So let's all go presbyterian or congregational and this sort of thing wouldn't happen ...
I think one thing to be said for Presbyterianism, at least as practised by the Kirk, is that it tends not to leave people in senior ecclesiastical positions very long which I think means that there is less of a clubish(?) nature to the senior decision making.
Doubly so when tied to a deliberate attempt to create - in effect - a church within a church (in the case of Iwerne and it's related offshoots).
I don't mind where Welby goes, personally, but if this does not drag the tendrils of HTB and its abusive nonsense out of the Church of England, it will be an opportunity (or divine imperative, if there is any difference between the two) missed.
Well this particular case didn't come out of the HTB circle, it was the conevo/Reform circle (as is the case that will be considered next year).
I have to recognise that CSL, no less (no evangelical he) comes across in the Narnia books as having what nowadays seems an unhealthy preoccupation with canes and corporal punishment. If you read his description of his first school in England in Surprised by Joy, there is a possible point of origin.
Isn't +tomlin implicated with regard to pilavachi?
I'm not sure that running things with committees helps especially - the camps were run by a committee of the right sort of chaps.
I have to recognise that CSL, no less (no evangelical he) comes across in the Narnia books as having what nowadays seems an unhealthy preoccupation with canes and corporal punishment. If you read his description of his first school in England in Surprised by Joy, there is a possible point of origin.
His letters as a young man (prior to conversion) do reveal this as a predilection. He famously signed himself "Philomastix", "whip lover".
Dude went to school under a literally insane headmaster, and in a very different era. Besides this being before his conversion as an adolescent in private letters. Maybe we can acquit him of causing today’s public scandals in the church.
I don't think anyone is accusing Lewis of that, @Lamb Chopped. They are simply saying that there was an emphasis on caning and so on within the English private school system of that time.
So it is highly surprising that it should surface within religious groups that specifically targeted that demographic.
Also massive connections among different elements of the English Establishment. He's not just a writer in his own right (if you'll forgive the pun), he's also a pillar of the establishment - or at least, was, given his professorship at Oxford. Pillars of the establishment prop each other up by instinct.
ETA: irrespective of theological nuance, this instinct of mutual support is hugely important in understanding both why Welby must go - his personal history, as well as the centrality of his role in the English Establishment, both mean that for anything to change, that Establishment has to be shaken very hard, and just maybe the departure of someone who is so very Establishment by instinct, and has built an establishment in his image onto the side of the church, is needed for the necessary changes to take place.
So let's all go presbyterian or congregational and this sort of thing wouldn't happen ...
I think one thing to be said for Presbyterianism, at least as practised by the Kirk, is that it tends not to leave people in senior ecclesiastical positions very long which I think means that there is less of a clubish(?) nature to the senior decision making.
Interesting perception. In fact the same people tend to be recycled round various posts and committees. Not the Moderatorial post, so much, but it’s not a position of power really, but the chairs of committees etc. I served for three years on the nominations committee and it was the same names coming up again and again, and once, when we went for less known names the high heid yins stepped in and accused us of incompetence, and more or less forced us to change to their choices.
Unless things have changed in the last 3 years, and with a new Principal Clerk they may have, then the inner ring is alive and well.
ETA: irrespective of theological nuance, this instinct of mutual support is hugely important in understanding both why Welby must go - his personal history, as well as the centrality of his role in the English Establishment, both mean that for anything to change, that Establishment has to be shaken very hard
Right, and in that wider sense, this (and whatever may come next year) is a recapitulation of the earlier scandal around Peter Ball:
If you were referring to Lewis, ThunderBunk, he was never given a professorship at Oxford thanks partly to adademic jealousy. The Chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge was a consolation prize.
The shenanigans around yhe Oxford Professorship of Poetry (an anomalous elected Chair) are well explained in A.N. Wilson's biograhy of Lewis.
So let's all go presbyterian or congregational and this sort of thing wouldn't happen ...
I think one thing to be said for Presbyterianism, at least as practised by the Kirk, is that it tends not to leave people in senior ecclesiastical positions very long which I think means that there is less of a clubish(?) nature to the senior decision making.
