MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun
Dan Rodricks
BALTIMORE SUN
dan.rodricks@baltsun.com
The Episcopal Church’s very public “Agony in the Garden” over the Heather Cook case — with most of the angst focused on whether church leaders knew about her drinking problem before they made her a bishop — continues. Now a high-ranking official is calling for the national church to officially “repent for our role” in the death of bicyclist Thomas Palermo.
Perhaps it’s the Catholic in me, but I associate “repent” with sin, a considerable step above a mere wrong or mistake that would require apology. Sin calls for repentance. So, with that word, the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church, elevates this tragedy into a sphere where the laity fear to tread — into the realm of moral evil. That’s somewhere high above criminal law, and well above my credentials, up in the clouds where clergy agonize among themselves.
That’s what spiritual leaders are ordained to do. They wrestle with large moral questions. Among many instructions, they tell us what’s sinful and what isn’t.
But I have to ask: What sin is Jennings suggesting here? A lie of omission?
You could take that from the questions that keep coming up: How did Cook win election last year as Maryland’s bishop suffragan when she had received probation before judgment for drunken driving on the Eastern Shore in 2010? Sub-question: Why were those who elected her not made aware of that incident ahead of the vote?
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