A message from the Dean - 11 October 2020
Dear Friends,
The issue of trust features prominently in our concerns just now. Social media spreads news at lightning speed alongside every kind of comment, conspiracy theory and subjective opinion. We all know the press is biased and we buy newspapers and journals that confirm our prejudices and opinions. The BBC has been a favourite target of criticism from conservative quarters for its alleged failures in impartiality. Although not all stories have two sides. Climate change is undeniable for example. To give air-time to its deniers is to indulge fantasy. Of course, it’s possible for us all to live in sealed rooms of our own devising but the problem about life is that sooner or later our private worlds are challenged or questioned by other people and events themselves.
It’s been a tough week for the Church of England as we have received the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. It makes grim reading. Although safeguarding has been a major concern for many years, getting the whole Church to be able to take coherent and united action and to have the processes, procedures and training in place has been a struggle. It has taken too long to address the hurts of survivors and the protection of the Church’s own reputation and personnel has got in the way of justice and reparation.
I have put the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comment on the report on the Cathedral’s website. He expresses our sorrow and penitence. Of course, in reaction, there’s been a flurry of comment. Some say words are cheap and so is institutional remorse: kindly get on with giving the survivors some redress and compensation. Get your act together and don’t let it ever happen again. The British Secular Society has called for the dis-establishment of the Church of England and denounced this “toxic, minority religion”. It should have no part in public life, the secularists demand.
Archbishop Welby called the abuse scandal a profound stain, overshadowing and questioning the integrity of everything we do. In short, the trust we need to establish in order to minister effectively to people and communities has been compromised, if not, with some, altogether lost. For a Church that has as its primary task the care of every community in England, losing trust and public confidence is a grievous, self-inflicted wound. How to recover? First, I suggest, to acknowledge the raw facts of what has happened. Scandals are shocking and disruptive, and, like explosions, they create an epicentre of destruction and outer circles of injury, distress and nervousness. The consequences can be very far reaching and do not resolve quickly. My former Bishop in the Oxford Diocese reckoned it took a parish twenty-five years to recover from a scandal that involved any of the three usual candidates – sex, money or misuse of power. Yet, there can be no healing, no reconciliation without truth: the open acknowledgement that these things have happened, that there has been deep hurt and pain, that people have sinned grievously, that trust has been betrayed. Secondly, recognition that the Church has to contain safely people who have been abused and the abusers themselves. Appropriate pastoral care has to be given to survivors who need assurance and protection from the people and systems that have caused them distress. Every care has to be given to people trying to rebuild their lives and recover from trauma. Only victims have the moral authority to forgive wrongs done to them. No one can be hurried. Equally the Church has to look after perpetrators. Many of them will have served a judicial sentence. All will have seriously damaged their own lives and that of their families. There are deep matters of shame and penitence to address. All sinners have a place in a Church which is a collection of sinning, fallible people, but that place must be negotiated, supervised and clear limits and accountability have to be put in place to uphold survivor’s rights and the protection of the perpetrators themselves.
Thirdly, the matter of safeguarding has to be acknowledged as a responsibility for the whole community. We have to be mindful of situations, places and behaviours that pose risk and to that end every church and cathedral has safeguarding policies, procedures and access to training. All these measures help to ensure we keep children, young people and vulnerable adults safe. In this way we try and keep the trust of our communities and painstakingly re-establish the trust of those who have grounds for suspicion and deep cynicism about our integrity.
Of course none of this can happen if we do not value what it means to trust. Human life is very problematic without it. We’d never go on a journey if we didn’t trust the competence of the people driving the bus, train, ship or plane. We couldn’t exist economically if we lost trust in the Banks’ ability to transfer and look after our money. Without trust we’d be ever more anxious and prone to control freakery than we already are. Distrustful people have a wonderful knack of creating the conditions in which things really do turn out badly because they create the conditions for people to behave badly – incapable of trust they produce suspicion and anxiety and make it hard for others to perform well. Worse still when inconvenient news or facts that contradict our settled opinions get rubbished as “fake news” and everything is seen as a world-wide conspiracy to upset our way of life we live in the grip of paranoid delusion. (Old joke – “I might be paranoid, but it doesn’t mean they are not out to get me”).
The crisis of trust both in the Church and the world might only be resolved, after due penitence, reparation and new ways of life by practising what the American ethicist, Stanley Hauerwas, called “public virtues”. Although we’re all subject to quality audits these days, the difference between being an average human being and a decent one is where our heart is. The professions we depend on medicine, law, teaching, engineering, accountancy and architecture have standards and ways of affirming what is good, excellent and of good report. These professions have authority because what they do is inherently trustworthy. People who are at the top of their game in any walk of life, humble or exalted, aren’t always doing an internal audit of what is passable, they have a deep sense of purposeful excellence: what is the best for the people they serve and the public affected by their decisions and their work.
It's this deep, acquired and practised sense of purpose that gives people authority. Jesus did not simply say he was authority. He acquired trustworthiness because he healed the sick, revealed a new law of love and taught the crowds with a wisdom that struck a beautiful chord – that’s what gave him authority, the ability to enlarge and enliven people’s sense of their worth and value.
As a church reeling from failure and scandal, we can only humbly hope to be more faithful to Christ’s own pattern of love and healing and to pledge ourselves to rebuilding trust however difficult and lengthy that will be.
With my love, prayers and blessing.
Adrian