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| Archbishop Barry Morgan with Joanna Penberthy at her consecration. Source: ITV/Church in Wales |
From ITV 21 January 2017
Fateful words:
"This is an historic occasion for the Church in Wales, as well as a being hugely significant moment for Canon Joanna. It is marvellous that it is possible for us to appoint women, as well as men, to all three Orders of ministry and to regard that as now being the norm. What matters is not gender, but suitability, character, gifts - and that was why Joanna was elected as Bishop."
Dr Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales
"Suitability, character, gifts - that was why Joanna was elected as Bishop."
Those words must be ringing in the ears of anyone who really cares about the Church in Wales as their spiritual home. It is no longer a laughing matter.
Once again the 'mushroom method' of management is being employed by the bench. Consequently worshippers remain in the dark regarding events in St Davids diocese as they were in the diocese of Monmouth which led to the departure of bishop Richard Pain.
In St Davids diocese the bishop should have resigned in June after her position became untenable but there is no indication of an acceptable resolution for those she has offended, just extended sick notes.
In June senior clerics in St Davids diocese issued a statement: "Bishop Joanna is unwell and, on
the advice of her doctor, will be away from work for the next month." The period of sick leave has been gradually extended. This time beyond the dates of the diocesan conference. On the advice of her doctor, bishop Joanna Penberthy will be away from work until the middle of October.
The September 2021 edition of Pobl Dewi has been published without a prayer for the bishop. Perhaps that says something in itself!
A comment on a previous entry indicates that congregations and giving in the diocese are shrinking as a result of bishop Penberthy's tweets which caused offense to so many.
There is now a wider problem for the Church in Wales. In a statement reported in Christian Today, the Evangelical Fellowship in the Church in Wales (EFCW) claimed that there have been and will be "resignations from clergy, lay readers, worship leaders, church wardens, Sunday school teachers and parishioners. A number have withdrawn their regular giving to their churches."
The EFCW had been consulting their members and were calling for the appointment of a bishop to "give voice" to those who believe in the traditional Christian teaching on marriage and sexual morality.
Some hope given the treatment of traditionalists who were left with no pastoral or sacramental oversight after archbishop Morgan achieved his revisionist goals.
Offending worshippers appears to be all that the bench of bishops is capable of.
They have treated loyal worshippers like pew fodder as they rail-rolled their zeitgeist legislation through Governing Body, the latest of which is to permit same-sex blessings.
The consequences are already looking dire.
Hats of to the Tory Roman Catholic MP who still is prepared to play the organ in joJo's diocese - quite a feat to play while holding one's nose.
ReplyDeleteLet's be charitable and accept that Joanna is genuinely unwell. I hope in that case that she regains her full health. Genuinely. Soon.
ReplyDeleteYet, she brought her condition upon herself by her Rayner-like comments. It also reveals that she is unable to accept the brickbats that sometimes are the concomitants of accepting a mitre.
Illness or not, she should have realised that the welfare of the diocese matters more than her ambition. If bishops are needed, the Diocese of St Davids needs an active bishop.
All the signs are that she and the bench are doing their utmost to ride out the storm - the storm of justifiable outrage. I am learning of more and more letters of fierce protest that have been sent to her. Some of these are from holders of important parish offices. If it is a question of them or her resigning, she should be the one to go. If she has an ounce of decency, or anything approaching sound judgement, she should bite the bullet now and get out. The water is already murky. For heaven's sake, woman, do the decent thing and acknowledge that some mistakes are so serious that it is simply not credible to retain an official position. Forgiveness there may be, but continued episcopal ministry - never!
Rob
What a pity the authors of the fierce letters don't publish them all here too, then more people might be able to gauge for themselves the degree of support for DodoJo to walk the plank.
DeleteI never gave much thought to the political preferences of clerics in my Anglican days, taking the line that a cleric, high or low, is also a citizen like anyone and everyone else, and as such wholly entitled to think and to vote as he (and now also she) sees fit. Not my business!
DeleteAnd it's also not my business if clergy, in their personal and private lives, choose to be active in a political cause or in a political party. They must go where theit conscience leads them. Many years ago I recall Canon John Collins, a residentiary canon of St Paul's cathedral in London being a very prominent leader in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and, nearer home, Fr Bob Morgan, vicar of Caerau with Ely and father of our present health minister, being a leading Labour councillor in Cardiff.
But what they can't legitimately do is blur the line between their personal lives and convictions and the exercise of their preaching and teaching ministry. That's not at all to suggest that they have to studiously and wholly avoid the political in their teaching, preaching and writing, because the Christian gospel is intensely political.
