Here is what I said in our first conversation. You came to me, of course, in order to find out what my views were. I said three things to you.
The first was that all Christians are witnesses to God and icons of Christ. Each Christian is glad to meet another and recognise in him the image and gifts of Christ. We bear this witness together every time we pray in public in our morning and evening prayer. This service of public witness is as intrinsic to us as our breath, and it is our service to the world. The best we can do for the world is praise God, publicly, and so this is what we do.
The second was that each church needs to receive from all other churches the full packet of holy catholic and apostolic life, and we acknowledge this package when we receive the person who presides for us in the Eucharist. Our church is a faithful witness for as long as it receives what is passed to it by the whole worldwide church, not only contemporary but generations past and future. It receives as gift, not as command, whatever it can recognise from the diocese and national church as faithful. It cannot receive what does not seem to be faithful.
Thirdly I said that worship of God is the public service of our church to the people of our town, our neighbours and our nation. Our service to God is also our service to them. The service begins as we stand and sing a first hymn at the entrance of the Lord. The procession of priest, servers and congregation together form the procession of the Lord coming into the world to dwell with man. The procession comes down the side aisle, up the nave. In this shared act, priest and people represent the drama of God’s advent in this public pageant played out before heaven and earth, before our neighbours in the parish and the nation.
That procession and this service is our act of witness. It is our mission and evangelism, and it is our intercessory and priestly office. The congregation is not inert. We are at work, for our praise and thanksgiving is the ‘Work of God’. We Christians have been offering this public work of praise of God here, according to the panel of names of rectors by the south door, for eight hundred years (and probably some centuries before that). No one has the authority to alter this.
The whole congregation sets out on this work of God at the start of the service. When you, or any priest, halt the procession in order to address us chummily you break our dialogue with the Lord. We do not want to have our attention drawn to you, or to listen while you labour to establish some other form of rapport. This is not vaudeville and the priest is not an entertainer. We do not want you to make our servers, stand and look foolish whilst you attempt to establish some basis other than the liturgy. Your own ad hoc remarks are no different from those we have all heard from the BBC all week long.
In this procession and service you are in persona Christi, so we greet you as the Lord coming into the world. Surely the Dean of a cathedral knows this much. We are in a large public drama, a ‘passion play’, so all the world can see that God is with man. I pointed this out to you and asked you not to do it. Now I ask you again not to undermine this corporate act of ours.
This is not a private matter solely between you and me. It is a concern for our public life together as a congregation. It was you who changed it from private to public, by making a report to a statutory body. In that Sunday morning conversation I suggested that the three of us should talk again so we could hear one another’s reasons, see perhaps where there has been misunderstanding, and so attempt some reconciliation. I suggested that that reconciliation must take place before the altar.
It is baffling that you should think that that pastoral care should consist in telling people what their moral failings are. And that you should tell them this so heatedly, before these witnesses, minutes after celebrating the Eucharist with them. A second point is this: we are looking for a pastor for men who are angry as well as for those who are not, and indeed for men of every sort. A pastor must love and serve each member of the church regardless of their moral failings, despite those failings, and with some awareness that we all, and he himself, share these moral failings. That pastor will be able to cope with all people of all characters of the parish and may not decide that the character of any parishioner is deficient and that they should be sent away.
You replied by saying that you want your legal representative to be present at our next conversation. It is again astonishing that you think that recourse to lawyers is any way to offer pastoral care. One of us then reminded you of the command in Matthew to sort out issues before two witnesses, and then before the Church, and quoted 1 Corinthians 6.1 about not taking disputes outside the Church for judgement.
The way you have exercised power and taken decisions without consultation has been a shock to us. It seems to reveal such a low view of us and of our shared life and worship. It lacks the patience and self-control listed among the spiritual gifts. Our church is looking for pastoral, that is to say, spiritual oversight. For you to resort to social workers and talk about using lawyers against parishioners within one month of your arrival is a colossal failure. This has all taken place before our priest left the office of Rector, surely a breach of procedure and even of legality.
You came to visit me in order to find out what I thought. I told you. At the end of our first conversation you told me that if I did not entirely share your views of Christian ministry you would not be able to work with me. I agree. It does not seem possible for you to work with us. And you do not want to work against us, do you?
