HYDRA

Saturday, October 29th, 2011 | Uncategorized

The Bede Parry story, and Katharine Jefferts Schori’s role in it, refuses to go away.  Information has surfaced which suggests that while she was still the Episcopal Bishop of Nevada, the Presiding Bishop knew exactly who Bede Parry was and what he had done but took him on as a priest anyway.

A man named Bruce Marker, one of Parry’s victims, started a web site called Conception Abbey Abuse to try to keep the issue of Parry’s abuses and the totally inadequate response to them, before the public.  Last July, Marker posted notes of conversations about Parry that he’d had with Conception Abbot Gregory Polan both by himself and in the presence of others.  If true, these conversations are damning:

During our first telephone conversation, on Monday, April 25, 2011, you shared the following information:

1) You heard something about Bede’s 1981 misconduct at St. John’s “at the time of the incident”.

2) You were aware of an incident involving Bede Parry with a member of the abbey’s choir in the summer of 1987.

3) Bede Parry was sent to New Mexico soon after the 1987 incident.

4) When Bede Parry tried to enter another monastery, he took psychological tests that showed a “proclivity toward sexual misconduct with minors.”

5) You called Parry’s boss at an ambulance company and a woman bishop with the Episcopal Church with the information.

6) You identified the woman bishop as Katharine Jefferts Schori.

7) You told Katharine Jefferts Schori not only about the allegations [plural] against Bede, but also of Bede’s attempt to join another monastery, the psychological testing and his “proclivity”.

8 ) That Katharine Jefferts Schori, despite your revelations, “allowed him to continue to work.”

During an April 28, 2011, telephone conversation you shared or confirmed (with Fr. Patrick Caveglia and Fr.Daniel Petsche in your office and all on speakerphone) the following information:

1) You agreed that Katherine Jefferts Schori had known about Bede’s “propensity to reoffend” for nine years.

In our last conversation, you said that you had to trust your conscience. I find it hard to believe that your conscience is telling you to stonewall.

I also request that you end all speculation regarding your conversations with Katharine Jefferts Schori and Dan Edwards[the current Episcopal Bishop of Nevada]. They ignored your warnings and are rewriting history to serve their own agendas. Please do not fall victim to that trap.

You may recall that Edwards issued what was essentially a Sergeant Schultz “We know nuthink.  NUTHthink!” statement last July.  And you may also recall that while still Bishop of Nevada, Katharine Jefferts Schori agreed to take Parry on as a priest in 2004.

But if Marker is accurate, Schori knew everything important that there was to know about Bede Parry in 2002 but took him on anyway.  And Dan Edwards lied through his teeth.  So the Anglican Curmudgeon would like some answers.

Bishop Jefferts Schori, it is time for you to come out of your cocoon of silence on this topic, as well. The entire Episcopal Church (USA) deserves the truth as to why you regarded a Catholic priest with such a prior record — known to you after being “warned” by his Abbot — as morally fit for reception as a priest into your own Diocese.

Particularly, your Church deserves to know how you reconciled the version of the facts which Father Parry admits he gave you, which was incomplete and admitted only one prior offense in 1987, with the version you heard from his Abbot — and then decided to receive him despite his lies to you.

More particularly, we need to have your own word on the record as to whether or not you received and read the psychological report on Father Parry which Abbot Polan had in his possession and which ended, as Abbot Polan apparently admitted he told you, with a conclusion to the effect that Bede Parry had a propensity to offend again. (This is the same report which the lawsuit filed by one of Fr. Parry’s adolescent victims alleges was sent to you for your information, even though Bishop Edwards of Nevada now denies that it is in the files he has on Fr. Parry.)

More particularly still, given that Bishop Edwards claims that you gave instructions, following his reception, that Fr. Parry be kept from all contact with minors, we need to hear from you as to why his employers at All Saints Las Vegas stated in 2011 that they had never been aware of any such instructions.

Finally — and not least of all, but far more serious — one would like to know just what evidence you had before you in 2004 of Fr. Parry’s moral and godly character (to quote Canon III.11 as then in effect [and continued unchanged today as Canon III.10.3 (a) (3)]), which was substantial enough and sufficient, in your view, to override all the testimony you then had to the contrary, so that he qualified for reception into your Diocese as one of your priests.

Failing your open, full and honest response on all these weighty matters, one waits to see whether you will self-report your offenses against the Canons in this case to your own Intake Officer, Bishop Matthews, for investigation by the same Disciplinary Board for Bishops whose report you are awaiting in the case against Bishop Lawrence of South Carolina. And the longer the period during which you refuse to speak openly to this matter, then perhaps the more might you subject yourself, mutatis mutandis, to charges that you have likewise “abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church.”

Will Mrs. Schori turn herself in?  Doubtful.  Will one of the bishops bring charges?  Although the possibility can’t be ruled out, I don’t see it happening.  Can any Episcopal clergy do it?  Apparently.   Will they?  Only if they’re particularly interested in committing Episcopal Organization career suicide.

I still doubt that anything will ever of this.  Even if, mirabile dictu, charges are brought, I think we all know what the results of any investigation will be. 

One hopes that Mrs. Schori is supoenaed to testify in any lawsuit against the Abbey.  Hopefully, the truth about what Mrs. Schori knew about Bede Parry and when she knew it will come out even if the Episcopal Organization decides once again to ignore both the truth and its own canons in order to save its Presiding Bishop’s skin.

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