Chapter
58 ... “The Archbishop Must Save Face
What did the Archbishop do? He had a
plan. He executed it meticulously. He succeeded.
The plan had in part been brewing for a
while. Recall I said earlier how we were taught in college that one
protection of evangelical ministers in non-evangelical dioceses had
been that the bishop was restrained by church law from booting them
out unless they did something sinful or heretical. The archbishop was
going to remove that safeguard.
To cut a long story short, he was
manoeuvring through the diocesan synod an alteration to church law
that would allow him to dismiss a minister without any charge of
wrongdoing.
Of course it had to be dressed up a bit
to make it look proper. A certain number of people in the parish had
to “petition” him to get rid of their minister. The archbishop's
assistant bishop for that area had to agree. A specially convened
board had to find that there was “an irretrievable breakdown”
between the minister and some people in the parish. But
one does not have to be very worldly wise to know that this was only
a bit of window dressing. If the archbishop and the required number
of parishioners wanted a minister out – he or she was as good as
gone!
Since nick and Shirley had persuaded
about one third of the parishioners to join them, readers will not be
surprised that the final church law stipulated “at least one third”
as the required number. I always have to suppress a chuckle when I
recall that this is precisely the proportion of angels that we are
told in Revelation 12 rebelled against God! I just find it quirky
that a church should think that an irretrievable breakdown of exactly
the same magnitude as God had with Satan and his angels is reason
enough to kick an honest priest out. So … would they want to kick
God out and hand heaven over to Satan?
In the meantime, while he waited
another 18 months for this legislation to get through synod, the
archbishop needed to keep Nick and Shirley's people “parishioners”;
maintain their rage and stop St. Luke's getting on with the work of
the Gospel and looking successful.
At first Nick and Shirley's group moved
en-mass to worship at a nearby evangelical church.
I am describing the archbishop's plan
of attack with the benefit of hindsight – we were pretty naive and
didn't see it all at the time. We were just praying through each step
and doing what we thought was right and godly.
Try 1: – the archbishop asked us to
allow Nick and Shirley's people to use our hall for a bible study and
worship with another minister. I took it to vestry, we all prayed and
decided “No”. We answered that as Vicar I should run it if it
were held at our church. We got a very angry response from the
archbishop! Now I see that he wanted to be able to say Nick and
Shirley's people were still “parishioners”.
Try 2: - the archbishop set them up as
their own church, by renting the use of another Anglican church just
down the road from us – but not counting them as members of that
parish. The diocese had to tear up the rule book to do this.
The Anglican church is very
territorial. Sydney diocese cannot set up a church in Melbourne for
instance and every part of Melbourne is allocated to some parish or
another. Of course it can be re-carved to make more or less parishes,
but there is a process to go through to do this. The archbishop did
not bother with lawful procedure he just acted on his own. He gave
Nick and Shirley's group use of a church building, allowed to have
their church committee and treasurer like a normal parish, gave them
a diocesan bank account to use, gave them their own minister. Then
allowed them to try to recruit from the real St. Luke’s by firstly
calling themselves “St. Luke’s” then saying that
the real St. Luke’s was in rebellion against the archbishop, so
true Anglicans should go with them to the new building!
The two things I find amazing are
firstly that no one in the diocese saw this as wrong, and secondly
that for all those advantages, only less than one third of the
congregation left or were lured away to form this “parish-in-exile”
Pincer movement: - The archbishop tries
to stop St. Luke's being successful.
Then some of our wardens and vestry
were prevented from contributing to the growth of the parish as they
would have liked by constant demands from that diocese that they “do”
something about reconciliation with the group who had left, despite
their protests that the other group were merely toying with them. The
other group were not interested in reconciliation! They wanted
revenge! They wanted domination, and they well knew that they
only had to wait and the diocese would hand it all to
them on a platter.
The following are
extracts from a contemporary Statutory Declaration by one of the
Church Wardens describing their frustrations during this time:
“On
4th
January 1995 I and my fellow Wardens met with the Archbishop to
discuss our concerns at the implications of the Archbishop’s
actions in purporting to set up a “branch” of St. Luke’s in
another parish. … I did not find the Archbishop’s response to
our concerns at all helpful.”
“On
14 January I and my fellow wardens wrote to the South Vermont Group
(as we now called the dissident group) … We had been told by the
Archbishop that we were the Wardens of the South Vermont Group as
well as St. Luke’s. We pointed out the difficulty involved and we
were told to arrange meetings with the Committee of the South Vermont
Group.