Interesting perception. In fact the same people tend to be recycled round various posts and committees. Not the Moderatorial post, so much, but it’s not a position of power really, but the chairs of committees etc. I served for three years on the nominations committee and it was the same names coming up again and again, and once, when we went for less known names the high heid yins stepped in and accused us of incompetence, and more or less forced us to change to their choices.
Unless things have changed in the last 3 years, and with a new Principal Clerk they may have, then the inner ring is alive and well.
I will bow to your superior knowledge and ditch my hypothesis.
So let's all go presbyterian or congregational and this sort of thing wouldn't happen ...
I think one thing to be said for Presbyterianism, at least as practised by the Kirk, is that it tends not to leave people in senior ecclesiastical positions very long which I think means that there is less of a clubish(?) nature to the senior decision making.
Interesting perception. In fact the same people tend to be recycled round various posts and committees. Not the Moderatorial post, so much, but it’s not a position of power really, but the chairs of committees etc. I served for three years on the nominations committee and it was the same names coming up again and again, and once, when we went for less known names the high heid yins stepped in and accused us of incompetence, and more or less forced us to change to their choices.
Unless things have changed in the last 3 years, and with a new Principal Clerk they may have, then the inner ring is alive and well.
I will bow to your superior knowledge and ditch my hypothesis.
I wouldn’t ditch it completely. I’d say no form is perfect, and every form has strengths and weaknesses.
That said, I don't know to what extent the Kirk has been lucky and simply had fewer abuse cases to deal with or whether it has actually dealt with them better.
Although there’s always (and God forbid this is the case obviously)option C, it’s just for whatever reason still waiting to go off.
In the 1990s, it was true that BSE in cattle was the biggest problem in countries that were looking hardest for it and encouraging/enforcing a reporting regime….
I was a member of a Church of Scotland congregation in 1989, whose minister was jailed. My impression was that the Kirk handled it well, although at the time I had no point of comparison. I certainly had the impression the Kirk was on high alert in the aftermath, though of course it could simply be that I was in a bubble surrounding that particular case.
That said, I don't know to what extent the Kirk has been lucky and simply had fewer abuse cases to deal with or whether it has actually dealt with them better.
Although there’s always (and God forbid this is the case obviously)option C, it’s just for whatever reason still waiting to go off.
In the 1990s, it was true that BSE in cattle was the biggest problem in countries that were looking hardest for it and encouraging/enforcing a reporting regime….
I was a member of a Church of Scotland congregation in 1989, whose minister was jailed. My impression was that the Kirk handled it well, although at the time I had no point of comparison. I certainly had the impression the Kirk was on high alert in the aftermath, though of course it could simply be that I was in a bubble surrounding that particular case.
There was high alert in the aftermath: so much was done and changed that the RC church in Scotland asked Andrew MacLellan, who had done the CofS work (as an ex-moderator who became a prisons inspector) to take on their mess (in the sense of having no proper safeguards in place, not saying they were all terrible abusers!) and sort it out.
I should add, I was a member of the church, but not connected in any way to any of the victims. I did experience first hand the impact on the congregation.
I don't mind where Welby goes, personally, but if this does not drag the tendrils of HTB and its abusive nonsense out of the Church of England, it will be an opportunity (or divine imperative, if there is any difference between the two) missed.
Well this particular case didn't come out of the HTB circle, it was the conevo/Reform circle (as is the case that will be considered next year).
HTB's long-serving vicar, Sandy Millar, might not have had a direct connection with the Iwerne camps, but his successor, Nicky Gumbel, who led from 2005 until 2022, did. Here's what he wrote about EJH Nash himself (from a long-term study of the HTB network on your name is like honey):
In a 2011 version of Bible in One Year Nicky Gumbel also paid tribute to Nash, (who he met at Iwerne when Nash was in his early eighties), saying ‘I was spellbound, I had never before heard anyone speak with such authority.’ He recalls Nash as ‘extremely gracious and I sensed a deep humility’. He concludes by reflecting on Nash’s ‘self-authenticating’ authority, and how though ‘today people are very wary of authority… which can be abused…authority can also be a source of great blessing.’ In the 2003 edition of Questions of Life Gumbel uses Nash as a ‘notable example’ of God using weak, inadequate and ill-equipped people who ‘when they are filled with the Spirit become outstanding leaders in the church’. He quotes John Stott saying: ‘Nondescript in outward appearance, his [Nash’s] heart was ablaze with Christ.’
