Newcastle Anglicans Morpeth College and sexual abuse: Professor Patrick Parkinson significantly adds to what we know about the scandals of the Newcastle Anglican Diocese in an ABC Religion and Ethics review of Ann Manne’s book Crimes of the Cross.
“I had a role to play on the margins of this story, in two respects,” Parkinson writes. “First, research with which I was involved uncovered some disturbing statistics about the number of perpetrators of abuse in Newcastle or other dioceses who had received their theological training at St. John’s College, Morpeth. Second, I was involved early on in the controversies surrounding the efforts of leaders in the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle to enforce professional standards by removing or disciplining priests who had engaged in various kinds of sexual misconduct.
“Professor Kim Oates, Amanda Jayakody, and I wrote a report for the Anglican Church in Australia on child sexual abuse in the church, which was published in 2009. Church personnel in most of the dioceses either completed a detailed questionnaire on known clergy perpetrators of sexual abuse against children and adolescents or made the files available for us to do so.
“In that survey, among the many questions we asked, was a question on what theological college the alleged perpetrators had attended. For about a third of perpetrators, no information on this was provided, but of those where we knew the theological college, 25 per cent of the alleged perpetrators had trained at St. John’s College, Morpeth. Morpeth is a small town in the Hunter region. That theological college, long since closed, trained a great many of the clergy in the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, as well as providing some clergy to other regional or rural dioceses.
“Although we had no firm figures on this, it seemed to us that the number of perpetrators trained at Morpeth was greatly out of proportion to the number of those who had studied at the theological colleges located in the major cities. We wondered, therefore, whether a paedophile ring had become established at Morpeth. We could not take the matter further on the data we had.
“The question was eventually examined by the Royal Commission. It was unable to reach a definite conclusion, but it did confirm that six former trainee Anglican priests at Morpeth had been convicted of child sex offences, while ten more had been identified as perpetrators. That was two more than we knew about. Four of these offenders were together in residence at Morpeth in 1963.”
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Change and decay: Obadiah is in a season of reflection. This week, the Australasian Religious Press Association (ARPA) held its 50th jubilee and final conference, an organisation that Obadiah has been involved with since he first judged some of their awards. At the same time, he was firmly ensconced in the Fairfax fortress on Sydney’s Broadway. Now, the fortress is stripped of journalists and printing presses. Just like mainstream newspapers, the church press has become a shadow of its former self.
That includes the paper Obadiah founded, Eternity, which did not live up to its name!
And it has been a week where discussion on new ways to communicate peaked, piquing Obadiah’s interest, with examples of AI-generated podcasts surfacing. The indefatigable Akos Balogh, blogger and thinker (not always the same thing Obadiah guesses), was responsible for tossing that pebble into the pond of Christian communicators.
It’s been a salutary reminder that some things are eternal and other things are not.
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Fonts of knowledge: Strangely enough, words are more solid than lead type*, or the physical screen you are reading this on. Rather than the tech we use to communicate them, Words continue. Theologian and Moore College principal Broughton Knox said this in his “The Everlasting God“.
“As Paul says, “What was written before time was written for our instruction”, and “All Scripture has been breathed out by God [i.e. spoken by God] that God’s man [i.e. person] might be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (i.e. the Bible is sufficient to guide us in all our relationships).
“In this connection, Jesus’ words to the Sadducees are most interesting. He asked them, “Have you never read what was spoken to you by God?”
“Notice it is the Scripture that Jesus said was spoken by God. Something we have in our hand, something permanent, and which we can read. But note especially that these words are spoken by God to the present-day reader. In Scripture, God speaks to us.
“He communicates with us. Of course, it is through the Holy Spirit who indwells us that we hear those words, just as it was through the Holy Spirit that the words were addressed to us in the first place, so many centuries ago.”
* Type metal is an alloy of lead, antimony and tin. Aren’t you glad Obadiah clarified that?
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Best headline: in the past, the “best headline award” would have been part of the ARPA awards. Obadiah never won it, but would like to suggest a winner for 2024. “Exmouth – 849 kms from Bunnings” made sure Obadiah read a story by Simon Roberts, senior minister of the Exmouth Anglican Community Church, about ministry in a town “Where it’s hot in summer, rarely maxing out below 37 degrees and regularly above 40.” It is part of a fascinating edition of “Moore Matters” about graduates of Moore College across Australia. It read really well in print – and will be fine to read online at https://moore.edu.au/resources/moore-matters-spring-2024/
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Fighting words: Another set of words that linger is referenced in suspended doctor Jereth Kok’s fundraising post. That’s an article by Kok that Obadiah published in Eternity.
As Kok says, “For those following news of my legal battle and praying about it: can I please ask you to pray for the lawyers at Human Rights Law Alliance and our barristers Stephen and Owen? They have two weeks left to complete their written legal arguments that will be submitted to the tribunal by October 11th. They need to respond to 34 pages of legal submissions from the prosecution (the medical board), defending against the allegations of misconduct.
“As you know, I am on trial for speaking my mind on matters of faith and conviction, on Facebook, in a 2015 Eternity News article, and in the comments section of a Christian blog over a decade ago.”
His fundraiser is here: https://www.givesendgo.com/GT59
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Part-time preachers: An alarming fact from a story in the Living Church about the Anglican mother church in the US – “Having a full-time paid priest serving one congregation used to be the norm in the Episcopal Church, but not anymore. Sixty-four per cent of Episcopal congregations don’t have a paid, full-time priest. That’s up from 40 per cent in 2015, according to the most recent Office of General Convention data from 2022.” Obadiah wonders if this fits any Australian church networks.
In the Moore Matters issue, we nominated for the best headline, Bishop Mark Calder of the Bathurst Diocese (region) discusses 11 churches without ministers but adds, “As much as possible though, I want people to be involved full-time. Some parishes say ‘Mark, we only need somebody part-time.’ I reply, ‘No, you need someone full-time. A part-time minister will keep things ticking over, But someone in full-time ministry will be able to make those extra connections, go those extra miles and immerse themselves in the life of the community. They will end up really making a difference.” Calder, bishop for five years of the region, has been re-stocking his 28 parishes and is more than halfway there!