Why is the Church of England so often led by an idiot? Because prime ministers, who effectively make the appointment, do not want someone too cunning looking over their shoulders? Or is it simply that as the Church’s importance in British life dwindles seemingly by the minute, and fewer and fewer turn up on a Sunday morning, the reservoir of possible talent narrows until you are left with somebody like Justin Welby — Ed Davey in a dog collar and a nice frock?
I suspect that the departing archbishop was a kindly man — at least by his own lights, in that slightly wet-lipped, hand-wringing, upper-middle-class bien-pensant manner that is too often mistaken for godliness by the C of E. But he was surely not the brightest of even the recent incumbents (that would be Rowan Williams).
Eventually forced to resign, after a long while of hanging on by his fingertips in a somewhat inelegant manner, Welby delivered himself of a speech in the House of Lords that succeeded only in infuriating half of the synod and all of those people who suffered at the hands of that bona fide psycho the church reader John Smyth. He kind of morphed into Michael McIntyre, cracking jokes with his lordships, all of which suggested he did not give a monkey’s about the abuse perpetrated by Smyth and in any case was not remotely responsible for having kept the allegations from the police and the public eye.
It was one of the least humble speeches you could wish to hear. He joked about his predecessors having their heads cut off and intimated that, metaphorically, the same thing had happened to him. He added: “I hope not literally. One of my predecessors in 1381, Simon of Sudbury, had his head cut off, and it was then the peasants — the revolting peasants at the time — who played football with it at the Tower of London. I don’t know who won. It certainly wasn’t Simon of Sudbury.”
Ho-ho-ho — back of the net! And all the while, those who had been unfortunate enough to come within John Smyth’s weird orbit of brutal sado-noncing were expecting something in the way of contrition. Nope, not a bit of it.
Welby exonerated himself by implication. Having accepted “personal and institutional responsibility” for the failure to bring Smyth’s crimes to light in his resignation statement, he now backtracked, saying: “The reality is that there comes a time, if you are technically leading a particular institution or area of responsibility, when the shame of what has gone wrong, whether one is personally responsible or not, must require a head to roll.”
Let’s admit he may have a point here, in the general. Sometimes the person at the top is forced to depart as a consequence of the failures of those below him (although more often those lower down cop disproportionate blame). But this was not the case with Welby. He was not “technically” the head of the Church: he was head of the Church. And all the evidence suggests that he knew plenty about John Smyth but did absolutely nothing about it.
He has since apologised for his House of Lords speech — but it’s too late, Justin. You said it. One assumes you meant it.
His tenure was characterised by a predilection for grandstanding on political issues and a marked absence of God.
Read it all in the Sunday Times