Rather they need, before sounding off, to really assure themselves as best they can that the message which they're conveying is based on the foundation of the Christian gospel rather than merely on secular convictions which they might happen to hold. Convictions to which they're wholly entitled, but which are peripheral, if not irrelevant, to the gospel message which they're commissioned to proclaim. I'm not sure that all of them invariably do that!
And they have to bear in mind as well - a somewhat humbling process - that if they glean publicity as a consequence of their message, the publicity may well be accorded to them solely because they're bishop of X, archdeacon of Y, or canon of St Z's cathedral doing their month of annual cathedral preaching.
And that were they merely ordinary lay people, or even the ministry area leader of Llangatwg in the Mudflats, no one outside their patch would be in the slightest interested in anything that they said.
'the Christian Gospel is intensely political.' Explain, please.
DeleteRob
You might start with the sermon on the mount, which I suspect is a manifesto to which, in the Palestine of the time, neither the Roman imperial authorities nor the Sadducee Judaic religious establishment would have signed up. There were worldly reasons as well as eternal ones for the crucifixion.
DeleteMore recently both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin sought to tame the churches and corral them into their political agenda - with a fair degree of immediate success. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Cardinals Wyszynski, Mindszenty and Wojtila were among those who resisted that; as, in a central American context, did Archbishop Oscar Romero.
The rector of Drumcree and the archbishop of Armagh never uttered a peep - at least any that I ever heard - one way or the other about the Orange Order concluding its distinctly incendiary annual 12th July march with an act of worship in the church there.
I once had a brief but interesting conversation with a British army chaplain staffing an army recruitment exhibition on the periphery of Cardiff Castle who informed me that he saw part of the chaplain's role as stiffening the morale of squaddies so that they do what they were ordered to do, and offer 'the love that asks no question, the love that pays the price, to lay upon the altar the final sacrifice' in defence of queen and country.
Those are intensely political issues. As are certain Christian counter-arguments which were and still are assembled to question them.
It really is not clear that the Gospel is intensely political. With respect, I think you need to start again. Begin by defining terms and illustrate from Jesus' life how he acted politically.
DeleteRob
I would certainly endorse John's comments. I think we fail to see the Gospel as politically for two reasons. One is that we neglect to look at the Scriptures in the context of their day: for instance, the question aimed at Jesus about money, God and Caesar clearly had political implications. The Sciptures may be "timeless" but they were written in real places and times; our task today is to analyse what they say in those contexts and try to fathom out how to apply them today. The difficulty of course is that we may not always arrive at the same answers although some issues - such as justice for those who have no voice in society - are surely unarguable. The OT prophets had a lot to say about that kind of thing!
DeleteThe other issue I think is that we read the Scriptures pietistically and individualistically - in other words, as our own personal spiritual manuals. I think, as it happens, that the change in English language has had a lot to do with that, in that generations of Christians have read its injunctions to "you" as being singular when of course it was always plural. (The singular second person pronoun was of course "thou"). Thus instructions to Jesus' disciples, the early churches and indeed modern readers are not just for ourselves as individuals but for us to heed as a group within wider society.
Another disappointing, unconvincing response. The reference to paying taxes is hardly relevant. The Lord, like the rest of the population paid taxes. He was NOT a revolutionary like Barabbas.
DeleteI expected a better case than this.
Rob
I'm not arguing that he didn't pay taxes, and I know that most certainly was not a revolutionary (although I think that description would be more suitably applied to Simon the Zealot than Barabbas!) After all, Jesus rebuffed both Pilate's suggestion that he was setting himself up as a king and the disciples desire to be 'cabinet ministers' when he set up his rule. That clearly wasn't what he was interested in doing. Nevertheless, so much of what Jesus said and did, in a fervid and tense occupied nation, had implied political connotations even if explicit ones were denied. Even the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday - especially as it took place, as Crossan et al have suggested, at a similar time to Pilate's annual "show of force" as he entered Jerusalem - would have been viewed as a political act, albeit one which transcended and subverted ordinary human politics.
DeleteCase not made, although attempted. It is because of interpreting Christianity primarily in terms of politics that Joanna made her serious mistake.
DeleteRob
@ Rob:
DeleteI deliberately chose not to impose my own personal value judgements as to the position Christian leaders ought to have taken over, say, the Nazi ideology of the natural supremacy of the Aryan race, or of the Communist doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or indeed of the notion of the protestant ascendancy in Northern Ireland.