I
was invited by Nick xxx to a meeting of the South Vermont Group on 22
January 1995; however before the meeting Nick xxx telephoned to
cancel the invitation to that meeting.
On
20 January I and my fellow wardens wrote to the South Vermont Group
and asked them what their intentions were at th election they had
indicated they were holding on 22 January.
Over
the following 4 months I and my fellow wardens had difficulties in
getting the leadership of the South Vermont Group to arrange meetings
with us. Appointments were made verbally by the South Vermont people
but when I spoke to Peter xxx the day before the meeting he said
words to the effect: “Nothing’s been arranged because we were
expecting something in writing.” Then he said “All communication
must be in writing”.
I
and my fellow wardens met with the Archbishop on 23 May 1995. A
report for the Archbishop for that meeting was prepared by my fellow
wardens and myself. Our frustration with the prevarications of the
South Vermont group was expressed.
At
that meeting the Archbishop directed bishop xxx (regional bishop of
the time) to arrange a meeting between three members of the South
Vermont Group and us Wardens.
We
then had some meetings with the three members of the South Vermont
Group at the bishop’s home. These were “ice-breaking” and
amiable but not productive of anything of real value, particularly in
the way of finding ways forward to a reconciliation of the South
Vermont Group and the body of St. Luke’s Vermont. The bishop took a
role of absorbing information but was not pro-active in any way.
In
respect to the Archbishop’s charge that we should seek
reconciliation between the South Vermont Group and the body of St.
Luke’s I have to say nothing of value was achieved in my time as
warden. There was much talk on the part of the South Vermont Group,
but no real proposals.
An
indication of how the South Vermont Group approached the matter is
given in an open letter fro Nick xxx,
undated, copies of which were circulated to myself, the other
wardens, and to all members of vestry and to David Greentree in about
January and February 1995.
(I
will intrude here to quote from this letter by Nick xxx:
“ … I
have heard many of you talk about the need to put the past behind us
and get on with focussing on Jesus and His mission at St. Luke’s.
Some have also said we should forgive and seek reconciliation so that
St. Luke’s can again be one body … I note from scripture that
every Christian is to forgive unconditionally with no exceptions …
on the other hand reconciliation requires a commitment of any persons
involved and can only happen if there is repentance as well as
forgiveness” Nick then goes on to liken his being dismissed by me
to the relationship of a young girl abused by her father “the only
way forward together in such a situation would be for the father to
openly repent of his abuse. I feel that our situation is not unlike
that currently”
)
In
the report of the Wardens to the AGM my fellow Wardens and I stated
our collective view that the then impending legislation to amend the
Appointments Act to permit the Archbishop to remove a vicar from his
parish and even remove his licence was a major stumbling block to
reconciliation. Subsequent events have proved this to be true. …”
So the Archbishop was on one hand
charging the Wardens to seek reconciliation between the one third he
had set up as a “parish-in-exile” and the two-thirds who had
remained at St. Luke’s. But on the other hand he was encouraging
the one third to resist any reconciliation with the prospect of this
impending legislation. All they had to do was resist the efforts of
the Wardens and they would be rewarded by seeing me removed from the
ministry, which was what they desired above all else.
Back to the change in church law the
Archbishop was bringing in:
Any justification behind this change
came from the “no fault” divorce laws. It was totally contrary
to 2,000 years of experience of Christian ministry - starting I
suppose with St. Paul’s unpopularity with the congregation at
Corinth. It was totally contrary to the principles of Anglicanism
laid down in our Constitution. It was totally contrary to common
sense: any vicar will always be at the mercy of a large interest
group. I know a true story of a vicar who sacked a paedophile
choirmaster – the choirmaster later went to jail for the terrible
things he did to a generation of choir-boys. The vicar had no
concrete evidence at that stage - but he had good reason to believe
the man was a paedophile, and he was right - but boys were to ashamed
to give evidence even though they were innocent victims - paedophiles
are diabolically clever that way. But the choir master had a popular
following and it was very difficult to get rid of him. Under these
new rules the vicar would be the one who got sacked and the
paedophile would have been able carry on with impunity until one of
the boys grew old enough to realise they had to go to the police. An
extreme case but it illustrates a point:
The
bible and history are full of cases of godly ministers
having to confront vested interests. Vicars need to be protected, not
made more vulnerable to them!
