As the Guardian reveals in a leak from the notes of the late dean of Southwark Cathedral, Colin Slee, who was present at the meeting to choose a bishop for the Diocese of Southwark:
The document reveals shouting matches and arm-twisting by the archbishops to keep out the diocese's preferred choices as bishop: Jeffrey John, the gay dean of St Albans, and Nicholas Holtam, rector of St Martin-in-the-Fields in central London, whose wife was divorced many years ago. Eventually Christopher Chessun, then an assistant bishop, was chosen.
As I've already said, I'd like to have smacked the two archbishops, but that's resorting to violence. On second thought, I'd send them to their rooms without their supper to contemplate their bad behavior.
Unfortunately, the two men are not toddlers, but rather "mature" men in positions of power and influence, and their actions have consequences, grave consequences.
Slee described Williams shouting and losing his temper in last year's Southwark meeting, which left several members of the crown nomination committee, responsible for the selection of bishops, in tears.
Slee also in effect charges the church with hypocrisy, stating that there are several gay bishops "who have been less than candid about their domestic arrangements and who, in a conspiracy of silence, have been appointed to senior positions". The memo warns: "This situation cannot endure. Exposure of the reality would be nuclear."
How the Church of England continues to function in such a vast and hypocritical conspiracy of silence, remains a mystery to me. And that the Archbishop of Canterbury has the chutzpah to lecture our bishops in TEC on how to run a church is beyond my understanding. Perhaps he should try leading by example.
