relies upon an unnamed sources to make its most important point. This is not the way to write a newspaper story. It stinks.
First printed in GetReligion.
Adelaide Supreme Court to review Australia’s church disciplinary canons: The Church of England Newspaper, September 2, 2012 September 6, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: clergy disciplinary canons, Diocese of The Murray, Peter Coote, Phillip Aspinall, Ross Davies
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An Australian diocese has asked the Supreme Court of South Australia to uphold the legality of the Anglican Church of Australia’s clergy disciplinary code following the successful appeal of a suspended archdeacon.
The Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, has also joined the Diocese of the Murray in seeking an order from the court overturning the findings of Neville Morcombe QC, who last April held the diocese’s Professional Standards Board did not have jurisdiction to examine Archdeacon Peter Coote’s alleged misconduct.
Dr. Aspinall argued that unless the Supreme Court reaffirms the legality of the diocesan and national church disciplinary canons, the church’s ability to discipline its clergy could collapse. The latest court proceedings in the Coote affair cap an 8-year saga for the Diocese of the Murray, which led in part to the dismissal of its former bishop, the Rt. Rev. Ross Davies.
In 2004Archdeacon Coote was accused of sexual misconduct by three female members of the diocese. After investigation the diocese’s Professionals Standards Committee found the allegations to be credible and in July 2007 Fr. Coote was dismissed as archdeacon and his licence to officiate as a priest suspended in 2008.
The diocesan decision was sent to the national church’s Professional Standards Board for review, and in 2009 the board upheld the decision. Fr. Coote appealed that decision and review by an independent attorney followed, which included a new hearing before a newly constituted Professional Standards Board.
The new board issued its decision in March 2011, which Fr. Coote subsequently appealed, and the case was sent to Mr. Morcombe for review. In April 2012 he concluded the board had no jurisdiction to investigate Fr. Coote and ruled the board had no jurisdiction to undertake its inquiry. The diocesan standards committee responded in June with its appeal to the civil courts asking for a declaration that the Professional Standards Board had jurisdiction to hear the case, and a ruling that the Morcombe finding be dismissed.
Attorneys for Fr. Coote urged the Supreme Court to uphold the Morcombe decision, and argued the 2007 disciplinary canon was inconsistent with Article IX of the church’s constitution.
Represented by the Adelaide law firm Iles Selley, Archbishop Aspinall asked permission to intervene in the case to defend the “constitutional validity” of the diocesan and national church disciplinary canons.
“The Professional Standards Ordinance 2007 of the Diocese of the Murray is largely mirrored in some 21 of the 23 dioceses which constitute the Anglican Church of Australia,” Archbishop Aspinall’s pleading said.
“Were any challenge to the validity of any professional standards ordinance to succeed, or should such a view be expressed by this honourable court, it may have widespread and adverse consequences for all of the dioceses that make up the Anglican Church of Australia,” the archbishop argued, adding that as primate, he had “an interest in the proper interpretation of the National Constitution and, in particular, insofar as it affects the rights, powers and responsibilities of individual dioceses.”
On 24 Sept 2010, Archdeacon Coote’s former superior, Bishop Davies, resigned as Bishop of The Murray one day before a tribunal met to hear nine counts of misconduct laid against him by the Archbishop of Adelaide and Bishop of Willochra.
After two days of hearings, the tribunal found the former bishop guilty of misconduct in absentia and recommended he be removed from the episcopate. Among the charges that led to his being deposed, Bishop Davies was adjudged to have subverted the Professional Standards processes by failing to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct made against Archdeacon Coote.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Australia’s asylum policy ‘un-Christian’: The Church of England Newspaper, September 2, 2012 p 6. September 6, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Immigration.Tags: Houston Report, Jeffrey Driver, Philip Freier
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Retired Australian Defence Chief Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston
Church leaders in Australia have voiced objections to new legislation to regulate entry of asylum seekers and control illegal immigration.
The Archbishop of Adelaide, Dr. Jeffrey Driver – the chairman of the Anglican Church of Australia’s Refugee and Migrant Network – said he welcomed some of the reforms, but was perturbed by the underlying philosophy of the government’s “Houston Report” on asylum seekers.
On 13 August 2012 a report commissioned by the government from an expert panel convened by Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston made 22 recommendations for reforming the government’s asylum policies including processing asylum seekers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The report, which the panel described as “hard-headed but not hard-hearted” and “realistic, but not idealistic”, also recommended increasing the current number of asylum places from 13,000 to 20,000 immediately, and expanding it to 27,000 within five years.
Air Chief Marshall Houston said there were no quick and easy solutions to Australia’s boat people problem, but argued the panel’s recommendations were guided by fairness and a sense of humanity. “Like all Australians we are deeply concerned about this tragic loss of life at sea … to do nothing is unacceptable,” he said.
The “Houston Report’s recommendation that boat people processed on Naura and PNG’s Manus Island should be forced to wait as long as those who claim asylum through more traditional channels before they are resettled is inhumane and will be prohibitively expensive,” Dr. Driver said.
“Using the fate of asylum seekers in this way to discourage people smugglers is like using the victims of crime to fight crime; it is punishing the victims in order to discourage the perpetrators,” he said.
The Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr. Philip Freier welcomed the quota increase, but worried there were no guarantees that asylum seekers will not be detained indefinitely on Nauru and Manus Island.
“It has been clearly established that long and indefinite detention severely affects the mental health of detainees. This is of particular concern in the case of children and unaccompanied minors,” he said on 16 August, adding that he urged “the Federal Government to place a limit on the time detainees, especially children, are held in detention.”
Prof. Andrew Dutney, President of the National Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, said his church was “deeply disappointed at the recommendations of the Houston Panel on Asylum Seekers. And we are dismayed by the enthusiasm with which the Parliament has passed legislation which will see Australia close its doors to asylum seekers arriving by boat.”
The new policies a sign of a “grave moral failure” and of a “political process that has completely lost its moorings in the Christian heritage” and were “based on a theory of deterrence. The aim is, effectively, to punish new arrivals so that when others hear about it they will be deterred from attempting the same thing. The horrifying message we are sending is that, not only are strangers not welcome here, they are risking further harm at our hands,” he argued.
“A nation that is so determined to turn strangers away – to oppose the God whose mission begins with the stranger, the disadvantaged and the unwanted – cannot prosper in any way that matters,” Prof. Dutney said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Maverick bishop backs mining ban in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, August 19, 2012 p 6. August 23, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Environment.Tags: Diocese of Gippsland, John McIntyre, mining
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The Australian Bishop at the center of that church’s controversy over gay clergy has taken up a new cause, writing in his diocesan newspaper that he would close down local coal mines until the government had determined they posed no threat to the environment.
Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week, Bishop John McIntyre of Gippsland said that if he had the power, he would “lock the gate and I would invite my neighbours to do the same” until Exxon Mobil and other mining companies agreed to his terms.
Writing in the August issue of the Diocese of Gippsland newspaper, Bishop McIntyre said coal seam gas extraction was unsafe and posed a threat to the environment. The Victorian state government had an obligation to study its environmental impact before permitting any further mining and drilling.
Exxon Mobil had a “questionable reputation in our communities for not being transparent in its dealings with local people” he wrote, adding that he was surprised the Victorian National Party was “standing with the landholders” in this dispute.
He told the ABC: “I did that to be a little bit provocative I guess because it strikes me that too often a lot of decisions that get made by governments are made sometimes more often for political reasons than they are for actually looking at the facts of the matter.
In his presidential address to the 36th meeting of the Synod of the Diocese of Gippsland in May, Bishop McIntyre said that as a matter of conscience he could not conform to the House of Bishops protocol on gay clergy.
“I will appoint to office in our diocese those whom I believe God is calling to minister among us,” he said adding that this as “my commitment to God and to you, and I am willing to live with any consequences that may arise from remaining true to that commitment.”
At their March meeting the bishops agreed that they accepted “the weight” of the 1998 Lambeth Resolution on Human Sexuality as well as resolutions adopted by the Australian General Synod as “expressing the mind of this church on issues of human sexuality” and agreed not to ordain, license, authorise or appoint persons known to be in a sexual relationship outside of marriage.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Archbishops’ ‘no’ to gay marriage in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, June 24, 2012 p 5. June 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Marriage, Politics.Tags: Diocese of Sydney, gay marriage, George Pell, Peter Jensen, Stylianos Harkianakis
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Peter Jensen
The Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox archbishops of Sydney have urged Christians to reject gay marriage. The “revolutionary re-definition” of marriage was not “inevitable”, Dr. Peter Jensen said in his 17 June 2012 letter, but those “who wish to stand for marriage, as instituted by God, would thoughtfully and courteously let their views be known to their Federal parliamentary representatives.”
