On the impotence of bishops

Sometimes, even church leaders trying to the right thing are infuriatingly stymied by nonsensical church laws

Hello again! Apologies for the patchy coverage from The Critical Friend in recent weeks (and total absence of a newsletter last week). As I had slightly feared, moving house took over and I didn’t have any time to spare.

We are back with a big story however which you might have seen splashed across the BBC’s various outlets over the last week: The Priest and the Pay-off. A senior cathedral cleric was given a six-figure sum to quietly retire after a series of risk assessments concluded he posed a risk to young people. This has provoked obvious outrage, but what does it tell us about the utterly unfit for purpose rules governing employment of clergy in the C of E? Maybe, just for once, the bishops aren’t actually the bad guys in this story?

Then we briefly return to the commissioning of pseudo-curates by conservative anti-gay blessings churches, and also consider a lesser-noticed synod debate which suggests the tectonic plates on overworked clergy might be shifting.

We also have my late…