Nicky Gumbel on Jonathan Fletcher:
I am so grateful to Jonathan Fletcher. When I first encountered Jesus in 1974, Jonathan met with me for three hours every week for a year, and regularly thereafter until I left university. He became a great friend. He taught me the Christian faith. He explained to me how to read the Bible and how to pray. He recommended Christian books and answered my questions. Even though I had only just encountered Jesus myself, he encouraged me to lead others to faith in Jesus and to straight away pass on what I was learning.
Nicky Gumbel rowing back:
In recent years Gumbel, like Justin Welby, has taken understandable pains to distance himself from Iwerne. Nash was edited out of the aforementioned anecdote on power by the time the 2019 version of Bible in One Year was published, and replaced by John Collins, (who is given the same eulogy verbatim as had been attributed to Nash in 2011).
At the beginning of this year, Nicky Gumbel was appointed CBE for services to the Church of England.
I don't mind where Welby goes, personally, but if this does not drag the tendrils of HTB and its abusive nonsense out of the Church of England, it will be an opportunity (or divine imperative, if there is any difference between the two) missed.
Well this particular case didn't come out of the HTB circle, it was the conevo/Reform circle (as is the case that will be considered next year).
HTB's long-serving vicar, Sandy Millar, might not have had a direct connection with the Iwerne camps, but his successor, Nicky Gumbel, who led from 2005 until 2022, did.
Yes, Gumbel is the link between the two worlds, being a former Iwerne attendee (and borrowing from the form of dialogue used in the Iwerne camps when it camp putting together the Alpha Course).
That said Smyth himself seems to have existed largely within the ambit of Reform/Reform adjacent churches - a similar dynamic to that observed by 31:8, and his work abroad appears to have been enabled and funded by figures within that movement.
...That said Smyth himself seems to have existed largely within the ambit of Reform/Reform adjacent churches - a similar dynamic to that observed by 31:8, and his work abroad appears to have been enabled and funded by figures within that movement.
And then there are the Colmans. Sue Colman (1959) was a curate at HTB. She and her husband Jamie (1958, Eton, lawyer) donated Malsanger Park, which HTB described as its “home in the country.” Jamie Colman was at Eton with Welby, Gumbel and Lee, preceded by Millar. He was mentored by Smyth. Irvine, Millar and Gumbel were lawyers before they were HTB clergy, Jamie Colman was a lawyer married to HTB clergy. And Smyth was also a lawyer, the professional and Church connection with Jamie Colman leading him and his wife having to admit to giving Smyth hundreds of thousands of pounds over nearly thirty years till 2017, “despite knowing that the barrister had admitted beating boys and showering naked with them.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/10/colmans-mustard-heir-admits-charity-funded-child-abuse-barrister/ Gumbel appointed Sue Colman safeguarding minister at HTB. Smyth and his wife stayed in the flat of another lawyer – fellow barrister, HTB lay leader and friend of Gumbel, Jane Auld, in 2016.
And from the Makin Review:
13.1.48 On 22nd June 1989, the Zambesi UK Trustees wrote to John Smyth, threatening that, if he did not withdraw from personal involvement in youth work they would resign, with a deadline of the end of July being given. Jamie Colman spoke at this point with some of the Trustees, asking them to continue. Jamie Colman was in regular touch with John Smyth at this time... The Trustees resigned en masse, stating their reasons as being: (a) John Smyth had not sought psychiatric/medical help as he had promised; (b) there was no effective accountability structure around him; and (c) they considered that he should cease his youth work immediately.
13.1.50 John Smyth then approached Jamie Colman to ask him to set up a new Zambesi Trust Board. Jamie Colman asked his wife, Sue Colman, to sit on the Board. Sue Colman was later ordained and became a Church officer; however, she was, at the time of being a Trustee, not in this position. ... It is likely, on the balance of probabilities, that both Jamie and Sue Colman had significant knowledge of the abuses in the UK and Africa, given their positions as Trustees.
13.1.127 A book was published by John Smyth – “Tremendous Teens” in 2011. ... It is clearly based on the Zimbabwe period, but was written long after leaving there. The book confirms the central role of Jamie Colman in financially supporting the Trust and the camps: "I name only one individual… Jamie Colman, who for nearly 25 years has borne the burden of running the Zambesi Trust (UK) and keeping the work on the road financially”. ... There is talk of the corporal punishment at the camps but this is minimised: ... The death of Guide Nyachuru is also referenced in the book, again minimised, and accompanied by a description as to how safety practices were introduced following the death.