My point was simply that once the Church came, first to be cautiously patronized by Constantine in the early fourth century, and then to be wholeheartedly embraced, first by Gratien and then, wholeheartedly, by Theodosius I towards the end of that century, the whole dynamic for the Church changed, and changed for good,
Before that it didn't really matter what Christians thought and believed, because they were generally viewed as a fringe eccentric cult whom the establishment didn't take seriously. That subjected them to routine contempt and intermittent local - and occasionally empire-wide - bouts of persecution; but they were at least able to shape their own doctrine of where duty to the empire stopped and obedience to the Lord prevailed.
But once the secular power embraced the Christian faith, while there were undeniable benefits in that imperial patronage enabled the Church to flourish and evangelize as never before, there were also downsides, as the prevailing secular power sought to dominate the Church and utilize it for its own secular and political ends.
That was at least one factor which in part fuelled the reformation in northern Europe; and yet there was no escape from it because local princes embraced the reformers' agenda in pursuit of their own wholly secular purposes.
My argument is that while the Church can't realistically wholly resist the power of the state, because it has legal and, ultimately, judicial and military clout which the Church lacks, it must always seek to maintain the primacy of Gospel imperatives over ethnic or national ones.
A case in point was when Thatcher exploded in wrath because, after the Falklands war, Archbishop Runcie chose to pray for Argentinian casualties as well as British ones. I'm not a fan of the now departed Runcie, but in that he was right: the Church stands for the Gospel, and if it's to be true to its calling it can never be a mere adjunct or creature of our own or of any nation state.
I'd contend that you can't honourably and faithfully create a sort of 'cordon sanitaire' which separates Christianity from practical politics. It can't ethically be done.
What I have chiefly in mind is clerics who get involved in party politics - some were mentioned by name earlier. In my experience of such clerics, the party politician tops the priest. It is not a nice thing to see. There is a book to be written about this whole subject. What was Christ's mission? Surely, primarily, in Paul's words, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself'. Of course, he was also concerned with this life and provided food for the hungry on certain occasions, and healed the sick in body and mind. But, unlike too many modern ordained Anglicans, he was not a social worker, but high priest. And, firstly, they should be priests too.
DeleteRob
@ Rob:
DeleteI haven't personally known many clerics who've involved themselves actively in party politics, but over many years I've known of quite a number. I've not particularly had the sense that 'the party politician tops the priest' in the case of any of them that I now recall; but I have to acknowledge that in the instances where I didn't know them personally, that might have been more the case - at least on occasion - than I'd thought.
So of course that hazard is always there, which is why in my earlier post I emphasized that 'they need, before sounding off, to really assure themselves as best they can that the message which they're conveying is based on the foundation of the Christian gospel rather than merely on secular convictions which they might happen to hold'. There, perhaps, you and I might be on a broadly similar, if not the identical, page.
Like you, I also have the impression that contemporary Anglicanism, at least in the provinces of the British Isles and in north America, has lost touch with its sense of what the Church essentially is, and in the absence of spiritual conviction substitutes instead a campaigning role around contemporary niche causes. (As, in the purely political arena, I suspect the Labour party also has!)
But - despite I Corinthians 9:22! - I see no intrinsic reason why a priest or minister shouldn't involve himself or herself in political activity as and when time allows, and, indeed, see it as an aspect of his or her ministry. But always with the caveat which I set out earlier in this comment.
Much nearer my viewpoint. I have known four such clerics, one a bishopess, who all idemtified with the Labour Party. Then there are national figures like The clever idiot Bruce Kent, Mr Underpants and another, a gay activist.
DeletePriests may justifiably be drawn into commenting controversially on social issues, but involving themselves in 'political activity' is not their role. It can hinder the Gospel and antsgonise Christian people as Joanna has done. So let them leave party politics alone.
Rob
I'd rather such people left the Church.
DeleteFar healthier.
Ruth, I really think they are more suited to be social workers. In my experience, the social work of some clerics, admirable, doubtless, in itself, comes before the distinctively priestly role. They are would be politicians, social workers, probation or prison officers or aid workers but they are not fulfilling a proper priestly role. It says much about the CinW's laughable selection process.
DeleteRob
Your second paragraph expresses a more rigid view than my own, though it does broadly accord with the restriction imposed on priests by Roman Catholic canon law. Which is why Bruce Kent left the priesthood in the '80s.
