Pennsylvania bishop returns to divided diocese
Episcopal News Service. August 16, 2010 [081610-03]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison returned to the diocesan offices in downtown Philadelphia Aug. 16 amid continued calls for his retirement or resignation.
"We do not believe that Bishop Bennison has the trust of the clergy and lay leaders necessary for him to be an effective pastor and leader of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, nor that he can regain or rebuild the trust that he has lost or broken," the diocesan Standing Committee said in a letter posted to the diocese's website in the late morning. "We believe that it would be in the best interest of the diocese that Bishop Bennison not resume his exercise of authority here."
Bennison is due to meet with Assisting Bishop Rodney Michel on the morning of Aug. 17. Standing Committee President Glenn Matis, Standing Committee Secretary Arlene McGurk and committee member the Rev. Ledlie Laughlin plan to meet with Bennison in the afternoon, Matis told ENS.
The bishop did not answer an Aug. 16 ENS request for an interview.
Bennison, 66, said Aug. 5 that he planned to continue to serve the diocese as its bishop. He noted during a news conference that church canon allows for a bishop to serve until age 72, and said that he will continue as bishop "if it seems appropriate and in the best interest of the church" until that time.
Bennison's return to office was prompted by the church's Court of Review for the Trial of a Bishop's decision overturning a lower court's finding that the bishop ought to be deposed (removed) from ordained ministry because he had engaged in conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy. The review court agreed with one of the lower court's two findings of misconduct, but said that Bennison could not be deposed because the charge was barred by the church's statute of limitations.
The review court said that Bennison failed to respond properly in the mid-1970s when he was rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Upland, California, and learned that his brother, John, who worked initially as a lay youth minister in the parish, had been having a sexual relationship with a member of the youth group that began when she was 14 years old. John Bennison was later ordained a priest but deposed in 1977 for an unrelated offense. He was restored to the priesthood in 1980, but was forced to renounce his orders again in 2006 when accusations of his abuse became public.
The decision by the Court of Review for the Trial of a Bishop is here.
The Standing Committee said in its Aug. 16 letter to the diocese that "we grieve the pain endured by the victim of abuse, and by her family; our prayers are with her and with all who suffer."
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori inhibited Bennison in October 2007 from exercising his ordained ministry when the church's Title IV Review Committee formally accused him of the inaction. The inhibition expired with the review court's decision.
The Standing Committee, which had been the ecclesiastical authority in the diocese during Bennison's inhibition, has been at odds with Bennison since the mid-2000s over concerns about how he managed the diocese's assets and other issues. More than once in the past it has called for Bennison's resignation.
The Standing Committee's Aug. 16 letter lists a series of accomplishments during the past nearly three years and calls on Bennison to honor that work. The committee said it had adopted "procedures and practices that stress transparency, openness, and shared responsibilities in the administration of the diocese and in our lives together as a Christian community" as well as "nurture[ed] open working relationships within the diocesan bodies … and among and between those bodies."
The Standing Committee said it will continue to nurture what it called the "fragile web" of relationships that it has been weaving and is "committed to ensuring the spiritual, emotional and physical safety of all within this diocese and all whom we seek to serve in the name of Christ."
Meanwhile, a second major Pennsylvania parish called on Bennison to resign and an advocacy group of survivors of clergy sexual abuse added its voice to the debate. One of the leaders of a diocesan committee charged in part with fostering reconciliation told ENS that "my sense of things is that we can serve a role in some careful and honest conversations with Bishop Bennison about his future in the diocese."
The rector of St. David's Episcopal Church in Wayne and his warden wrote on Aug. 12 to Bennison to "confirm our repeated requests" that he retire or resign.
The Rev. W. Frank Allen and Joseph Bonn said in their letter that Bennison's resignation or retirement would be "the swiftest path to reconciliation for the diocese and for you."
The two said that "a Christian community requires a level of trust and mutual accountability and servant leadership that has been absent during your tenure as bishop."
The call from St. David's followed a similar one Aug. 8 from the Rev. Timothy Safford of Christ Church in Philadelphia.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which sent three pickets to the diocesan office on Aug. 10 to protest the review court's decision, added to the calls for Bennison to step aside, and said in a news release emailed to ENS on Aug. 16 that the Episcopal Church ought to revise what it termed as its "archaic, arbitrary" statue of limitations "on committing or concealing clergy sex crimes."
Episcopal Church canons have no time limit for bringing claims arising out of physical violence, sexual abuse or sexual exploitation of a person younger than 21 years (Canon IV.19.4(a) and (b). The statute of limitations on other offenses committed by clergy is 10 years, with certain exceptions extending the time period by a small number of additional years.
