Of course, if they were told to sell their house, either to support themselves during training or because "we'll look after you in your retirement", they may find themselves in difficulty later on.
Although it rather raises the issue of liability.
In practice, it appears not. From all the reporting that I've read (and heard about), this "advice" was always given verbally, rather than in writing.
As far as I can tell, the house-selling issue appears to have been a consequence, at least in part, of the CofE's one-time(?) policy of people going forward for ordination not having unsecured debt, and DDO's and other clergy not knowing the difference between unsecured debt and a mortgage (or other forms of debt).
As with many things in the CofE, there doesn't appear to have been any requirement for those giving advice to have any expertise.
Your post prompts me to speculate that another possibility is that some dioceses saw it as an issue of managing their own financial liabilities (again, possibly incorrectly).
Most of the people giving the advice back then didn’t have the authority to make those kind of promises - let alone make good on them. No liability there.
Justin Welby has given an interview with Laura Kuenssberg which was discussed on Radio 4's Sunday programme and is (will soon be) available on iPlayer and BBC Sounds. From the clips I've heard, he seems to phrasing his comments more carefully and taking more responsibility for his errors. Some might argue that his explanation of the reasons behind his error is still a failure to take responsibility, but things seldom take place in a vacuum.
"The reality is I got it wrong. As archbishop, there are no excuses."
"I think there is a rush to judge ... judgment of public leaders."
"There is an absence of forgiveness; we don’t treat our leaders as human. We expect them to be perfect. If you want perfect leaders, you won’t have any leaders."
To be fair, most of the clergy I know have trouble reconciling the concept of forgiveness with the concept of people accepting responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
Well, he's right about the rush to judgement - not just of leaders, of anyone in the public eye: but if he thinks he's hard done by, he should try being Diane Abbott for a while. Or if that's too big a jump, Stella Creasey.
And it's not his place to forgive Smyth. It might have been appropriate to talk in general terms about forgiveness as part of the healing process, but even that would come better from someone who has suffered as the result of a crime, rather than someone who was involved in a cover-up.
I also think, I couldn’t think about this abuser issue well because there were so many - is a) depressing and b) bollocks.
I think if you come into a job and find a massive number of your employees or people your organisation is involved with, are thought to have committed serious crimes - do make some kind of systematic plan.
E.g. let’s set up a team to pick through each file and check all the correct actions have been followed, let’s set up a steering group for that team that includes representatives of those affected (which shouldn’t have been that hard give one of survivors is already a bishop). Meanwhile, let’s set up another team to look out doing everything we can to ensure this doesn’t happen again - maybe get some external expert help.
I have seen it said on the Ship that that Welby suffers considerably from depression. Could this have affected his ability to take decisive, organised action in the face of this major challenge?
I have seen it said on the Ship that that Welby suffers considerably from depression. Could this have affected his ability to take decisive, organised action in the face of this major challenge?
It's possible, but if your mental health is preventing you from doing your job effectively there needs to be a mechanism for you or someone else to sound the alarm and get you the help you need and/or remove you from that job and let someone do it who can.
I'm sorry, but the Nolan Report came out a full decade before Welby became ABC and it was very widely publicised. Long before he became a bishop he held suffiiciently senior posts that should have made him aquaint himself with it.
But then I was always amazed that he was made a bishop at all, bearing in mind what went on when he was Dean of Liverpool. Maybe TPTB thought that a Dean taking out an injunction to ban someone from their cathedral normal, and were comfortable that the same person allowed someone on the Sex Offenders Register to officiate at a service for children?
I have yet to see any evidence that Welby has even the remotest idea of the damage he has done to victims, the harm he caused to the reputation of the office he held and, the catastrophic knock-on effect his hubris has had on the church he was meant to lead.
I think Laura K was headline searching and got what she wanted. Shame really. More fuel for the blame machine.
I think the relevant question is what Justin's motives were in doing the interview. It seems to me that he was looking for forgiveness:
LK: Do you feel that you were "cancelled" if you like in this modern frenzy?
JW: We won’t know that for 30 or 40 years and I’ll be dead by that time. I don’t know, I can’t answer that question. You’d have to ask others. I know that I let God down, I let people down.
... LK: ... but you’ve mentioned today, and you’ve written and talked before a lot about forgiveness. Would you like the victims of John Smyth to forgive you?
JW: Obviously, but it’s not about me...
... LK: You wrote ‘to forgive is not to pretend that nothing’s happened, it’s the opposite, it accepts the full weight of the wrong’. Do you forgive John Smyth?
JW: Yes. I think if he was alive and I saw him, but it’s not me he’s abused, he’s abused the victims and survivors. So whether I forgive or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant.
Does Welby's position on forgiveness make sense to people here? (Including putting it into the public domain.)
I think Laura K was headline searching and got what she wanted. Shame really. More fuel for the blame machine.
I think the relevant question is what Justin's motives were in doing the interview. It seems to me that he was looking for forgiveness:
LK: Do you feel that you were "cancelled" if you like in this modern frenzy?
JW: We won’t know that for 30 or 40 years and I’ll be dead by that time. I don’t know, I can’t answer that question. You’d have to ask others. I know that I let God down, I let people down.
... LK: ... but you’ve mentioned today, and you’ve written and talked before a lot about forgiveness. Would you like the victims of John Smyth to forgive you?
JW: Obviously, but it’s not about me...
... LK: You wrote ‘to forgive is not to pretend that nothing’s happened, it’s the opposite, it accepts the full weight of the wrong’. Do you forgive John Smyth?
