Bishop's Column
Posted Sunday, December 03, 2006
A Church for Others
December 2006
[Note: the Bishop's Column in December is traditionally his Diocesan Convention Address]
ANNUAL ADDRESS BY THE RT. REV. CHARLES E. BENNISON, JR.,
TO THE 223rd MEETING OF THE CONVENTION OF
THE DIOCESE OF PENNSYLVANIA,
PHILADELPHIA CATHEDRAL, NOVEMBER 11, 2006
THE FEAST OF ST. MARTIN OF TOURS
And the king will answer them, "Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to
one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Matthew 2:40)
Grace and peace to you, beloved in Christ, the clergy and people of our diocese. A special greeting to my dear friends and colleagues, Bishop Lee and Bishop Coleridge, the latter whom takes leave of us today after six years of wonderful ministry among us, and about whom I will have more to say at the Noonday Prayers. How good it is to have with us our other friends: the Rt. Rev. Duncan Gray, Bishop of Mississippi, who is here to thank all of us who assisted with the rebuilding of the church on the Gulf Coast following Katrina and to raise financial support for the same good work; Anne Ditzler, Special Projects Manager, Episcopal Church Foundation, who is accompanying him; the Rev. Barbara Seras, the Coordinator of Province III; the Rev. Gregory Fairbanks and Sister Josephine Kase of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia; our sister, Bishop Claire Burkat, of the Southeast Pennsylvania Synod of the ELCA; the Rev. Gary Harke of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches; and the Rev. Dr. David Fife of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, the United Methodist Church, with which we are now beginning Interim Eucharistic Sharing. How wonderful it is, too, to have more than 40 of our young people here taking their place in this council of the church.
At the outset this morning, let me address the questions raised in the formal charges made this week in a complaint sent to the Presiding Bishop that I have mismanaged diocesan funds. Except for the Bishop's Discretionary Fund, the bishop in our diocese cannot spend any monies without the approval of the requisite governance body. I have never spent any monies without obtaining the approbation of the requisite governance body as determined in our canons through the interpretation of them by our chancellor. Last July 21, I informed the Standing Committee in writing of my concern about our rectifying canonical discrepancies, a number of which ante-date my tenure, reported in the Special Audit that was completed last June, and that I had asked the then-Chancellor and Executive Director of the Church Foundation to advise us regarding what should be done about them. I have also requested and await the final recommendations from the Special Audit Committee regarding them. Once we receive these reports, the Bishop and Standing Committee can decide under the canons what rectifications are to be made.
Secondly, I want to speak to all of you who have followed news reports of my failure to forward to civil or ecclesiastical authorities a report of my brother John's sexual abuse of a teenage parishioner, and to those of you who heard from her mother, my former sister-in-law, and others in three forums held in our area last weekend:
Last Monday I was provided transcripts of statements made at those meetings. Reading them has been excruciatingly painful, as it has both brought back memories and supplied me with much new information I have never had. I believe that the chronology of the events that the speakers presented is more accurate than that in my letter of October 30 (even while last evening I read further new information that leaves me convinced that the actual facts of what happened some 30 years ago have yet to be established).
Reading the statements from last weekend's sessions reminded me that it was probably the senior warden, not the girl's mother, who in 1975 reported John's abuse, after which I immediately told him to leave the parish, and that in order to maintain the confidentiality of both John and the girl, I did not tell the parents, who nonetheless confronted me when they had found out four years later. Until reading the statements I had never before known that John's destructive behavior did not stop, but rather increased, in the parish to which he went after leaving my parish. That I could have prevented that from happening had I known to act differently is extremely grievous to me. My efforts to maintain confidentiality and prevent scandal were very misguided, born of my mistaken idea that while I viewed John's behavior as highly immoral, at the time I had no idea of how extensive, pathological, and damaging it was. That the effects of his behavior can and probably will affect untold numbers of persons over countless years vastly deepens my grief. Coming to terms with this fact has been very painful me, and for the notes and telephone calls and prayers of so many of you these past two weeks, I am immensely grateful.
I am aware that this story has shaken many in our diocese, especially those who have been impacted in any way by clergy sexual abuse or who have a pastoral responsibility to those who have been affected by it. It is important for all of you to know that in the mid - 1990's the Episcopal Church put in place a new disciplinary procedure called Title IV for reporting and adjudicating cases of clergy sexual exploitation or abuse. Through safe church trainings throughout the church and in our diocese we have educated thousands of clergy and laity about destructive abuses of power and how to report them. What happened 30 years ago would not happen today.
Given our present situation, I also hope it may be helpful if I make myself available to any who may have questions of me or feel a need to say something to me. Therefore, I invite any lay persons who may so desire to meet with Barbara Blodgett, the Diocesan Pastoral Assistant, and me at the Seamen's Church Institute, 475 North 5th Street, Philadelphia, on Sunday, November 19, at 7:00 p.m. And I invite any clergy persons who so desire to meet with us about this matter here at the Cathedral on Monday, November 20, beginning with Morning Prayer at 10:00 a.m.
The real scandal and unfathomable tragedy of an abuser's behavior is its hypocrisy, standing as it does in absolute contradiction to the gospel he is ordained to proclaim. In our reading today from the Gospel according to Matthew, all human beings, from "all the nations," without exception, are said to come under God's judgment based on only one standard - whether we have done God's will through our good works on behalf of, instead of the abuse of, what Matthew calls "the least."
Martin of Tours, whom we commemorate today, did good works to meet the needs of "the least." While still in uniform, he was approached by a poor beggar, who asked for alms in the name of Christ. Martin took his sword, cut off part of his military cloak, and gave it to the beggar. On the following night, Jesus appeared to Martin, clothed in half a cloak, and said to him, "Martin ... covered me with this garment." Jesus tells Martin that in his generous, gentle caring for the other in need - feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the foreigner, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the incarcerated fugitives from persecution - he had cared for Jesus himself, as Jesus, in the Gospel according to Matthew, had predicted.