In separate letters read to congregations last Sunday, Dr. Jensen, Cardinal George Pell, and Archbishop Stylianos Harkianakis called for the rejection of two private members bills that will amend the Marriage Act introducing same-sex marriage. A social policy and legal affairs committee inquiry report was presented to Parliament on 18 June, but declined to endorse or reject the bills introduced by Australian Greens MP Adam Bandt and Labor MP Stephen Jones.
Archbishop Stylianos urged Orthodox Christians to lobby their representatives in government to vote against the bill. The proposed legislation was ”diametrically against” the teachings of the Christian faith and Greek Orthodox tradition and must be stopped, he said.
Cardinal Pell told Catholics that said same-sex relationships were “contrary to God’s plan for sexuality.” The proposed amendments to the Marriage Act would harm Australia. “Instead of removing discrimination and injustice, [it] will cause them.”
A spokesman for Australian Marriage Equality Alex Greenwich responded the churches’ views were behind the times. ”With polls showing a majority of Australian Christians support marriage equality and with prominent Christians … and a growing number of clergy endorsing the reform, I don’t expect many people will be influenced by their priest this Sunday,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
In his letter, Dr Jensen urged Anglicans to “oppose this move as out of keeping both with the word of God and also of the best interests of our community.”
The Anglican archbishop opened his letter by saying it was important that the debate must be civil. “God’s love for all teaches us that we must not be glib or unfeeling as we discuss, pray and act according to our convictions.”
But civility should not be construed as weakness. “Christians are led by the word of God itself to bear witness to our strong commitment to marriage understood as the public joining of two persons of the opposite sex from different birth families through promises of enduring, sustaining and exclusive love, consummated in sexual union.”
Marriage “is one of God’s blessings upon us as a race” the archbishop said, for “through it God allows for the pure expression of our sexual natures, for the faithful companionship of one we love and the opportunity for the nurture of children.”
It was a “tragedy” he said that “marriage is so little understood or honoured and that so many people are denying themselves or others the experience of a public commitment and life-long union.”
“The education of children must not be distorted by the state-imposed idea that a family can be founded on the sexual union of two men or two women as a valid alternative to that of a man and a woman,” Dr. Jensen said, as the call for changing the law “only adds to the confusion by taking a God-given social institution for the creation and nurture of families and extending it to those who by God’s design and by nature cannot be married to each other.”
“This is not a matter of ‘marriage equality’ nor of human rights, since the right to be married extends equally, but only to those who are qualified,” he said.
Debate on the bills is not expected until year’s end, however, as its supporters concede they do not have sufficient support to pass the amendments to the Marriage Act at this time.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Re-branding for Australian church aid agency: The Church of England Newspaper, June 24, 2012 p 4. June 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, NGOs.Tags: Anglican Overseas Aid
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The Australian church aid agency, Anglicord , has adopted a new name and logo. The Melbourne-based Church Aid agency announced last week that it would now be called “Anglican Overseas Aid”.
Anglican Overseas Aid’s CEO, Misha Coleman said the re-branding came in “response to supporter feedback that our name needs to better reflect what we do, which is to work through Anglican connections to reduce poverty in some of the world’s poorest communities, in some of the most difficult to reach locations.”
“We accept that our name should say what we do,” Ms Coleman said, adding that the agency also believed it was necessary to adopt a new name to differentiate its work from that of other church organizations. A spokesman said the agency sought to “remove the confusion between ourselves and other Anglican agencies, which is an ongoing issue at the broader public and government levels” in Australia.
The name change, and a move to new offices, will not change the mission or ministry of Anglican Overseas Aid, Ms. Coleman said. “We still have the same commitment to our vision of a world free of poverty and for justice and peace for all.”
The foreign aid arm of the Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican Overseas Aid raised approximately A$2.2 million to support education, relief and development programmes in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Perth bishop denies abuse cover up: The Church of England Newspaper, June 10, 2012 p 6. June 12, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Perth, Michael Challen, Roger Herft, Roy Wenlock
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Bishop Michael Challen
A retired Australian bishop has denied claims made to a government commission investigating child abuse in Western Australia that he took no action for almost a year after learning that the head of a church-affiliated youth hostel was a child molester.
The former warden of St. Christopher’s Hostel in Northam, Western Australia was alleged to have indecently assaulted boys during his 14 years as head of the home. On 23 May 2012 a former principal of a local high school gave evidence to the commission stating that he had learned of abuse being committed by the warden, Mr. Roy Wenlock, and reported the abuse to the chairman of the hostel’s board, the Assistant Bishop of Perth, the Rt. Rev. Michael Challen.
In his statement Mr. Claude Riordan said he approached Bishop Challen in 1976, but no action was taken against Mr. Wenlock until 1977 when he was forced to step down. Mr. Wenlock, who was in charge of the boys home from 1963 to 1977, was never charged with abuse and died in 2007.
A spokesman for the Archbishop of Perth, the Most Rev. Roger Herft told The Church of England Newspaper the archbishop was travelling and not able to respond to the allegations, but noted Bishop Challen was scheduled to address the commission last week.
In his testimony, Bishop Challen said that he had not waited for over a year to dismiss Mr. Wenlock but acted immediately upon hearing of the reports of abuse. Bishop Challen, who was chairman of the hostel board from 1976-1979, said he first heard about the allegations of indecent behaviour from Westeran Australia MP Ken McIver and immediately held a meeting with the parents of the abused boy.
“As far as I was concerned, to invite boys into your lounge…often in pairs and ask them to strip down to their underpants and for him to just be in a pair of black shorts only and to wrestle…I thought that was quite inappropriate and action had to occur,” Bishop Challen told the committee.
“I just simply asked him ‘have you been behaving like this, boys in your room wrestling with your shorts on and asking them to wear their underpants’…and he said yes.”
“I said here’s a piece of paper you can write your resignation. I think I gave him 24 or 48 hours to get out,” the bishop said.
The inquiry continues.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Australian bishop rejects church ban on gay clergy: The Church of England Newspaper, May 27, 2012 p 7. June 4, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue.Tags: Diocese of Gippsland, John McIntyre
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Bishop John McIntyre
An Australian bishop has told his diocesan synod that as a matter of conscience he cannot abide by the church’s policy forbidding the ordination or deployment of non-celibate gay clergy.
In his presidential address to the 36th meeting of the Synod of the Diocese of Gippsland, Bishop John McIntyre said that as a matter of conscience he could not conform to the House of Bishops protocol on gay clergy. At their March meeting the bishops agreed that they accepted “the weight” of the 1998 Lambeth Resolution on Human Sexuality as well as resolutions adopted by the Australian General Synod as “expressing the mind of this church on issues of human sexuality.”
The bishops stated they would “uphold the position of our Church in regard to human sexuality as we ordain, license, authorise or appoint to ministries within our dioceses.”
In a statement given to Eternity magazine, a spokesman for the primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall said “In effect it is an undertaking not to ordain, license, authorise or appoint persons whom the bishop knows to be in a sexual relationship outside of marriage.”
In his 19 May 2012 address, Bishop McIntyre said that he would not conform with this protocol.
“I will appoint to office in our diocese those whom I believe God is calling to minister among us,” he said adding that this as “my commitment to God and to you, and I am willing to live with any consequences that may arise from remaining true to that commitment.”
The bishop explained that his defiance was based upon his reading of Scripture.
“Only in light of reflection on God’s Word did I finally come to understand. Despite what I or others may believe is their worthiness, the fruit of the works of many gay and lesbian people has brought God’s blessing to me and to many other people, both in and beyond the church. That is the measure of their worthiness to minister in the name of Jesus Christ in the life of the church, and in the community in the name of the church. That indicates their place in the life of God’s people.”
“Put simply, I think God has been saying to me for many years now ‘If it is good enough for me, John, why is it not good enough for you?’” the bishop said.
Science and new ways of reading Scripture had led the bishop to this conclusion.
“The world is round, not flat, despite what those who first penned the words of the Bible thought and assumed. It took the church a long time to acknowledge this, and in the name of orthodoxy, it treated Galileo rather shabbily along the way.”
The medieval church’s rejection of Galileo was an “exegetical parallel” for the church as it wrestled with homosexuality.
“Because of recent new understanding, we now all know that same-sex attracted people are not heterosexual people who have made a perverse choice about how they express their sexuality. They simply are what they are. We might like to argue about whether this is how life should or should not be, but that will not change the way it is. And we have to respond to what is,” Bishop McIntyre said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Anglican Unscripted Episode 41, May 25, 2012 May 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican Church of North America, Anglican.TV, Church of England, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
This weekend Kevin and George discuss Anglican’s first historian, the Tale of Two Ladies, and AUs new Canterbury Sweepstakes feature. Our Contributors bring news from England, Australia, and the USA. Comments to AnglicanUnscripted@gmail.com To donate to Georges trip to General Convention goto http://www.Anglican.tv/donate
Abuse inquiry for Melbourne: The Church of England Newspaper, May 6, 2012 p 7. May 14, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Melbourne, Diocese of Newcastle, James Michael Brown, Protecting Victoria’s Vulnerable Children Inquiry, Victoria
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The premier of Victoria has launched a parliamentary inquiry into the handling of sexual abuse complaints lodged against churches. The 17 April 2012 press statement said “a focus of the inquiry will be on identifying reforms that can and should be put in place to better protect children and ensure that instances of abuse are responded to properly and effectively. In doing so, the inquiry will have the power to consider evidence of past policies, practices and abuse.”
