THE Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, has added her voice to calls for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign in response to the Makin report on John Smyth, now regarded as essentially the most prolific abuser within the Church of England (News, 8 November).
Speaking to Radio 4’s World at One on Monday, she said: “Sadly, I believe his position is untenable, so I believe he should resign.”
The Makin report was “truly horrific, horrendous and shocking”, she said. Survivors and others were asking: “‘Can we actually trust the Church of England to maintain us secure? And I believe the reply in the mean time is ‘No.’”
Asked concerning the Church’s response to the report, she said: “I believe ‘disappointing’ is maybe an understatement. I believe it’s very hard for the Church because the national, the Established, Church to proceed to have an ethical voice, in any way, shape, or form in our nation, after we cannot get our own house so as with regard to something as critically essential, something that might be asked of any institution, let alone the Church, which is supposed to have the gospel of Jesus Christ, searching for essentially the most vulnerable, in our midst. We are in peril of losing complete credibility on that front.”
While changes had been made to enhance safeguarding, she said: “You do must ask the query, culturally, has change really embedded within the institution, when its leadership cannot take ownership and responsibility of its mistakes?”
The Archbishop’s resignation wouldn’t solve the issue, she said, but can be “a really clear indication that a line has been drawn and that we must move towards independence of safeguarding”.
Archbishop Welby told Channel 4 News last week that, having taken advice from senior colleagues, he had decided to not resign. “If I’d known before 2013 or had grounds for suspicions, that might be a resigning matter then and now. But I didn’t.”
Lambeth Palace reiterated his position to the BBC on Monday.
The Makin review concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, it was “unlikely that Justin Welby would have had no knowledge of the concerns regarding John Smyth within the Nineteen Eighties within the UK”.
It found also that, while the Archbishop had acted inside safeguarding policies in place in 2013, and had been the recipient of an inaccurate report that a police investigation was under way, he had had “a private and moral responsibility to pursue this further, regardless of the policies at play on the time required”.
Archbishop Welby has apologised for his “profound failures”, having “personally did not be certain that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated”.
Dr Hartley’s call follows a growing movement on social media calling for the Archbishop’s resignation, led by members of the clergy. An online petition, began by the Vicar of St James’s, West Hampstead, in London, the Revd Robert Thompson, has gathered greater than 4000 signatures.
Earlier this 12 months, Dr Hartley said that it was “disgraceful” that the General Synod had not agreed immediately to adopt a recent and independent safeguarding structure, as beneficial by Professor Alexis Jay (News, 1 March).
However, at a subsequent meeting of the Synod she said that consultation with victims and survivors had softened her stance, and she or he now believed that further exploration of the choices was one of the best ways forward (News, 8 July).
Of the 25 bishops who responded to a survey published in May, only three said that they backed a recent, independent organisation to tackle the Church’s safeguarding temporary; two-thirds said that they disagreed; and the remainder reported that they were unsure (News, 31 May).
