He’ll need it when he assumes temporary leadership of the Church in three weeks after Justin Welby’s resignation takes official effect. He’s also one of the names regularly being discussed as Welby’s official successor as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Cottrell has responded that he faced a horrible situation when he became Bishop of Chelmsford but that it’s wrong to say he did nothing. “I suspended David Tudor from office at the first opportunity, when a new victim came forward to the police in 2019.” Until then, he says, there were no legal grounds to take any other action.
The Right Rev Helen-Ann Hartley, the Bishop of Newcastle, the most outspoken episcopal critic of Justin Welby’s handling of the John Smyth case, disagrees. “One archbishop has resigned over a safeguarding failure, and now the remaining archbishop has a very serious matter that calls in to question his ability to lead on the urgent change that is required.”
The central problem is that the Church is an institution. One founded on the Gospels and dedicated to the work of Christ but still an institution. And institutions by their nature build defences and bulwarks, and the larger they are the more chance they have of inadvertently allowing entry to people who abuse, lie, and cheat. Churches do this, schools do this, corporations do this, sports clubs do this. Anybody who believes that sexual abuse is somehow the preserve of churches simply hasn’t done their research.
The character flaw that proved fatal for Justin Welby
Read MoreThe Church of England isn’t the Catholic Church, where the number of cases of criminal obfuscation is shocking, but the Church does appear to have problems with transparency, slowness to act, bureaucracy and safeguarding. Some in the clergy and laity are calling for a full and independent investigation in to the Church’s safeguarding practice, and even for the establishment of a permanent independent oversight in to the Church’s handling of abuse claims. That would mean that the bishops would effectively lose control of the situation, and some of them would be reluctant to allow that to happen.
For the sake of the Church and its members, and most of all for the sake of the vulnerable and the abused, something has to change and to change quickly.
Michael Coren is an Anglican priest and author. His latest book, The Rebel Christ (Canterbury Press, £12.99), is out now
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