The announcement said the Victoria Coalition government had “decided to establish the inquiry after giving careful consideration to the report and recommendations” the Protecting Victoria’s Vulnerable Children Inquiry. “It is clear that there have been a substantial number of established complaints of sexual abuse of children by those who have taken advantage of positions of authority. This abuse has had traumatic consequences for victims and their families.”
The Diocese of Melbourne said it would give the inquiry its full cooperation and welcomed “this step to provide the community with confidence that churches and religious organisations will handle allegations of abuse with the utmost seriousness and concern, and with the best possible practices, policies and protocols for handling allegations of abuse, and for providing appropriate care for the victims of abuse.”
Prosecutors have lodged an appeal against the ten year term of imprisonment sentence handed down to a former church youth worker in Australia.
Last month the Director of Public Prosecutions in Newcastle, Australia announced his intention to appeal the sentence of James Michael Brown, 60, a former youth work and member of the staff of St Alban’s Boys’ Home in Aberdare, he pled guilty to charges that he molested 13 boys aged 11 to 17 from 1974 to 1996. The indictment includes 38 charges of sodomy and 60 indecent assault charges.
In a statement released after Mr. Brown’s in 2010, Newcastle Bishop Brian Farran confirmed Mr. Brown had worked for the diocese in the 1970s and early 1980s in a variety of duties, including youth work and as a carer at the St Alban’s Home. The diocese had assisted the police with their inquiries and was ‘‘strongly committed to addressing the issue of current and historical child sexual abuse in the church,” the bishop said.
A hearing has been scheduled for August to review the sentence.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Newcastle dean loses abuse appeal: The Church of England Newspaper, May 6, 2012 p 7. May 14, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Newcastle Graeme Sturt, Graeme Lawrence
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Dean Graeme Lawrence
The New South Wales Supreme has upheld the legality of the Anglican Church of Australia’s clergy disciplinary canons, dismissing a challenge brought by two clergymen disciplined by the Diocese of Newcastle’s Professional Standards Board.
Justice John Sackar held the civil courts did not have the authority to intervene in the church’s internal deliberations by issuing an order granting a permanent stay on the proceedings of the standards board, as the standards board was not a statutory tribunal subject to government oversight. His 27 April 2012 decision did not address the merits of the charges of abuse brought before the standards board, but held the board’s proceedings had not been arbitrary or capricious.
On 10 December 2010 the standards board held that Dean Lawrence and his partner, church organist Gregory Goyette, had engaged in sexual relations with a 17 year old boy at a church camp in 1984. Mr. Sturt was found to have observed the incident, but did not report the abuse.
The two clergymen denied all charges, but did not cooperate with the tribunal. The board recommended Dean Lawrence and Mr. Sturt be defrocked and Mr. Goyette prevented from working in the church. The two clergyman responded by filing suit against the board, saying its proceedings were arbitrary and capricious. .
Last year the court permitted Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Brisbane to be joined as an additional defendant in the lawsuit. On 10 May 2011, Dr. Aspinall said an adverse ruling had the potential to force the church to re-write its clergy disciplinary code in order to comply with civil law.
The court found that the allegations of misconduct “if true or untrue” had “no doubt been distressing and potentially damaging” to Dean Lawrence and Mr. Sturt. And, “there also is no doubt that these events have arguably impacted upon the reputation of the Anglican Church of Australia.”
But the court’s 135 page decision found the standards board proceedings had not been biased. In a statement released after the decision, the Bishop of Newcastle, Dr. Brian Farran, said he was pleased with the ruling, noting the standards board “must take all allegations of sexual abuse seriously; this is in line with public expectations.”
“I hope all those directly or indirectly concerned with the litigation remain calm and prayerfully consider the effect of the judgment on the Diocese, the clergy concerned and others,” the bishop said.
Dean Lawrence and Mr. Sturt have not commented publicly on the ruling and are understood to be reviewing the decision.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Australian Labor Party leader to train for the ministry: The Church of England Newspaper, April 29, 2012 p 6. May 4, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Anglicare, Diocese of Adelaide, Lynn Arnold
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Lynn Arnold
The former Labor Party leader and South Australia Premier, Dr. Lynn Arnold, has resigned as head of the church’s social service agency Anglicare SA to study for the ordained ministry.
On 16 April 2012 Archbishop Jeffrey Driver announced that Dr. Arnold would leave Anglicare SA at the end of June to enter St Barnabas College – the diocese’s theological college. Dr. Driver said he had been in conversation with Dr. Arnold about his call to ordained ministry for a number of years, and at age 63 Dr. Arnold said it was time to act.
Under his four-year tenure as leader of Anglicare SA, Dr. Arnold increased the staff to 1500 and doubled its annual budget to AU$100 million. The archbishop lauded Dr. Arnold’s record at the social service agency saying he had “significantly invested in public advocacy and has been the strong and compassionate face of Anglicare’s innovative care and service approach.”
Elected to Parliament in 1979, he served as a minster in the state’s Labor government that entered office in 1982 variously holding the Education, Tertiary Education, Agriculture and State Development portfolios. In 1992 he became Labor Party leader of South Australia and premier after the resignation of John Bannon. In the 1993 elections he was turned out of office by the Liberal Party and left politics a year later. From 1997 to 2007 he worked for World Vision and in 2007 was appointed CEO of Anglicare SA by Dr. Driver.
First printed in the Church of England Newspaper.
Gay clergy banned in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, April 22, 2012 p 7. April 20, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue.Tags: John McIntyre
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Bishop John McIntyre
The annual meeting of the Australian church’s House of Bishops in Melbourne has adopted a protocol reaffirming the church’s position banning the ordination and deployment of non-celibate gay clergy.
On 29 March 2012 Anglican Media Sydney posted to its website the statement adopted by the meeting. It noted that “in comparison with other Bishops meetings, especially those associated with the Episcopal Church in the United States, the Australian agreement is being seen as a conservative stance.”
The protocols “express the common mind of the bishops as determined by consensus at our National Meeting” the bishops wrote, noting that they had agreed to “abide by them and renew this commitment annually by consensus.”
The bishops said they “accept the weight of 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 and the 2004 General Synod resolutions 33, 59 and 61-64 as expressing the mind of this church on issues of human sexuality.”
They “undertake to uphold the position of our Church in regard to human sexuality as we ordain, license, authorise or appoint to ministries within our dioceses.”
And they “understand that issues of sexuality are subject to ongoing conversation within our Church and we undertake to support these conversations, while seeking to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
In a statement given to Eternity magazine, a spokesman for the primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall said “In effect it is an undertaking not to ordain, license, authorise or appoint persons whom the bishop knows to be in a sexual relationship outside of marriage.”
Spokesman for Changing Attitude Australia did not respond to a request for comments, nor did the Bishop of Gippsland whose licencing of a partnered gay priest to a parish living last year prompted sharp criticism. Bishop John McIntyre told the ABC radio service the appointment of a partnered gay priest did not violate the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution on human sexuality, “because I didn’t actually ordain this man. He was ordained over 30 years ago in the diocese of Melbourne.”
The new protocol, however, clarifies the understanding of the issues for the Australian church as it forbids the call and employment of clergy whose personal lives do not conform to the church’s teaching on marriage and sexual relations.
Anglican Unscripted Episode 36, April 16, 2012 April 16, 2012
Posted by geoconger in AMiA, Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican Church of Rwanda, Anglican Church of the Congo, Anglican.TV, Church in Wales, Property Litigation, Wicca/Druidism.comments closed
Back from Holy Week your Host Kevin and George discuss AMiA, the Occult, and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. David Ould joins us this week to talk about Clergy Protocol in the Australian Church and Dean Munday tackles Easter (the real one). Alan Haley talks about San Joaquin and the battle for paper documents.
Gay marriage will not harm the church, dean argues: The Church of England Newspaper, April 6, 2012, p 7. April 10, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Marriage.Tags: Diocese of Brisbane, Peter Catt
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Dean Peter Catt
The Dean of Brisbane has urged the Australian government to legalise same-sex marriage saying it is a question of equal justice that will not harm society.
In a submission to the Australian government’s federal parliamentary inquiry on gay marriage, Dr. Peter Catt, Dean of St John’s Cathedral, broke ranks with his Anglican colleagues and urged adoption of the proposed Marriage Equality Amendment Bill.