JW: Yes. I think if he was alive and I saw him, but it’s not me he’s abused, he’s abused the victims and survivors. So whether I forgive or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant.
Does Welby's position on forgiveness make sense to people here? (Including putting it into the public domain.)
Indeed. And this shows what a travesty the headline is.
I rather though he was not so much seeking forgiveness as some sort of bizarre validation for his inaction. Much of this has been in the public domain for years and years, so his claiming to be "overwhelmed" by the number of incidents seems disingenuous, to say the least. His documented association and friendship with Smyth received a light touch during the interview, and the "bigger boys (police) told me not to get involved" line was frankly pathetic.
I have seen it said on the Ship that that Welby suffers considerably from depression. Could this have affected his ability to take decisive, organised action in the face of this major challenge?
It's possible, but if your mental health is preventing you from doing your job effectively there needs to be a mechanism for you or someone else to sound the alarm and get you the help you need and/or remove you from that job and let someone do it who can.
I think that's rather difficult though especially if the consequence is omissions and poor performance rather than collapse. I think Welby has been rather low-energy as ABC. Someone said it was odd and disappointing how invisible he was during COVID, for example. Maybe the low energy is medical in origin.
Welby’s understanding of forgiveness looks orthodox to me. But I remain puzzled as to his reasons for agreeing to the interview.
As to depression, I wouldn’t be surprised at anyone becoming depressed by carrying out the ABC role. Whichever part of the coalition they belong to, they will have enemies to contend with. Or at best not everyone will wish them well. That’s just for starters.
Add in the impossible expectations over unity, the realities of historical (and continuing) abuse, and gender differences, and you have an agenda that most would rather avoid.
I thought forgiveness went hand in hand with repentance, so I am somewhat flummoxed by the notion of someone forgiving another who has shown no signs of it.
Welby’s understanding of forgiveness looks orthodox to me. But I remain puzzled as to his reasons for agreeing to the interview.
Thanks. What do you make of his statement that, for the person doing the forgiving, "to forgive ... accepts the full weight of the wrong"?
Giving this (the whole interview) another look, I can't escape the feeling that it's rather too easy to read implied criticism of people who don't forgive, although I suspect his intention was probably to explain how forgiveness works and why its a "good thing":
LK: How to you think a victim of John Symth might react to you saying that you could forgive him? Because he didn’t abuse you, he abused them.
JW: I would say exactly what I just said, it’s not about whether I do, yes, you asked me a question I gave an honest answer, but I also said that that’s irrelevant. The point is, is the church – nobody’s going to say to them, “You must forgive,” I’ve never said it to a survivor, I never would. But is the church behaving in a way and loving in a way, and it isn’t, hasn’t, in a way that enables people to have that choice, freely for themselves, and not because some archbishop has said it’s a good thing. That’s what matters.
I think some of his intentions may have got lost in translation.
I thought forgiveness went hand in hand with repentance, so I am somewhat flummoxed by the notion of someone forgiving another who has shown no signs of it.
TBF, Jesus never said of forgiving others "if they repent". He just said do it anyway.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is Smyth's offences weren't against Welby, so it isn't in Welby's remit to forgive him.
I thought forgiveness went hand in hand with repentance, so I am somewhat flummoxed by the notion of someone forgiving another who has shown no signs of it.
TBF, Jesus never said of forgiving others "if they repent". He just said do it anyway.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is Smyth's offences weren't against Welby, so it isn't in Welby's remit to forgive him.
About repentance - I was thinking more in a sacramental setting rather than real life (oops!)
Welby should have just said it was an inappropriate question as he wasn't the victim of Smyth's activities.
I thought forgiveness went hand in hand with repentance, so I am somewhat flummoxed by the notion of someone forgiving another who has shown no signs of it.
TBF, Jesus never said of forgiving others "if they repent". He just said do it anyway.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is Smyth's offences weren't against Welby, so it isn't in Welby's remit to forgive him.
Obviously Smyth has damaged Welby. He has indirectly ended his career and brought his name into public ignominy. It is completely reasonable for Welby to forgive Smyth on his own account, and Kuessenberg asked him about it point-blank in a way it would have been difficult to evade. Welby made it EXTREMELY clear that it would be inappropriate for him to express forgiveness on behalf of Smyth's direct victims.
I thought forgiveness went hand in hand with repentance, so I am somewhat flummoxed by the notion of someone forgiving another who has shown no signs of it.
TBF, Jesus never said of forgiving others "if they repent". He just said do it anyway.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is Smyth's offences weren't against Welby, so it isn't in Welby's remit to forgive him.
And furthermore if we cannot ever forgive people's offences against others, then forgiveness becomes a pretty empty shell. It is very common that wrongdoers hurt not just us, but the people around us. If we cannot forgive what others do to our family and friends, we are more-or-less giving up on forgiveness as a concept.
I thought forgiveness went hand in hand with repentance, so I am somewhat flummoxed by the notion of someone forgiving another who has shown no signs of it.
TBF, Jesus never said of forgiving others "if they repent". He just said do it anyway.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is Smyth's offences weren't against Welby, so it isn't in Welby's remit to forgive him.
And furthermore if we cannot ever forgive people's offences against others, then forgiveness becomes a pretty empty shell. It is very common that wrongdoers hurt not just us, but the people around us. If we cannot forgive what others do to our family and friends, we are more-or-less giving up on forgiveness as a concept.
