In 2022, Mark Rivera, a former Anglican lay minister, was convicted of felony child sexual assault three years after a young girl told her mother that he had abused her. Months later, he pled guilty to felony sexual assault, nearly three years after his neighbour reported that Rivera had raped her.
From the primary, his survivors said, authorities within the Anglican Church in North America’s Upper Midwest Diocese had been slow to reply, casual about informing their fellow church members and, even after he had been arrested, sided with Rivera.
In 2021, several of Rivera’s victims went public concerning the obstacles they faced in reporting Rivera’s misconduct, and, ever since, a gaggle of ACNA members has been clamouring for the denomination to revise its abuse prevention protocols.
Now, the denomination has taken steps in that direction. At its June meeting in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the denomination’s governing bodies added two sections to church bylaws about safeguarding and reporting misconduct, in keeping with a recent update to ACNA’s website. An extended-awaited overhaul of Title IV, the bylaws’ protocol for church discipline, continues to be reportedly within the works.
It was partly “due to the nature of what was happening within the Upper Midwest” that ACNA called a unprecedented meeting of its Governance Task Force, a committee of clergy and laity, around early 2023, charging it with reviewing the denomination’s bylaws, in keeping with the Rev. Phil Ashey, then the group’s chair.
By that point, the Rev. Stewart Ruch, the charismatic bishop who oversees the Upper Midwest Diocese, had returned from a voluntary leave of absence he had taken after admitting to mistakes in responding to the allegations against Rivera. He has since grow to be the subject of a church trial examining whether he knowingly welcomed individuals with histories of predatory behaviour into diocesan churches.
The task force commissioned two working groups: A Title I group to look at minimum safeguarding requirements for dioceses, and a Title IV group to review the denomination’s policy for responding to clergy misconduct. The task force reportedly spent greater than 1,500 hours developing proposals, raising hopes that the Assembly, ACNA’s largest representative body, can be voting on sweeping revisions to Title IV this June.
But in early March of 2024, the duty force published a draft of proposed changes that included two significant Title I amendments, and only minor revisions to Title IV. A May 2024 update of the proposals framed the Title I changes as laying the groundwork for an eventual Title IV overhaul.
The proposed latest Title I sections gave the dioceses and their bishops responsibility for their very own best practices and reporting of misconduct. This raised concern that the proposals allowed the church’s national leadership to evade legal liability for abuse. Others anxious the draft left unclear who would hold bishops accused of misconduct accountable. At the June meeting in Latrobe, one member of the duty force urged that the denomination strengthen its own oversight. The final version that passed included additional language saying it was the “moral duty” of the entire church to “see that the flock of Christ is shielded from abuse,” while leaving primary responsibility within the hands of the bishops.
The Rev. William Barto, a priest within the Reformed Episcopal Church (a sub-jurisdiction of ACNA) and a member of the Title IV working group, said while many dioceses already had pre-existing policies, the ultimate version of the Title I amendments will formalize that requirement. “This is consistent with the larger governance structure of Anglican Church in North America, which could be very decentralized and puts focus of activity on the congregation and the dioceses that support those or oversee those congregations,” he said.
Barto told RNS he thinks the change is a step in the proper direction. “In the trial of Bishop Ruch, within the diocese of the Upper Midwest, a part of his defence is, it wasn’t my job … I trusted the local rector, the local priest in charge, to care for this,” he said. “So that is, partly, an effort to foreclose that and make clear that the buck does stop with the diocesan bishop, by way of the misconduct of their clergy, staff and their congregations.”
Still, the new edition of Title I lays out minimum requirements that the dioceses must adopt by the tip of 2025 of their misconduct protocols. They include the appointment of report receivers, the creation of a reports investigation committee, requirements that pastoral care be provided to the reporting party and clergy accused of misconduct and guidelines for coping with reports of lay misconduct.
Ashey, who leads the mission organization American Anglican Council and who served on the Governance Task Force for 15 years, praised the revamped Title I, calling it “an exquisite framework for caring for many who’ve suffered trauma. It also provides a good and transparent process and care for many who’ve been accused as well, and it provides the power for every diocese to plot its own means of discipline that really incorporates these general standards.”
But Sarah Wagner-Wassen, a canon lawyer within the Anglican Catholic Church who has written about the ACNA canons, as church laws are known, said she is anxious that making changes to Title I without the expected overhaul of Title IV creates inconsistencies within the reporting requirements.
“The major issue I even have with the Title I changes is, they didn’t change Title IV very much to match it,” she said. If anyone made a grievance, she said, “I would not know what was alleged to occur. The canons appear to be describing various things which may’t each occur at the identical time.”
Megan Tucker, a layperson who attends an ACNA church in Minnesota and certainly one of the authors of a presentment, or list of charges, against Ruch, said she was dissatisfied with the time period — 21 days — that laypeople got to supply their input on the changes. She also felt that communication concerning the proposals was spotty and wished that denominational leaders had been more transparent concerning the efforts.
“The church must proactively educate and equip laity and clergy so everyone seems to be empowered,” said Tucker concerning the canons and process for revising them. “If we were all included and equipped, this may be a profoundly meaningful effort in making the church a very protected space where church persons are well-armored against abuse.”
Ashey said the method was highly vetted and publicized by the American Anglican Council and on ACNA’s website and that each one feedback received from the general public throughout the comment period is assigned to a working group for review.
The canonical changes will go into effect in September. Though it isn’t currently clear how or why the Title IV revisions were delayed or after they shall be made public, in June, because the Assembly wrapped up its business session, Archbishop Foley Beach, the outgoing leader of the denomination, suggested meeting prior to the following scheduled meeting in 2029 to think about broader Title IV changes.
“We’re really seriously taking a look at Title IV as well, and that is an enormous undertaking. Actually, we probably must have a special session only for that. And in order that’d be easy to do by Zoom, so that is what we’re considering,” said Beach. “But it’ll be as much as the brand new archbishop and his leadership team.”
© Religion News Service