Saying he was writing in his private capacity, the dean told parliament that he believed that a foundational principle of society was that “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.”
Current laws and the traditional understanding of marriage discriminate against gay couples, he said, noting that marriage was “available to all opposite-sex couples with legal capacity, regardless of any other characteristic”.
“Recognising the union of same-sex couples doesn’t reduce the liberty of other couples to enter into legally- and socially-recognised partnerships – so there is an inherent injustice in preventing same-sex couples from doing so,” the dean argued.
Australia’s Catholic bishops have urged the government to reject the gay marriage bill, while the primate of the Anglican Church in Australia, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall in December said “discussion about changing same-sex marriage laws has been a topic of discussion across the world-wide Anglican communion, and resolutions at the Australian General Synod consistently support marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, based on Scripture.”
However, the dean argued that churches would not be forced to marry gay couples under the proposed legislation. Adoption of the bill would also enable Anglican supporters of gay to press for change from within the church. “I believe the inclusion of this provision will provide a position space in which religious groups will be able to have their own internal debates and conversations about their approach to marriage.”
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Adelaide push for gambling controls: The Church of England Newspaper, March 16, 2012 p 6. March 21, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Gambling.Tags: Diocese of Adelaide, Jeffrey Driver
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The Archbishop of Adelaide, Dr. Jeffrey Driver, has called upon the Australian Federal government to institute a one dollar bet limit on computer poker machines.
“A $1 maximum bet, with losses limited to $120 an hour has the potential to reduce the great harm problem gamblers can do to themselves and those who are close to them,” Dr. Driver said on 8 March 2012.
In January church leaders denounced Prime Minister Julia Gillard after she backed away from a pledge to tighten regulations on “pokies”.
The chairman of the Melbourne Anglican Social Responsibilities Committee, Bishop Philip Huggins said the prime minister “did not just break her promise” to her political allies, “she broke it with the coalition of groups who then lent their support to these reforms. She broke it too with those problem gamblers who bravely spoke in public about their plight, hoping their support of the reforms might give some meaning to their suffering and that of their families,” the bishop said.
Dr. Driver noted that “about a third” of regular pokie users had a problem with gambling addiction. “Nearly 100,000 Australians lose more than $20,000 a year through their poker machine habit. For every problem gambler there are many others affected; families, children, friends and co-workers. The human price is too high.”
“Polling has consistently shown that Australians support the introduction of measures to mitigate the harm of problem gambling. Apart from the government, Church agencies provide about 70 per cent of the caring services in Australia, so we are well placed to speak about the damage done to individuals and families across our country by poker machine addiction,” Dr. Driver said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Gay clergy row heating up in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, March 2, 2012 p 4. March 8, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue.Tags: David Head, Diocese of Gippsland, John McIntyre
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Bishop John McIntyre of Gippsland
A new hot spot appears to be forming in the Anglican Communion’s decade old war over human sexuality following the appointment of a partnered gay clergyman to a parish benefice in Australia. The Bishop of Gippsland has rejected suggestions he violated the letter and spirit of Australian canon law and pan-Anglican agreements on human sexuality by licencing Mr. David Head to serve as minister of the Anglican Church in Heyfield, Victoria.
On 27 February 2012, Bishop John McIntyre told the ABC radio service the appointment was not improper. “If [conservatives] think that I have acted against the Lambeth Resolution [1.10 of 1998 on human sexuality], they need to think again, because I didn’t actually ordain this man. He was ordained over 30 years ago in the diocese of Melbourne.”
The appointment of Mr. Head has caused some controversy in the rural diocese in Victoria as the announcement was made via a front page article in the December issue of diocesan newspaper that pictured the minister with his partner. Sources within the diocese tell The Church of England Newspaper they were perturbed the bishop had chosen to make the announcement in this way, and one large parish has already voiced its objections to the bishop’s unilateral decision to change diocesan policy.
One Gippsland clergyman, who asked not to be named, told CEN that the bishop’s actions were not unlike shifting abuser clergy between posts with the new diocese taking no responsibility or notice of inconvenient truths arising from the old diocese. The issue will likely be brought before the May meeting of synod, CEN was told.
The Sydney-based Anglican Church League (ACL) released a statement expressing its “dismay” with the bishop’s actions on 12 Feb 2012, which it said violated Scripture, Lambeth 1998 Resolution 1.10, the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008 and the Australian Church’s professional standards for clergy.
“Appointments like this put unwanted strain and tension upon relationships between the various dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia. It also contributes to the fragmentation of the Anglican Communion,” the ACL said.
Bishop McIntyre rejected this argument, saying he had told his diocese at is 2011 synod that Gippsland would be a welcoming diocese for gays and lesbians. Nor had he violated any rule, guideline or canon.
Mr. Head “has been a priest in a parish in the diocese of Melbourne where, when he was inducted into that parish the bishop of the day welcomed not only him, but his partner Mark into the life of the parish and the people of that parish were well aware that David was in that relationship, living in the vicarage of that parish,” he said.
“I see myself simply as having appointed to a position in this diocese a person who was, to use the formal language, ‘a priest in good standing in his previous diocese’,” Bishop McIntyre said.
ACL chairman Dr. Mark Thompson told CEN this argument was specious. “In the face of all that has gone on since Lambeth 1998 Bishop McIntyre’s decision cannot be excused as a mere oversight,” he said.
He noted that while the appointment of Mr. Head “may not be an ordination – what an extraordinarily narrow reading of the central issue – it was still an appointment which should not have been made.”
“Bishop McIntyre is aware” he added, of the “official reiterations of biblical teaching on the subject [of human sexuality] by Anglican authorities in Australia and elsewhere. Nevertheless he would seem unwilling to draw back from this scandalous appointment and by going ahead he has heightened tensions within the Anglican Church of Australia.”
“Actions such as this have torn the Anglican Communion apart. In the face of all that has gone on since Lambeth 1998 Bishop McIntyre’s decision cannot be excused as a mere oversight.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Bishop denounces govt u-turn on gambling reform: The Church of England Newspaper, January 27, 2012 p 6. February 2, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Gambling.Tags: Julia Gillard, Philip Huggins
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Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Queen
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Church leaders in Australia have denounced Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s u-turn on poker gambling machines, saying her decision to back away from plans to tighten regulations on “pokies” was a “serious moral” failing that would sapped the people’s trust in government.
The chairman of the Melbourne Anglican Social Responsibilities Committee, Bishop Philip Huggins said the prime minister “did not just break her promise” to independent Tasmanian MHR Andrew Wilkie to implement reforms to address problem gambling.
“She broke it with the coalition of groups who then lent their support to these reforms. She broke it too with those problem gamblers who bravely spoke in public about their plight, hoping their support of the reforms might give some meaning to their suffering and that of their families,” the bishop said.
On 21 January 2012 the prime minister reneged upon her agreement with Mr. Wilkie to implement timely reforms to address problem gambling. In 2010 Mr. Wilkie agreed to support the government in parliament in return for the government’s support of recommendations proposed by the government’s Productivity Commission to address problem gambling.
However, the prime minister’s Labor Party has come under pressure from the gambling industry to loosen the proposed restrictions. The November election of Peter Slipper as speaker of the house gave Labor an additional vote, loosening Mr. Wilkie’s value as a vote in support of the government’s majority.
The dispute between the prime minister and Mr. Wilkie centers round bet limits and loss or pre-commitment limits for machines. Mr. Wilkie had urged the government adopt mandatory pre-commitment limits for gambling machines which would set binding limits on losses and the time gamblers spent playing on a single machine. The government’s new plan is to adopt trial of the pre-commitment system but without any bet limits.
Opponents of the gambling machines noted that the government’s proposals, which would come into effect in 2017 avoided the issue. Critics charged that problem gamblers are unable to set limits when in the midst of their addictions and chase their losses, incurring substantial losses.
Bishop Huggins said the proposed reforms were “sensible proposals to assist problem gamblers manage their addiction and put them on the path to healing and freedom.”
But the prime minister’s decision to break her promise also spoke to a deeper issue as when “confidence in a Government’s trustworthiness is shaken by broken promises, people withdraw and civil society is depleted.
“At its extreme, we see this now in the bitterness of citizens towards their Government in parts of Europe and the Middle East,” the bishop said, urging the prime minister to “return to her original agreement” and “endorse these reforms.”
Anglican “no” to gay marriage in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, December 16, 2011 December 17, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Marriage.Tags: gay marriage, Peter Jensen, Phillip Aspinall
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First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Anglican leaders have called for the rejection of the legalization of gay marriage in Australia.
Statements made by the primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Brisbane, and Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney follow upon the 3 Dec 2011 vote by delegates to the Australian Labor Party’s national conference to support gay marriage.
