Martin Sewell Surviving Church Resigning from General Synod
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love The Church of England’s absurd position on sex and marriage
Martyn Percy Meander Barnaclization in the Church of England
Helen King ViaMedia.News In the Beginning: Sex, AIDS, Judgment and the Church of England, 1986-1991
Martyn Percy: Let me give an example. I recently met a retired Church of England priest, who is over the age of 80. Still helping his local churches, he told me that to hold a licence (PTO) he must apply for and complete a process annually, and also pass the mandatory safeguarding training. It takes many hours, and is a lot of work for him. So he was thinking that he might just “retire to the pews”, and sit with the laity. However, he’s been told as a clergyman that he must still hold a licence just to sit in… Read more »
That sounds like a bonkers diocesan staff member, not even a bonkers diocese, or possibly even a conversation that was misunderstood.
I can’t imagine anyone could think you could insist on retired clergy holding PTO in order to attend church. Is it possible they meant “if you’re going to attend wearing a dog collar”, or some other indication of being ‘active’ clergy? But even that seems a stretch.
I am fully retired without pto and sit in the pews of the church I attend with the full knowledge of the incumbent. This is in the Diocese of London. I don’t suppose the Diocese has been advised of my situation, I have had no formal contact with it since my retirement, or informal contact with archdeacons or bishops.
Assuming others are in the same situation as I am, that ‘bonkers diocese’ needs outing!
It may be an accurate report, but I found myself distracted by another aspect of the blog that made me wonder about accuracy. The linked videos of barnacles being removed appear to be AI generated. I am not sure why, but there seems to have a lot of AI content at the moment that shows humans ‘saving’ marine animals by taking off layers of barnacles (or other ‘stuff’) to background music that indicates it’s meant to be cute and heart warming. It is quite bizarre. Back to real life, barnacles don’t kill whales. They attach to the whale for the… Read more »
Absolutely, Liz. The metaphor works in relation to ocean going ships, I believe, where the presence of barnacles affects whatever the maritime equivalent of aerodynamic efficiency is, and so they are seen as undesirably hampering efficiency. But not for living creatures…
I had exactly the same reaction! Because I look at a lot of online content about sailing I seem to come in for loads of utterly bonkers AI footage about people cleaning off whales. Generally the “comments” demonstrate that only the utterly bonkers viewers are fooled. It was silly of Martyn Percy to fall for that and certainly detracts from the impact of his article.
Barnacles are also a nuisance in offshore oil and gas installations.
“He’s been told…” by whom? An over-scrupulous incumbent? A misinformed Area Dean? A foolish safeguarding advisor? Or has he misunderstood? I say this I have three clergy in my congregations over 80 who have chosen not to renew PTO and no-one can force them otherwise. I cannot imagine any person with oversight telling them to retain PTO in order to go to church. The story seems either fanciful or unprecedented. It feels like a one-off.
The simple answer, surely, is to move to a church (if needs be non Anglican) where he isn’t known as a retired clergyman.
Simple for a man his 80’s to leave the community he knows? Is he still driving? Is there even likely to be another church of his tradition nearby? Non Anglican is an option for this elderly CofE priest – really? But the point is he doesn’t have to move anywhere – this is all total nonsense.
The idea of any non-criminal parishioners being excluded from a Church service is plainly illegal (see Church publications under ‘right to exclude from services’) and obviously impractical. This story deserves to be taken either non-literally or non-seriously
That is bonkers. I know that some clergy who no longer hold PTO have been told that they may not wear a clerical collar when attending church for fear that they may be perceived as being in some way available for pastoral conversations. Clearly, our dear leaders have failed to notice that many clergy no longer wear collars anyway.
I only very rarely wear a dogcollar these days – mostly just to remind people who need it that I am still a clerk in holy orders. Never locally. But people approach me for pastoral conversations from time to time, and these usually take place not on church premises. I never solicit such converwsations, nor advertise the fact that I might a person to approach for them. But if people ask to talk to me confidentially, I am happy to have those conversations as one Christian with another. They are no concern of the diocese.
if I were a priest “told not to” wear a clerical collar I’d simply pay no attention. Who do these people think they are?
