BBC News, 7
July 2013
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| The Synod will be asked to consider improving policies and practices on safeguarding children. |
The ruling
General Synod, meeting in York, will debate a report about abuse in the
Chichester Diocese.
Members
will be asked to back an earlier apology issued by the Archbishops of
Canterbury and York.
They will
also debate the government's welfare changes, which have already been
criticised by bishops.
The cases
of two priests - Roy Cotton and Colin Pritchard - who abused several children
during the 1970s and 1980s, prompted an inquiry into safeguarding procedures in
the diocese.
Its report
described a "profoundly unhelpful and negative culture" there,
producing an "appalling" and "dysfunctional" record in
handling allegations of abuse.
The
Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of York, John
Sentamu, later offered their own apology for "individual wickedness on the
part of abusers" and serious failures by the Church to protect children or
listen properly to victims.
They said
would be a source of grief and shame for years to come.
'Inescapable
truth'
The motion
before the Synod will ask members to endorse their apology.
It could
also agree plans to take further legislative and non-legislative steps to
improve policies and practices on safeguarding children.
The Synod
will be asked to lift the current one-year limit on making complaints of child
abuse, and give bishops the right to suspend clergy who are credibly accused of
abuse.
Meanwhile,
the debate on the government's welfare reform programme will decide whether to
back a call rejecting the "misleading characterisation" of welfare
recipients.
A briefing
document drawn up for the General Synod by Philip Fletcher, chairman of the
Church's Mission and Public Affairs Council, has accused government spokesmen
of making "political capital" by presenting unemployment as a
"strivers" versus "scroungers" debate.
Archbishop
Welby and Dr Sentamu were among the 43 bishops to write to the Daily Telegraph
earlier this year criticising the Government over benefit cuts.
On
Saturday, the MP who acts as the Church of England's link in the House of
Commons told the Synod it has been divided into a "gathering of
tribes" as a result of disputes over the role of women.
Sir Tony
Baldry, Second Church Estates Commissioner was speaking after General Synod
members spent the day in private talks in an attempt to solve the impasse over
introducing women bishops.
A debate
and vote on endorsing draft legislation on women bishops is to take place on
Monday.
Sir Tony
told the meeting: "There is, I believe, an inescapable truth that the
Church of England probably has no more than 20 years to reassert its position
as the national Church of England," he said.
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