Establishment religion under scrutiny

It was such a relief to wake up to a blue sky this morning, after nearly a fortnight under cloud cover. After breakfast and Morning Prayer, I fell asleep in the chair again for another three quarters of an hour. It seems that really need eight hours worth these days. Then the usual Monday housework, and preparing text to record for next week's Thursday Morning Prayer. I made lunch as Clare went out shopping. I started a bit late and she arrived home late, just as it was ready to serve. After we'd eaten I recorded what I'd prepared, then went for a two hour walk in the park. The last load of crush barriers used for Saturday's athletics meeting were being loaded on to a lorry to return to storage as I started. The bulk of the clearing up was done late Saturday or yesterday. Clear-up takes a lot longer than setup. A couple of the dead trees were felled this morning leaving behind piles of logs for collection, the branches having been already cleared away. I arrived home just as the western horizon turned pink after the sun had gone from view.

After supper, I edited the audio recorded earlier, then watched a couple of episodes of the fourth series of Danish crimmie 'Those who kill', about the work of a Copenhagen based criminal profiler dealing with perpetrators active across the border in the Swedish city of Malmö. I've noticed over years of watching European crime drama series how many are set in border zones: Finland and Russia, Germany and Poland or France, Italy and Switzerland or Austria, and there are island based series, as well as those set inland in big cities, and rarely in rural areas. Cross border crime is perhaps a growing phenomenon, on the back of the internet, not just financial fraud but in physical reality too, as contraband and people are trafficked.

The media today is reporting calls from senior Anglican church leaders for the resignation of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury. He's one of several CofE bishops criticised for failing to take inquire into stories about a senior evangelical church lawyer now dead, who had a history of violently abusing boys at church camps over a fifty year period, with punishment beatings to ward off temptation to masturbate. This started well before safeguarding discipline was introduced in church practice, before the crimes of sex abuser Bishop Peter Ball were exposed and punished. Those who were aware of allegations ahead of official criminal complaints being made, were clearly reluctant to tackle such powerful figures - much the same as happened with Jimmy Saville and Mohammed Al-Fayed. 

Anxiety about undermining the church's reputation in the public eye, yet again leads to further erosion of  the institutional church's credibility. It's a sordid reality of life that the wrongdoings of those occupying positions of high status, power and wealth can go undetected and unpunished simply because those of lesser authority and status around them fear the consequences of drawing attention to them. There are situations in which allegations aroused are proved unfounded, and this is equally damaging to all involved. If the Archbishop is forced to resign due to errors of ignorance or omission, what is going to happen to other Bishops and senior clergy who were aware things were not right, that there was a whiff of iniquity behind the mask of conservative piety?