We can only do that inasmuch as it affects us. You can forgive someone for hurting you through hurting someone you care about, but it isn't in your gift to forgive them for the hurt they caused that person themselves. That's for them, not you.
I thought forgiveness went hand in hand with repentance, so I am somewhat flummoxed by the notion of someone forgiving another who has shown no signs of it.
TBF, Jesus never said of forgiving others "if they repent". He just said do it anyway.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is Smyth's offences weren't against Welby, so it isn't in Welby's remit to forgive him.
Obviously Smyth has damaged Welby. He has indirectly ended his career and brought his name into public ignominy. It is completely reasonable for Welby to forgive Smyth on his own account, and Kuessenberg asked him about it point-blank in a way it would have been difficult to evade. Welby made it EXTREMELY clear that it would be inappropriate for him to express forgiveness on behalf of Smyth's direct victims.
He would still have been better to avoid any direct answer to the question of his forgiving of Smyth. It's drawing attention to the molehill as it if has any significance beside the mountain of what Smyth did to his victims. He should have started at "But it's not me he abused".
...
Obviously Smyth has damaged Welby. He has indirectly ended his career and brought his name into public ignominy. It is completely reasonable for Welby to forgive Smyth on his own account, and Kuessenberg asked him about it point-blank in a way it would have been difficult to evade. Welby made it EXTREMELY clear that it would be inappropriate for him to express forgiveness on behalf of Smyth's direct victims.
Smyth himself did not damage Welby or end his career (indirectly or directly), or bring his name into public ignominy. Welby did all those things to himself. If anything, it seems to me likely that Welby would have never been Archbishop of Canterbury in the first place if it hadn't been for the Iwerne camps. (Where John Smyth was a prominent camp leader from 1964 to 1984, as well as being chair of the Iwerne Trust from 1974 to 1981.)
From where I sit, one of the underlying issues is Welby's failure to demonstrate that he sees things from the point of view of those who were abused. This isn't the BBC, but it's still a public forum, and the optics are still not good.
As several here have pointed out, he shouldn't have directly answered the question. And it's the job of BBC interviewers to ask questions in a way that is difficult to evade. This was an interview he did of his own free will. Whoever helped prep him for it did a lousy job.
None of which indignant armchair spluttering addresses the central issue of the effect this has on victims. Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley put it more bluntly, but the CofE's lead safeguarding bishop, Joanna Grenfell, published a statement that starts:
Today’s interview with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, will be a reminder to Smyth survivors of their awful abuse and its lifelong effects. I know they continue to be offered support and we are deeply sorry for the abuse they suffered. First and foremost this must always be about victims and survivors, their needs and what they are asking us to hear and learn.
...
Obviously Smyth has damaged Welby. He has indirectly ended his career and brought his name into public ignominy. It is completely reasonable for Welby to forgive Smyth on his own account, and Kuessenberg asked him about it point-blank in a way it would have been difficult to evade. Welby made it EXTREMELY clear that it would be inappropriate for him to express forgiveness on behalf of Smyth's direct victims.
Smyth himself did not damage Welby or end his career (indirectly or directly), or bring his name into public ignominy. Welby did all those things to himself. If anything, it seems to me likely that Welby would have never been Archbishop of Canterbury in the first place if it hadn't been for the Iwerne camps. (Where John Smyth was a prominent camp leader from 1964 to 1984, as well as being chair of the Iwerne Trust from 1974 to 1981.)
ISTM that this of those nagging questions that hasn't really been addressed to date, partly because the question of that kind of influence is quite subtle and involved.
I think it was C S Lewis who drew the key distinction between inexcusable behaviour (requiring forgiveness) and erroneous behaviour at least explainable in part by mitigating circumstances. To make allowances for mitigating circumstances isn’t about forgiveness, it is about being fair.
I’m pretty clear that Welby understands that in his interpretation of forgiveness. He knows Smyth’s behaviour was inexcusable.
Should he have avoided Laura K’s question? Maybe. But I don’t fault the answers he gave in terms of what they show of his understanding of forgiveness. It’s a problem of the times in which we live. Being misquoted or incompletely quoted for the sake of headlines is basically unfair behaviour by journalists. The fact that there is a lot of that about and that public figures should avoid it doesn’t change the fact that the unfairness is with journalism. Why kick a man who is already down?
I'm not sure it's a matter of mediocrity in the candidates (though I was never particularly impressed with +Justin) so much as the ABC is seen as being in charge of both the CofE and the Anglican Communion while having minimal ability to make either do anything, and what little they can do is likely to result in more than half of one or both being pissed off with them. Ss Peter and Paul together would struggle as ABC.
I'm not sure it's a matter of mediocrity in the candidates (though I was never particularly impressed with +Justin) so much as the ABC is seen as being in charge of both the CofE and the Anglican Communion while having minimal ability to make either do anything, and what little they can do is likely to result in more than half of one or both being pissed off with them. Ss Peter and Paul together would struggle as ABC.
There is something in what you say. Being *in charge* of the church just in England is a hard enough task, given the various factions, but the whole *Anglican Communion* thing is just far too incomprehensible...
There is something in what you say. Being *in charge* of the church just in England is a hard enough task, given the various factions, but the whole *Anglican Communion* thing is just far too incomprehensible...
There is, in fact, no reasonable meaning of ‘in charge’ which applies to the relationship between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England.
There is something in what you say. Being *in charge* of the church just in England is a hard enough task, given the various factions, but the whole *Anglican Communion* thing is just far too incomprehensible...
