Sowing the wind

The three of us have just taken off our lifejackets after a wonderful few hours on the Weber River.

Fabulous guide, great stories (can you believe a tourist really asked "at what altitude does a deer become an elk?") and the sight of my son floating alongside the raft have produced a mood of blissful relaxation. Looking at the canyons above, I am amazed by the natural forces that created beauty that inspires such awe in humans.

Walking over to the Explorer my friend has rented, I decide to check my email. And my jaw drops as I scan the diocesan email telling congregants and clergy that the ecclesiastical appeals court has reversed the judgement of a lower one against Bishop Charles Bennison.

Not because the case against him was incorrect -- he did indeed act, they argue, in a way unbecoming a member of the clergy by covering up the sexual abuse of his brother.

But because, dear friends, the statute of limitations ran out.

The Bishop says the case ought not to have been brought. I say, it should have been brought decades ago.

But this issue is much bigger than our Bishop, previously and now my boss.

It is a judgment on a church whose leaders, like so many Roman Catholic bishops, ignored the abuse going on right under their behatted skulls. What did Bishop Borsch know? What of other bishops now gone? Why did they protect the brothers, Charles and John -- because the Bennison's father was a colleague?

The bitter fruits of that bigger cover-up are evident now. A bishop tainted by a court judgment, but free on what is basically a technicality. A Standing Committee that did all they could to unseat him, using whatever weapon lay nearby. A Presiding Bishop and ecclesiastical court that now look weak and perhaps even inept.

What would have happened if twenty years ago the men who ran the church would have put justice above self-interest? What of the men and women ruling it now? Where are the models for charity, or humility, or integrity?

Sow the wind...and reap...a judgment.

I hop into the car. You aren't going to believe this, I tell my friend, also an Episcopalian. And she doesn't.