Why is the Church silencing victims?
by Giles Fraser, UnHerd:
The Archbishops’ Council has given up on safeguarding.
My small children, being Hebrew speakers, call me abba. Originally Aramaic, the language of the Lord’s Prayer — “Our Father, which art in heaven” — abba is softer, more intimate than the English “father”. Perhaps slightly closer to “daddy”, though less nursery, less sentimental. To call God “abba” is to speak of God as a loving presence, not an austere despot.
So into that one word a whole pile of very deep stuff collapses — our relationship to the ultimate nature of things, our relationship to religion, our relationship with our own fathers. You don’t have to be Freud to find it unsurprising that Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, touched a highly sensitive nerve when he worried out loud that there might be a problem with “Our father”.
Many commentators inwardly groaned, spotting another depressing bout of Church of England wokery. And yes, the Archbishop did inevitably rehearse the idea that God is the apex predator of the patriarchy. But actually, what he said was worse than that. Much worse.
This is exactly what he said: “Yes, I know the word ‘Father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly Fathers has been destructive and abusive.” And he is clearly right that if your father beat or molested you as a child, then the word “father” will have disturbing connotations. But what the press did not pick up on was the fact that “Father” is also how many of the clergy style themselves. And if Father so-and-so abused you as a choirboy, then yes: “Our Father” may well be a problem.
In truth, things were already difficult for the Archbishop and the church he leads. For the current meeting of the General Synod in York has witnessed a crisis for the Church of England on an almost unimaginable scale — a full descent into acrimony and chaos, which will take a generation to recover from. “The Church often does the work of Satan,” one Priest wrote, after witnessing events unfold on Sunday.
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