There is, in fact, no reasonable meaning of ‘in charge’ which applies to the relationship between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England.
Indeed, and yet titles like "Archbishop" and "Primate of All England" and so on imply an ability to effect change that largely doesn't exist.
Being misquoted or incompletely quoted for the sake of headlines is basically unfair behaviour by journalists. The fact that there is a lot of that about and that public figures should avoid it doesn’t change the fact that the unfairness is with journalism. Why kick a man who is already down?
I think it was C S Lewis who drew the key distinction between inexcusable behaviour (requiring forgiveness) and erroneous behaviour at least explainable in part by mitigating circumstances. To make allowances for mitigating circumstances isn’t about forgiveness, it is about being fair.
In that case...
At least one survivor said he is unable to forgive Justin Welby because of how he (and the CofE) have continued to treat the victims of the abuse. Is that fair?
More generally, what is the status of appeals to fairness when they are made by the privileged, or on behalf of the privileged?
I’m pretty clear that Welby understands that in his interpretation of forgiveness. He knows Smyth’s behaviour was inexcusable.
Should he have avoided Laura K’s question? Maybe. But I don’t fault the answers he gave in terms of what they show of his understanding of forgiveness. It’s a problem of the times in which we live. Being misquoted or incompletely quoted for the sake of headlines is basically unfair behaviour by journalists. The fact that there is a lot of that about and that public figures should avoid it doesn’t change the fact that the unfairness is with journalism. Why kick a man who is already down?
Why agree to an on-camera interview if you don't think you'll benefit in some way? And on the nature of fairness, if you don't fault Justin Welby's forgiveness of John Smyth, why do you fault the BBC for using it as a headline?
I think you are treating the victims and Welby as having some sort of parity of freedom of choice in this. Welby was in a position where he could have done much more than he did. The victims, the people who were abused, were in an almost powerless position at the time when they were abused, and haven't been shown a lot more consideration since.
It seems to me that Welby's analysis of forgiveness overlooks the issue of power disparity - forgiveness of the strong by the weak as being equivalent to forgiveness of the weak by the strong. It amounts to yet another means of control - one of the things being controlled in this case being the narrative.
Abuse involves the violent displacement of control - any response which does not seek to restore control perpetuates its displacement.
I have no idea why Welby agreed to the interview. In his shoes, I wouldn’t.
Forgiveness, as I understand it in Christianity, does not look primarily at the parity of power. It is seen, I think, as a costly virtue, regardless of the parity of power.
It does not rule out justice for misdeeds. It seems to function more in the territory of person to person relationships. The “70 times 7” point in Matthew 18 v 21-22 illustrates that very clearly.
As Welby argued, it was not for him to forgive Smyth for his abuse of others. Nor do any of us have the right to seek to impose a duty of forgiveness on the victims. Nor evaluate from any third party view what the cost of that may be. It is a matter between abuser and victim.
The problem with the BBC headline is that it does not clarify the scope of Welby’s forgiveness. The implication of the headline is that Welby forgave Smyth for his abuses of victims. Which is precisely what he did not do.
Abuse does indeed involve the displacement of control, whether or not it is associated with physical or sexual violence. The correction of that is indeed a matter of justice. Abusers deserve to have their control taken away. I would have thought that was common ground.
It may be true, at least in some cases, that an act of personal forgiveness may help the healing of a victim to be freed from the historic power of the abuser. I know personally of cases where victims of abuse by parents have been helped to move on in that way. But that is a matter for them, on a case by case basis. I don’t generalise over whether such acts of forgiveness are possible. The damage of abuse can be very severe indeed and may have lifelong consequences.
The problem with the BBC headline is that it does not clarify the scope of Welby’s forgiveness. The implication of the headline is that Welby forgave Smyth for his abuses of victims. Which is precisely what he did not do.
That rather begs the question of what it was that Welby was forgiving Smyth for. (And I note that the implication you state wasn't how I read it.)
The problem is that the interview itself does not clarify the scope of Welby's forgiveness. Reading it again, paying attention to the framing of the question, I'm not convinced that the headline is an especially unfair characterisation of the exchange. The question asked by Kuenssberg puts it in the context of Welby's own words that "to forgive ... accepts the full weight of the wrong". What is the "full weight of the wrong" for which Welby was forgiving Smyth in his answer to the question?
We need to learn to forgive. Especially we need to learn to forgive those who have the temerity, even the abusive intransigence, to disagree with us on something where we think we are right. That appears today to be a mortal sin.
Disagreement should be a matter of debate, of rational examination of different views, even of passionate and robust argument. But it should not be a cause of hatred, the incitement of violence, and the denigration of the humanity of the other person.
Yet, that is where we seem to have got to. Forgiveness is the process by which we recognise guilt, and yet release it...
I'm not sure what to make of it, but I get the impression that he's re-imagining the concept of forgiveness for an online age, where hatred and harm can happen at a distance (yet "intimately and powerfully") which relates to what you say about the territory of person to person relationships.
This doesn't seem unreasonable, but the question is whether, in extending the notion of forgiveness, Welby is unintentionally undermining a traditional understanding and outworking. If forgiveness works in the territory of person to person relationships, what happened between Welby and Smyth for which Welby was forgiving Smyth?
Another problem with the exchange (about forgiving Smyth) is all the qualifications that come after it. Welby says "yes" and then says whether he forgives or not is largely irrelevant. He says "yes" in immediate response to the question, then says that only after survivors are sufficiently loved, and cared for and liberated to rebuild their lives, can you start talking about forgiveness.
