The bishops “failed to back their man” – In the Irish News yesterday a full page in the Weekly ‘Faith Matters’ feature was given to an article by William Scholes, the journalist who broke the news of the problems centring on Ven. Leslie Stevenson’s withdrawal from the appointment.
William Scholes commented in his article:
An electoral college at the end of January this year nominated Mr. Stevenson for bishop, a nomination that was later confirmed by the House of Bishops.
The bishops were familiar with the background and, one might have thought, could reasonably have imagined that Mr. Stevenson’s past could come back to haunt him – and them.
It is regrettable that when it did, they failed to back their man with even the chairman’s vote of confidence familiar to doomed football managers.
Already painfully and publicly exposed, Mr. Stevenson has received no ‘arm around the shoulder’ statement or messages of support from the bishops.
They could have, for example, reflected that although properly nominated to Meath and Kildare, they all understood his decision and wished him well in his future ministry.
However, in the days since Mr. Stevenson’s decision not to accept the Meath and Kildare post, none of the bishops have publicly stated their support. Silence, as they say, can be deafening.
Only the body that represents laity and clergy in his diocese have supported him and what the Meath and Kildare clerical and lay honorary secretaries, on behalf of the members of diocesan synod and diocesan council, described as “these extraordinary circumstances and difficult days.”
They say they had received the news of Mr. Stevenson’s decision to decline his appointment with “a deep sense of dismay and profound regret.”….
…Scholes later continues : The question of what the reaction of Mr. Stevenson and the bishops would have been if the ‘strenuous and adverse publicity’ had broken following his consecration continues to hang in the air.
All of this matters because the Church has certain pastoral standards. It is the burden of those called to leadership in the church that they are held to high standards.
It must matter because otherwise Mr. Stevenson would not have resigned and accepted that he had – to use the obfuscatory language of an earlier statement –fallen “short of pastoral expectations” and required “a period of personal reflection.” Nor, ultimately, would he have felt the need to decline the appointment.
And how credible is it to suggest that, in the time – worn reflex of those exposed in the press, it was all the media’s fault?
The publicity was only “adverse” because the instinct of many of those involved had been to keep hidden a set of circumstances that a great number in the Church of Ireland find at odds with its teaching.
The church is called to be different from the word around it and its teaching on marriage is one area where it can be defiantly countercultural.
It remains the Church’s settled view that sexual relations should take place only in marriage.
Indeed, it clarified directly its teaching on marriage at the weekend in advance of Monday’s assembly debate on same-sex marriage.