Anglican Watch predictions for 2025

It’s that time of year that we all love to hate: New Year’s Day, when everyone and their twin brother speculates about the coming year. So, Anglican Watch will add to the collective misery with our predictions for 2025 and the Episcopal Church/Anglican Communion, with our usual emphasis on clergy discipline.

• Business as usual won’t work for the Church of England. Yes, Cottrell and other members of the Pointy Hats Club are telling us, “Move along, move along. Nothing to see here,” but the days when that works are over.
• TEC finally understands what a fustercluck Title IV is. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and others say fixing Title IV is a priority, but they don’t know how big a mess it really is. Look for things like the Losch case, in which everyone from Todd Ousley to Glenda Curry has ignored child rape, to blow up in their faces, resulting in (some) increased understanding of the hot mess that is clergy discipline in the denomination.
• Bad bishops fade away. Members of the Episcopal Church are tired of our money going to shore up adulterers like Whayne Hougland. Folks like this will increasingly find it hard to get jobs, even amidst a clergy shortage.
• Title IV: It’s not just for sex anymore. Episcopalians are over the notion that Title IV only applies when sex and money, and sometimes children, are involved. If it would get you fired from a for-profit job, it will increasingly get you fired as a priest.
• Options besides Title IV. Only in the Episcopal Church can you be accused of sexually harassing an adult woman, yet more than a year later, the Title IV complaint is still sitting in an inbox (Dallas bishop George Sumner). Dioceses increasingly will look at ways to address the problem first, and deal with the clergy disciplinary issue second.
• It’s about time. Judicatories will increasingly focus on faster processing of Title IV complaints. The current two years or more to address even simple cases does not help anyone.
• More suspensions. Bishops diocesan increasingly will suspend clergy facing credible accusations of abuse, in line with policies in the Roman Church. As things stand, respondent clergy in a Title IV case who are allowed to continue in office use the time to drum up support from their sycophants and trash complainants, thus causing lasting harm to the church.
• Increased truthtelling. Dioceses and the national church will quit playing games with “confidentiality” and claims that disclosure of misconduct might be traumatic. If we cannot traffic in the truth, we have no business calling ourselves a church.
• Title IV becomes mandatory. Right now, the Episcopal Church ignores the canons whenever it wants to, including Title IV. People in the pew are tired of these games, including the ever-popular line among bishops, “I don’t want to get involved.” Clergy discipline is part of their job; bishops need to do their jobs.
• More mergers. Right now, there are far too many dioceses in the denomination. Look for increased pressure in 2025 for knucklehead bishops like Santosh Marray to get out now and make way for mergers and other efforts at consolidation.
• Alignment of ethics with clergy discipline. Right now, there’s very little notion of Title IV as aligning with any sense of integrity or ethical conduct. Instead, Title IV is seen as just another heap of paperwork that need to be completed. Look for judicatories to start — emphasis on the word “start” — viewing Title IV as aligning with some notion of personal and professional integrity.
• Increased pressure to hold laity accountable. Right now, members of the laity can teach others how to torture Muslims, file false and frivolous legal pleadings on behalf of the church, and sexually harass women. Yet, the only thing that happens to these miscreants is they get elected to the local vestry or some other role intended to boost church cash flow. Enough already.

But amidst all these changes, don’t get too excited about the future. The Episcopal Church remains staunchly opposed to meaningful change versus rearranging the deck chairs as water fills the hull.

And church members still don’t understand that the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.

So we’ll still see a toxic crock of goo in the church in which rampant clericalism mixes with a knee-jerk rejection of criticism as being, in the words of one particularly clueless member of the Diocese of Easton, “despicable.” Or church members leaving Mass at 12:15 PM and flipping off nearby former members at 12:19. (Yes, that would be Grace Episcopal Alexandria.)

That said, as churches continue to empty at an unsustainable rate, expect to see a small measure of rationality creep into the Episcopal Church’s group thinking. Perhaps even — horror of horrors — some notion of a loyal opposition.

But don’t get too optimistic. We are talking, after all, about the Episcopal Church.

Happy New Year!