He says the reason he said "yes" was because it was the honest answer, but also that it was irrelevant. As people here have pointed out, he could have avoided a direct answer and just said "That's irrelevant, because I'm not the one he abused".
In the dynamics of forgiveness, one aspect is the way in which it can benefit the forgiver and the person forgiven, and enable them to move on. When the person being forgiven is no longer around, I would understand this as forgiving someone in order to stop resenting them, to have a more positive attitude towards them, and so free the forgiver.
In this analysis, the most likely explanation that occurs to me for Welby doing the interview is that he was indicating that he wants to move on.
LK: You wrote ‘to forgive is not to pretend that nothing’s happened, it’s the opposite, it accepts the full weight of the wrong’. Do you forgive John Smyth?
JW: Yes. I think if he was alive and I saw him, but it’s not me he’s abused, he’s abused the victims and survivors. So whether I forgive or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant. What matters is, are the survivors in – and everyone responds differently to abuse, but are the survivors sufficiently loved by the church and cared for, and are enabled, liberated to rebuild their lives, after that you can start talking about forgiveness.
LK: And we know many of his victims don’t feel that the church has shown them love.
JW: Exactly.
LK: And they don’t feel that you showed them moral leadership.
JW: Yes.
LK: How to you think a victim of John Symth might react to you saying that you could forgive him? Because he didn’t abuse you, he abused them.
JW: I would say exactly what I just said, it’s not about whether I do, yes, you asked me a question I gave an honest answer, but I also said that that’s irrelevant. The point is, is the church – nobody’s going to say to them, “You must forgive,” I’ve never said it to a survivor, I never would. But is the church behaving in a way and loving in a way, and it isn’t, hasn’t, in a way that enables people to have that choice, freely for themselves, and not because some archbishop has said it’s a good thing. That’s what matters.
If forgiveness works in the territory of person to person relationships, what happened between Welby and Smyth for which Welby was forgiving Smyth?
Another problem with the exchange (about forgiving Smyth) is all the qualifications that come after it. Welby says "yes" and then says whether he forgives or not is largely irrelevant. He says "yes" in immediate response to the question, then says that only after survivors are sufficiently loved, and cared for and liberated to rebuild their lives, can you start talking about forgiveness.
He says the reason he said "yes" was because it was the honest answer, but also that it was irrelevant. As people here have pointed out, he could have avoided a direct answer and just said "That's irrelevant, because I'm not the one he abused".
I think Smyth was, in Welby's Iwerne youth, someone who he trusted and admired. So that trust has been betrayed, and the outworkings have trashed Welby's career and reputation. Certainly Welby is at fault but the greater fault is Smyth's. That is the person-to-person basis which I bet is in Welby's mind when initially answering LK's question. But he is simultaneously aware of the difference between this and what happened to Smyth's direct victims and so immediately highlights this. That's not a "problem" with the exchange, that is essential to the exchange.
The 2018 Prospect article is about the necessity of forgiveness. I think if he completely sidesteps by immediately saying "that's irrelevant" he is backtracking on that. Also, looking at the transcript, Welby is on the back foot throughout. I agree with the comment that he is consciously or unconsciously seeking forgiveness. Why did he agree to do the interview - perhaps he feels he is morally obliged to, that to say no would be cowardly? I think this is fish in a barrel for Kuessenberg: he is constantly trying to say sorry without implying that anyone is obliged to forgive him. So he has no counter-attack, he just has to hope for the best. But of course journalists are not in the business of giving absolution or an easy ride. By the time we get to "do you forgive Smyth?" he is floundering and prone to say the wrong thing by accident.
I think we have to allow for the possibility that Welby's motivation for doing the interview is not about him at all.
I have heard it said by one of the victim support groups that the Church's response to the victims is in some cases more hurtful than the abuse itself.*
Welby resigning and disappearing from the public stage without any comment could be seen as cowardly and just compounding that problem.
My point is - whether he succeeded or failed - it is possible that he did the interview for a noble reason.
He was very clear that he wanted to explain but not excuse his personal failure in this situation.
Here, I want to hear from victims. It is their voice and their voice only that matters here. I will speculate slightly, based on knowing lots of abuse victims,** that some will have been unimpressed by Welby's statement: he should have done better . Some might feel some acknowledgement from his words, in essence, he is saying I (personally) failed you. The church made it look like you don't matter. You do matter, I did not fail because I didn't care but because I did not do a good enough job. It is not for me to tell anyone how they should feel about Welby's comments but I can see a reasonable interpretation is that he is acting here from good intentions. Indeed he probably knew that he would take flak but did it anyway.
I can also see that people might interpret him as acting from vanity, arrogance and an attempt to justify and excuse himself.
I have thoughts on this but not knowing him personally, I would not expect anyone to trust my interpretation.
AFZ
*This is a common pattern for abuse victims that reactions to disclosure can exacerbate the abuse and can - in some circumstances - be even more damaging.
**I do not personally know any victims of abuse within the church but I have some experience with abuse victims who were abused in other situations.
If forgiveness works in the territory of person to person relationships, what happened between Welby and Smyth for which Welby was forgiving Smyth?
Another problem with the exchange (about forgiving Smyth) is all the qualifications that come after it. Welby says "yes" and then says whether he forgives or not is largely irrelevant. He says "yes" in immediate response to the question, then says that only after survivors are sufficiently loved, and cared for and liberated to rebuild their lives, can you start talking about forgiveness.