Now we came to the nitty-gritty. I hope
the condensed version still makes sense.
Under the new law it mattered who was
on the parish electoral roll. The ones who left us 18
months previously were still on the roll but no longer entitled to
be. What should we do. The wardens asked the diocese to provide a
legal opinion on who was entitled to be on the roll. We could read
the regulations ourselves, but we needed the application made clear.
The opinion which came back was that a person had to “habitually”
attend for the three months before the roll was revised. Further they
had to attend the actual piece of real estate that was the church in
question. This mattered because the diocese had been allowing the
group who had left and gone down the road to call themselves “St.
Luke’s”. The point was according to the diocese's own experts in
church law that legally they were not entitled to be on our
church roll.
My next question was how to determine
this, since some were still coming occasionally to continue harassing
our congregation as explained earlier. Also a number of people
who supported me had been so hurt by all the sit in demonstrations
that they stopped coming, and even now were pretty sporadic.
So, could I just take off the members of the other group and leave
supporters on? I would have loved to have done that - just out of
kindness to the supporters who had already been hurt so badly.
Vestry and I
decided we couldn’t just take off the names of Nick and Shirley's
people who had not been attending St. Luke's. We were fighting
dishonest practices: we had to be scrupulously honest ourselves.
Otherwise we would be no better than they were!
We marked an attendance roll every
Sunday for three months. Then we revised the electoral roll and took
off every name “friend or foe” without fear or favour who did not
attend.
The Archbishop was furious. The ones
from the dissident group whose names we had removed were primed to
appeal to Archbishop-in-council. We heard that the diocese’s law
committee had ruled that they were not eligible to have their names
on our electoral roll - because they did not attend our church. In
fact their own church was not only geographically separated from us,
but had its own minister, its own finances (using a diocesan bank
account) and its own governing committee - and its own Sunday school
and youth groups. In short it was in every conceivable way “a
different church”.
I believe that the Archbishop told his
council that it was a “pastoral matter” and that they must just
accept his “pastoral judgement”. Except for two
brave souls who questioned the archbishop's actions, the council did.
Archbishop-in-Council did what the
archbishop demanded and put back the names
of all the dissidents (but none of my supporters) on
the excuse
that Vestry had not passed a motion defining what standard was to be
applied for “habitual” attendance.
The two brave members of that council
who spoke against it had signed their own career death warrants –
they were later quietly put out of their diocesan positions.
Vestry promptly passed the required
motion based on what the diocese's own legal experts had decreed
and instructed the electoral roll
committee to revise the roll forthwith, which they have the legal
right to do and which they did, removing again the names which had no
right to be there!
It did not do
any good of course. But it showed up that the diocese was acting
outside even the law it had just passed and was relying on to get rid
of me!
The Archbishop invoked the provisions
of the law, maintaining against all the facts that these people
constituted “one third of the electors of the parish”.
A “Board of Reference” was now
called into being. Under the act, all they had to determine was the
question “Does there exist an irretrievable breakdown in pastoral
relationships between the vicar and some parishioners” So if a few
persons say “We will never reconcile to the vicar” that is it.
The vicar must go! As I said it is a very bad law.
Since this Board said that the question
of these people not being “parishioners” was outside its frame of
reference, and since said people had for eighteen months spurned
every attempt by our Wardens to talk reconciliation the result was a
foregone conclusion.
Nick and Shirley's people had already
been assured of this by the diocese. Here is what one of their
leaders said to one of our parishioners (I am quoting her statutory
declaration made 1996)
“One
day at about the time that the board of reference was appointed Andy
xxx (a
mechanic who was one of the leaders of the South Vermont Group)
was at my house to work on my car. As soon as I opened the front door
to him he said to me words to the effect: “The Board of Reference
is purely and simply called as a formality to satisfy David that the
Archbishop was taking appropriate action - to shut David up. xxx
(naming the Chairman of the Board) is a good friend of the
Archbishop’s. The outcome is already decided. This is just for
appearance sake. The decision will be made quickly because xxx
is going on holidays overseas and wants to get the whole thing over
and done with. …”
So the whole thing was just a show for
propaganda purposes. Yes I know, I am sounding sour, but I really
disapprove of churches acting like this.
At the beginning of
October 1996 I was summoned to see the Archbishop where he handed me
a letter revoking my licence, and forbidding me from entering the
church at Vermont. It was payday, and another letter was send to the
treasurer commanding him not to give the monthly pay.
I was out.
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