On Sunday there will be a Diocesan Confirmation for twenty-three candidates at Southwell Minster. This is a very significant occasion in their Christian journey, and I will be praying for them.
The service will be taken by clergy including the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell.Normally, I would be in the congregation for this service. But I am not going to be there, as a protest at the presence of the Archbishop. There are three reasons for this.
After publication of the Makin Report into John Smyth’s horrific abuse of young men and boys over decades, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was criticised by name, eventually decided he had to resign. Stephen Cottrell has since said that he doesn’t think there need be any further resignations of bishops or other senior figures as a result of this report. This is an appalling response, which will do nothing to help victims and survivors feel that the Church of England takes proper responsibility for its failure to have stopped a prolific abuser. It will only add to a sense of entitled avoidance of appropriate responsibility, and a resistance to much needed change at the institutional level in the church.
Secondly, a senior safeguarding expert, Dame Jasvinder Sanghera, has called for the Archbishop to stand down himself over other, unrelated, safeguarding failures, in cases in which he was involved and responsible.
Thirdly, the Archbishop tried to persuade the General Synod that the decision to dismiss the church’s Independent Safeguarding Board last year, by the Archbishops’ Council, was taken after a unanimous vote to act. The vite was not unanimous, and the Archbishop must have known that. It is not clear why he misled General Synod, but it may have simply been a miscalculated exaggeration in the face of some very angry Synod Members.
These three areas add up to a substantial case for the Archbishop of York voluntarily to step back from ministry. He could then invite the appointment of an independent review of his actions in the light of which he could reflect on his future.
What he should not be doing is turning up at a diocese in his province and carrying on as if nothing has happened. I will not collude in that.
From The Quire 
I’m afraid I don’t agree with you on this one, Jeremy, largely because I am uncomfortable with the common culture that anyone who has made a mistake should be blamed and therefore resign. If every surgeon whose knife slipped, every hospital which had failed to investigate malpractice or neglect, every overseas aid charity had been shown to have some funds purloined by recipients, or any public figure who said one untrue thing in a heated debate were called to resign, then we’d be deprived of many capable doctors, several overstretched hospitals, a good many valuable charities and loads of effective politicians.
Justin has resigned on behalf of the institution. I’m not convinced that more resignations will help to put things right. As someone in Southwell asked this week, if every single bishop resigned, would that be enough? Someone has to lead the C of E at the moment, to work with others to put right the ship-wreck of the sacking of the independent national Safeguarding team.
Meanwhile, churchwardens, ancient clergy, chorister supervisors, children’s workers, etc, etc, are all thoroughly vetted and trained by every diocese now. The processes and courses are thorough and well-led and – most importantly compulsory. The church is now like the scout movement, schools,, care homes, etc in doing all they can to prevent abuse of any kind.
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Dear Vincent,
I hear what you are saying, and I understand that position. However, I am listening too to the voices of survivors, for whom one representative resignation does nothing to assuage the feeling of having been reabused by the institution . Nor am I at all convinced that our Archbishop is the person to lead the rebuilding. I don’t agree with a culture that can’t forgive any mistakes – but that is not what this is about. Stephen Cottrell can’t put right the shipwreck of the ISB, for example, because he still believes, as Keith Makin puts it, in “the Church marking its own homework”. It was he, among others, who wanted the ISB dismissed.
I fear that the powers that be, among whom are significant people like William Nye, as well as a number of bishops, want to
ride this out. The changes we need will not come under their management.
What you say about the quality of local safeguarding is absolutely true. Those huge local improvements have not been helped by the large abuse scandals which have then been confounded by being ignored or minimised or botched. The labour of love that is local care and safguarding deserves a changed culture at the top. Four clergy have lost their PTOs over Smyth – but why have no senior people resigned? Until they do it is hard to see many people inside our church trusting them again, let alone in the general population.
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