...That said Smyth himself seems to have existed largely within the ambit of Reform/Reform adjacent churches - a similar dynamic to that observed by 31:8, and his work abroad appears to have been enabled and funded by figures within that movement.
Well...
You're right, I'd always thought that the group of evangelical churches in that part of Hampshire were connected with Reform, but it appears they may be more connected with HTB:
Why/how did Rico Tice retain PTO if he'd left the CofE?
I wonder if aligning more to the charismatic end might have enabled smyth to explain away bad vibes/rumours from the more con evo end?
Perhaps Tice left the C of E in a sort of metaphorical fashion IYSWIM, eschewing the whole thing except for officiating at All Souls etc. (though I'm surprised his bishop would allow this...).
Mind you, I'm no longer surprised by anything bishops allow. I wonder sometimes quite what the point of bishops actually is.
Perhaps Tice left the C of E in a sort of metaphorical fashion IYSWIM, eschewing the whole thing except for officiating at All Souls etc. (though I'm surprised his bishop would allow this...).
AFAIK he left for the IPC and that's where he regularly attends.
Yeah, it's a Presbyterian church started by Francis Schaeffer - in tone it's probably closest to the conservative end of the PCA, or at least it was when I encountered it, I don't know what the Scottish intake may have done.
Extracts from the House of Bishop's current policy on granting PTO [ETA Permission to Officiate] (2018, PDF):
2.11 It important to ensure that clergy with PTO are fully aware that
PTO is subject to carrying out safeguarding training and keeping this training up to date;
they must work in accordance with the House of Bishops Safeguarding Policy and Practice guidance and report any safeguarding concerns or allegations to the DSA in line with House of Bishops guidance
3 When is PTO appropriate? (i) Who should be given PTO?
3.1 Forms of ministry that usually require permission to officiate include:
a) Occasional duties, for example preaching, providing cover during temporary absence, and presiding at the Eucharist,
b) performing the Occasional Offices;
3.3 Clergy who are granted PTO are often, but not always, retired stipendiary clergy. Some may have retired from self-supporting ministry or from other walks of life, but would like to continue to have a ministry so far as they are able to. See section 9 on PTO in retirement. However, not all clergy with PTO are retired. Examples where it might be appropriate to grant PTO to someone who has not retired include:
someone in good standing who has left parochial ministry in order to take employment outside the Church, but who wishes to continue to offer help with the Occasional Offices;
From Anglican Ink:
Mr Tice said: ‘I retain my Permission to Preach (sic), so I can still speak in C of E churches. But I think it vital that I demonstrated clear separation from a church that no longer affirms Biblical orthodoxy, especially with regard to preaching repentance.’
I'm not sure that the idea of "leaving" the Anglican Church has any formally recognised expression.
Why did Nash acquire the nickname Bash? Did he have a reputation for beating people or where his camps noted for the use of ritualised violence?
I'd wondered if it had anything to do with "The Bash Street Kids" in the "Beano" but they didn't appear until the 1950s (and the boys Nash worked with would, I think, have eschewed said comic!).
No, they'd have read The Beano alright. They'd have been encouraged to read The Eagle though. A vicar established that one and there were always 'improving' nuggets of information and diagrams of cross-sectioned boats and so on. As well as Dan Dare and The Mekons.
Yes, interesting. It may be that Welby was not quite as useless as his vilifiers allege, given that the police seemed to be satisfied.
(The article isn't behind a paywall, and can be read gratis - but you're limited to four free articles per month, and have to take the few seconds' trouble required to get past a pop-up.)
No, they'd have read The Beano alright. They'd have been encouraged to read The Eagle though. A vicar established that one and there were always 'improving' nuggets of information and diagrams of cross-sectioned boats and so on. As well as Dan Dare and The Mekons.
I read the Eagle - and the Swift, when I was younger. Their editor, Marcus Morris, was a somewhat unconventional clergyman!
