Today, November 12, 2024, we have learned that Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has resigned over his personal failure to report child abuse by an Anglican priest, John Smythe.
According to a report released last week, John Smyth abused more than 100 boys and young men, beginning in the 1970s.
Archbishop Justin Welby failed to report Smyth to authorities when he learned of the alleged abuse after becoming the head of the Church of England in 2013.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Gemini-generated Image by William T. Orr, Jr.
Why do I say he failed?
This resignation, while entirely appropriate, is far from enough. This NPR article quotes Welby:
“I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church,” Welby said. “As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse.”
Former Archbishop Welby, IT DOES NOT make anything clear. Not only did you fail your God, the church and its members but you failed faithful Christians around the world.
Your heartfelt apology to all of these would go a long way, but your entitlement as a white male church leader, nurtured by years of arrogance and British colonial thinking, has placed you above apology, above responsibility to your flock.
Author’s note: We raised our children in the Episcopal Church in the U.S. because it was the most reasonable church we vetted and I am more than grateful that this church has told the Church of England that they will welcome and ordain all qualified clergy, regardless of anything that is none of anyone else’s business.
Is this failure unique to the Church of England?
The Roman Catholic Church Gemini-generated Image by William T. Orr, Jr.
Sadly, it is not. I am sorry to have to report that the Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world, and the one that claims exclusive and exceptional access to God and to Jesus has known about, and has covered up, the sexual abuse of children, especially young boys, for centuries.
“The Catholic Church has a long history of actively covering up sexual abuse, including the silencing of victims. The latest report from France reveals the vast scale of clerical abuse over the course of decades. But such abuse – violent rape, coercive coverups, victim shaming – is not new.
“Systemic abuse can be found in the literary and historical records going back to the very beginnings of the Catholic Church, and outrage at corruption in the church is part of what led to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Will these latest findings urge the church to reckon seriously with its past, move beyond calls for forgiveness, and create a robust, inclusive, transformational, and transparent reformation?”
NBC News reported in 2019 that almost 1700 Catholic priests and other clergy members with “credible accusations of child abuse” were working in parishes and schools across the country with no church or legal supervision.
These priests, deacons, monks and lay people now teach middle-school math. They counsel survivors of sexual assault. They work as nurses and volunteer at nonprofits aimed at helping at-risk kids. They live next to playgrounds and daycare centers. They foster and care for children.
And in their time since leaving the church, dozens have committed crimes, including sexual assault and possessing child pornography, the AP’s analysis found.
From Australian country towns to schools in Ireland and cities across the US, the Catholic Church has faced an avalanche of child sexual abuse accusations in the last few decades.
High-profile cases and harrowing testimony given to public inquiries have continued to keep the issue in the headlines.
In the most recent development, a damning inquiry found that some 216,000 children in France had been sexually abused by members of the clergy since 1950.
216,000 children in France. Surely, that is an aberration.
In the US, determined reporting by the Boston Globe newspaper (as captured in the 2015 film Spotlight) exposed widespread abuse and how paedophile priests were moved around by Church leaders instead of being held accountable. It prompted people to come forward across the US and around the world.
A Church-commissioned report in 2004 said more than 4,000 US Roman Catholic priests had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years, in cases involving more than 10,000 children – mostly boys.
This from a church that looks down on LGBTQ+ people and practices:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, a text which contains dogmas and teachings of the Church, names “homosexual acts” as “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law,” and names “homosexual tendencies” as “objectively disordered.” While the Catholic Church does not consider “homosexual orientation” sinful in and of itself, it does have a very negative attitude toward it.
So the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church are unmatched in clergy child abuse?
Small Protestant Church Gemini-generated image by William T. Orr, Jr.
Perhaps you would think that, but you would be very wrong. Time and space prohibit a complete report here but there is one other denomination that bears infamy.
A sexual abuse scandal has shaken up the Southern Baptist Church. A report issued just over a week ago confirmed that survivors who came forward alleging they were sexually abused by church leaders, ministers, workers and volunteers were ignored or silenced by church leadership and often disparaged. Meanwhile, the church kept a secret list of over 700 offenders. The list was even kept secret from most of the church’s leaders. This new report was commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention in response to a series of articles investigating widespread sexual abuse in the church.
NPR interviewed Robert Downen, who was one of the reporters who broke the story.
So this was a list that was commissioned at the behest of a top SBC leader and one of their longtime lawyers. And basically, what it did is it compiled Google Alerts and other news stories about criminal charges. And since 2007, that list had grown to more than 700 names. Most of them were confirmed as Southern Baptist affiliated. And a handful of them at the time of the report last week were still working in churches, including in other denominations.
Where does all this lead us?
What, indeed, do we make of all this? I believe that we can draw some definite conclusions:
Church leaders (and sadly, some scout leaders and many other adults like teachers and police) simply cannot be trusted around children unsupervised. This is a horrible truth but a real one. In 40 years in education, I saw far too many examples among professional educators)
Church denominations that ignore or cover up abuse, deserve no consideration from anyone and should, in a fair world be disbanded.
Clergy (ordained by the church), lay church workers, (and indeed child abusers in other institutional settings) should be permanently removed from their posts, criminally charged and publicly shamed.
Any bishop, archbishop or other supervising clergy who ignore or cover up abuse should also be permanently removed from their posts, criminally charged and publicly shamed.
I am certain that some will have other opinions. I invite and request your comments, whether positive or negative.
William T. Orr, Jr. is a retired educator, most recently the principal of a high school named in the Top 10 in the nation by Newsweek magazine. Orr has a B.A. in English Language and Literature, a M.Ed. in Education Administration and Supervision, and an Ed.D. in Education leadership. He’s also completed Postdoctoral study at Yale Divinity School and Dallas Theological Seminary. You can read more about the author here.
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