That Money Was Just Resting In My Account

A few years ago I wrote about David Tennant's (or more accurately writer Steven Moffat's) TV portrayal of a priest at the centre of a safeguarding storm and how far it seemed from any remotely credible depiction of how someone in that position would react. Now I find myself able to add to the sequence of bizarre media depictions of clergy in crisis, as The Archers' Alan Franks seems to have managed to avoid all the safeguarding courses the rest of us have to go on in just the same way as Inside Man's Fr Harry Watling had. The incumbent of Ambridge is a man of long and challenging experience, and yet when he gave dying parishioner Carol Tregorran his own bank details so she could make a donation to St Stephen's Church for flowers, anyone but him could see where the storyline was going a mile off. Now he finds himself the next best thing to suspended, unable to handle the parish's money and chaperoned in every pastoral encounter by a churchwarden, after Carol, unbeknownst to him, transferred several thousand pounds his way the day before she died, and her daughter made a formal complaint after discovering what had happened. 

The Archdeacon turned up on Revd Franks's doorstep and in their awkward encounter played the straightest of bats, correctly insisting there was a process that now had to be followed. It was the supposedly experienced priest's reaction that made me boggle. 'But I'm innocent!' the scriptwriters have him cry, apparently never having given a moment's thought in all his ministry to how these things pan out. Even if I hadn't been included in several cases which have involved the Diocesan Safeguarding Department, I would have known what happens through training and Church news outlets. For heaven's sake, a quarter of the bench of bishops are signed off duty at the moment for irregularities of varying sorts, you can't avoid that. 'Ray, how long have we known each other?' Alan pleads with the Archdeacon, as though that could or should make any difference, as though 'Ray-how-long-have-we-known-each-other' doesn't reflect exactly the attitude which has got the Church of England and other once-trusted organisations into the pickle they find themselves now. Where has he been? How come all these media clergy never seem to have done the training I've had to do? Repeatedly? Or be subject to the Clergy Discipline Measure?

He has a bit of a habit of this, does Alan Franks. Not so long ago he seemed utterly bewildered by how to handle a contentious baptism request when the answer was obvious, and last year reacted so unclerically to a pair of local teenagers who were terribly apologetic for accidentally breaking a vicarage window with an errant cricket ball that listeners asked questions about his mental health. Now, as is his wont, he has decided that his accuser 'feels I have wronged her ... I have to try to treat her with grace', while it's Mrs Vicarage Usha's turn to be furious and make churchwarden Neil Carter thoroughly uncomfortable with what in court would be unconscionable attempts to influence someone who needs to maintain strict procedure - and Usha, remember, is a lawyer, who of all people should be aware of how the system has to work. All it needs now is for Alan's daughter Amy who we haven't heard from in about 15 years to take out a contract on his accuser's life. Or maybe the Archdeacon's.  

Visited

It wasn't even the Archdeacon who came to do the Archdeacon's Visitation at the church this week; it was the Deputy Archdeacon, the affable newly-retired Vicar of Crowfield who is clearly in need of some activity to ease himself into retirement (I'm pretty sure he doesn't get paid anything more than petrol money). In fact the last Visitation was the only time when an Archdeacon did do it, and as the Archdeacon then very soon became our Suffragan Bishop I had forgotten he wasn't when he came, if you're following me. On this occasion, Deputy Archdeacon Ray's first task was to swear Colin in as our new churchwarden, taking on the remaining months of the term of office until the Annual Meeting after Easter, and then to examine various register books and policies. This time we were mildly upbraided for not having our Certificate of Public Liability Insurance on display in both the church entrance and the hall, and for the Safeguarding Officer's details on show in the former but not the latter. Nobody has ever mentioned those, but ratcheting-up is the point of these things, so far do's. 'Your Safeguarding Dashboard is a bit of a dog's dinner', Ray stated, rather to my surprise, showing us a screen capture on his phone of a range of amber and red boxes, 'though you're not the worst in the diocese'. I suppose that's a comfort to everyone except the worst parish in the diocese, to whom the rest of us should be grateful. Curiously when I went onto the Dashboard the following day I saw much more green, and was able to turn another box green just by confirming the PCC had discussed something, so I don't know where Ray had got his image from, but again, I'm not disagreeing that more needs to be done.

