Private life? What private life?

[UPDATE (Tuesday 28 August): An excellent sermon by the outgoing Dean of Wellington, Frank Nelson, touching on the story below, is available here, courtesy of Taonga.]

"I have a private life and I'm endeavouring to get on with that to deal with the difficulty of separating from my wife. 

"I love the church . . . and I have no intention of turning around and walking away from the church."

So speaks Tom Brown, former Bishop of Wellington, i.e. predecessor of current Bishop Justin Duckworth.

As clergy, do we have a 'private life' if by that is meant something other than when and how we perform our morning ablutions? Have we not been enjoined to a particular discipleship through ordination in which our lives are called to be exemplary in all respects, transparent to the world which sees us as representatives of God through preaching, presiding and pastoring? Are we permitted to draw a distinction between 'private' and 'public' lives? I once challenged a priest who thought he could do one form of ministry in his 'private life' which he was not permitted to perform in his 'public life'! 

Which brings me to the second sentence, "I love the church." What do you think? 

Here is my thought: To use the phrase "love the church" when one surrenders one's licence five minutes after laying down one's crozier is, well, striking. As the rest of the article makes clear, an entirely predictable thing has happened. Everyone Lots of people in the Diocese of Wellington is are upset and aghast at this news. And rightly so. Let's remember just one role of a bishop: it is to stand at the head of the whole system of licensing for ministry, including the system of maintaining those licences through education in appropriate ministry according to the standards of our church, to say nothing of being the 'chief judge' should infringements of those standards lead to a need for 'determination'. To find that within months of laying down the crozier one's bishop has felt a need to hand in his licence must indeed be disturbing for the people of the Diocese of Wellington.  

Some big questions are raised by the very publication of this article. One of course is whether it is true and accurate in all respects, but one can have a degree of trust in our media when they use actual comments made within quotation marks, and we may trust the judgement of eminent Wellington clergyman Sir Des Britten in his observations.

Episcopacy is not a job one stops doing once one ceases to be paid a stipend for it. It is a calling into a role in which great trust and faith is placed by clergy and laypersons. The remarks cited above are troubling when placed alongside that calling.

POSTSCRIPT: Do we need some urgent discussion about the nature of our licensing system, the underlying legislation beneath it (Title D), and the processes by which education and training are conducted in order that we live well by that legislation. I wonder what this situation means for the education and training sessions we are compelled to attend. At the very least we need to ask the question whether these sessions are beneficial to the trainees (i.e. licensed ministers)? Here we have a bishop of our church feeling compelled to hand his licence in. There is merit and integrity in making that decision. But has something broken down about our education and training re licensed ministry and its obligations that we can end up with such an outcome? Can we hope that our church collectively will ask and discuss such questions?  I do not know! We do not always seem to be at our best re discussion and engagement of the issues at hand when faced with the awkwardness of  the reality of our lives clashing with the expectations of our parishioners, our colleagues and our canonical standards.