There is an article in the Grauniad, er, Guardian today on this subject which was co-written by Stephen Bates, the Guardian‘s former religion correspondent, and which is well-written, well-sourced, makes sense, and is sensitive to the feelings of Dr. John and the Diocese.
The fact that the pastoral needs of the Diocese of Southwark took a back seat to church politics is something that we have all been annoyed about but no one else has highlighted it in any of the many thousands of words that have been written and spoken about this matter.
I suspect that there has now been a leak from someone who was actually at the selection meeting (how else would Bates know that 5 of the 6 Southwark representatives voted for John?). Whatever I think about the Archbishop of Canterbury, I think that it is right and proper that, given the normal secrecy about the process of selecting bishops for the Church of England, anyone who violates their oath of confidentiality about the process should be unmasked and deprived of their responsibilities in episcopal selection. Whether the secrecy and the process itself is good is another question. Both open election (as is practiced in the US, Canada, and some other provinces) and secret selection as practiced here can throw up exceptionally good bishops and exceptionally bad bishops, and proponents on each side can point to elected bishops and secretly-chosen bishops who turned out not to be very good bishops.
As a native-born American but an adopted Brit, I am on the whole in favour of open selection processes and elections. I do not believe that this is in the cards for the Church of England, either on a parochial level (the process for selecting an incumbent for a parish is broadly in line with the process for selecting a bishop) or on an episcopal level. Whenever I have brought the question up in appropriate fora (such as the Bishops’ Council or at various Synod meetings) the very idea of an open process has been greeted with the same horror that maggots on that American Airlines plane produced in the passengers. “We can’t do THAT here!” is the usual response, although some, who think of “our American cousins” and refer to “across the pond” with the same genial superiority that was once assumed for “our black brothers and sisters” and for “darkest Africa”, just laugh and say, “Well, that might be appropriate for America, but it just wouldn’t work here.” These latter people will never say exactly why it wouldn’t work here, though, and if pressed, will just chuckle a bit at my na
I can’t believe I just wrote that.
Sort of like that line by Ian McKellan in Gods and Monsters, when James Whale introduces his straight, hunky gardener (Brandan Fraser) to Princess Anne: “He’s never met a princess before, only queens.”
LOL!