Then we discussed our draft Church Development Plan. I was a bit conscious that a lot of it involves taking decisions about where to go with various ideas, such as whether to instal AV equipment or employ a Musical Director, rather than actually doing any of these things, but Ray was less fazed by that rather than the fact that much rests on me finding people to run with these ideas and build small groups of congregation members to do the thinking. 'Your initials are next to a lot of this', he pointed out, though I think at this stage it's inescapable that they would be. Poor Colin and Robert, the existing churchwarden, who didn't have a great deal to contribute to the discussion.

'What did you make of the previous iteration of this?' asked Ray. 'Well', I said, 'The fact that it was called the Parish Needs Process and the way it was marketed led us to think that we were identifying what our parishes wanted to do and then the diocese would provide what we needed to achieve our dreams, and it became clear that it wasn't really like that'. 'Yes', mused Ray, 'That's right. I think they've probably learned from that'. Which tells you everything you need to know.

Here's the glorious photo of Archdeacon Colley of Stockton I used for the last Visitation post.

Omerta

There is an Area Dean in the church-set TV comedy series Rev, but she has a minor role next to waspish Archdeacon Robert, who turns up at the vicarage almost every week to patronise Fr Adam Smallbone and tip his coffee into the sink. And yet thanks to the horrible scandal of David Tudor the phrase ‘Area Dean’ is all over the place: he was a ‘senior priest’, say the news reports, ‘in charge of twelve parishes’ in the Chelmsford diocese. Well, says anyone who knows anything about how the Church of England works, Yes and No.

An Area Dean is a bit of a dogsbody. You don’t get paid to do it, but generally you do the job alongside your parochial duties: someone who isn’t a parish priest can technically be an Area Dean, but it’s uncommon. They act as a conduit for information between the local clergy and the diocese, and have a pastoral brief over those clergy. It’s a task nobody generally wants, because we’re all busy enough, thank you, and yet everyone likes to be asked, because it shows that the bishop and your colleagues have enough confidence in you to think that you’d be good at it. Or at least no worse than anyone else available.

But appointing the Area Dean in a deanery is very much the bishop’s initiative. Which is why, in David Tudor’s case, it not only baffles that Stephen Cottrell, as Bishop of Chelmsford, kept re-enlisting him to do it when he, Tudor, was subject to a safeguarding order, but that he was ever asked to do it in the first place. Just like Stephen Cottrell, his predecessor John Gladwin would have been perfectly aware of the restrictions Mr Tudor had had placed on his ministry some months before he was appointed in 2008: why did that happen at all? How could the bishop, whichever bishop, really believe that being subject to a safeguarding order didn’t make a difference to David Tudor’s ability to carry out this extra duty? Today, clergy in a Deanery – and their Parish Safeguarding Officers – would have been told that one of their number wasn’t allowed to be alone with children, but this clearly wasn’t the case in Chelmsford Diocese in 2008. Or maybe they were told, and decided not to believe it, a habit which crops up in many of these depressing narratives.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether institutions that are seduced by abusers or the bishops who make mistakes in dealing with them are liberal or conservative, evangelical or catholic; instead the real conflict is between openness and secrecy. Priests get used to keeping confidences, for very good reasons, but perhaps the habit tends to extend into areas it very much should not. The next step is to imagine that keeping the secrets makes you important, and that only you have the wisdom to deal with them in the right way. You picture yourself as one of a special cadre defined by the secrets they keep. That's above the non-existent pay grade of an Area Dean: that's bishop territory.