He says the reason he said "yes" was because it was the honest answer, but also that it was irrelevant. As people here have pointed out, he could have avoided a direct answer and just said "That's irrelevant, because I'm not the one he abused".
I think Smyth was, in Welby's Iwerne youth, someone who he trusted and admired. So that trust has been betrayed, and the outworkings have trashed Welby's career and reputation.
I don't think that explanation would entirely comport with Welby's own description of their connection:
"As I recall him, he was a charming, delightful, very clever, brilliant speaker. I wasn’t a close friend of his, I wasn’t in his inner circle or in the inner circle of the leadership of the camp, far from it."
I think it would totally comport with it. You don't have to be in someone's "inner circle" to trust them or feel betrayed by them.
I feel if I only knew someone as a public figure it would be supremely indulgent of me to describe my sense of betrayal in the same breath as that of one of their victims.
That would probably feel familiar to them. Though some PR person would have to explain to Paul that he can't wish GAFCON would castrate themselves in public.
I think it would totally comport with it. You don't have to be in someone's "inner circle" to trust them or feel betrayed by them.
I feel if I only knew someone as a public figure it would be supremely indulgent of me to describe my sense of betrayal in the same breath as that of one of their victims.
There are many stages between inner circle and public figure. For example, Smyth may have been Welby's guru at a significant point in his life. This would not require a direct relationship between the two, and certainly not one of which Smyth was conscious, but it would be reasonable for Welby to feel betrayed. Of course this would not negate the possibility of Welby still following in his guru's footsteps. Such are the potential paradoxes of such relationships.
Maybe to belabour the point? The exchange is very clear that he is not forgiving Smyth on behalf of those Smyth abused. To that extent he clarifies his “yes”.
Your online point is worthy of a separate discussion. Certainly I haven’t thought it through.
On forgiveness.
Back in 2017 when the Smyth abuse became public knowledge, a parishioner asked the Rector for his opinion. “ God has forgiven him, that’s all that matters” was the reply. A totally inadequate response.
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Most of the people giving the advice back then didn’t have the authority to make those kind of promises - let alone make good on them. No liability there.
To be fair, most of the clergy I know have trouble reconciling the concept of forgiveness with the concept of people accepting responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
And it's not his place to forgive Smyth. It might have been appropriate to talk in general terms about forgiveness as part of the healing process, but even that would come better from someone who has suffered as the result of a crime, rather than someone who was involved in a cover-up.
Agreed. He should have been more emphatic that the forgiveness of Smyth wasn't any of his business.
I guess it shows he didn’t think about the headline risk.
Indeed.
This is very different in both tone and meaning to the headline I just heard on BBC Radio a few minutes ago.
Who’d want to be ABC?
I think if you come into a job and find a massive number of your employees or people your organisation is involved with, are thought to have committed serious crimes - do make some kind of systematic plan.
E.g. let’s set up a team to pick through each file and check all the correct actions have been followed, let’s set up a steering group for that team that includes representatives of those affected (which shouldn’t have been that hard give one of survivors is already a bishop). Meanwhile, let’s set up another team to look out doing everything we can to ensure this doesn’t happen again - maybe get some external expert help.
It's possible, but if your mental health is preventing you from doing your job effectively there needs to be a mechanism for you or someone else to sound the alarm and get you the help you need and/or remove you from that job and let someone do it who can.
But then I was always amazed that he was made a bishop at all, bearing in mind what went on when he was Dean of Liverpool. Maybe TPTB thought that a Dean taking out an injunction to ban someone from their cathedral normal, and were comfortable that the same person allowed someone on the Sex Offenders Register to officiate at a service for children?
I have yet to see any evidence that Welby has even the remotest idea of the damage he has done to victims, the harm he caused to the reputation of the office he held and, the catastrophic knock-on effect his hubris has had on the church he was meant to lead.
I think the relevant question is what Justin's motives were in doing the interview. It seems to me that he was looking for forgiveness:
Does Welby's position on forgiveness make sense to people here? (Including putting it into the public domain.)
Indeed. And this shows what a travesty the headline is.
I think that's rather difficult though especially if the consequence is omissions and poor performance rather than collapse. I think Welby has been rather low-energy as ABC. Someone said it was odd and disappointing how invisible he was during COVID, for example. Maybe the low energy is medical in origin.
As to depression, I wouldn’t be surprised at anyone becoming depressed by carrying out the ABC role. Whichever part of the coalition they belong to, they will have enemies to contend with. Or at best not everyone will wish them well. That’s just for starters.
Add in the impossible expectations over unity, the realities of historical (and continuing) abuse, and gender differences, and you have an agenda that most would rather avoid.
Giving this (the whole interview) another look, I can't escape the feeling that it's rather too easy to read implied criticism of people who don't forgive, although I suspect his intention was probably to explain how forgiveness works and why its a "good thing": I think some of his intentions may have got lost in translation.
TBF, Jesus never said of forgiving others "if they repent". He just said do it anyway.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is Smyth's offences weren't against Welby, so it isn't in Welby's remit to forgive him.
About repentance - I was thinking more in a sacramental setting rather than real life (oops!)
Welby should have just said it was an inappropriate question as he wasn't the victim of Smyth's activities.
Obviously Smyth has damaged Welby. He has indirectly ended his career and brought his name into public ignominy. It is completely reasonable for Welby to forgive Smyth on his own account, and Kuessenberg asked him about it point-blank in a way it would have been difficult to evade. Welby made it EXTREMELY clear that it would be inappropriate for him to express forgiveness on behalf of Smyth's direct victims.