Jesus is always present, incognito, in the others in their needs. And every one of us, Jesus claims in Matthew's Gospel, has needs. Our needs, in fact, are the most characteristic aspect of our humanity. They are not the result of God's insufficient creation or lack of knowledge regarding our whereabouts. God knows our needs. But more than that, God created our needs, knowing that our needs have a critical, positive role to play in the governance of the universe and the ordering of the church. Without our needs we would have no reason to depend upon one another or upon God; we would have no concern for the just distribution of things; we would have no cause for the petitions wherewith we ask God to meet our needs. It is our needs that bind us together and create what, in Anglican Communion parlance, we used to call "mutual interdependency and responsibility" in the Body of Christ.
In the past week I have had painful moments of self-judgment as I have pondered the extent to which my failure in the 1970's to act more assertively with regard to my brother, his victims, and the church. By implication, I have wondered if it has been not so much things I have done as bishop as things I have not done - specifically, my not meeting certain needs of yours, thereby reducing the dynamics of dependency in our diocese, and my not making my own needs more transparent to you, thereby making possible greater "mutual interdependency and responsibility" among us - that at least partially describes my role in our present conflict.
That would be Matthew's "take" on a situation like ours in the diocese. It was because members were not meeting each other's needs that his own church - let's call it St. Matthew's Church - was seriously conflicted. Thus he describes the conflicts between the wheat and tares (13:24-30), bad fish and good (13:47-50), true disciples and false (12:46-50). He warns about the growing coldness of many (24:12-13) and the danger of being thrown out of the wedding feast even though they call you a "Friend" (22:12) - like Judas, who betrayed Jesus, even though Jesus called him "Friend" (26:50). He portrays intramural betrayals in addition to betrayal by others and hatred by all nations (25:9-10). He takes pains to set up a system for the collective discipline of wayward church members (18:15-20). He calls for expansive applications of much - needed forgiveness, not seven times, but seventy-seven times (18:21).
In Mark's Gospel Jesus promises houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields - along with persecutions - right here, right now, in St. Mark's Church (Mk.10:30). But in Matthew's Gospel the same promises are postponed entirely to the age to come (19:29). St. Matthew's Church is so conflict-ridden, it in no way mirrors the future promises now. That may be why Matthew's gospel ends with the Great Commission sending the members out to disciple all nations: it may have been the only way to get them to stay out of each other's hair! But, of course, he pens his gospel precisely to work out ways for them to stay together and not separate. In fact, he thinks there is to be only one separation - that between the helpers and the non-helpers, the sheep and the goats, in the final judgment when the Son of Man comes. The Roman Catholic spiritual writer Friedrich Baron von Hugel (1852-1925) described this sole cause for separation very simply:
This whole world can be divided in two,
Between those who don't care, and those who do.
Richard Hooker, arguably the greatest of all Anglican theologians, held that conflict is the sign of a growing church, and, of course, our diocese is growing by the only measure which really counts - not the amount of good press coverage we receive, not the number of congregations we maintain, not the size of the diocesan budget, but the number of souls who through our ministries are growing into a transformed life in Christ.
And Matthew would have us not despise conflict, fail to seize the opportunities it presents, or foreclose on its full possibilities too readily. "Blessed are you," he writes, "when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you" (5:11). While it takes strong faith and a brave heart to live in the midst of it, for Matthew conflict is the narrow door into heaven:
So high, you can't get over it,
So low, you can't get under it,
So wide, you can't get around it,
You've got to go in through the door.
But look at why the conflict at St. Matthew's Church has increased so much compared to that at St. Mark's. It is not just that the members of St. Matthew's are more antagonistic or indifferent or apathetic, though a few may be. It is simply that they are under more pressure from the external forces of persecution. True, St. Mark's Church suffers from persecution. But at St. Matthew's it has escalated, increasing greatly the intramural conflict. In fact, "the least" at St. Matthew's are members who, facing persecution, are tempted to quit the church if their fellow members do not support them by better meeting their needs.
Like St. Matthew's Church, our beloved diocese may number apathetic people or antagonists among its members. There is no doubt that many of our problems are internal. But it is also true that we are under considerable external pressure. The area we serve is undergoing breath-taking demographic change. An increasingly secularized, materialistic culture is having a deleterious affect on people's sense of the importance of religious faith and practice, and their church attendance. Media coverage of clergy sex abuse and other scandals, and the role religion plays in the violence all over the world, have caused people to see the church, once widely-regarded as a beneficent social institution, as harmful. Like St. Matthew's Church, we are also under pressure.
And so we need to take seriously Matthew's solution and with heart, soul, mind, and strength, be a church for others. If we in our diocese are to heal our relations with one another, instead of autonomous or independent, I must become more empathic and other-directed, and each of you must, too. We must become more aware of and willing to attend to each other's deepest needs, especially the needs of those among us who are under the most pressure, whether it arises from neighborhood violence or personal spiritual despair or plain material want. We must increase our respect - our willingness to look again and again and again - to see the face of Christ in the face of the other.
And we must not forget that our eternal destinies rest on our doing so, for the day may not be far off when the Son of Man will come in glory with all of his angels and sit on his throne and separate us into sheep and goat, helpers and non-helpers. Instead of resting on the presumption that we are acceptable as we are, "let our light so shine before others that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven" (5:16), to the end that we will hear him call, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (25:31-34). Far better that than the alternative (25:46),
For of all the sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
(John Greenleaf Whittier)
— Charles E. Bennison, Jr.