In addition, the 1996 changes (in Canon IV.14.4(a)(3) opened a window of 18 months (from Jan. 1, 1996 to July 1, 1998) for people to bring forward complaints of physical violence, sexual abuse or sexual exploitation not involving minors performed by deacons, priests and bishops that had been previously barred by the old five-year statute of limitations.
The SNAP group said it has sent letters to the members of the review court, asking them to "address clergy sex crimes and cover-ups from your pulpit and in their church publications, specifically excoriating Bennison for his decades of reckless cover-up, and urging your flock and staff to report any suspicion of possible child abuse to secular authorities immediately. (These messages can't be repeated too often, even if you believe your employees and church members have heard them before.)"
Training in sexual-abuse awareness and prevention for clergy and lay employees and volunteers is now widespread in the Episcopal Church. Church Pension Group and Church Publishing Inc. in December 2008 introduced three training programs for that purpose
The bishops composing the Court of Review for the Trial of a Bishop in the Bennison case are Michael Curry (North Carolina), Clifton Daniel (East Carolina, presiding judge), Duncan Gray (Mississippi), Mary Gray-Reeves (El Camino Real), Don Johnson (West Tennessee), Chilton Knudsen (Maine, resigned), Bruce MacPherson (Western Louisiana) and Todd Ousley (Eastern Michigan).
Delaware Bishop Wayne Wright recused himself from the hearing for personal reasons.
The roster is different from the current members of the court because the bishops who were serving on the court when the appeal was filed in the fall of 2009 are the ones who must review the judgment and sentence.
Meanwhile, the Rev. John Sorensen told ENS that the long-term planning work of the Pennsylvania Diocesan Mission Planning Commission, which he co-chairs, is on hold, because "now we have a bishop returning that people don't want to return."
The commission was begun by the 2009 meeting of the diocesan convention to continue and expand long-term planning work that had begun after it became clear that some parishes were struggling to survive, but were worried about whether decisions about their future might be made without their input.
Because "some relationships have been severely tested," as the resolution's explanation noted, commission members found themselves having to consider how diocesan members might be reconciled to each other, Sorensen said. The commission members, whom he said include "people who were pushing hard for [Bennison's] removal and people who were pushing hard to support him, and everybody in between," have developed amongst themselves to talk "honestly and openly" about their disagreements.
Sorensen said he personally hopes that model can be expanded for the entire diocesan membership, especially given the tension surrounding Bennison's return.
"It's happened and we need to find a way to have honest, respectful conversations about the future of the diocese," Sorensen. "Those who want to have a conversation with the bishop about asking him to resign, I think that we can provide a place for them to do that and to hear the bishop's thoughts on that. And those in the diocese -- and there are some -- who resent the whole idea that the court case was used as a way to get rid of the bishop also need an opportunity to share that. I think there's a lot of honest conversation that needs to happen in the diocese in order for us to move forward."
"Instead of having a conversation about him and about people in the diocese and each other and how we can move forward in Christ, he's now in the mix," Sorensen said of Bennison. "I can only assume that that's what God wants for us and maybe that gives us a better sense of healing than the other."
The commission, which meets again in September, plans to discern a way to offer to facilitate such discussion, he said.
In its ruling dated July 28 and released on Aug. 5, the review court was clear about what it said were Charles Bennison's failures. When he found his brother alone with the girl behind closed doors, he should have intervened, the bishops said. His inaction was "even worse" when within a month of that first instance, Charles Bennison again found his brother and the girl alone and their clothes "in a disheveled condition," the court said.
"The tragedy of this conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy is exacerbated by the fact that, during the trial of the case, [Bennison] testified that, upon reflection on his failure to act, he concludes that his actions were 'just about right,'" the court added. "They were not just about right. They were totally wrong."
The court said that "there are no words adequate to condemn sexual abuse, especially when the victim is a child."
"The church has devoted a great deal of time, energy and prayer to develop canonical procedures to confront and punish incidents of sexual abuse should they occur within the Church family," the bishops said. "It takes seriously its commitment to protect all of its members, especially children, from sexual abuse or sexual exploitation."
However, the bishops cautioned that the church's disciplinary courts must guard against allowing the time-limit exception for filing sexual abuse charges "to be used without proof of actual sexual abuse."
"This is especially true under circumstances where the exception is invoked not so much to deal with sexual abuse but, rather, as an effort to use events in the distant past when the respondent was a priest to remove a bishop during current times of strife within the diocese," the bishops said. "It runs the risk of labeling a bishop as a sexual abuser when the origin of the charges is based upon the individual's alleged poor performance as a bishop and not upon the individual's being a sexual abuser."
The proceeding did not arise, however, from any complaint or charge filed by any diocesan body or group of members. Instead, the Title IV Review Committee investigated the matter after the Bennison brothers' behavior became the subject of widespread publicity in the spring of 2006 and documents in the public report were brought to its attention by then-Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.