However, the conference also endorsed Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s call to allow ALP MP’s a free vote when amendments to the federal Marriage Act come before parliament next year. While the governing ALP and the Greens support gay marriage, the opposition has instructed its members to vote against the change, while a number of Right Labor MPs have voiced opposition to the change.
In a statement released last week, Dr. Aspinall said that while the Anglican Church “acknowledges and continues to participate” in the national debate over gay marriage, it does so from the position of “commitment to the present definition of marriage in the federal Marriage Act.”
He noted the 2010 General Synod had expressed its “commitment to the present definition of Marriage under Commonwealth Law: that marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.”
Dr. Aspinall added that while many Anglicans supported state recognition of same-sex civil unions, “changing the definition of ‘marriage’ away from the exclusivity of male and female is not consistent with the Church’s current view.”
The Archbishop of Sydney rejected the philosophical and ethical premise behind the push for gay marriage. In a 3 Dec 2011 statement, he said the ALP had a “proud history” of supporting equality, “so it is disappointing to see it divided over the false rhetoric of ‘equality’ surrounding same-sex marriage.”
The definition of marriage under law “is not a denial of rights,” he said, noting that “issues of inequity regarding the financial and legal status of same-sex relationships have already been addressed by the Parliament and I have supported these changes.”
But the ALP must consider the cost of tinkering with marriage. “Redefining marriage will have unintended and unwelcome consequences for the meaning of parenthood, our openness to other forms of marriage, sex education and our commitment to religious freedom,” Dr. Jensen said.
Sydney rejects Anglican Covenant: The Church of England Newspaper, Oct 21 2011 p 7. October 25, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican Covenant, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Sydney, Mark Thompson, Robert Tong
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First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Sydney has rejected the Anglican Covenant. The 11 October vote by the 49th meeting of the Diocese of Sydney Synod likely spells the death knell for Dr Rowan Williams’ plan for a global agreement to set the parameters of doctrine and discipline for the Anglican Communion.
Support for the Covenant peaked in the run-up to the 2009 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Kingston, however, Dr Williams’ untimely intervention into the Covenant debate and changes made to the document have alienated both left and right.
Liberal dioceses in New Zealand, Australia and the US have rejected the plan as un-Anglican, while the Global South Primates last year stated that “while we acknowledge that the efforts to heal our brokenness through the introduction of an Anglican Covenant were well intentioned, we have come to the conclusion the current text is fatally flawed and so support for this initiative is no longer appropriate.”
The Sydney motion was moved by Dr Mark Thompson of Moore College, and assistant chancellor Robert Tong, and followed a September recommendation by the diocesan standing committee to reject the Covenant.
In his report to Synod, Dr Thompson said the Covenant was “the wrong approach to the crisis in the Communion; the proposed Covenant has serious theological flaws; and it just won’t work: it won’t solve the crisis.”
The difficulties in the Anglican Communion “ought to have been addressed in terms of the New Testament patterns of fellowship rather than with a fresh appeal to law or regulation,” Dr Thompson said.
He added that “fellowship is nourished by our common commitment to truth and so faithfulness to the teaching of Scripture; it is undone by a refusal to submit to the teaching of God’s word.”
Creating a Covenant that establishes a “new legal structure that is incapable of distinguishing between the betrayal of biblical principle on the one hand, and unpopular but faithful adherence to biblical principles on the other” will not work, he argued.
Dr Thompson cited five theological flaws in the proposed agreement. “It fails to give sufficient attention to historic Anglican formularies; It embodies a confused ecclesiology; It expresses an inflated view of the Anglican bishop; It gives formal expression to an accrual of inordinate power and authority by the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the Covenant fails to give due weight to the teaching of Scripture.”
The Anglican Communion Covenant as it has been drafted is “fundamentally concerned with maintaining structural and institutional unity rather than with biblical faithfulness,” Dr Thompson argued.
“Those who have created the problem won’t sign it; and if they did without repenting of the departures from the teaching of Scripture it would only demonstrate the uselessness of the Covenant itself. What is more, a number of orthodox Anglican provinces throughout the world have already indicated they won’t sign it for various other reasons,” he noted.
“It’s the wrong way of dealing with the problem; the draft given to us has serious theological flaws; and in the end it just won’t work,” Dr Thompson said.
Synod adopted the motion by an overwhelming majority.
Oz abuse policies under review: The Church of England Newspaper, Oct 21, 2011 October 21, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Canon Law, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall
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Archbishop Phillip Aspinall
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia is backing a rethink of the Church’s sexual abuse reporting polices.
Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Brisbane told the Australian that he was having “second thoughts” about the policy of mandatory reporting of child abuse allegations to the police – regardless of the victim’s wishes.
In the wake of the child abuse reporting scandal that forced the former Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr Peter Hollingworth, to resign as Governor General of Australia in 2003 after he was found to have inadequately investigated child abuse claims in his diocese, his successor, Dr Aspinall, introduced the mandatory reporting requirement.
The diocesan protocol, which is followed by most Australian dioceses, is to turn over all complaints of child abuse to the police for investigation. Brisbane follows this policy, the Archbishop said, but he did see the wisdom of arguments that the wishes of the victim should be considered.
“When you’re dealing with an adult who is reporting abuse that happened to them as a child, it’s really important to empower that adult,” he said.
“And if you take that decision out of their hands and say, ‘Regardless of what you want, I’m going to report it to the police’, you are disempowering that adult and maybe even re-abusing them.
“I understand that position. But we have taken the view that because of the need to be accountable to the wider public, and because of allegations of cover-up and what have you in the past, then we will report everything.
“And then it is a matter between the police and the complainant … the Church will not interpose itself in that relationship and lay itself open to the allegation of covering up.”
Dr Aspinall has asked the diocese’s professional standards commission to review the policies, and to see whether Australia should adopt the policy currently in force in the Church of England, which takes the victim’s views into account.
The Australian reported that under the current protocol, three clergy have been defrocked. In 2005, 29 cases were reported to the Church. Only one complaint was filed last year and none have been submitted this year – there were no active investigations, the diocese reported.
The House of Bishops’ policy and its accompanying guidance ‘Protecting all God’s Children’ and government guidelines found in ‘Working together to Safeguard Children 2006’ forms the basis of diocesan policies in Britain.
The Church of England’s policy commits it to the “safeguarding, care and nurture of the children within our church community;” to “respond without delay to every complaint made, that a child or young person for whom we are responsible may have been harmed;” to “fully cooperate with statutory agencies;” to “offer informed pastoral care” to those who have “suffered abuse;” and to “care for and supervise any member of our church community known to have offended against a child.”
Sydney synod begins: The Church of England Newspaper, Oct 14, 2011 p 7. October 19, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Diocese of Sydney, Peter Jensen
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Dr. Peter Jensen
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Archbishop of Sydney has denounced the use of church courts to bypass the Anglican Church of Australia’s General Synod to set doctrine and discipline. However, Dr Peter Jensen also reaffirmed the diocese’s commitment to the Anglican Church of Australia, saying Sydney Anglicanism had a central place in the faith life of Australia.
In his hour-long presidential address to the diocese’s 49th synod on 10 October, Dr Jensen addressed social questions, noting the parlous state of family life in Australia and urged politicians to push back against the country’s “gambling culture.”
He also touched upon the spiritual and financial health of the diocese. Participation was ”more than holding its own,” he said. Growth was “not vast but in a world where clubs, political parties and voluntary organisations are struggling to stay alive, it is significant.”
Taking as his text 1 Kings 19, Dr Jensen stated that “Like Elijah, we sometimes feel alone … But what we have is what Elijah was given – not God in earthquake, wind and fire, but the God in his Word. We live by faith, not by sight. Our business, whatever our situation, is to consult the Word of God, to trust it and to keep it.”
As Elijah was “emboldened by God’s Word, so you too take heart,” he told synod.
Speaking about the diocese’s difficult relations with the national Church, Dr Jensen noted the “division or dismemberment of the Anglican Church of Australia is not in the best interests of Christianity in this country.” The Archbishop’s remarks follow an attack last month upon the diocese by journalist Muriel Porter on the ABC, who accused the Sydney diocese of perverting Anglicanism.
The Archbishop stated that from Sydney’s perspective it was “best” if the national Church was “committed in form and fact to orthodox doctrine and behaviour.”
Sydney also laboured “to retain the integrity of the national Church,” he said, adding the diocese “always insisted that the national federation be decentralized in ethos and diocesan in structure as it is under the Constitution. Sydney also had an ongoing “role to encourage and support the growth of evangelical ministries throughout the national Church,” Dr Jensen said.
He also criticized the process by which women were permitted to be ordained to the episcopate, saying the circumvention of the national synod by an appeal to the church courts harmed the integrity of the institution.
“We want to establish the point that the ready appeal to the law to solve relational and political problems is unfruitful and to ensure that there is minimum interference with the life of the dioceses, in line with the spirit and intent of the Constitution,” Dr Jensen said.
