JUSTICE FOR BISHOP GEORGE BELL OF CHICHESTER

LORD CORMACK

"Surely the lesson to be learnt here is that to give great publicity to a possibility, without giving any opportunity for it to be challenged, is itself a rather dangerous precedent"

~ Lord Cormack (House of Lords January 28 2016)

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201516/ldhansrd/lhan101.pdf (page 1516)

PART 1 - "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT" BY SARAH MAC DONALD - FEATURES : ANONYMOUS ACCUSATIONS - THE TABLET - JUNE 4 2016 (Hat-Tip : Meriel)

"Fr [Tim] Hazelwood says there is a climate in both church and society which presumes priests are guilty unless they prove their innocence. The 57-year-old parish priest...believes it is time for priests in Ireland to establish a national body which will lobby the bishops and the current safeguarding structures on their behalf, to ensure that natural justice is not undermined"

~ Sarah Mac Donald

PART 2 - "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT" BY SARAH MAC DONALD - FEATURES : ANONYMOUS ACCUSATIONS - THE TABLET - JUNE 4 2016 (Hat-Tip : Meriel)

"I don't believe any anonymous accusation should go forward. False allegations only undermine genuine survivors and victims. It is important that the procedures to investigate allegations move as quickly as possible . Justice works both ways"

~ Marie Collins (survivor of clerical abuse and member of the Vatican's Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors)

COMMENT BY PETE ON LITURGIAE CAUSA

http://liturgiae-causa.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/a-petition-for-bishop-george-bell.html

"The Bishop of Chichester needs to be reminded of what The Apostle said: Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. A 5 year old girl's memory of over half a century ago is not reliable"

~ Pete

"THE CHURCH AND THE JEWISH QUESTION" - AN ESSAY BY DIETRICH BONHOEFFER - APRIL 1933

Bonhoeffer's essay was the first to address the new problems the church face under the Nazi dictatorship...The real question, he argued, was how the church would judge and respond to the Nazi state's actions against the Jews. The essay was completed in the days following the April 1, 1933, boycott of Jewish businesses.

In autumn 1933, the Deutsche Christen ('German Christians') gained control of many Protestant church governments throughout Germany; their policy of excluding those with 'Jewish blood' from the ministry was approved, September 1933, by the national church synod at Wittenberg.

In May 1934, the anti-Nazi Confessing Church was organised in Barmen, Germany. Bonhoeffer bitterly opposed the Aryan paragraph, arguing that its ratification surrendered Christian precepts to political ideology.

"PASTOR NIEMOLLER AND HIS CREED" - FOREWORD BY THE BISHOP OF CHICHESTER ("GEORGE CICESTR': ) - HODDER & STOUGHTON 1939

The author of this book is a close personal friend of Martin Niemoller [Franz Hildebrandt]...The National Socialist regime began in 1933...National Socialism had something Messianic in its character. Its good side was that it brought deliverance for the common people. It brought the waters of "Nationalism" and "Socialism" together in an overwhelming flood...But its bad side was that the Messianic hope was fixed entirely on this world; with natural and most unhappy results. Thus, there was a worship of the race [Aryan], coupled with the hatred of the alien, and particularly a passionate antagonism to the Jew. And also there was a complete subordination of all things to the absolute authority of the State. Thus National Socialism implicitly contradicted the First Commandment, as Niemoller and his friends were quick to perceive.

"AND OTHER PASTORS OF THY FLOCK" - 'A GERMAN TRIBUTE TO THE BISHOP OF CHICHESTER' - CAMBRIDGE 1942

My dear Bishop

The plan for this book goes back as far as November 1938. You will remember those days when we read about the pogrom in Germany, when your palace at Chichester was overflooded with letters of refugees begging you to help them to come over to England, when it became clear that not only the Jews but thousands of Christians had to leave their country. YOU WERE THE FIRST TO REALIZE THEIR PLIGHT...It is an academic custom in Germany to honour a man by a dedication of some essays written by his friends and pupils, and that is what we have tried to do in this little book...

Yours ever,

FRANZ HILDEBRANDT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Hildebrandt

"MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL" BY TS ELIOT (Hat-Tip : Marilyn)

https://cemjoad.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/t-s-eliot-and-bishop-george-bell/

TS Eliot...accepted the commission to write a play – “Murder In The Cathedral” – for the Canterbury Festival in June 1935, at the request of George Bell, Bishop of Chichester.

