Tag Archives: Justin Welby

Anglican Church of Canada statement on the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury

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Here it is:

We have seen the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has resigned, having acknowledged personal and institutional responsibility in relation to “the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth” that had been exposed by the Makin Review. Our hearts break for the children and young people who were abused by Smyth and further victimized by the lack of meaningful action on the part of the church.

In 2022, the Archbishop of Canterbury visited Canada to listen to residential school survivors and to issue apologies for the church’s role in the abuses at residential schools. We mourn that today’s news will add to the pain of survivors, and we hold them in our prayers.

The Anglican Church of Canada is committed to continuing the work needed to make the church a safe place for all, in keeping with our baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being. We pray for the humility, courage and wisdom needed for this all-important work.

It’s difficult to miss the irony that Welby “visited Canada to listen to residential school survivors”, an alleged scandal that he was not tangled up in, yet failed to meet with victims of a scandal he was.

Note this tweet from the Anglican Survivors Group. Note in particular the word “lie”:

Justin Welby’s other problem

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As bad as the Justin Welby/John Smyth scandal is, a survey at YouGov illustrates what might be an even bigger problem for the Church of England: 42% of the population has never heard of Justin Welby.

What can this mean other than  an indicator of how utterly irrelevent the church has become to almost half the people in the UK?

 

The fall of Justin Welby

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Justin Welby has resigned over the John Smyth sex, physical and psychological abuse scandal. Welby was not directly involved in the abuse but he knew about it and almost certainly covered it up to protect the institution and his cronies, although he has denied the cover-up and pleaded incompetence instead.

Other heads in the Church of England should probably roll but the ecclesiastical old boys’ network is undoubtedly circling the wagons.

Much as I have disagreed with Welby’s performance during his tenure, I feel rather sorry for the man. Based on his experience as an oil executive, he has tried to run the church as a business, and it hasn’t worked because the church is not a business.

Welby tried to bring reconciliation between irreconcilable parties by telling each what they wanted to hear, earning him the mantle of hypocrite rather than reconciler.

Who will go – and deserves to go – next, I wonder. The Pope?

From here:

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, resigned Tuesday after an investigation found that he failed to tell police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it.

Pressure on Welby had been building since Thursday, when release of the inquiry’s findings kindled anger about a lack of accountability at the highest reaches of the church.

“It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024,” Welby said in the statement announcing his resignation. “I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England, which I dearly love and which I have been honored to serve.”

Helen-Ann Hartley, the bishop of Newcastle, said Monday that Welby’s position was “untenable” after some members of the church’s national assembly started a petition calling on him to step down because he had “lost the confidence of his clergy.”

But the strongest outcry had come from the victims of the late John Smyth, a prominent attorney who abused teenage boys and young men at Christian summer camps in Britain, Zimbabwe and South Africa over five decades. Andrew Morse, who was repeatedly beaten by Smyth over a period of five years, said that resigning was a chance for Welby to start repairing the damage caused by the church’s handling of historical abuse cases more broadly.

Our Nory in heaven

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The Church of England is thinking – yes, I know, an oxymoron, but bear with me – of using gender neutral words when referring to God. Thus “Nory” is a “name which is derived from the “no” and “ry” in “non-binary”. It may work for ze, but does it work for God?

Justin Welby thinks (there I go again, another oxymoron) it might:

The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the religious head of the church, previously said that “God is not male or female” or “definable.”

“All human language about God is inadequate and to some degree metaphorical,” he said in 2018.

Justin Welby criticizes Canada for over-ordering COVID vaccine

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From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised Canada for massively over-ordering supplies of coronavirus vaccine, hindering the rollout of jabs to the world’s poorest nations.

The Most Rev Justin Welby told Parliament the North American country had in the pipeline more than five times what it needed for its 38million citizens.

The government of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has reportedly secured 76million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and up to 56million of the recently-approved jab developed by US firm Moderna.

Meanwhile, here he is being injected with a COVID vaccine dose that he could have donated to someone in one of the world’s poorest nations:

A Church of England Green Lent

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The Nicene Creed has it wrong. Rather than:

For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven

It should say:

For us men and to rebuild our relationship with the planet
he came down from heaven

Because, you see, being reconciled with the planet is more important than being reconciled with God the Father. If you worship Gaia, that is.