DeleteI adhere to the view that I expressed previously: that a cleric should be free to get involved in politics if time allows, and for most that will mean party politics, if only to make where they broadly stand apparent to voters. They might if course stand for election as 'independents', but that can sometimes be less than honest; I know a Welsh county councillor, for instance, who sits as an independent but is a current member of the Conservative party. Not a mere rumour, because he told me so himself.
If a priest or minister gets involved in politics conscientiously and not out of some sort of cynical self-interest, can't be accused of neglecting his ministry, and doesn't join a political faction with an agenda which conflicts with Christian principles, I see no cause for complaint.
If certain Christian people are thereby 'antagonized', they might usefully search within themselves before griping. For most of us, following our own conscience is onerous enough without seeking to be the keeper of someone else's.
Dear John, I fear you are infected with the current political virus. Let laypeople join and lead political parties. The priest must be above the compromises and exaggerations that this inevitably involves. He should be able to serve all. How can he do this if he says x party members are scum or that we must'never 'never, trust them'? To attempt to combine priesthood and party politics is a no, no. To attempt to justify this by an appeal to the Lord beggers credibility. Jesus producing a manifesto that would get him elected? goading party workers to fight against the other side? appearing on t.v. to traduce the other politicians? neglecting the synagogue in order to speak at a public meeting?
DeleteThe nearest you can turn the New Testament narrative to your viewpoint is by quoting John Baptist's condemnation of Herod. Yet it is not credible to paint the prphet as political, forsaking the desert for party conferences, or falling in with the outrageous wave demands of unions.
It is sickening to continue. The priest might be called to social intervention but not to be a politician. His other priestly work is too important.
Rob
A couple of thoughts. One is that the Minister preceding me at one church I served had arranged for a large banner to be displayed across the frontage saying, "This church supports the Labour party". I would never do that; and even at the time it wasn't true as there was a diversity of allegiance within the church. (Mind you, some of the right-wing American Evangelicals were just as brazen about Trump!)
DeleteI have always made it my business to pray on the Sunday before elections - and sometimes to preach in the weeks before too - focussing on issues such as authority, justice, fairness, the common good, patriotism and the like. However I have made a point of trying to base what I have said on Biblical foundations and certainly have never endorsed any political party. However I do want people in the congregation to think through their Christian approach on such matters and not just put their X in the box because they've always done so.
I do think that there have been clerics who have successfully combined their spiritual ministry with overtly expressed political opinions. There have also been others (eg Nick Stacey back in the 60s in London) who found their true vocation in working for social services.
The Italian actor Alberto Sordi played a wonderful character part as a monsignor preaching in the run up to elections. "It would be wrong of me to tell you how to vote but I am bound to explain basic Christian principles. A Catholic is free to vote for any candidate he or she likes as long as the candidate supports policies that are Christian and Democratic!" (The play on words is even better in Italian.) There's many a true word spoken in jest: Don Luigi Sturzo exercised his priestly ministry by founding the Christian Democrats to fill the vacuum left by the fascist regime. Adenauer and his friends - while not priests - were performing the same ministry for Germany. JoJo Legge's pffence is not that she was political but that she carried on her politics in a thoroughly juvenile fashion. Contrast her 'political Christianity' with that of Blessed Franz Jaeggerstaetter, who judging that National Socialism was irreconcilable with biblical truth freely went to the guillotine. He knew that in the circumstances in which he found himself his faith impelled him to political action (refusing the call-up) and. like so many others, paid the supreme sacrifice.
DeleteThere are too many other clergymen in the wrong job like Nick Stacey.
DeleteDom
@Rob
DeleteIn my experience, the only people who usually need social workers are social workers.
I like it.
DeleteRob
@ Rob:
DeleteI think that it's quite possible to involve yourself in party politics without resorting to Angela Raynerish invective! Though as it happens I spent a decade living virtually next door to the comprehensive school which she attended, and judging from her age I would have been living there when she arrived at that school at the age of 11.
And having lived there, in fairness and knowing the ordinary street patois of the upper Mersey valley, 'scum' round there doesn't have quite the sharp meaning that you might think. You might well even use it about yourself: as in 'as soon as I did it, I thought, "Why did I do that? Why didn't I think? Because that were a dead scummy thing what I did to her!"
The lesson, as always, is to watch what you say; I think the moral theology phrase was 'guardianship of the lips'. Perhaps most of all at the end of the day when you've had a few and you're in the company of friends. But there's no room in Christian converse for referring to people as scum, and it's something that you can discipline yourself to avoid. A priest, perhaps, is better placed than most to do that.