I’ve seen Private Eye’s story on the report, and indeed I’ve read the report itself. One of the criticisms in the report is that the matter wasn’t reported to the police. It is that element of the report to which the Church Times story responds. I’m not aware that the Eye has picked up on that at all.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czr74xg7805o
Not sure if this has been posted before but it covers the police failures to act on information re Smyth, with “not sufficiently curious” and “overwhelmed “ with many other reports relating to Jimmy Saville, given as reasons.
Two things occur to me, which may or may not be relevant. The first is the fact that Al Capone was convicted of tax fraud, rather than murder, and the other is the many occasions on which public inquiries have come the conclusion that the offences/breaches, in complex situations where many people have done many substantive things - or omitted to do them - are procedural. Here, we have a procedural breach which is being used to resolve the fact that there are many factors involved, none of which can be accounted for over the forty-year history of this situation. Something can, and indeed has, be(en) done, and responsibility taken, without finding a substantive issue which it can entirely satisfactorily be recorded against. This underlines the fact that the horrors discovered were serious enough to require someone to take responsibility for them as a whole, without any one of the horrors being sufficiently clearly understood for it to be used as the occasion for this.
Yes, interesting. It may be that Welby was not quite as useless as his vilifiers allege, given that the police seemed to be satisfied.
OTOH there did seem to be a certain circling of the wagons from parts of the media/wider establishment.
Indeed. Quoting selectively from the Church Times article:
Former officer A also said that the production of an “intelligence report” by Cambridgeshire Police, to be sent to Hampshire Police, about Smyth’s actions was further evidence that Ms Quirk was justified in thinking that the disclosures had been treated seriously by police.
However
The Makin report says that “no other record” of the intelligence report had been found, and a spokesperson for Hampshire Constabulary told the Church Times: “No intelligence report was received by us from the force mentioned within the report.”
And
In 2014, an inspection of Cambridgeshire Police concluded that the recording of crimes referred to the force by third parties, including “other public sector organisations”, required urgent attention.
“We found little evidence of supervision of these systems and we found that there is no cross-referencing to the crime-recording system,” the inspection report said.
Crime Recording Rules from the Home Office say: “A belief by the victim, or person reasonably assumed to be acting on behalf of the victim, that a crime has occurred is usually sufficient to justify its recording.”
I note that the four former police officers identified (by name or letter) all now hold safeguarding roles.
In relation to the significant number of people involved or informed in 2013 of the disclosure of abuse, what I take from the reporting is that most of them think or assert that they did what was required of them (more or less), but that any of them could have done more to pursue the issue.
Why did Nash acquire the nickname Bash? Did he have a reputation for beating people or where his camps noted for the use of ritualised violence?
As others say, yes the assonance, but I remember a slightly sniggery reference to Bash camps said to a group of us which included one of those named in the Makin report. I am unable to remember with the passing of time who made the comment.
Time for him to disappear into a well-deserved obscurity, perhaps with Permission To Officiate (PTO) so that he can continue to exercise a priestly ministry at grass-roots level...
Time for him to disappear into a well-deserved obscurity, perhaps with Permission To Officiate (PTO) so that he can continue to exercise a priestly ministry at grass-roots level...
I'd advocate restoring the ministry of the hermit for this particular case.
Comments
Doubly so when tied to a deliberate attempt to create - in effect - a church within a church (in the case of Iwerne and it's related offshoots).
Well this particular case didn't come out of the HTB circle, it was the conevo/Reform circle (as is the case that will be considered next year).
I'm not sure that running things with committees helps especially - the camps were run by a committee of the right sort of chaps.
His letters as a young man (prior to conversion) do reveal this as a predilection. He famously signed himself "Philomastix", "whip lover".
So it is highly surprising that it should surface within religious groups that specifically targeted that demographic.
ETA: irrespective of theological nuance, this instinct of mutual support is hugely important in understanding both why Welby must go - his personal history, as well as the centrality of his role in the English Establishment, both mean that for anything to change, that Establishment has to be shaken very hard, and just maybe the departure of someone who is so very Establishment by instinct, and has built an establishment in his image onto the side of the church, is needed for the necessary changes to take place.
Interesting perception. In fact the same people tend to be recycled round various posts and committees. Not the Moderatorial post, so much, but it’s not a position of power really, but the chairs of committees etc. I served for three years on the nominations committee and it was the same names coming up again and again, and once, when we went for less known names the high heid yins stepped in and accused us of incompetence, and more or less forced us to change to their choices.