And furthermore if we cannot ever forgive people's offences against others, then forgiveness becomes a pretty empty shell. It is very common that wrongdoers hurt not just us, but the people around us. If we cannot forgive what others do to our family and friends, we are more-or-less giving up on forgiveness as a concept.
We can only do that inasmuch as it affects us. You can forgive someone for hurting you through hurting someone you care about, but it isn't in your gift to forgive them for the hurt they caused that person themselves. That's for them, not you.
He would still have been better to avoid any direct answer to the question of his forgiving of Smyth. It's drawing attention to the molehill as it if has any significance beside the mountain of what Smyth did to his victims. He should have started at "But it's not me he abused".
From where I sit, one of the underlying issues is Welby's failure to demonstrate that he sees things from the point of view of those who were abused. This isn't the BBC, but it's still a public forum, and the optics are still not good.
As several here have pointed out, he shouldn't have directly answered the question. And it's the job of BBC interviewers to ask questions in a way that is difficult to evade. This was an interview he did of his own free will. Whoever helped prep him for it did a lousy job.
None of which indignant armchair spluttering addresses the central issue of the effect this has on victims. Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley put it more bluntly, but the CofE's lead safeguarding bishop, Joanna Grenfell, published a statement that starts:
ISTM that this of those nagging questions that hasn't really been addressed to date, partly because the question of that kind of influence is quite subtle and involved.
I think it was C S Lewis who drew the key distinction between inexcusable behaviour (requiring forgiveness) and erroneous behaviour at least explainable in part by mitigating circumstances. To make allowances for mitigating circumstances isn’t about forgiveness, it is about being fair.
I’m pretty clear that Welby understands that in his interpretation of forgiveness. He knows Smyth’s behaviour was inexcusable.
Should he have avoided Laura K’s question? Maybe. But I don’t fault the answers he gave in terms of what they show of his understanding of forgiveness. It’s a problem of the times in which we live. Being misquoted or incompletely quoted for the sake of headlines is basically unfair behaviour by journalists. The fact that there is a lot of that about and that public figures should avoid it doesn’t change the fact that the unfairness is with journalism. Why kick a man who is already down?
A bigger issue, also applicable to Welby, is the mediocrity of people who rise to the top in the CofE.
Rowan Williams wasn’t mediocre.
Or is mediocre shorthand for particular colours in the C of E rainbow? Like radical liberals or evangelicals?
There is something in what you say. Being *in charge* of the church just in England is a hard enough task, given the various factions, but the whole *Anglican Communion* thing is just far too incomprehensible...
There is, in fact, no reasonable meaning of ‘in charge’ which applies to the relationship between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England.
Indeed, and yet titles like "Archbishop" and "Primate of All England" and so on imply an ability to effect change that largely doesn't exist.
It feels to me like a form of victim blaming.
At least one survivor said he is unable to forgive Justin Welby because of how he (and the CofE) have continued to treat the victims of the abuse. Is that fair?
More generally, what is the status of appeals to fairness when they are made by the privileged, or on behalf of the privileged?
Why agree to an on-camera interview if you don't think you'll benefit in some way? And on the nature of fairness, if you don't fault Justin Welby's forgiveness of John Smyth, why do you fault the BBC for using it as a headline?
I think you are treating the victims and Welby as having some sort of parity of freedom of choice in this. Welby was in a position where he could have done much more than he did. The victims, the people who were abused, were in an almost powerless position at the time when they were abused, and haven't been shown a lot more consideration since.
It seems to me that Welby's analysis of forgiveness overlooks the issue of power disparity - forgiveness of the strong by the weak as being equivalent to forgiveness of the weak by the strong. It amounts to yet another means of control - one of the things being controlled in this case being the narrative.
Abuse involves the violent displacement of control - any response which does not seek to restore control perpetuates its displacement.
I have no idea why Welby agreed to the interview. In his shoes, I wouldn’t.
Forgiveness, as I understand it in Christianity, does not look primarily at the parity of power. It is seen, I think, as a costly virtue, regardless of the parity of power.
It does not rule out justice for misdeeds. It seems to function more in the territory of person to person relationships. The “70 times 7” point in Matthew 18 v 21-22 illustrates that very clearly.
As Welby argued, it was not for him to forgive Smyth for his abuse of others. Nor do any of us have the right to seek to impose a duty of forgiveness on the victims. Nor evaluate from any third party view what the cost of that may be. It is a matter between abuser and victim.
The problem with the BBC headline is that it does not clarify the scope of Welby’s forgiveness. The implication of the headline is that Welby forgave Smyth for his abuses of victims. Which is precisely what he did not do.
Abuse does indeed involve the displacement of control, whether or not it is associated with physical or sexual violence. The correction of that is indeed a matter of justice. Abusers deserve to have their control taken away. I would have thought that was common ground.
It may be true, at least in some cases, that an act of personal forgiveness may help the healing of a victim to be freed from the historic power of the abuser. I know personally of cases where victims of abuse by parents have been helped to move on in that way. But that is a matter for them, on a case by case basis. I don’t generalise over whether such acts of forgiveness are possible. The damage of abuse can be very severe indeed and may have lifelong consequences.
Rowan was Church in Wales, poached by the CofE. Maybe that was why he was the ABC who sent in an Episcopal team to the diocese of Chichester ...