He also touched upon the “For Kid’s Sake” report prepared by Sydney academic Patrick Parkinson. The Parkinson paper chronicled an increasingly dysfunctional youth population, with alarmingly high rates of substance abuse, self-harming behaviour and sexual promiscuity. The rise in bad behaviour could be linked to the decline of the family, he said. “The missing ingredient [in Australian family life] is commitment – a public commitment in the marriage vows,” Dr Jensen said.
“There is a cultural malaise here, a tsunami is beginning which, should it be unchecked, will engulf us. At the base of it the problem is spiritual – it is sin and evil, broken promises and broken hearts, our abandonment of God and our elevation of the individual self to the throne,” the Archbishop said.
Over the next two weeks, the synod will address the diocese’s financial situation and plans for future growth.
Anglican Unscripted: October 17, 2011 October 18, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican.TV, Church of Ireland, Episcopal Church of the Sudan, Property Litigation, South Carolina.Tags: Diocese of Sydney
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http://blip.tv/play/g5IjgtjoSgI.htmlhttp://a.blip.tv/api.swf#g5IjgtjoSgI
Kevin and George both seem to be qualified to perform the Sacrament of the Eucharist under new rules readopted by the diocese of Sydney. Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury had a very successful visit to Zimbabwe and our hosts tip their hats to the new and improved head of the communion. Almost predictably, Allan Haley builds a defense for the Diocese of South Carolina while stacking the deck against the most arrogant Presiding Bishop to serve in North America. Kevin also interviews Bishop Abraham Neal (formally one of the Lost Boys) of the Province of Sudan.
Motion denied in the Dating Game lawsuit: The Church of England Newspaper, Oct 14, 2011 p 7. October 18, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Canon Law, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Brian Farran, Diocese of Newcastle, John Gumbley, Professional Standards Board
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First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
The New South Wales Supreme court has rejected a bid by a former Diocese of Newcastle priest to compel the Diocesan Professional Standards Board to turn over a transcript and documents used in a hearing that ruled he be removed from the ministry.
Newcastle District Court Judge Margaret Sidis dismissed the motion to produce documents of John Gumbley and ordered the former priest to pay costs after she ruled on Sept 28 that he had failed to present a case to the court.
In August, Mr. Gumbley charged Bishop Brian Farran and the Professional Standards Board with using unlawful and immoral means to remove him from the ministry. In May 2010 the bishop defrocked Mr. Gumbley after the board found he had engaged in misconduct by consummating a sexual relationship with a member of his congregation. The 40-year-old unmarried clergyman had protested his innocence, but his veracity was questioned after the board reviewed journals that chronicled his private life.
Mr. Gumbley charged the diaries had been stolen and should not have been used in evidence against him. The Bishop conceded the diaries had been unlawfully downloaded from the priest’s computer by a spurned lover who had handed them over to the Diocese. But the bishop defended the propriety of using them in an ecclesiastical trial. However, the solicitor for the diocese, told the court the “stolen” reference was “an allegation, not a fact,” according to a report printed in the Newcastle Herald..
Mr. Gumbley’s solicitor told the court her client needed the documents to determine whether the professional standards board acted improperly. The court said it was “not going to allow this to be a fishing expedition” and rejected the motion.
Church backs constitutional protection for aboriginal rights: The Church of England Newspaper, Oct 7, 2011 p 6. October 11, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.Tags: Aboriginal People, Brisbane
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First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Diocese of Brisbane has backed the call for amendments to the Australian Constitution that would grant greater self-government to the country’s indigenous peoples.
The diocese’s paper was one of 3,400 submissions to an expert panel appointed by the federal government that has been charged with studying changes to the Australian constitution that would codify the legal rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
In a statement printed on the diocesan website on 3 October, the chairman of the Diocesan Social Responsibilities Committee, Dean Peter Catt, said the reforms were necessary to unite the country.
Among the proposed changes were the creation of dedicated seats for Indigenous peoples in the federal parliament, the establishment of an Indigenous parliament, and putting a “Treaty or Makarrata back on the public agenda,” Dr Catt said.
“If a new preamble [to the Australian constitution] is truly to unite the peoples of this country and bring a new sense of optimism for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders then it must recognise their prior sovereignty and custodianship. It should be aspirational in tone rather than legal,” he said.
The diocese stated the recognition of native rights was a moral issue. The church’s view was “underpinned also by the value of traditional cultures and recognition of the historical roots of our peoples; and an acknowledgement of God as the basis of human integrity and community.
“We are called at this time to do justice. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must determine their own lives and futures,” the dean said.
A majority of submissions received by the close of the comment period on 30 September supported changes to the constitution. However, The Australian reported that those sections of the document came under fire from some respondents.
The expert panel is scheduled to meet in Canberra this week to discuss the submissions and will forward its recommendations to parliament later this year.
Lord’s Prayer out in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, Sept 23, 2011 p 6. September 28, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Atheism, Australia, school prayer
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First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Complaints by devotees of the new atheism in Australia have beaten back the Lord’s Prayer from the public square. A primary school in Perth’s northern suburbs has ended the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer before school assemblies after some parents complained that it violated the law by promoting religious belief over non-belief.
On 20 September, Edgewater Primary School principal Julie Tombs wrote to parents announcing the cessation of prayers after 25 years, after a survey of parents indicated that some were opposed to the practice.
“We acknowledge that of the parents who did respond to the survey, many wanted to retain the Lord’s Prayer and it is right that we continue to recite it at culturally appropriate times such as Christmas and Easter, as part of our educational programme,” Mrs Tombs said in a statement.
“However, at this school we have students from a range of backgrounds and it is important to consider all views and not promote one set of religious beliefs and practices over another.”
A survey sent by the school to parents found that a small minority were offended by their children having to recite the Lord’s Prayer once every two weeks. Parents who enrol their children at the school had been informed that recital of the Lord’s Prayer was part of the school assembly programme.
The complaints to the school, which is in an area with few religious minorities, arose from parents who opposed any prayer. While only 36 per cent of the parents responded to the survey and of that group only a minority were opposed to the prayers, Mrs Tombs stated the argument that Western Australia Education Act forbade state schools from fostering sectarian religious creeds.
WA Premier Colin Barnett told the AAP that “WA is basically a Christian-based community and I think its desirable to have the Lord’s Prayer said.”
However, the “decision rests at the school level. Certainly schools can, and I would encourage them to, have the Lord’s Prayer.”
The Very Rev John Shepherd, the Dean of Perth, concurred, saying there was a place for the Lord’s Prayer in a multi-faith environment at government schools.
“I think there is a place [for the Lord’s Prayer], just as there is a place for exposing children to the full knowledge of other faiths,” Dr Shepherd said, adding “it does embody values to which we all ascribe.”
One mother interviewed by Nine News as she picked her children up from school summarized the complaints as being “ridiculous” for giving a vocal minority control over public life.
Archbishop was sexually abused: The Church of England Newspaper, Sept 16, 2011 p 9. September 17, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Roman Catholic Church, Traditional Anglican Communion.comments closed
Archbishop John Hepworth
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
Rape and abuse drove the Archbishop John Hepworth out of the Roman Catholic Church into the arms of the Anglican Communion. But a love for the priesthood and the Catholic Church has brought the leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion back into its fold 30 years later.
In an interview with the Weekend Australian, Archbishop John Hepworth detailed 12 years of sexual abuse from the age of 15 at the hands of two priests and one seminary student while he was a student and priest in the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide.
Archbishop Hepworth, who is the primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, spearheaded the drive for Anglican corporate reunion with Rome that has resulted in Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of the Anglican Ordinariate.
His revelations of abuse have prompted controversy in Australian Catholic circles, as the Archdiocese of Melbourne has offered its apologies and given compensation for the abuse suffered by Hepworth at the hands of one its priests, while the Archdiocese of Adelaide has been in possession of the complaint of abuse for four years but has not taken any action.
Breaking his public silence over the assaults, Archbishop Hepworth stated he “never wanted to leave” the Catholic Church, but “fled in fear” to England after his complaints of abuse were ignored by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
“The Church is full of sinners,” he said, “but it is God’s gift to the human race through Jesus Christ. … I have never lost the sense of vocation of being a priest.”
In 1960 Hepworth entered Adelaide’s St Francis Xavier Seminary when he was 15 years old. He was raped a month after he entered the minor seminary by an older seminarian, John Stockdale. Stockdale, who died at the age of 57 while visiting a gay sex club, threatened Hepworth, saying if he spoke of the assaults he would be expelled from the seminary.
