Bishop Bennison is Returning as the Bishop of Pennsylvania
Click here to visit the Diocesan website for an announcement from the
Standing Committee.
Click here for an open letter to the people of the Diocese of Pennsylvania From the Standing Committee of the Diocese.
Click here for Philadelphia Inquirer dated August 22nd titled “Sins of omission”
Click Here for an open letter from the Bennison Trial Witnesses
Click Here for an open letter to from the Vestry of St. Christopher’s Church
Click Here for an open letter to the trial witnesses from the President of The House of Deputies
One person’s thoughts and observations
after the meeting of the members of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, clergy and laity, held on Sunday 8 August 2010 in the Cathedral, to consider how we all stand now at Bishop Bennison’s return.
The cathedral was quiet, almost silent, before the meeting formally began. The lights were bright, and the openness of the seating, rows of chairs in a great three-sided square, welcoming and inclusive. The mood was somber, the people thoughtful. We all, four hundred or more of us I do believe, stood and recited Evening Prayer; all our voices raised together in the familiar hymns plucked at the soul of each of us present.
After announcements and thanks Bishop Michel in full canonicals stood to the dais and took questions, some fifty in all, from clergy and laity present.
The greatest sense of course was that of concern, deep, profound, soul-searching concern about the vast issues. First, how could the appeals court so flagrantly reject on a mere technicality the judgment of the previous court and the expressed wishes of the members of the diocese, clergy and laity alike, responding to us with such a fierce and deliberate slap in the face? Second, how could the members of this diocese have any confidence at all in the national leadership of their church after such a brazen assault? Third, how could Bishop Bennison be restrained in future, if he must come back to where he is profoundly and rightly disliked, and made totally ineffectual if and when after his return he were to act essentially no differently than he had acted before, such being his expressed intention? And fourth, how can anyone urge us to forgiveness and reconciliation when the offender has resolutely rejected any notion that he has ever done anything wrong, even going so far as to liken his troubles glibly and with the crudest of sacrilege to the travails of Jesus upon the Cross?
Bishop Michel constantly and repeatedly urged the members of the diocese to live a life of prayer. He said much else, of the need for reconciliation and for going forward together, but he offered nothing more concrete than prayer. He informed the assemblage, in response to a question, that the canons of the Episcopal Church at this point directly forbid and prevent the Presiding Bishop, any other bishop or group of bishops, indeed any group or individual at all, clergy or laity or combined, from doing anything in any way towards removing Bishop Bennison now that he is coming back. He can be asked, he can be begged, he can be solicited, he can be urged to resign or to retire – and that’s the whole of it, short of another Reformation. Personally, I felt that the disappointment, the chagrin, the soul-felt frustration, and yes the real disgust, of the people in the cathedral was indeed palpable.
From the notes I took during the two hours or more of the meeting I can count that Bishop Michel responded to more than thirty individual questions submitted to him.
One question has to stand out alone among all the others because this particular speaker was totally, 100%, and in every way supportive of Bishop Bennison: he has been persecuted, he has been reviled, he has suffered, he has known rejection … and therefore he deserves our love and total support in all that he would do when he comes home from his travails. Slay the fatted calf. The question of guilt and all its ramifications were irrelevant to this speaker (who announced that he was looking for a new parish). He spoke alone.
Beyond what Bishop Bennison has done to this diocese, in his manipulation and deliberate devices to deceive his clergy, in his reckless finances driving a once prosperous diocese to the brink of bankruptcy, two themes occurred time and time again to those who submitted questions. First, “I have two adolescent sons, coming up for confirmation. After all this, how can I ever urge them to see the church as their home?” And, this from a member of the clergy, “I have two young daughters. Never, never will I allow them to come close to this man who has supported his brother in the rape of a minor.” In Bennison’s hands confirmation would be a travesty of the sacrament. The second theme was this: “Why could not the bishops reach behind that wretched statute of limitations to the purpose for which laws protecting minors were enacted? Federal courts look back to ‘the intent of Congress’ behind the words of an act, so why does the Episcopal Church reject this reasonable line?” In sum, “Why is an unrepentant offender who has been labeled as guilty in two church courts to be foisted off on us again, yes, foisted, absolutely forced upon us, as if we were of no account in Christ’s kingdom?”
There was much talk of “Let him without offence cast the first stone” as a way of forgiving and forgetting Bishop Bennison’s offences, but this line of reasoning was set in its place by the recognition that the woman taken in adultery had confessed her sin, repented, and asked for mercy rather than execution by slow torture, which is not what Bishop Bennison faces.
Again and again Bishop Michel advocated prayer, reminding us that God’s Church will survive and that Bennison will not be with us forever. (Neither was Nero, I thought, nor Torquemada.) I did not have any sense that the assemblage found any comfort at all in his words.
As for Bishop Bennison’s ‘looting’ of the diocese before his inhibition, Bishop Michel urged us that in every future instance the appropriate authorities should be notified, but in view of what he had said before about outside accountability, there did not seem to be any real substance to his words. He urged us to write to Bishop Jeffers…. and to pray.
One speaker, a priest, expressed deep concern that half of our diocese’s parishes were in decline or in danger and that the presence of conflict within the diocese has been repeatedly identified as the prime cause. He therefore urged Bishop Bennison to resign at once. This, and many other such entreaties (at least ten in all) were greeted with prolonged applause throughout the cathedral!
Another speaker hit an intellectual note. “How can we take back an offender into the highest position of leadership in our diocese when he refuses to admit to any offence, although he has been found guilty both ecclesiastical courts?” (Note that he was reprieved on a technicality, a loophole, due to the bishops vastly preferring to give precedence to the statute of limitations over any question of guilt or innocence.) “I ask myself, what does the leadership of the Church stand for? Is there something there that I can respect? What are we meant to learn from this? Just to move on? The leadership says ‘Oops!’ and that’s that?” These words were followed by prolonged applause. And then Bishop Michel suggested once again that we write to the leadership… and pray..
A priest followed up on the last speaker’s frustration. No corporation or institution in America, he said, would continue to pay a very handsome salary to a chief executive what had been found guilty in two law courts. He maintained that it would be distinctly and directly immoral for us to welcome Bishop Bennison back. We should all read carefully the Ordination Service in the Prayer Book, and see how profoundly and precisely Bishop Bennison has violated his oath. Applause …
The last speaker, a layman, announced that he, like so very many others, cannot possibly welcome Bishop Bennison back. The six years remaining in Bishop Bennison’s tenure are not to so very long, we are told, but this speaker wants him out in six weeks. The Church has indeed lasted to two thousand years and will surely overcome this blight – but why wait, why are we waiting, how can we justify a sluggishness that looks very much like complete indifference?
After two hours, time was up. The meeting drew to a close in a reading of the Service of Compline with all its comforting sentiments. It is worthy of note that for an hour or more yet after the formal conclusion of proceedings groups of individuals came together, discussed everything (often with furrowed brow), slipped apart, reconstituted themselves into other groups, talked it though and talked it through again. That in itself was something to remember.
In conclusion, I would like to repeat that these are purely my own notes and impressions, and that it is my profound belief that although the people in the cathedral were glad to feel companionship, to express themselves and to listen attentively to each other, their frustrations and their bitterness have not been assuaged, no, not in the very least.
The resentment and the grinding fury remain, and a fog of grey cynicism about the national leadership is settling deep over the diocese of Pennsylvania.
George Wrangham