Whichever Diocesan Officer has told this priest this could well get the Diocese into hot water legally, should the priest be minded to challenge the instruction. If the priest lives in the parish, they have as much right to attend their local parish church as any other parishioner. Provided there is nothing in their history that would make a safeguarding risk assessment a necessity, and they do not behave in such a way as to cause disruption to worship, there is nothing that can be done to prevent them attending as a congregant. Of course, that is not to say… Read more »
If he is not wearing a collar or describing himself as a priest I don’t understand why he was told he needed a PtO. I do understand though that he might find it hard to consider himself a lay person.
I doubt this ever happened. But it’s the sort of thing Martyn Percy would be eager to believe. He has good reason to be sceptical of ‘safeguarding’ measures.
Those writing safeguarding guidelines are unregulated, unaccountable, and unlicensed. They may interpret and implement laws and guidelines as they see fit, and can CDM any clergy for non-compliance. The CofE – Synod and Bishops – consistently vote to remain a law unto themselves, so there is no appeal outside such fiats. So whilst this might seem ‘bonkers’, it is entirely predictable. Anyone with any kind of normal, regular or specific duty in a church, lay or ordained, will be regarded as having some kind of ministry, and will be covered by a rubric that states (for example) “[people] who seek… Read more »
My difficulty with Percy’s use of this story of the clearly very vulnerable priest in the last years of active ministry is that, unless there are particular circumstances behind this story we are not told about, all the details as told here are wrong. At the very least there is a great deal of confusion. Permission to Officiate is not a licence. It is renewed every three years (and the form is not a long one). Likewise safeguarding is renewed every threeyears. As to the idea that a retired priest cannot worship in a church without a license (PTO that is), this is… Read more »
The CofE spends about £50 million on safeguarding. There are hundreds of DSAs and safeguarding officers across 40+ dioceses. And yet…”at the very least there is a great deal of confusion…” amply sums up safeguarding in the CofE. Consider the following facts: 1. The previous head of the NST stated that a bereavement visit needed to be pre-vetted by a DSA (as the bereaved is a vulnerable person), and a risk assessment should be conducted (2020). 2. The current NST Director thought that Christmas lunch at a vicarage for those who might otherwise be alone or vulnerable might need a risk assessment,… Read more »
My own experience is quite different. I have just had my fourth, three yearly, safeguarding check and training update. Two were while I held a license, two with a PTO. They took place in three different dioceses. In all three the training was exemplary. Communication was clear. Venues thoughtfully spread to assist travel in large dioceses. The on-line modules and live presentations were clear and each time contained fresh perspectives. One team helped me to develop a module aimed at the needs of those involved in spiritual direction. Though all the teams worked under great pressure I cannot fault their… Read more »
I have had a similar experience of the once-every-three-year safeguarding check and training. To maintain a PTO.
I have to do these safeguarding exercises in a number of different professional settings.
I wonder if paying a lot of attention to the training process isn’t where the real problem lies. Much depends upon the culture in question and it is obvious that the CofE has challenges specific to it.
Great that you have had positive experiences, David. There are of course wise, sane, diligent DSAs at large in the CofE. But Martyn puts his finger on a real and troubling issue – the subsumsion into ‘Safeguarding’ of more and more – ultimately all? – of the life of the church. Life which then needs to be organized, protected, guidlined, recorded and processed. It can’t be done. And leads to at least two pathologies which cripple the life of the church. Either the exhausting attempt to out-bureaucratize any and every conceivable threat. Or the lurking guilt that there must be… Read more »
To be clear, there are some good experiences of safeguarding process. Equally, there are some dreadful ones which are actually very abusive. But as the entire safeguarding system is completely unregulated, unaccountable and unlicensed, and those on the end of the processes have no right to appeal, and there is no independent professional auditor to go to, it cannot be trusted. After the Fr Alan Griffin case, what has changed? Nothing. No lessons that might have been learned were ever implemented. The CofE just continues to mark its own homework. Clergy entering safeguarding processes are at the mercy of administrators… Read more »
I wouldn’t be too doubtful. I can think of two Safeguarding Officers in the fairly recent past who would be capable of such nonsense. Thankfully common sense has prevailed.