After two years he was “passed on” to Fr Ronald Pickering, who continued the assaults. Pickering, who has since died, was acknowledged to be a sexual predator by the Archdiocese of Melbourne in 2002. Hepworth’s third abuser, who raped him during a trip to the beach, was not identified by the Weekend Australian and remains active in the ministry of the Diocese of Adelaide. His attacker attempted to silence Hepworth by seeking to confess his abuse to him, using the Seal of the Confessional to silence the young priest.
Ordained in 1968, Archbishop Hepworth said he took his concerns to diocesan officials in Adelaide, but they took no action. Auxiliary Bishop Philip Kennedy told the young priest that if he persisted in his complaints, he would “destroy” him, while Archbishop James Gleeson told Hepworth he would have to leave the diocese, if he persisted in pressing his accusations.
At that point, Fr Hepworth said he “fled” to England, and in 1972 took up work as a truck driver for Boots the Chemist. In 1976 Hepworth returned to Australia and was received by the Anglican Diocese of Ballarat, where he served until 1992 when he left to join what would become the Traditional Anglican Communion, becoming a bishop in 1996 and rising to primate in 2002.
In 2008, Archbishop Hepworth wrote to the Catholic Archbishops of Melbourne and Adelaide detailing the abuse he suffered. While Adelaide has so far not responded, last month Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart reported that a formal inquiry had substantiated the TAC primate’s charges.
The sexual abuse Archbishop Hepworth suffered at the hands of Melbourne priest Ronald Pickering was also coupled with gruesome blasphemy about the Virgin Mary, said the consultant psychiatrist’s report provided to the Melbourne Archdiocese’s Independent Commissioner for Sexual Abuse.
The effects of the abuse and blasphemies have imprinted themselves on his psyche, Archbishop Hepworth told the archdiocese’s consultant psychiatrist. “When I see a statue of Our Lady, that whole thing comes back and I can’t get rid of it.”
On 26 August Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart wrote to Archbishop Hepworth stating: “We cannot change what has happened … You may never be rid of the memories or the hurt … On behalf of the Catholic Church and personally, I apologise to you and to those around you for the wrongs and hurt you have suffered at the hands of Fr Ronald Pickering.”
Australian dioceses to be consolidated: The Church of England Newspaper, Sept 9, 2011 p 7. September 15, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Bathurst, Canberra & Goulburn, Riverina
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First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn has agreed to a merger of its administrative offices with those of the rural dioceses of Bathurst and Riverina.
The rationalisation agreement comes amidst declining revenues and attendance among the three dioceses, but builds upon a nine-year-old covenant of support endorsed by the dioceses that cover almost three-quarters of New South Wales.
Meeting in Goulburn on 3 September the Canberra synod agreed to the proposal that would merge the three dioceses’ administrative apparatus, property and financial management services.
Bishop Stuart Robinson of Canberra told the synod the consolidation plan was not a merger.
“What we are wanting to do is coalesce our resources. It is an administration procedure that enables us to work more closely together to de-centralise various aspects of the different ministries we operate,” he said.
“But it certainly is not a merger of the dioceses. What will take place if this arrangement moves forward will be three sovereign diocese operating in an independent fashion.”
The Bishop of Bathurst, the Rt Rev Richard Hurford explained that people in the pews would see no changes. However, the depressed rural economy, ageing congregations and declining revenues dictated a change in operations, the Bishop said.
In a letter to his Diocese, Bishop Hurford wrote “For a number of years there has been an awareness that the accumulating debt burden at the schools was becoming unsustainable. I profoundly regret that this matter has not been addressed adequately in the past few years and we must now face some very tough decisions.
“This matter requires urgent action. If we, as the diocese, do not implement a realistic recovery plan this year we will significantly undermine our ability to be part of God’s mission.”
In September 2003, Bathurst, Riverina and Canberra & Goulburn endorsed a ‘Tri-Diocesan Covenant’. The document stated the three dioceses acknowledged a common history and tradition and had entered into covenant not only for their own sakes or for the urgency of the Gospel imperative in their midst, but also “for the sake of the wider Church in Australia.”
The Covenant group has met every three months to coordinate selection, training and professional development of clergy, professional standards protocols and Child Protection policies, clergy deployment, church schools, indigenous ministry, and the operations of Anglicare.
Gay marriage fight brewing in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, Sep 2, 2011 September 7, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Marriage.Tags: Australian Christian Lobby, gay marriage
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First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Australian Church leaders have urged MPs to put the needs of children first and reject proposals to amend the country’s Marriage Act to allow same-sex marriages.
Last week over 50 senior Anglican, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant church leaders gave their backing to Revising Marriage?, a paper prepared by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) and distributed to all MPs that defended the traditional view of marriage as being between one man and one woman.
“The traditional concept of marriage has a place in the law for the purpose of supporting the exclusivity and faithfulness of those biological relationships that result in children,” the paper argued. “Marriage in the law is for the sake of children and society,” the ACL paper stated and should not be changed to “primarily serve the interests of adults.”
Revising Marriage? comes amidst a flurry of political manoeuvring with the Greens and some Labor MPs pushing for a re-write of the country’s marriage laws. The Australian Labor Party’s national conference will take up the issue in November and supporters of same-sex marriage have released a survey that suggests 53 per cent of Australian Christians backed gay marriage.
However, political support for the move appears weak. Queensland Liberal-Nationals senator Ron Boswell handed the government a petition last week with more than 52,000 signatures supporting traditional marriage, and a parliamentary debate showed little desire for change.
In Parliament, 30 MPs spoke in response to Green MP Adam Bandt’s motion asking politicians to test voters’ views on gay marriage. Of those who spoke on 24 August, 18 reported their constituencies were against same-sex marriage, six were in favour and six offered no numbers. Opposition to gay marriage enjoyed cross-party support with a majority of Liberal and Labor constituencies opposing the move.
The 17-page Revising Marriage? reported offered theological, sociological, political and economic defences of traditional marriage. It started from the premise that all members of society should be treated fairly under the law, and noted that the legal protections of marriage were provided to same-sex couples under domestic partnership regulations.
However allowing same-sex marriage would fundamentally alter its meaning, they noted.
“Marriage has a place in the law because a relationship between a man and a woman is the kind of relationship that may produce children. Marriage is linked to children, for the sake of children, protecting their identity and their nurture by a mother and a father. The State would have no interest in the permanence and exclusivity of marriage if it were not the fact that marriage may produce children.”
Changing the nature of marriage to accommodate the ideological desires of adults was wrong, the paper argued. “In redefining marriage, the law would teach that marriage is fundamentally about adults’ emotional unions, not complementary bodily union or children, with which marital norms are tightly intertwined,” the paper said.
While supporters of same-sex marriage argue change the law would harm no one, the ACL paper argues that this “revisionist case reduces marriage to a matter of choice and love between adults” and would harm children and society.
“Marriage is a shared obligation for children,” the paper said. “That marriage has come under stress from a variety of causes over the past 50 years, no-fault divorce included, is no reason for radically altering its core nature, its aspirational value to society that it is the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.”
Endorsing the document were the Anglican bishops of Sydney, Tasmania, Armidale and North West Australia. A spokesman for the Archbishop of Melbourne said Dr Phillip Freier was on leave, however it was her understanding that “he had sought advice from the Social Responsibilities Committee of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, and was advised not to sign the ACL petition as worded.”
Dating game lawsuit filed in NSW: The Church of England Newspaper, Aug 26, 2011 September 5, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: clergy discipline
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A Facebook photo of John Gumbley
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The New South Wales Supreme Court has been asked to review church rules governing whether a clergyman may date a member of his congregation, and if so, what moral standards should guide his conduct.
The question comes as part of lawsuit brought by a clergyman against the Bishop and Diocese of Newcastle (Australia) who had been defrocked for sexual misconduct.
The Rev John Gumbley last week charged Bishop Brian Farran and the Diocesan Professional Standards Board with using unlawful and immoral means to remove him from the ministry. The suit by Mr Gumbley, former vicar of St Mark’s Church in Terrigal, NSW is the latest legal challenge to the Diocese’s disciplinary policies, which critics charge denies clergy “natural justice.”
In May, 2010 Bishop Farran removed Mr Gumbley from the ministry after the professional standard board found he had engaged in misconduct by engaging in a sexual relationship with a member of his congregation. The 40-year-old unmarried clergyman had protested his innocence, but his veracity was questioned after the board reviewed his private journals that chronicled his private life.
Mr Gumbley charged the diaries had been stolen and should not have been used in evidence against him. The Bishop conceded the diaries had been unlawfully downloaded from Mr Gumbley’s computer by a spurned lover who had handed them over to the Diocese. But the Bishop defended the propriety of using them in an ecclesiastical trial.
“The legal advice was [that] it was an absolute obligation to hand [the diaries] to the inquiry,” Bishop Farran told the Newcastle Herald last year. “It’s a collision between two ethical principles: the rights of the individual and the common good.”
