Jesus loves Jersey

This is Justin Welby. He is the Church of England Archbishop of Canterbury and he has just given the most pathetic, insipid and duplicitous interview I have ever heard.

The interviewer was Matthew Price, of BBC Jersey, and, to give him his due, he didn't do a bad job, asking most of the necessary questions.

The Bishop, on the other hand, sounded like he hadn't a clue, more like a bureaucrat caught in the headlights and trying to defend the indefensible than a bishop giving leadership to his flock. If God's love is as insipid as that quoted by the Bishop then lots of Christians are in deep shit.

You will be familiar with the story of the Dean and the vulnerable lady if you have read the earlier post on Jersey. Well, the Bishop, who was being interviewed explicitly on the fallout from this sorry saga, didn't seem to know anything much about it, or, if he did, he hid it very well.

In summary, a churchwarden in Jersey abused a vulnerable young lady. When she complained to the Dean he effectively ignored her complaint and when she made a fuss he had her arrested. She was then deported from Jersey and dumped penniless on the mainland where she was mainly homeless for the following three years. The then Bishop (Scott-Joynt) was a waste of space but when the new bishop (Dakin) came in he suspended the Dean. His feelings in the matter are no doubt to his credit. However, as he was badly advised and exceeded his powers, he had to reinstate the Dean who immediately, and falsely, claimed that he had been exonerated of the bad behaviour of which he had been accused. Relations between the Bishop and the Dean deteriorated to the point that the Bishop (Dakin) dumped the Dean on another Bishop (Willmott) who is now supposed to "supervise" him.

Meanwhile, the young lady, whom Jesus no doubt loves as much as he might love any of the other players, has been living in distress and near destitution all the while.

Bishop Dakin - out of his depth

Jersey Dean - as sleazy as they come

Bishop Willmott - the Dean's new mammy

Now, Archbishop Welby thinks Bishop Dakin is a wonderful fellow. He also sees no reason why he should not have confidence in the Dean, whom he has only met once, and whose behaviour he ducked commenting on in the interview. He also thinks Bishop Willmott is a wonderful fellow and hasn't he spent the most of the last while in Jersey, doing God only knows what. They're all very nice fellows really.

Welby, in my view, makes it quite clear that he puts the reputation of the institutional church above the wellbeing of its individual members. And he doesn't want to upset anybody. His job, according to himself, is to ensure that his officers all get along happily together. Now, while Jesus was supposed to have come to save the world he was not above knocking heads together and I'll wager that none of this lot would have survived his anger in the temple for long.

So, while all these cretins are busy playing at happy families and dispensing God's love to all and sundry, the young lady is living damaged and in mortal fear of the Church of England and the police who have been harrassing her in the meantime. She has repeatedly asked them to leave her alone and to stop making statements and threatening reports that would, by their publication or even the expectation of it, further ruin her physical health and mental wellbeing.

As I don't believe in Heaven, I'm not supposed to believe in Hell, but I'm working on it.

Proxy Bishop Bob

Bob Key, Church of England Dean of Jersey (CI)

I have just heard the Dean being interviewed on BBC Radio Jersey and a more sickening piece of effrontery you could not imagine. He was oozing complacency and triumphalism which must surely have made every one listening, bar his own claque in the Jersey civil and church power structure, throw up.

The background is briefly that a vulnerable young lady was abused by one of the Dean's Churchwardens and when she complained she was the one held up to odium and ridicule. Needless to say she did not react well to this and as a result, and with the connivance of the Dean, she was locked up in a cell for two weeks and then deported penniless from the island, in the night attire in which she had been arrested.

As far as the Dean was concerned, the matter had now been swept under the carpet and he and his buddies could continue "moving into the future".

Unfortunately for him the carpet was not up to the job and the whole matter resurfaced in recent times. The Dean's Bishop commissioned an inquiry, with which the Dean refused to cooperate, and which found his behaviour unacceptable. The Bishop promptly suspended the Dean but subsequently found he had not the power to do so (Jersey is a funny place) and had to withdraw the suspension. The Dean and his civil cohorts immediately trumpeted this as the Dean being "cleared", which it wasn't and the whole matter moved on, beyond the victim, who had been living homeless on the streets of the mainland, and into a fully blown civil and ecclesiastical constitutional crisis.

As relations between Jersey CofE and its parent diocese had totally broken down, the Archbishop of Canterbury (CofE's No.1 man) moved Jersey from the jurisdiction of Winchester to that of Canterbury itself, but effectively under Bishop Trevor Wilmott, a friend of the Dean, if we are to believe the story.

It was the signing of an agreement between Jersey, Winchester and Canterbury, the other day, which gave rise to the BBC interview referred to above.

In the interview the Dean claimed he had been "cleared" of any misbehaviour or whatever, and he gave out about the Korris report which criticised him, and which he had not been shown in advance of publication, though he had refused to cooperate in the drawing up of the report itself. He said he can't wait for publication of the Steel report, also commissioned by Winchester to look into the complaint, after all the work that went into it, including a gruelling 8 hour interview with himself. It should be pointed out here that Dame Heather Steel, the author of this report has strong Jersey establishment connections, offered herself to do the job, and did not interview either the young lady or the churchwarden. A former MET policeman and former Jersey parliament member, who was intermediating for the young lady and had a substantial meeting with Dame Heather, found her extremely prejudiced against the young lady. So it is no wonder the Dean, and his Jersey civil cohorts, can't wait for this report to hit the presses.

The man is a smoothie weirdo. Jesus would have a fit. I already have.

________________________________________

I have previously posted about the young lady and if you have a strong stomach you can read her blog where she is slowly finding a voice to pitch against the official trumpets.

You can listen to the Dean here.