By admin 
LONDON (RNS) – Christmas, a holiday that promises peace, is proving to be a tumultuous time for the Church of England as sex abuse scandals threaten to derail the Archbishop of York, the senior cleric charged with leading the church after the dismissal of November 11 from Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Since then, George Carey, who held Welby’s seat from 1991 to 2002, has also agreed to stop serving as a priest after being accused of failing to deal with a priest accused of abuse, in the same case that also led to demands for the resignation of Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York.
The combined scandals have given impetus to those calling for the church to give up some of its influence in the global Anglican communion and for its bishops to no longer hold seats in the House of Lords as so-called Lords Spiritual.
These latest crises came when the formal announcement was made by the Privy Council, a body of advisors to the British king, that the king had accepted Welby’s abdication and had therefore effectively ‘declared the Archdiocese of Canterbury vacant with effect from the seventh day of January’. 2025.”
The search for Welby’s successor is now underway, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer announcing that Jonathan Evans, former head of the MI5 security service, will become chairman of the Crown Nominations Commission, the body charged with appointing the next Archbishop of Canterbury .
Welby resigned following the publication of a damning report into an investigation into a known child abuser, John Smyth, who ran camps linked to the Church of England. The Makin report found that Welby had failed to consider whether police had resolved the situation appropriately after being informed about Smyth in 2013. After calls for Welby’s resignation, he said he must take “personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024.”
Cottrell, the second most senior cleric in the Church of England, was mentioned in a BBC documentary about David Tudor, a priest who was banned for life from office in October. The filmmakers said Tudor was acquitted in 1988 of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old despite admitting to having sex with her when she was 16, the legal age for sex in the UK, but was convicted separately of attacking three girls. That conviction was quashed on technical grounds.
The following year, Tudor was barred from office for five years by an ecclesiastical tribunal for sexual misconduct. He returned to the ministry in 1993 and was suspended again in 2005 over another complaint and banned from attending school or being alone with a child.
Despite this limitation, a few months later he was appointed area dean with responsibility for twelve parishes. When Cottrell was appointed Bishop of Chelmsford in 2010, he allowed Tudor to remain in the post despite knowing about these restrictions, according to the BBC, and renewed him in the role in 2013 and 2018.
Following another police investigation in 2019, Tudor was suspended and a five-year investigation, which concluded two months ago, ended with his complete dismissal from the ministry after he admitted to sexually assaulting two girls.
Cottrell has insisted that Tudor’s suspension and eventual expulsion in 2019 was the most he could do, saying that church regulations before then gave Cottrell no reason to act – a situation he called “terrible and intolerable.” mentioned, especially for the survivors.
But Cottrell’s critics point to Tudor’s appointment as an honorary canon during Cottrell’s time, which Cottrell believes was beyond his power. The Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, the first to call for Welby’s resignation, described Cottrell’s response as ‘ridiculous’.
Andrew Brown, a former religion correspondent for The Guardian, said Cottrell was in an extremely difficult position. “Since (Tudor) had been acquitted twice of the crimes no one doubted he committed,” Brown said, “he couldn’t even be suspended until new charges were brought against him. As soon as that happened, in 2018, Cottrell suspended him. He cannot be blamed for not doing what was legally impossible.”
However, Brown agrees that Cottrell should have blocked Tudor’s renewal as area dean and his appointment as an honorary cathedral canon. The latter called Brown ‘a meaningless trinket, but one that looks meaningful to the outside world. Cottrell should have severed that link, but for reputational reasons, not because it would have made anyone safer at the time.”
The Tudor saga led to another fall from grace with Carey’s departure as a priest.
It was Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury, who reinstated Tudor under his supervision in 1993, and under Carey’s supervision in 1996, Tudor’s name was removed from a list of disciplined clergy. Last week, Lord Carey, now 89, announced he would no longer serve as a priest, relinquishing his license to administer the sacraments after more than 60 years.
The scandals have raised other issues about the future of the church. Coincidentally, the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order has just published a document questioning the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The so-called Nairobi-Cairo proposals, which say that “the leadership of the Community should look like the Community”, in fact call into question the status of the Archbishop of Canterbury as President of the Community, who is now much stronger in power Global South than in England. .
“Anglicans now recognize that full communion with the Church of England or the See of Canterbury is not a requirement for any church,” the report said. “Instead, we all strive together for the highest possible degree of community, with each other.”
It further suggests that the Communion should recognize its “historic link with the see of Canterbury”, but that in a post-colonial era the presidency should rotate among primates.
Graham Tomlin, bishop of the Church of England and chairman of the IASCUFO, tweeted last week: “It is time for the Church of England to stop being the center of the Anglican Communion,” a view echoed by the Rev. Giles Fraser, an influential Anglican broadcaster who said last week: “The Anglican Communion should no longer be governed from a small town in Kent.”
Although the Nairobi-Cairo proposals will not be considered until 2026, their publication will undoubtedly influence discussions over who could be appointed to replace Welby. At least two likely candidates – the current Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt. Most Rev. Guli Francis-Dehqani, and the Bishop of London, the Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullally – are women, which can be controversial in some parts of the Communion.
Furthermore, a recent second reading of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, which seeks to end the role of hereditary peers in the British Parliament, also called for the abolition of bishops’ seats in the Lords.
Lord Birt, former director general of the BBC, described the Lords Spiritual as “a feudal overhang” and said that in the 2022 census of 56 million British subjects “less than half declared themselves Christians. … there are more Catholics than Anglicans; and more people say they don’t believe in a God than do. We are a country with many beliefs and no faith. Our established church is not even a church for the whole of Britain.”
Referring to the abuse scandals, he said that “recent events have powerfully and emphatically demonstrated that the Church of England is losing moral authority.”
The Rt. The Revd Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, said bishops were “under no illusions” about the need for change. We support that, but we need to be wiser about the nature of what we do.” He also noted that bishops continue to provide the necessary connections between British communities. “Probably some of the best connected people in this country are the diocesan bishops who oversee and engage with all of civil society at virtually every level in the regions.”
The bishops’ place in the House of Lords reflects the status of the Church of England as the established church of the United Kingdom. Another reminder of this will come on Christmas Day, when the supreme governor, King Charles III, will deliver the monarch’s annual message to the nation via television and radio.