Safeguarding the sanctuary of our Church

This past May I visited Durham Cathedral as a pilgrim. I had just finished walking St. Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose Abbey to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. Durham was the place where Cuthbert was finally laid to rest, and so I went. Awestruck by the glories of that magnificent Romanesque edifice, I wandered meditatively from the tomb of the saint to the tomb of the Venerable Bede. Until suddenly I was pilgrim no more. Instead, I was again the canon pastor of the Diocese of Toronto, thinking anew about the responsibilities with which I am charged.

For I had been stopped in my tracks, arrested by an ancient symbol of sanctuary. There in front of me, on the north outside door of the cathedral, was a large bronze ring with a lion’s head. Utterly captivated, I looked more closely and saw a man’s legs hanging out of the lion’s mouth, with a double-headed snake biting at his feet. In the museum where the original safely resides, I learned that the ring’s design was based on the medieval “Hellmouth” image, which was thought to keep evil at bay. Despite the ghoulish iconography of judgment and hellfire and its intended deterrent purpose – or coexisting with it – was the fact that this ring afforded a way to a safe haven: sanctuary inside the cathedral walls, even for those who had allegedly committed evil.

I was intrigued by this symbol because as the canon pastor of our diocese, my role is to safeguard the sanctuary of our Church. It is my job to protect the Church from behaviours and actions that undermine or threaten the health and safety of our communities and our people, and to facilitate healing when injury has occurred. On a nuts-and-bolts level, I have oversight of the matters that fall under our Sexual Misconduct Policy and the Harassment when a Cleric is Involved Policy, including the investigations of complaints made under those policies. While technical legal documents, these policies are 21^st century vehicles for keeping the Church safe as the place of sanctuary it is called to be. On that day in Durham, my understanding of sanctuary was illumined and augmented.

The Sanctuary Ring

The Sanctuary Ring was placed on the north door of the cathedral shortly after it was completed in 1133. It offered temporary refuge to those seeking asylum in the church, having been accused of a heinous crime such as murder, rape or theft. Calmly, or perhaps highly agitated – or everything in between – the asylum seeker would hang onto the ring, waiting for the monk stationed on watch in a small room above the door to ring the bell. If the bell rang, sanctuary had been granted. Once inside, the person was clothed with a black robe with a yellow St. Cuthbert’s cross stitched onto the left shoulder. Once inside, they enjoyed temporary reprieve for a period of 37 days.

The fugitives were housed in a small room below the southwest tower and given food and drink. Thus contained and protected for 37 days, they reflected. Their weighty task was to decide whether to go back into the world beyond the cathedral’s walls and face trial, or go into exile. If they chose exile, they had to confess their crime and swear to leave the country, never to return. The Royal Coroner, a legal official, would decide the port from which they would leave, and they were given a set amount of time to get there on foot. There they would board a ship, leaving hearth and home, family and friends, and all that they knew. A most bleak pilgrimage!

This medieval concept of sanctuary was in essence a time out, an interval for sober reflection. It was a process of coming to terms with one’s misdeeds and crimes, a time of penitence and remorse. Although there is no record of this, I can imagine that most of the fugitives made a sacramental confession as part of the process. Today, whether in the Church or civil society, we would call this a time of reflection leading, hopefully, to accountability, the making of amends, forgiveness and reconciliation. And perhaps making a new life for oneself, having been reborn in the waters of repentance.

In fact, this medieval concept of sanctuary is simply a particular form of what we Christians have always done Sunday by Sunday throughout the ages. We gather as people who have all fallen short of the glory of God. We come to the altar having been tested and challenged by the Word of God, confessing the wrong we have done, receiving absolution and restoration, and making peace with our neighbours. We do all of this in a safe, consecrated space in which we all belong and are equally beloved in God’s sight, a place that incarnates and proclaims the Reign of Christ. Or is called to – and does not.

A dark, dank room

Tragically, the truth is this: the Church has not always been a sanctuary for God’s people. Instead, at times, it has been a dark, dank room that has harboured evil and allowed it to fester, inflicting great trauma upon many. As I finished my pilgrimage at Durham Cathedral that May day, I was very mindful of the horrific scandal that had rocked the Church of England just six months before, when the Makin Report was released. It revealed a decades-long pattern of abuse inflicted on adolescent boys by John Smyth, a barrister and active lay member of the Church. A recitation of the Church’s sins is depressing and sobering. But it also provides a trumpet blast awakening us to our need to repent, to make amends and commit to doing all we can to live up to our high calling. In the Diocese of Toronto, we have been striving to do this for over three decades. Shortly after the abuses of the Canadian church in our Residential School systems came to light, our diocese struck a task force to draft its first-ever policy on sexual abuse. That policy came into effect in 1992 and has been evolving in its scope and procedures ever since. Then, as the deleterious effects of harassment also became better understood, the diocese added a policy governing harassment in our churches when a clergy person is involved.

As the canon pastor of our diocese, I am the monk stationed at the door available and waiting for the moment when people in distress reach for the sanctuary ring. Unlike medieval times when the person at the door was accused of a crime, the person at the door now is almost always the person claiming to be injured and needing our protection. This first contact begins a process of investigation overseen and directed by me to determine the truth of the allegations of sexual misconduct or harassment. I work with a team of trained investigators known as the Diocesan Response Team, a diverse group of clergy and lay people from across our diocese who have been carefully selected and trained in trauma-informed investigation work. The investigators follow the process set out in the policy that governs, a process that is designed to create a safe, boundaried space of containment and reflection to encourage accountability.

For the Church to be a true haven of sanctuary, everyone must be accountable for their behaviour. This was modelled for us in the Anglican Communion when Justin Welby, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, resigned last November for his and the Church’s failures in dealing with the Smyth allegations. Accountability means that everyone in our churches is held to the same high standards. Everyone includes all our clergy and all our lay people. Everyone includes the bishops and the canon pastor. Our policies provide for a separate, independent process in the event a bishop or the canon pastor is alleged to have committed sexual misconduct or to have harassed someone.

The sanctuary of the Church

The investigatory work of the canon pastor and the Diocesan Response Team culminates in a report that is sent to the diocesan bishop, so that he can decide the consequences, if there are to be any. This depends on many factors, first and foremost of which is whether the allegations were proven to be true. Whatever the consequences or discipline imposed on the person who did the wrong, the goal is not punitive. The goal is to safeguard the sanctuary of the Church. We strive for that by containing and stopping the behaviour, assessing it to determine culpability or innocence, encouraging accountability, and promoting forgiveness and reconciliation. We strive to educate people about their behaviour and to encourage the exercise of empathic understanding regarding its effects on others.

The paradox of the Church as a place of sanctuary is that we include and protect all the children of God, but do not welcome or permit all their behaviours or ways of relating. Within the sacred bounds of sanctuary, we enter into a process of sober reflection and examination (the investigation) not to cast a person out or exile them forever, but to encourage healing and to safeguard that fragile sanctuary which is threatened by wrongdoing. Grace is free. But it is not cheap. Neither is the sanctuary of Christ’s Church.