I think you misunderstand my meaning when I said that the Gospel is 'intensely political'. "Party" political it emphatically isn't; but it's manifestly a programme for living life in community: commenity with God and with one another, a theme explored by the late Fr Lionel Thornton in his book 'Common Life in the Body of Christ'.
But it seems to me that it's quite unobjectionable for a priest or minister so inclined to devote some of his or her time to politics, and in practical terms that's likely to be under the banner of some party, because on the whole that's the way in which we do politics here. Some political parties have held tenets which are at variance with the gospel - far right parties advocating racial supremacist doctrines and far left ones proclaiming dialectical atheism naturally come to mind in our era - and no christian ought to commit to them. But I believe that it's perfectly possible to be an ordained Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem Plaid Cymru of Green activist, as long as the principle of 'in omnibus, caritas' is upheld.
But to placard a church building with a statement of support for any political party is wholly illegitimate, because from the Christian perspective it reverses the proper order of things. The church should be no creature of any secular body, nor even ever risk giving the impression of that being the case. Indeed, I agree entirely with the thoughts which Baptist Trainfan has set out. And Teilo's reflections on the evolution of 'Christian Democrat' parties in mainland Europe - something that we haven't experienced here - do prompt me to reflect that, while I see no fundamental objection to clerics being involved in secular politics, the witness of lay Christians doing so is better still!
@ Ruth:
I'd be interested, if only it were possible, to run your neat but airy thesis past some of the families whom I knew in my last job pre-retirement, who looked to local authority community and social services to provide support for physically and/or mentally frail elderly relatives, to enable them to continue living safely and successfully at home for as long as possible, and eventually, when that became impossible, to help find and when necessary finance residential care for the remainder of their days.
I'm always amazed when the CiW allows and even encourages full time Priests to stand for county council (I believe a ministry team leader in Llandaff diocese was unsuccessful in the last elections) If county councillors are paid to do 3 days a week, and a Priest does at least 5 days a week (usually more) ...how is that fair?
DeleteMany stand for a political party too which divides the parishioners who don't agree with them.
@ Danny Jones:
DeleteI've never come across any indication, statutory or otherwise, which suggests that county, county borough or city councillors are 'paid to do three days a week'. Though a range of expenses are payable, from necessary travel relating to council functions, though payments in recognition of 'special responsibility' roles in the service of the authority, and down to a financial allowance for councillors who can show specific caring responsibilities for younger children, disabled relatives, &c., the role of local councillor is, as it's always been, a role performed voluntarily.
The regulations around councillors' expenses in Wales as laid down by the Senedd can be found at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/wsi/2002/1895/made
I'm not now closely enough involved with local government here in Wales to be familiar with the minutiae of the arrangements in my own local authority, let alone in others. But in the last authority in which I was closely involved - a metropolitan borough in England - only the leader of the council was deemed as having a full-time rolr, and expenses were paid accordingly in recognotion.
No other elected member was seen as 'full-time', and the other councillors performed their function in a voluntary capacity, being paid only incidental expenses of office. In some very large metropolitan authorities - the one where I lived was medium-sized - there might be another one or two roles deemed to be necessarily full-time, but I'd say that the one in which I lived was a pretty average one of its type.
@ John Ellis
DeleteIf you use a phrase like "the Palestine of the time" many Christians will simply stop reading and dismiss your opinions, whatever they may be!
I didn't claim that county councillors are full time but that a ministry team leader is. Torfaen claims that they "pay" all county councillors £14,000 a year, plus expenses etc. All the county councillor I know, say they put about 3 days a week or more into the voluntary paid job.
DeleteMy argument was that you can't put 5-6 days a week into being a full time paid Priest plus on top be paid to put in apx 3 days a week as a county councillor.
I know a situation where it happened and the Parish (when we had such things) was simply ignored.
Yet still it happens.
@ Danny Jones:
DeleteI think that you make a fair point. If you know a number of councillors who reckon that their council duties take up around three days a week, there seems no reason to question their assertion. They're better placed than any of the rest of us to know how much of their time the fulfilment of their role as councillors takes up.
I'd only say that I knew some councillors who did appear to hold down full-time jobs alongside their duties as councillors. If they did indeed need to devote three days a week to their voluntary work as councillors, I don't quite know how they managed it!
And I agree entirely that a parish priest who undertook that degree of commitment alongside his parish work might struggle to do justice to the demands of both. And inevitably even more so a ministry team leader.
I wonder if any ministry team leaders read this blog, and would care to offer an opinion from direct experience?