Actually, there IS an interesting restriction in that a retired priest who has not resigned orders cannot be on the electoral roll (i.e. is not a lay person) and is therefore excluded from voting at the APCM (and may only attend with the goodwill of the chair) or any other element of church governance.
I find it saves me from the temptation to be a back-pew driver (though I always sit at the front!)
A priest who holds a PTO may be co-opted onto Deanery Synod under provisions in the Church Representation Rules. Once on Deanery Synod they are also entitled to vote in Diocesan and General Synod elections.
Also, a priest holding a PTO can also stand for election to General Synod, even if they are not co-opted to Deanery Synod. There is scope for clergy with PTO, some long into retirement, to participate in church governance. I know at least three priests on General Synod who are retired with a PTO.
I should have made my point more clearly: the restrictions apply to those (like myself) who do NOT hold PTO in retirement.
I’m afraid they don’t in regard to attending an APCM. Under Model Rule M1(2)(b) of the Church Rep Rules 2025, any Clerk in Holy Orders who is resident in a parish and not licensed to a benefice may attend the annual meeting of that parish.
Why a retired priest who does not have to attend such things would want to….now that one escapes me!
Small point, but I am not resident in the parish concerned.
Realist, your last sentence…. Oops….tut-tut….. yonks ago when I was a Treasurer, I ensured that there was “riveting stuff” in my written report and welcomed questions after delivering ( hopefully a little entertaining….) a verbal summary at the APCM.
I think there may be a misunderstanding here. When there was the fuss forbidding Desmond Tutu’s daughter, a lesbian priest in a committed, amrried,relationship, from taking part in her godfather’s funeral, in any way the York Provincial Registrar (who for some reason was involved in the matter) made it very clear that a priest was a priest was a priest… She was forbidden to officiate because of her marital status but the registrar also made it very clear that for any priest to take part in a public service in any way (including leading intercessions, or reading) they must have… Read more »
Did the Registrar really make it very clear? I don’t think so. He said it very clearly but that’s not the same thing.
No matter how clearly a man says his cat is a dog, that does not make it clear that it is one
No, this is just wrong information. Sounds like a misunderstanding of a GS amendment to Canon Law we made a few years back which said that clergy under ecclesiastical discipline could not robe and sit in the choir etc.. Posters below ggive ample evidence that retired clergy do not have to have pto etc to attend church.
Exactly Charles. It was all part of the measure, canon etc brought forward after the Chichester report that we were discussing a decade ago (I forget, without checking, which side of the 2015 election).
Few DSAs will have a clue as to what GS says, or pay any attention to it at all. As I say, the DSAs are unregulated, unaccountable, unlicensed and all-powerful. This blog is especially striking for those very reasons: https://survivingchurch.org/2025/07/25/who-is-my-neighbour/
I read Dr Percy’s piece with interest, as it seems evident that the Church is sinking under the weight of its own administrative accretions and pretensions. A bureaucracy of rococo complexity might – just – have been tolerable when the Church had regular attendance north of a million, but not now. Moreover, administration has increased in inverse proportion to the remorseless decline in attendance – the two tendencies often function in symbiosis. Here, I am reminded of the following famous passage of C. Northcote Parkinson: “The strength of the Navy in 1914 could be shown as 146,000 officers and men,… Read more »
My CV reads like a litany of disappearing government departments and agencies; every one that I worked for eventually being closed and sold to private companies under the various regimes from 1978 onwards. They all had certain things in common, which Dr Percy’s article highlights. Top heavy bureaucracy, rigid, inflexible thinking and structures and, all too often, a complacent belief that theirs was the only way of doing things, were doomed. And, they believed they were indispensable The old Property Services Agency brass really believed that, until they had to tender for their work in competition with private contractors –… Read more »
If only our dear entitled leaders would listen to the lay people they now keep telling we local clergy are so essential to running churches (and to which many of us who have served local churches cry ‘no #£&* Sherlock’ [provide your own expletive of choice!!], we’ve known that for decades). Yours is a valuable salutary tale if ever I heard one! Thank you for sharing it.