The problem is that the interview itself does not clarify the scope of Welby's forgiveness. Reading it again, paying attention to the framing of the question, I'm not convinced that the headline is an especially unfair characterisation of the exchange. The question asked by Kuenssberg puts it in the context of Welby's own words that "to forgive ... accepts the full weight of the wrong". What is the "full weight of the wrong" for which Welby was forgiving Smyth in his answer to the question?
The words that Kuenssberg quoted come from an article Welby wrote for Prospect magazine, which opens with a framing of the issue he's addressing: I'm not sure what to make of it, but I get the impression that he's re-imagining the concept of forgiveness for an online age, where hatred and harm can happen at a distance (yet "intimately and powerfully") which relates to what you say about the territory of person to person relationships.
This doesn't seem unreasonable, but the question is whether, in extending the notion of forgiveness, Welby is unintentionally undermining a traditional understanding and outworking. If forgiveness works in the territory of person to person relationships, what happened between Welby and Smyth for which Welby was forgiving Smyth?
Another problem with the exchange (about forgiving Smyth) is all the qualifications that come after it. Welby says "yes" and then says whether he forgives or not is largely irrelevant. He says "yes" in immediate response to the question, then says that only after survivors are sufficiently loved, and cared for and liberated to rebuild their lives, can you start talking about forgiveness.
He says the reason he said "yes" was because it was the honest answer, but also that it was irrelevant. As people here have pointed out, he could have avoided a direct answer and just said "That's irrelevant, because I'm not the one he abused".
In the dynamics of forgiveness, one aspect is the way in which it can benefit the forgiver and the person forgiven, and enable them to move on. When the person being forgiven is no longer around, I would understand this as forgiving someone in order to stop resenting them, to have a more positive attitude towards them, and so free the forgiver.
In this analysis, the most likely explanation that occurs to me for Welby doing the interview is that he was indicating that he wants to move on.
I think Smyth was, in Welby's Iwerne youth, someone who he trusted and admired. So that trust has been betrayed, and the outworkings have trashed Welby's career and reputation. Certainly Welby is at fault but the greater fault is Smyth's. That is the person-to-person basis which I bet is in Welby's mind when initially answering LK's question. But he is simultaneously aware of the difference between this and what happened to Smyth's direct victims and so immediately highlights this. That's not a "problem" with the exchange, that is essential to the exchange.
The 2018 Prospect article is about the necessity of forgiveness. I think if he completely sidesteps by immediately saying "that's irrelevant" he is backtracking on that. Also, looking at the transcript, Welby is on the back foot throughout. I agree with the comment that he is consciously or unconsciously seeking forgiveness. Why did he agree to do the interview - perhaps he feels he is morally obliged to, that to say no would be cowardly? I think this is fish in a barrel for Kuessenberg: he is constantly trying to say sorry without implying that anyone is obliged to forgive him. So he has no counter-attack, he just has to hope for the best. But of course journalists are not in the business of giving absolution or an easy ride. By the time we get to "do you forgive Smyth?" he is floundering and prone to say the wrong thing by accident.
I have heard it said by one of the victim support groups that the Church's response to the victims is in some cases more hurtful than the abuse itself.*
Welby resigning and disappearing from the public stage without any comment could be seen as cowardly and just compounding that problem.
My point is - whether he succeeded or failed - it is possible that he did the interview for a noble reason.
He was very clear that he wanted to explain but not excuse his personal failure in this situation.
Here, I want to hear from victims. It is their voice and their voice only that matters here. I will speculate slightly, based on knowing lots of abuse victims,** that some will have been unimpressed by Welby's statement: he should have done better . Some might feel some acknowledgement from his words, in essence, he is saying I (personally) failed you. The church made it look like you don't matter. You do matter, I did not fail because I didn't care but because I did not do a good enough job. It is not for me to tell anyone how they should feel about Welby's comments but I can see a reasonable interpretation is that he is acting here from good intentions. Indeed he probably knew that he would take flak but did it anyway.
I can also see that people might interpret him as acting from vanity, arrogance and an attempt to justify and excuse himself.
I have thoughts on this but not knowing him personally, I would not expect anyone to trust my interpretation.
AFZ
*This is a common pattern for abuse victims that reactions to disclosure can exacerbate the abuse and can - in some circumstances - be even more damaging.
**I do not personally know any victims of abuse within the church but I have some experience with abuse victims who were abused in other situations.
I don't think that explanation would entirely comport with Welby's own description of their connection:
"As I recall him, he was a charming, delightful, very clever, brilliant speaker. I wasn’t a close friend of his, I wasn’t in his inner circle or in the inner circle of the leadership of the camp, far from it."
(via The Guardian here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/02/justin-welby-church-england-john-smyth-abuse-claims )
I feel if I only knew someone as a public figure it would be supremely indulgent of me to describe my sense of betrayal in the same breath as that of one of their victims.
There are many stages between inner circle and public figure. For example, Smyth may have been Welby's guru at a significant point in his life. This would not require a direct relationship between the two, and certainly not one of which Smyth was conscious, but it would be reasonable for Welby to feel betrayed. Of course this would not negate the possibility of Welby still following in his guru's footsteps. Such are the potential paradoxes of such relationships.
Maybe to belabour the point? The exchange is very clear that he is not forgiving Smyth on behalf of those Smyth abused. To that extent he clarifies his “yes”.
Your online point is worthy of a separate discussion. Certainly I haven’t thought it through.
Back in 2017 when the Smyth abuse became public knowledge, a parishioner asked the Rector for his opinion. “ God has forgiven him, that’s all that matters” was the reply. A totally inadequate response.