By David W. Virtue
Virtue Online
November 19, 2011
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=15220
 |
The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is defending her decision to allow a former Roman Catholic monk to become an Episcopal priest even after he admitted to sexual misconduct with a minor.
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori has been under increasing pressure to answer charges that she did not properly investigate the Rev. Bede Parry's past when she was bishop of Nevada in 2004.
She initially brushed off inquiries and then remained silent till this week when, under increasing pressure from VOL and canon law attorney A.S. Haley, she issued a statement arguing that she knew of only one incident when Parry, now 69, sought ordination as an Episcopal priest. She also said that Parry passed a background check and a psychological evaluation before he was ordained.
The condition of his ordination, said Jefferts Schori, was that Parry was to be supervised by another priest and not permitted to work alone with children.
"I made the decision to receive him believing that he demonstrated repentance and amendment of life and that his current state did not represent a bar to his reception," she wrote in her official statement.
In a signed statement and newspaper interview this year, Parry admitted to several acts of sexual misconduct with young adults and teenagers while he was a Catholic monk in the 1970s and 1980s. "Frankly, those allegations, most of them are true," Parry told the Kansas City Star in June.
Parry resigned from All Saints' Episcopal Church in Las Vegas that month when a civil lawsuit was filed alleging that he abused a minor in 1987. At the time of the alleged abuse, Parry was a monk and choir director at Conception Abbey in Conception, Mo.
Current Nevada Bishop Dan Edwards said Thursday that Parry has not been accused of wrongdoing since his Episcopal ordination. "His voluntary resignation was for the good of the church."
Parry has not functioned as a priest since his June resignation and will not be permitted to return to ministry, Edwards added. Bishop Edwards does not state that Parry has renounced his orders, but that he "resigned" from the diocese and that he will not function as a priest. We are not clear what "resigning" from a diocese is. Renunciation of orders requires a certification that the renunciation "was for causes which do not affect the person's moral character." Has Bishop Edwards given that certification? If he has not accepted a renunciation, has Parry's ministry been restricted under Title IV? If neither has occurred, on what basis are we assured that Parry will not function as a priest in the future?
Before she agreed to ordain Parry, Jefferts Schori said she wrote to Catholic bishops in Las Vegas and Santa Fe, N.M., and received brief responses that "indicated no problematic behavior."
Jefferts Schori also said she wrote to Conception Abbey "from whom I received only an acknowledgement that he had served there, been sent for treatment to a facility in New Mexico, and had been dismissed for this incident of misconduct."
By his own admission, Parry's statement contained an unequivocal declaration about what was communicated to the Presiding Bishop when she was the Bishop of Nevada: "Also in 2000, I considered joining the Prince of Peace monastery in Riverside, California. Prince of Peace had me undergo a series of psychological tests. After the testing, Prince of Peace's Abbot Charles Wright informed me I was no longer a candidate. The psychological evaluation had determined that I had a proclivity to reoffend with minors. Abbot Wright called Conception Abbey's Abbot Gregory Polan with this information.
"Abbot Polan would later share the information with Robert Stoeckig from the Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas, Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the human resources department at Mercy Ambulance in Las Vegas."
The statement set forth a full chronology of Bede Parry's sexual misconduct with young male students at both Conception Abbey and St. John's, in Minnesota, while he was a student there. There was far more than the one to which Parry openly admitted.
"His departure from the Roman Catholic priesthood had to do with his desire to take up secular employment," Jefferts Schori said. "His background check showed no more than what he had already told us."
Either she was misinformed or she is flat out lying. There is nothing in any document suggesting secular employment when he was received into The Episcopal Church.
Patrick Marker, an abuse victim who has been tracking Parry's history of sexual misconduct, faulted Jefferts Schori for not properly investigating the former monk before allowing him to become an Episcopal priest.
"She was taking the word of a predator at face value and not doing her homework," Marker said. "She was lazy and negligent."
True. She knew about his abusive background and forgave him despite that at the time (2003), Canon III.11 of the Episcopal Church required that before he could be received into the Church, Bede Parry had to furnish proofs of his "godly and moral character", and that his departure from the Roman Catholic Church had not been on account of "any circumstance unfavorable to moral or religious character . . .". Again, it is inconceivable that the full information made available to Bishop Jefferts Schori could have satisfied either of these requirements before she agreed to receive him in the fall of 2004.
It must be remembered, in considering all of this evidence, that 2003 was a year of intense examination in the Episcopal Church concerning its standards to prevent sexual abuse of minors and children.
First, General Convention in summer 2003 enacted Resolution B008, "Protection of Children and Youth from Abuse." This recommended that dioceses obtain "a written application, public records check, an interview and reference checks" for every applicant who would "regularly work with children." (Bede Parry had been functioning as the organist, and assisting with the choir at All Saints, Las Vegas, before applying to be received as a priest.)
Next, the Episcopal House of Bishops, of which Jefferts Schori was a member, met in August 2003 and promulgated a pastoral letter that said in part, "We, your bishops, are steadfastly committed to seeing that the Episcopal Church is a community of safety and health for all people. The Body of Christ, the Church, must be a place where adults, children, and young people find the love and blessing of God, and where no one might be hurt and where their hurts may be healed."
As if these statements were not enough to raise the red flag in the Diocese of Nevada, the Pastoral Letter from the House of Bishops went on to discuss the kind of abuse with which Bede Parry had been most prominently involved.
Following this letter, exactly as stated, (a) the Diocese of Nevada under Bishop Jefferts Schori adopted in October 2003 its own Manual of Policies and Procedures Concerning Sexual Misconduct, and then (b) the Church Pension Group promulgated a nationwide set of model standards for dioceses and parishes to follow. Those standards required a full application that included the inquiry: "Have you ever been accused of physically, sexually or emotionally abusing a child or an adult?" It also required a background check, including a check of references.
Amazingly, Bishop Jefferts Schori appears to have allowed him to wipe his slate clean and proceed to function as a priest in her Diocese without further concern or ado.
So the question is why is she not being hauled up on Canon Title IV charges and where are the Episcopal bishops who should be calling her to account? Are they all so afraid of her and her lawyer, David Booth Beers, that they won't challenge her? While she is being given a free hand to go after Bishop Mark Lawrence using her proxy forces down there, no one has the stomach to file charges.
It is long past time for the PB to "come clean" about this whole sordid affair - Title IV requires it - and the ongoing cover-up is unconscionable, wrote one blogger.
Bishop David C. Anderson, CEO of the American Anglican Council, said an independent panel should be established to fully investigate the moral debacle and fairly and judiciously determine where any guilt should be placed, and what consequences should follow. Nothing less than this will satisfy those whose lives have been harmed by clergy sexual misconduct, and those who watch how the church close ranks and protects itself from honest information getting out to the public regarding such cases.
An investigative panel should NOT include ANY bishops, and consist equally of men and women, laity and priests, he said.
We shall see.
END
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.