"BECKET'S LESSON FOR TODAY" - THE TABLET - MAY 28 2016 (Hat-Tip : Meriel)

[Thomas Becket] was resisting the principle that the Church must obey the state in all things...If for "the state" one reads "secular society", then this is still a burning issue....In their public witness [religious institutions]...their role is to maintain a crtical distance from the social consensus...This will not make them popular. Yet the lesson...is not that the Churches must move towards the social consensus. rather, it makes abundantly clear why at times they must resist it. And if that means taking a hit, then - as Becket would have said - so be it"

CHICHESTER POST - LETTER - FRIDAY JUNE 3 2016
(This letter also appeared in the Argus on May 31 2016)

Dear Editor

BISHOP Bell's name is being crucified by the Diocese of Chichester, not just because of a lack of common sense and sound judgement, but also because of an excess of secrecy and concealment.
If the Church of England's Chichester Diocese remains on the same trajectory, it may well find itself in 2016 embroiled in a scandal paralleling that of the Roman Catholic's Boston Archdiocese in 2002 - accurately portrayed in the film 'Spotlight', now showing in cinemas across the Diocese - stretching from Chichester to Hastings.

Richard W. Symonds
The Bell Society

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/justice-for-bishop-george-bell-of-chichester

Crawley
West Sussex

PART 3 (FINAL) - "CAMPAIGNERS' FIGHT TO CLEAR 'SEX ATTACK' BISHOP GOES VIRAL", CHICHESTER POST, MAY 27 2016

Last week Chichester City Council rehung a picture of the late bishop in its offices, having initially removed it "for fear of vandalism". Councillor Tony Dignum explained the decision to restore the portrait was based on the Chichester Diocese's failure to offer any evidence to condemn the bishop beyond the uncorroborated claim of the accuser....
The church claimed it had carried out a "thorough investigation" including the use of "expert independent reports", but refused to publicly reveal the evidence.

PART 2 - "CAMPAIGNERS' FIGHT TO CLEAR 'SEX ATTACK' BISHOP GOES VIRAL", CHICHESTER POST, MAY 27 2016

"The living who are falsely accused of child abuse are slowly destroyed - physically, emotionally and spiritually. But the dead who are falsely accused of child abuse cannot be destroyed any more; all that remains is to smear their reputations with wickedness and expunge people's perceptions of their saintliness. We don't know if Bishop Bell has been falsely accused because we may not see the evidence, but we do know the allegation has represented an injustice - morally, pastorally and legally - if only because justice has not been seen to be done."

~ 'Archbishop Cranmer'

PART 1 - "CAMPAIGNERS' FIGHT TO CLEAR 'SEX ATTACK' BISHOP GOES VIRAL", CHICHESTER POST, MAY 27 2016

"My own view, for what it's worth, is this: I have little doubt the victim was sexually molested by a 'man of the cloth' in one of the houses within the grounds of the Cathedral, but I have great doubt it was Bishop Bell. In other words, I think it was a case of 'mistaken identity'."

~ Bell Society's Richard Symonds

"BROTHER IVO" COMMENT 2

http://brotherivo.com/blog/2016/06/02/chichester-diocese-can-learn-from-its-own-lessons/

A Church that can get it right in secrecy, can get it wrong in secrecy, and will have all the necessary tools with which to bury its mistakes...

Whenever questions about the inquiry process surrounding Bishop Bell are asked, the official response is that nothing can be said because to answer any question would be to breach the right to confidentiality belonging to the complainant. It is deployed as a shield to silence even those questions touching upon the actions of the institution rather than the circumstances of the accuser. Apparently the cloak of secrecy is drawn so tightly, that even members of the Cathedral Chapter are excluded and frustrated.

"BROTHER IVO" COMMENT 1

http://brotherivo.com/blog/2016/06/02/chichester-diocese-can-learn-from-its-own-lessons/

Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.
This is the lesson that must be drawn from all these past tragedies. We have short term memories but highly entrenched corporate instincts towards secrecy.
This matter will not go away. It will be raised at Question Time at the next General Synod in York. If transparency does not begin thereafter, we shall have to seek a full public debate about the Church’s instinct against openness, by which the default position of “Trust me I’m a Bishop’ is exposed for the absurd foolishness that it is.