@ Evangelical Ed:
OK - I aacknowledge that the name for the relevant Roman province in the time of Christ was still 'Judaea', and that the province was only renamed as 'Sȳria Palaestīna' as a result of the emperor Hadrian's administrative reforms following the destruction of much of Jerusalem - second temple included - in the aftermath of Simon bar Hochba's rebellion in 135 AD.
But it was an innocent lapse, without tendentious intention. I'm old enough to remember hearing allusions to 'Palestine, the land of the Bible' from my primary school days.
I certainly know a local Councillor who manages successfully his duties with those of a demanding full-time job. How he does it, I don't know! (I knew someone else back in London, from a different political party, who did the same).
DeleteYour source, AB, for leave until October?
ReplyDeleteDom
From the 'bishop Joanna Penberthy' link Dom.
Deletehttps://stdavids.churchinwales.org.uk/en/newsfeed/doctors-orders-bishop-joanna-takes-sick-leave/
Do they mean October 2021, October 2022 or October 2023?
DeleteCaption contest time AB?
ReplyDeleteTweedle dumb and Tweedle Insidious.
Scylla and Charybdis?
DeleteBut which is which?
DeletePP. That's interesting, mid October. What did Snr Bishop say about S&B election? Early Nov is that the plan?
ReplyDeleteStrange how no suitable candidates were not available.
There were suitable candidates. As ever, the Bench had made their decision, the diocese had made theirs (which did not match) and, as one observer noted “they started throwing everyone under a bus”. Until the choice is properly given to the diocese, then ratified by the wider church, we’re going to see more and more of “direct appointments”. DewiResistance
DeleteIs there no way we can be rid of the 6 grotesques on the Welsh bench before they do any more damage?
ReplyDeleteLW
each diocese would need to Dispose each individual Bishop an there are only 5 Bishops on the Bench at the moment then each diocese would need to come up with a Arrangement with England or another Anglican communion Member to consecrate New Bishops and with no Primate now would be the time to do it. but lord knows how would you go about give those bishops from another Anglican communion Member permission to officiate with out the Last Bishop signing off on it. so I feel it would be a Case of using Retired bishops of Wales or even England who already have permission to officiate with in CIW.
DeleteADMIN NOTICE
ReplyDeleteAnonymous commentators must include a pseudonym if their comments are for publication.
Although this is specifically about the C of E the general points are equally applicable to the C in W. https://modernchurch.org.uk/martyn-percy-nuts-and-bolts-iii-reflecting-on-the-governance-review-group-report?fbclid=IwAR21vkKHswyX3riCXaNSLI2theK_PVD4s2c6XR7ub4QsZTuLiFOo3v9aYog
ReplyDeleteThe waiting game goes on - not waiting for Godo - but waiting for Joanna to make a decision: to go or not to go, to remain and leave the diocese rudderless.
ReplyDeleteRob
Sir David Amess MP, a deeply committed Christian, defender of Christian marriage and of the unborn, and a steadfast Tory. What a contrast to the foulmouthed bishop of St David's with her violent rantings. May he rest in peace.;
ReplyDeleteJoanna's sick leave extended until the end of October.
ReplyDeletehttps://stdavids.churchinwales.org.uk/en/newsfeed/doctors-orders-bishop-joanna-takes-sick-leave/
Really? She’s coming back on a phased return quite soon… or so the clergy have been told. The faithful, as ever, will be the last to be told. DewiResistance
DeleteIf so, there ought to be public demonstrations against it. If so, it would show she has not a shred of integrity, and, if so, the sick leave would have been a sick manoeuvre. I hope, anon, you are not inventing this. What is your source?
DeleteRob
I'm sure the source will shortly be appearing in all churches in the diocese, but Diocesan Comms is (again) asleep at the wheel... clergy received emails yesterday. As ever, it is likely not all has been disclosed in the email. I understand she's still a little time off her 5 years to pick up the pension, and with her off, moving to an election of an Archbishop was proving problematic...
DeleteDewiResistance
Thank you, DewiResistance. I should be really interested in what exactly was said.
DeleteBetter know the worst at once. If she returns, I suspect some people in parishes - even if a minority - could give her a hard time. She needs to ask if it' s worth the candle.
Rob
Interesting, no rep!y to Rob's question.
DeleteDom (the 1st).
NOT true, DewiResistance! Clergy did NOT receive emails yesterday,
ReplyDeleteDom
Not the usual Dom!
DeleteDom
Hang on there, a decision by J any decade soon.
ReplyDeleteDom