Unless things have changed in the last 3 years, and with a new Principal Clerk they may have, then the inner ring is alive and well.
Right, and in that wider sense, this (and whatever may come next year) is a recapitulation of the earlier scandal around Peter Ball:
https://survivingchurch.org/2019/08/20/gilo-writes-safeguarding-the-secrets-part-1-nobodys-friends/
The shenanigans around yhe Oxford Professorship of Poetry (an anomalous elected Chair) are well explained in A.N. Wilson's biograhy of Lewis.
I will bow to your superior knowledge and ditch my hypothesis.
I was a member of a Church of Scotland congregation in 1989, whose minister was jailed. My impression was that the Kirk handled it well, although at the time I had no point of comparison. I certainly had the impression the Kirk was on high alert in the aftermath, though of course it could simply be that I was in a bubble surrounding that particular case.
There was high alert in the aftermath: so much was done and changed that the RC church in Scotland asked Andrew MacLellan, who had done the CofS work (as an ex-moderator who became a prisons inspector) to take on their mess (in the sense of having no proper safeguards in place, not saying they were all terrible abusers!) and sort it out.
Yes, Gumbel is the link between the two worlds, being a former Iwerne attendee (and borrowing from the form of dialogue used in the Iwerne camps when it camp putting together the Alpha Course).
That said Smyth himself seems to have existed largely within the ambit of Reform/Reform adjacent churches - a similar dynamic to that observed by 31:8, and his work abroad appears to have been enabled and funded by figures within that movement.
Surviving Church, again:
And from the Makin Review:
You're right, I'd always thought that the group of evangelical churches in that part of Hampshire were connected with Reform, but it appears they may be more connected with HTB:
http://research.hgt.org.uk/item/malshanger-park/
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2024/11/priests-suspended-after-review-into-church-of-englands-abuse-failings/
I wonder if aligning more to the charismatic end might have enabled smyth to explain away bad vibes/rumours from the more con evo end?
I assume so he could continue to officiate on occasion at All Souls/churches in that orbit.
It's reasonable certain that people from both 'sides' knew at least some of the facts.
Mind you, I'm no longer surprised by anything bishops allow. I wonder sometimes quite what the point of bishops actually is.
AFAIK he left for the IPC and that's where he regularly attends.
I think it's these delightful chaps (and those in charge are definitely all chaps):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Presbyterian_Church
Yeah, it's a Presbyterian church started by Francis Schaeffer - in tone it's probably closest to the conservative end of the PCA, or at least it was when I encountered it, I don't know what the Scottish intake may have done.
From Anglican Ink:
I'm not sure that the idea of "leaving" the Anglican Church has any formally recognised expression.
There’s an interesting follow-up to the Makin Report in this week’s Church Times.
I'd wondered if it had anything to do with "The Bash Street Kids" in the "Beano" but they didn't appear until the 1950s (and the boys Nash worked with would, I think, have eschewed said comic!).
I'm with @BroJames. It's just an assonance thing.
Yes, interesting. It may be that Welby was not quite as useless as his vilifiers allege, given that the police seemed to be satisfied.
(The article isn't behind a paywall, and can be read gratis - but you're limited to four free articles per month, and have to take the few seconds' trouble required to get past a pop-up.)
OTOH there did seem to be a certain circling of the wagons from parts of the media/wider establishment.
True. Murky waters...
Not sure if this has been posted before but it covers the police failures to act on information re Smyth, with “not sufficiently curious” and “overwhelmed “ with many other reports relating to Jimmy Saville, given as reasons.
In relation to the significant number of people involved or informed in 2013 of the disclosure of abuse, what I take from the reporting is that most of them think or assert that they did what was required of them (more or less), but that any of them could have done more to pursue the issue.
As others say, yes the assonance, but I remember a slightly sniggery reference to Bash camps said to a group of us which included one of those named in the Makin report. I am unable to remember with the passing of time who made the comment.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/06/justin-welby-apologises-for-the-hurt-caused-by-farewell-lords-speech
Time for him to disappear into a well-deserved obscurity, perhaps with Permission To Officiate (PTO) so that he can continue to exercise a priestly ministry at grass-roots level...
I'd advocate restoring the ministry of the hermit for this particular case.