I am very glad to see that
six very reputable historians have taken Archbishop Justin Welby to task for
his smearing of George Bell.
Please read their entire open letter to Welby, but skipping to their
conclusions...:
We state our position bluntly. There is no credible evidence at all that Bishop Bell was a paedophile…. We state this after reviewing all that is known about his character and behaviour over many years…. We note, and emphasize, that there was never so much as a whisper of such an allegation in his lifetime. It is the testing of accusations which shows the integrity of a society, not the making of them. [If you heard wild applause, that may have been me. – Ed.]
There is today no cloud at all over Bishop Bell.
Nobody employing credible critical method could think otherwise. Two of us are
biographers of former Archbishops of Canterbury and we all acknowledge the many
difficulties and pressures which any archbishop must face, not least in a
position which Archbishop Lang once called ‘incredible, indefensible and
inevitable’. None of us may be considered natural critics of an Archbishop of
Canterbury. But we must also draw a firm line. The statement of 15 December
2017 seems to us both irresponsible and dangerous. We therefore urge you, in
all sincerity, to repudiate what you have said before more damage is done and
thus to restore the esteem in which the high, historic office to which you have
been called has been held.
Kudos to these scholars for
this excellent statement.
As for Justin Welby, he has
become rather isolated in this matter.
His smears reflect more on him than on George Bell. And that is as it should be.
No comments:
Post a Comment