The church leadership has enough evidence and resources to implement an effective church planting strategy, but many Bishops chose not to do so instead forcing the church towards schism. What we are experiencing looks and feels like the start of revival, but depending on its choices over the next 12 months or so these resources could be wasted and schism would only accelerate the decline of the CofE, which you have so clearly identified time and time again. So what will the Cof E chose, schism and decline or growth and renewal?
Re Helen King’s piece. As I asked before. If Issues wasn’t meant to be in the discernment process who authorized it? Anyone know? It came near the end of my time as a DDO. The retired priest in my parish who has worked at ACCM as it was did some investigation but drew a blank.
Someone in the comments on her article talks of the Osborne Report. What about the earlier Gloucester Report?
I’ve always wondered that, too. Like you, my time as a DDO straddled its introduction. I recall a missive coming from Central Casting (as I used to refer to the Ministry department in Westminster) telling us we had to start asking candidates if they were willing to live by the requirements of the Guidelines. But I don’t recall from where the authority for that change was drawn.
See GS2413A, the supporting paper for the PMM: “9. In July 2022 Revd Mae Christie asked the Chair of the Ministry Council “When and by what mechanism was “Issues in Human Sexuality” formally written into the Selection Criterion of the Church of England?” (Question 62). The response from the Bishop of Chester was “We do not have a record of the date or the mechanism by which Issues in Human Sexuality was formally written into the former Selection Criteria. Unfortunately, since the information is not readily available it could not be obtained within the time-frame available for responding to Synod… Read more »
“Quelle eglise” as dear old Cheslyn Jones used to say.
one of his less graphic sayings!
I never met Cheslyn Jones, but I was given a copy of The Study of Liturgy in the late 70s and it piqued an interest in church history, ecclesiology and liturgy that has stayed with me and even played a part in leading to ordination. As joint editor, it was said by one reviewer that ‘his puckish humour shone throughout’ the book.
Why is ‘puckish humour’ so characeristic of writers on liturgy? It is really rather tedious. I much prefer the humourless pedantry of ECRLamburn.
Reading Dr Percy’s interesting article, I wonder if the end product for Anglicans both lay and ordained who are at end of their tether will see the exodus of many either to the Roman Catholic Church or to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which may seem havens of sanity after what they have been experiencing with the Church of England, with a Leadership and Safeguarding systems out of control, especially if they are seeking in their Christian Journeys to recover a real sense of Spirituality. Jonathan
Regrettably Martyn Percy has allowed his deep distrust of CofE hierarchy to lead him to take an obviously garbled tale about supposed authoritarian CofE safeguarding requirements & make it a major part of his article bashing them. Even a simple on-line search would show that it has more holes in it than a colander. That is his failure, but to move from that to suggest that the RCs or Eastern Orthodox Churches in UK will have a far easier & thus more attractive safeguarding regime is an equally preposterous leap of credulity. The RCs have had their full share of… Read more »
Jonathon, A number of senior Clerics in Australia identified by our Royal Commission as persons of interest and subsequently deposed from Holy Orders have been known to appear in Orthodox Churches or in safe havens supported by the the SSC or offshoots of High Church anti female ordination. The Orthodox Churches have failed safeguarding systems, the SSC and Walsingham offshoots were hot zones and the Catholic Church system is currently even more dangerous for survivors and families statistically both quantified statistically as well as from vast amounts of qualitative evidence. Commissions of enquiry in the USA Canada NZ Australia the… Read more »
A clerk in Holy Orders is entitled to wear clerical dress on any occasion; some might say ought to do so on most occasions. One’s status as a clerk in Holy Orders is not contingent upon having either a licence or PtO. I would beard the overreaching diocesan official whilst wearing a clerical collar and by implication invite them to do their worst. If your record is as clean as a whistle it would be a very foolish officer indeed who pursued a CDM.