From here:

Church of England’s first ever green Lent campaign launches
Launching the resources, Archbishop Justin Welby said: “We urgently need to rebuild our relationship with our planet. To do this, we need to change our habits – in how we pray and how we act.

“Lent is not just about discipline. It’s about allowing Christ to show us what’s keeping us from loving and serving Him – and joyfully letting it go.

“Whatever age you are, this Lent I hope you’ll engage with God’s plea for us to care for His creation, and that these campaign resources will help you on that journey.”

Just some of the questions posed during the series are:

‘How much water goes into making a pair of jeans?’

‘Could you twin your toilet?’

‘When was the last time you gazed at the night sky?’

‘What was the carbon footprint of the meal I just ate?’

If you don’t have a relationship with the planet – I must admit, I don’t – then pull yourself together, twin your toilet,  feel guilty about the carbon footprint of your dinner and google how much water was used in making your trousers. That should do it.

And bishops wonder why people are leaving the church of England.

Sorry, I see I used “men” above. I meant “members of the non-binary, gender fluid, LGBT+, androgynous community; (aka a CofE vicar).”

Anglican global warming hypocrisy

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Justin Welby was in Jordan recently at a Primates’ meeting. One of his more ambitious items on the agenda was a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from Anglican division over the nature of human sexuality to the far more important topic of climate change (née global warming). After all, the weather is far more interesting than sex to most Anglicans.

From here:

Speaking to reporters at the end of a three-day Primates’ meeting in Jordan, the Most Rev Justin Welby said he wanted to see the Anglican Communion begin to focus instead “on those things that affect the world, be that climate change, conflict, the need for the Church to be confident in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, carrying it out into the world … [and] safeguarding”.

And here:

We heard about and commend the work of the Anglican Environmental Network, noting that climate change is not a future threat but, for many in the world today, a present, lived reality;

Where does the hypocrisy come in, you might ask? First of all, the Primates didn’t hold a Skype meeting, they all flew to Jordan on carbon spewing jets.

Second, rather more importantly since plastic pollution does seem to be a genuine problem, the attendees had plastic water bottles on their tables when they could have used filtered tap water:

Still, hypocrisy is as old as humanity and an inevitable byproduct of something in which the church has ceased to believe: original sin. So to find it in the church isn’t particularly surprising. Nor is it surprising that no one is at all interested in what Welby and his Primates have to say for themselves.

Church of England has a course on how to disagree

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Creating a course on how to disagree makes as much sense as a course on how to engage in sexual intercourse. If you can’t do it without instructions, you probably should find something else to occupy your time.

The meandering path Justin Welby trundled down to take him from the Alpha Course to the Disagreement Course is shrouded in mystery, a fantasy that would be beyond even the fertile imagination of Bunyan and his Byways to places like the Hill of Difficulty or the Slough of Despond.

For those who would like to descend into the Ditch of Disagreement to explore Disagreeing Agreeably, here you are.

Justin Welby comes down from the mountain with 10 digital commandments

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The Church of England has written 10 commandments for the digital age; that should really be “0000 1010 commandments for the digital age” but we’ll let that slide.

The Church is encouraging people to sign their agreement to this digital charter here.

Violators will have their rudeness summarily expunged:

The Church’s and Archbishops’ Communications teams may take action if they receive complaints or spot inappropriate, unsuitable or offensive material posted to the national social media accounts. This may include deleting comments, blocking users or reporting comments as appropriate.

Justin Welby has conveniently summed up the 10 digital commandments in this way:

“Social media has transformed the way we live our lives. As Christians we are called to engage in a way which is shaped by the example of Jesus.”

I found this very inspiring so I though I would try it out. Here goes:

But woe to you, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Woe to you, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

Woe to you, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

I’m looking at you, Anglican Church of Canada bishops.

I think I’m getting the hang of it.

Rowan Williams receives honorary doctor of divinity from Huron University

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The irony is that no one knew what an exceptional leader Rowan Williams was until Justin Welby demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt what an unexceptional leader looks like.