The code of conduct for Anglican clergy, ‘Faithfulness in Service’, directs ministers to maintain “chastity in singleness”’ and forbids clergy from taking “advantage of their role to engage in sexual activity with a person with whom they have a pastoral relationship.”
The Gumbley lawsuit is the third proceeding now underway. On 15 December, the Professional Standards Board held that the former Dean of Newcastle, the Very Rev Graeme Lawrence and his partner — church organist Gregory Goyette — had engaged in sexual relations with a 17-year-old boy at a church camp in 1984. A second priest, the Rev Graeme Sturt was found to have observed the incident, but did not report the abuse.
The board recommended Dean Lawrence and Mr Sturt be defrocked and Mr Goyette prevented from working in the church. The two clergymen responded by filing suit against the board, saying its proceedings were arbitrary and capricious, and have protested their innocence.
Bishop Farran is also the subject of an internal church investigation for misconduct. On 12 May nine complaints were lodged with the office of the General Synod in Sydney against the Bishop. Under canon law, the charges and the commission’s proceedings are not to be made public however sources tell The Church of England Newspaper the charges centre around the Bishop’s handling of the divisions within the cathedral and his oversight of the diocesan professional standards commission.
Mr Gumbley declined to speak to CEN about the pending lawsuit, which argued the clergy disciplinary review process was oppressive, unfair and capricious.
The best little whore house in Sydney: Get Religion, 9.01.11 September 2, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Get Religion.Tags: ethical investing, Phillip Jensen, prostitution
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When it comes to invective, no one beats the French.
The Italians and Germans are fine in their way, but when a Parisian philosophe reaches his stride — especially when denouncing American sexual mores — there is none better.
Pascal Bruckner — essayist, novelist and French man of letters — let fly in a recent news column in Le Monde:
“America obviously has a problem with sex that stems from its protestant heritage. … It’s not enough though to describe the country as puritanical because what governs here is a twisted puritanism which, after the sexual revolution, talks the language of free love and coexists with a flourishing porn industry. What we have here is lubricious Puritanism.”
The last bit sounds even better in French “C’est très exactement un puritanisme lubrique.”
While Bruckner was writing about the Dominique Strauss-Kuhn affair in New York, his words gave me pause as I prepared this note on a report in the BusinessDay section of the Sydney Morning Herald which ran under the headline, “Westpac pulls out of brothel project.”
Was my discomfort with this story a function of un puritanisme lubrique? A lack of continental sophistication, or is there a God-shaped hole in this story?
According to the SMH, one of Australia’s leading ‘high street banks’, Westpac:
… walked away from financing the ‘world’s biggest brothel’, the proposed 42-room megaplex on Parramatta Road opposite Sydney University.
The bank had come under pressure to abandon its role financing the brothel project when BusinessDay revealed an investor presentation two weeks ago showing Westpac as the senior financier on the deal. National Australia Bank was also a financier.
In a release to the Australian Stock Exchange today, Delecta, the company behind the development controlled by adult sex toy and porn kingpin Malcolm Day, said it was in the process of seeking alternative funding arrangements.
The deal had called for Westpac to provide $12.1 million in funding to build “spas, lounges, restaurant, underground car park and a number of multi-bed rooms.” The business plan appeared sound as the “existing brothel” took in “$7 million in revenue last year and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $3.6 million — a profit margin of more than 50 per cent.”
From a business point of view this appears to have been an attractive investment. The company has a sound cash flow, is expected to generate $11m in profits on $17.3m in sales in 2013. Oh, and prostitution is legal in that part of Oz.
However, the SMH noted that “Westpac declined to specify why it had withdrawn its offer but it had come under substantial pressure for its involvement with the deal since it was made public on August 1.”
At this point, it appears that there might be a religion ghost in this business report.
Who exerted pressure and why? The article doesn’t say, and a follow up story by the SMH is equally vague, adding only that CEO Gail Kelly and the bank’s senior officers were “mortified at being hauled into the public spotlight as brothel financiers.”
Why were they mortified? The SMH leaves me guessing. Perhaps le puritanisme américain has spread to the board rooms of Sydney? Or, could it be, as the Ethical Investor reported on the third day of this newscycle, that Westpac pulled out after a “prominent Anglican questioned the morality of the bank’s board of directors over the deal”?
The Ethical Investor stated that Dr. Phillip Jensen, dean of St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral in Sydney, had denounced Westpac “for its role in financing the project,” and had “railed against the fact that he had become an unwitting supporter of the brothel by owning shares in Westpac.”
Writing in Anglican Media Sydney Jensen attacked the bank’s ethical investment policies:
“Does this mean to invest ethically I must have nothing to do with banking? Does it mean I should sell my shares or protest at the Westpac AGM? Is it illegal for the bank to refuse, for purely ethical reasons, to invest in a legal, commercially viable, and very profitable business? Would such morally discriminating board members be accused of discrimination? It would certainly be discriminating, indeed ethical – but are boards allowed to discriminate or be ethical? And if they are, why is the Westpac board so unethical as to enter into the wickedness of promoting prostitution?”
It may well be the business pages of the SMH don’t do God — believing the moral implications of the deal and the subsequent outrage were extraneous to the financial issues at play.
And now back again to our French friends. Is the question I am asking a culturally specific one? Is Bruckner right to suppose that les Anglo-Saxons like Jensen are mere prudes? Or, did the SMH simply miss a crucial element in the story? It is not as if ethical investing were a new concept after all.
The bottom line: Should business reporting touch upon the ethical or religious issues pertinent to the story? What think ye, readers?
While kudos should go to the SMH for breaking the story and presenting the financial details of the deal, it could have been more than a louche account of a failed business deal and would have been improved if the basic questions of ethical investing, as raised by Jensen, had been addressed. It’s also possible that religious objections may have, literally, helped shut down the deal.
Is that a fact? It would have been good to ask that question.
This article was first posted at Get Religion.
Deposed bishop joins Roman Catholic Church: The Church of England Newspaper, June 24, 2011 p 6. June 28, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican Ordinariate, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
Ross Davies
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The former Bishop of The Murray has been received into the Roman Catholic Church. However, Ross Davies said he would not avail himself of Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an Anglican Ordinariate and will remain a layman.
Last December Archbishop Phillip Aspinall deposed Bishop Davies from the ordained ministry, after a tribunal found the former bishop guilty of misconduct and recommended he be removed from the episcopate.
Mr Davies had resigned as Bishop of The Murray in South Australia on 24 September, 2010, one day before a tribunal met to hear nine counts of misconduct laid against him by the Archbishop of Adelaide and Bishop of Willochra. He was adjudged to have subverted the Professional Standards processes by failing to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct made against his archdeacon.
The tribunal found Mr Davies had displayed a lack of commitment to the Anglican Church and acted at times in an abusive manner “inconsistent with his pastoral role as a Bishop of the Diocese.”
This week Mr Davies told The Australian he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church three days after he resigned as bishop, on 27 September, 2010, by Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson.
“I think I am the only Anglican bishop in Australia to join the Catholic Church so far,” Mr Davies said.
However, the former Bishop of Ballarat, the Rt Rev David Silk, who upon retirement became honorary assistant bishop of Exeter, was one of five English bishops who joined the Ordinariate last year.
Six other bishops have so far entered the Ordinariate: the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Rev John Broadhurst; the Bishop of Richborough, the Rt Rev Keith Newton; the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham; and retired bishops the Rt Rev Edwin Barnes of Richborough, the Rt Rev Raphael Kajiwara of Yokohama, and the Rt Rev Robert Mercer CR of Matabeleland.
Punish smugglers not immigrants, archbishop says: The Church of England Newspaper, June 24, 2011 p 8 June 26, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Immigration.comments closed
Archbishop Phillip Aspinall
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia has urged a rethink of his country’s illegal alien policies—urging the government to show greater compassion to asylum seekers while cracking down on people smugglers.
“It cannot be morally permissible to inflict suffering on asylum seekers in order to stop people smuggling,” Dr Phillip Aspinall told the Brisbane Synod on June 18. “That cannot be the correct approach.”
He urged a rethink of current government policies. While he supported screening would be immigrants in their country of origin, once they arrived in Australia—by whatever means—they should be treated humanely.
Australian must treat “with compassion the people who arrive on our shores in line with human decency and our international obligations,” the archbishop said, but the government should also be aggressive in “undermining the corrosive business of people smuggling.”
“That might involve putting more effort and resources in processing asylum seekers properly in overseas countries before they get into the hands of people smugglers in the first place,” he said.
However, the long term solution to Australia’s illegal immigrant problem lay in building up the economies and political institutions of the migrants’ home countries.
“If we invested time and energy and people and thought into helping those refugees and asylum seekers in the places they’re fleeing from, I think that would be an investment that would pay returns,” Dr. Aspinall said.
Immigration is a contentious issue in Australia, with the leading political parties divided over who should be allowed to enter the country and in what numbers.