It would be far safer to separate safeguarding and orders. That could be done by posting a notice at the church door listing the parish clergy and which have PTO and those whose safeguarding is up to date. Far more explicit- and far safer for all concerned. Indeed, there ought to be a notice up with photos anyway, maybe short bios, so this is a very natural extension. The notice could then also list other retired clergy and highlight that they don’t have PTO and are retired from active ministry. That way your retired cleric could wear a clerical collar… Read more »
Your idea seems premised on a view that members of the public (including the congregation) regard having PTO or up to date Safeguarding training as in some way correlated to risk. I doubt that is a common perception and I don’t believe it is true.
It seems highly indicative that a lot of comment inches have been used debating the credibility of some of Martyn Percy’s safeguarding assertions and examples, but none as far as I can see have engaged with Martin Sewell’s reasons for his resignation from GS. Maybe, just maybe, this is something to reflect carefully upon in the wider context of an ongoing approach to safeguarding and survivors of abuse? I don’t know Martin but I have a huge respect for him and a debt of gratitude for the way in which he has worked to ensure that survivors of church based… Read more »
Dear Anglican in Exile, Thank you for your excellent comment ! I’ve been struggling how to express the same thing politely… I wonder how it must feel to other victims and survivors that so much interest and or sympathy is flowing towards our anonymous octogenarian priest who is being unable to shuffle off the ill fitting yoke of diocesan safeguarding being forced upon him by a heartless bureaucracy in the name of protecting the vulnerable ? Like you, I have huge respect for Martin Sewell and the Synod is now much the poorer for the loss of Clive Billenness(RIP) Gavin… Read more »
Some of Martyn Percy’s comments, though specific to the C of E, resonate with issues we are having in the Canadian church presently. (1) From The Living Church: Bishop Organ Case Reveals Canadian Church Weakness. (2) From Anglican Journal: Defiant Newfoundland Bishop Ignores Metropolitan’s Recommendations After Misconduct Investigation. Imo The Living Church article is the better of the two because it looks at systemic issues around the confused situation in Canadian dioceses with regard to Canon law and various supplementary diocesan ‘safeguarding’ policies.
https://livingchurch.org/news/news-anglican-communion/bishop-organ-case-reveals-canadian-churchs-weaknesses/
https://anglicanjournal.com/defiant-newfoundland-bishop-ignores-metropolitans-recommendations-after-misconduct-investigation/
I wonder how many here are aware that the Church of England is in the middle of five year audit process in which every diocese and cathedral is being comprehensively reviewed by an INEQE – an independent safeguarding audit organisation. Nearly twenty dioceses have now been reviewed and their reports are all available online. You can find out more and read the reports here – https://ineqe.com/churchofengland/. I know from Exeter diocese just how professional and thorough this process is. In its most recent annual report their lead auditor wrote, ‘Like many external observers, I was initially deeply cynical about the Church’s capacity… Read more »
David , I know you have serious concerns that it is not possible to raise better news on TA ….
But I still am left with two questions-
1) How independent is a safeguarding service that is open to being bought in by an organisation to carry out audits?
2) What are the views of the ‘some victims and survivors’ as they are the people who are the most important?
And yes, I think Safeguarding should not be managed by blended Diocesan safeguarding teams advised by theNST but should be fully independent so I would say that wouldn’t I ?