Friday, September 30, 2011
The Sexual Mote in Our Eye
I usually came up with a couple of excuses why. But I never offered what I felt was the most important reason: Because every church, including the Episcopal Church, has failed repeatedly to discipline those who abuse power and commit sexual misconduct. We need to get the sexual log out of eyes.
Case in point: the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has "restricted" (what would have been "inhibited" under the pre-2009 revision of clergy misconduct canons) the ministry of the retired bishop of Olympia: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80263_130004_ENG_HTM.htm. Nearly ten years after telling his diocesan convention he was divorcing his wife (and remarrying shortly after the divorce was final), and nearly five years after retiring as bishop, this judgment was rendered based on allegations of "recurrent marital infidelity" (whether with his current or former wife, I don't know) passed on to the Presiding Bishop by the current bishop of Olympia.
One of the most shameful secrets in the Episcopal Church the past thirty years is the continued, recurrent, and systematic efforts to sweep sexual misconduct by clergy under the table.
Bishop Ed Browning, almost uniformly lauded as the PB who declared "no outcasts," apparently included sexual predators in that mantra. Allegations of sexual misconduct against Bishop Donald Davis, retired bishop of Northwest Pennsylvania, were brought to the PB in 1994. The authorities were not contacted. Nothing was made public. Bishop Davis was asked to "resign" from the House of Bishops, seek counseling, and refrain from episcopal actions. This sexual abuse apparently involved abuse of minors. Yet the (justifiable) scorn heaped upon Roman Catholic bishops has done nothing to remove most of the luster from Bishop Browning's reputation.
Bishop Richard Grein of New York falsely accused a priest of financial misconduct, removed her from her post, placed the woman he was having an affair with in her place, divorced his wife, and married the woman he had appointed. A settlement later reached with the diocese of New York paid a financial settlement and agreed to remove any paperwork from the priest's file that had to do with financial misconduct, essentially admitting the charges were not valid. Three ecclesial charges were filed against Bishop Grein but no disciplinary action was ever taken.
As part of my work for 815, I met a lot of people and knew a lot of bishops. Bishop Warner's sexual indiscretions were one of the worst kept secrets in the church. Neither are the whispers of indiscretions here and there about others.
The real new story here is what Bishop Warner must have done to warrant breaking the code of silence.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
End of the Beginning or Beginning of the End?
Saturday, September 24, 2011
September's Coming Soon
But unlike, say, the breakup of the Fat Boys, this one is sticking with Crusty Old Dean, making me ponder why. Couple of thoughts come to mind.
--They are attached to my youth. I was 14 when I first listened to Murmur, 15 when I snuck out after lights-out at my all-boys boarding school to slip into the TV room in the basement to watch them on Letterman at 1:30 in the morning.
--They just sounded so different: as one of the first generations to have musical taste shaped by MTV, REM helped to shatter the segregated pop music that MTV played from 1981-1984 (admittedly Prince and Michael Jackson helped shatter the segregated part, REM the pop part). Up until REM, music for me was Billy Joel, Blondie, and whatever I heard on local radio or MTV. In a post-Nirvana world drenched with alt rock, roots music, and any number of sub-genres, it’s hard to imagine just how different REM sounded. Mumbling, complex lyrics without a lyric sheet, the jangling Byrds-esque guitar (though I hadn’t yet listened to the Byrds), spare but driving bass-and-drum lines in a world of synthesized drum machines.
--They created community. In the days before the internet, you sometimes thought you were alone or the only one who liked a certain thing. You eventually found the guys at school who eschewed pop and hair metal and were into REM and the Psychedelic Furs and found out from them there was a college nearby which had a stationed that had a guy who had a show on Saturday mornings where he played Husker Du records and you’d tape the show and pass it back and forth.
--In their own way, there were a voice for a generation. There’s lots written about how Gen X and the Millennial generation have different view on faith (spiritual but not religious), community, institutions, and organizations. Some of their most haunting songs are about alienation and separation, and utter despair about how to make sense of that (e.g.: Losing My Religion; Texarkana; Half a World Away; What's the Frequency, Kenneth; nearly all of Automatic For the People, and so on). Gen Xers and Millennials are now adults, some of us even middle aged, facing all the same problems others face but without the same array of institutions to help us make sense of them.
I just received a report from the Department of Education telling me I need to file a certain report. I have no idea what the acronym of the report is. Crusty Old Dean is on the case.