A Response to Sir Philip Mawer's Review of the Nomi

Review Article Smoking in Public and the Limits of Liberty of Conscience: A Response to Sir Philip Mawer’s Review of the Nomination to the See of Sheffield The Very Revd Professor Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford “THE botched nomination of the Rt Revd Philip North to the see of Sheffield in January this year stemmed from one simple omission, a review has found. It did not occur to anyone to ask whether the diocese would accept a diocesan bishop who did not ordain women as priests. As a consequence, Bishop North, a traditionalist, mistakenly believed he had the support of the diocese. Five bruising weeks after his nomination was announced by Downing Street, he withdrew, stating: “The highly individualised nature of the attacks on me have been extremely hard to bear.” A fortnight after Bishop North’s withdrawal, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York asked Sir Philip Mawer, a former secretary-general of the General Synod, to investigate what had happened and make recommendations for the future. His review was published on Friday morning. Sir Philip Mawer is the independent reviewer appointed to ensure that those who cannot accept the ministry of women bishops and priests continue to flourish within the Church of England. According to the 2014 Settlement, Five Guiding Principles were confirmed (in brief) that: (1) all orders of ministry are open to all, regardless of gender; (2) that all who minister in the C of E must accept that this is the case; (3) that this move is to be seen in relation to other Churches, some of which allow only men to be ordained; (4) that those who cannot accept women’s ministry remain within the spectrum of Anglican teaching; (5) and that this minority will be given pastoral and sacramental provision to enable them to contribute to mutual flourishing across the whole Church of England.” (quoting Paul Handley, Church Times, 15 September 2017). The Report of the Review of Nomination to the See of Sheffield by Sir Philip Mawer was published in the first half of September 2017. The Report set out the findings of a review requested by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in March this year following the announcement that the Bishop of Burnley, Philip North, was to withdraw from nomination to the Diocese of Sheffield. The 75- page Report drew from meetings with and personal submissions from more than 1 100 people (including over 60 from the Sheffield Diocese) over recent months seeking to learn lessons from the events surrounding Bishop North’s nomination to and subsequent withdrawal from the See. There is a real sense in which the debate over the debacle in the See of Sheffield, and the subsequent Report by Sir Philip Mawer, represent a clash of languages and cultures. It is not a binary clash, either. There are several conflictual cultures at work buffering up against one another. Conservative Catholics; accommodating liberals who want to make concessions to conservatives; campaigning liberals who don't want to make concessions; gender binaries and dialects; progressives and traditionalists; theologians and those representing party interests; and then an institutional culture that can't resolve the disputes, so resorts to the language of arbitration, but refuses to make any kind of discerning judgements on the theological merits of cases involved in the disputes. Like a true arbitrator, Philip Mawer attempted to treat all the theologies in play as equals (and lapsing only occasionally into erroneous value judgments such as 'nuance'). He was, after all, the designated officer chosen by the Church of England to decide on the 'Sheffield See' dispute, and try and settle key differences between parties. He stuck to the facts, and carefully avoided taking sides. But he writes as an insider, not an outsider. So his 'independence' is to some extent tainted by the very culture he tries to reason with. But there is a difference between an 'independent' Report, and one that emerges out of a culture of internal arbitration and is penned by an insider. We can see this distinction of perspective if one looks at the recent Independent Report by Dame Moira Gibb on the sexual abuse perpetrated by Bishop Peter Ball. Here, we encounter the robust roving eye and critical review of an outsider, offering an eviscerating critique. As a social-worker (and I suspect as a woman too), she is able to say some penetrating and prescient things to the Church about its attitudes and behaviours in respect of safeguarding and sexuality. Mawer's review does not have that kind of independence of mind. Thus, subjects such as institutional sexism are not even raised, let along tackled. Mawer's 'balancing' of women in the Church with the convictions of a small dissenting minority points to a work of internal arbitration, not an 'independent review'. This leads to the present problem, namely the Church of England's inability to distinguish between quality and efficacy in competing theological convictions and beliefs, which leads to some unfortunate ecclesial compromises. Thus, 2 despite having a General Synod that votes on issues – not just on the basis of personal preferences, but also on the basis of the quality of theological arguments that convict and persuade – the actual decisiveness of such processes are robbed of their power by supplementary concessions. This is unusual, slightly specious, and somewhat un-Catholic behaviour on the part of the Church of England. All the great Councils and Synods of the Church, for the best part of two thousand years, have deliberated, debated and then voted on matters that threatened to divide the Church. There were no post-vote accommodations for the Gnostics in the second century; or for the Arians in the fourth century. These groups had argued their cases on the nature of Christ - and they lost those arguments. A decision was made. The Church chose the path of the orthodox, better-quality, more persuasive theological arguments. That is what Synods and Councils do. The Church of England did exactly the same with women priests in 1992, and women bishops in 2013. One cannot pretend the result was really a 'score draw'. It wasn't. Yet accommodations and provisions were nonetheless made in 1993, to those who could not in conscience accept women priests. Reparations for those defeated is honourable and good, conveying important and authentic signals about future hopes of togetherness. But it ends there. One cannot, as I think Philip Mawer's arbitration unconsciously scripts, pretend that these competing convictions were and are of equal theological value and weight. If they were, the voting would tell us that, and there would be stalemate, and no women priests or bishops in the Church of England. The fact that women priests and bishops now exist proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the Church of England worked through this theological and ecclesial disputation – and with principles and methods utterly consistent with the great Councils and Synods of the wider Catholic Church. There are many things to commend in Mawer’s Report. It took soundings from many quarters of the Church of England. It listened, and reflected back to the Church of England an episode that was deeply unhappy (with ongoing issues still to be addressed and resolved). It highlighted significant failures of process and multiple misunderstandings. It has done this in consistently measured tones. It has, arguably, pasteurised some quite raw rhetoric in the interests of creating a degree of pastoral homogeneity. Crucially, it concluded that in future, all candidates for vacant Sees will now be asked directly whether they will or will not ordain women. Philip Mawer (Independent Reviewer) notes (para. 112): 3 “Since the events in Sheffield, the Appointments Secretaries have ensured that the guidance they provide to dioceses does include this point. That is a welcome development. Although some represented to me that posing the question will simply invite most, if not all, dioceses to say that they want a diocesan bishop who will ordain women, I cannot see that ignoring the relevance of the question will help anybody.” The Report, however, also revealed how far the centre of gravity in the Church of England has drifted from the general public and contemporary culture. We are informed that “prominent voices question(ed) the nomination included those of Lord Blunkett and the MP for Sheffield Heeley, Ms Louise Haigh” (para 66). This is a highly significant issue for public theology and an established Church - not least for its public witness and Christian credibility. The sentence above, however, is the only mention of this exceptional, probably unparalleled intervention by a former Labour Government Minister and Peer, and a serving Member of Parliament. The intervention merited some serious discussion, and not merely a fleeting mention. The Report reveals a Church talking to itself, relatively deaf to wider culture. The centre of gravity for the Report lies in several interlocking loci. First, how the Church seeks to manage an unresolvable ecclesial conflict, and competing theological convictions. The Report is at pains to stress how the way ahead can (somehow) be managed. The document cannot, of course, go into the deep theological divisions that underpin the issues. But it should be obvious by now - 25 years after the vote to ordain women to the priesthood at the November 1992 General Synod - that the weight of theological arguments for and against the ordination of women are not of equal value, and so cannot easily be ‘balanced’ in any ecclesial context. And even if the Bishops and General Synod likes to think that these arguments are of equal weight, the rest of the Church of England, general public and wider culture think differently on this debate.

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