By Benjamin Crosby
August 9, 2025 News Analysis
IN RECENT YEARS, the Anglican Church of Canada has been wrestling with a series of scandals related to clergy misconduct.
In 2021, identifying information about survivors who had intended to come forward confidentially was shared with the institutions where the alleged abuse occurred by a prominent ACC leader, prompting the formation of the survivors’ group ACCtoo. In 2022, the Most Rev. Mark MacDonald, the ACC’s first National Indigenous Archbishop, resigned following allegations of sexual misconduct. Earlier this year, an episcopal election in the Diocese of Montreal (where I am licensed to serve) was overshadowed by concerns about misconduct allegations involving multiple members of the episcopal slate.
In the last months, yet another crisis related to clergy misconduct has gripped the Diocese of Western Newfoundland. In January 2025, the bishop of the diocese, the Rt. Rev. John Organ, removed the cathedral dean, the Very Rev. Catherine Short, from her position. In response, members of the congregation held public protests and Short filed a complaint under the Safe Church Charter of the ecclesiastical province to which the diocese belongs, the Province of Canada.
The metropolitan of the province, the Most Rev. David Edwards, commissioned an investigation. He then issued a determination in which he found the dean’s complaints to be largely justified and called on the bishop to take action to rectify matters. Bishop Organ, however, has refused to comply with the archbishop’s recommendations, alleging an unfair and canonically inappropriate investigation and complaining that the issues with the dean that led to her removal in the first place have been overlooked.
In a recent interview, the newly elected primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Most Rev. Shane Parker, has said that the formal church process has “run its course” and that he has no jurisdiction over the matter, although he is offering personal pastoral assistance to the parties involved.
So what happened here, and what can we learn from it?
The Anglican Church of Canada has two different, partially overlapping systems for dealing with clergy misconduct like the alleged misconduct committed by Bishop Organ. The first is the use of disciplinary canons.
The canons for church discipline in the Anglican Church of Canada are similar to those which the Episcopal Church had prior to its 1994 Title IV reform: they generally locate authority for investigating and deciding on the validity of accusations and imposing consequences in the diocesan bishop, use procedures and lists of offenses that do not reflect how the contemporary church thinks about abuse, and have a particularly high bar for bringing accusations against bishops.
In this case, to bring a formal charge under the disciplinary canon against the bishop, the dean would have needed to use the policy set out in Canon 5 of the ecclesiastical Province of Canada. To even begin the formal canonical process, an allegation of offense would need to be filed by either three bishops of the province or three priests and three lay delegates of the diocesan synod – an extremely high bar! It is perhaps small surprise that the dean did not choose this route.
One possible response to the challenges of a canonical disciplinary system like that of the Anglican Church of Canada – whose very high bar for prosecuting bishops is only one example – would be to reform the canons. This was the path taken in the Episcopal Church from 1994 on, but not in the Anglican Church of Canada.
Instead, individual dioceses and provinces have adopted various supplemental policies for dealing with misconduct outside of the use of the disciplinary canon while leaving the old disciplinary canons in place. It is under this second system of supplementary policies that the dean sought redress for what she argued was unjust treatment by her bishop.
The first place to look for handling misconduct under this second system is the diocesan misconduct policy of a given diocese. But the dean could not have filed a complaint under the diocesan misconduct policy in Western Newfoundland against her bishop. This is not because the diocesan misconduct policy requires allegations against bishops be handled at the provincial level. Rather, it is because the diocese simply does not have a functional or robust misconduct policy at all. As Archbishop Edwards put it in his ruling on the dean’s complaint, the diocese’s safe church charter “consists of worthy generalizations and thoughtful discussions but is deficient on the nuts and bolts of investigation. It cannot be applied practically without some future amending.”
And so, when the archbishop received the complaint, he chose to adjudicate it under the provincial misconduct policy. But there was also a problem here. A body appointed by the provincial council called the provincial misconduct committee is supposed to investigate allegations. Unfortunately, as Edwards noted in his determination, there just was no provincial misconduct committee. It did not exist.
Thus, the archbishop chose to delegate the investigation to an individual (the provincial misconduct complaints officer); the archbishop made his determinations on the basis of this person’s investigatory report. While Edwards clearly felt that the severity of the situation meant that an investigation could not wait until the committee was appointed, his authority to deviate from the policy is not clear to me. What is beyond controversy is that, while the province had a more fleshed-out misconduct policy than the diocese, it was still unable to actually use it as written.
Ultimately, on the basis of this investigation, the archbishop decided that three of the dean’s four complaints against the bishop were substantiated and (in his words) “determined that the following actions should be taken:” the dean should be restored to her position and the bishop should apologize and spend the rest of his episcopate on sabbatical.
However, Bishop Organ has chosen to ignore what he calls the archbishop’s “recommendations” on the grounds that they would put the diocese at risk. He argued that the provincial misconduct policy was not used correctly – indeed, the archbishop admitted in his determination that the policy was not used as written – and has called for a new investigation.
In light of Organ’s refusal, the archbishop seems to have felt unable or unwilling to enforce his determinations. It is unclear to me whether Edwards would agree with Organ’s characterization of them as “recommendations.” If he were to attempt to enforce them, he would not be without options. The misconduct policy provides for the possibility of suspension with or without terms when allegations are determined to be accurate, and it seems possible that the Organ’s refusal could be grounds for an allegation under the provincial disciplinary canon as well.
But according to the new primate, the matter seems to be largely closed. Neither an attempt to enforce the determinations nor the new investigation that Organ requested seem likely to occur. Apparently, Short will remain removed from her position despite her vindication by the provincial investigation, and Organ’s concerns about the investigatory process will not be formally addressed.
What should we take away from this situation? What we see here is the consequence of both an ill-designed disciplinary system and over-taxed institutions. It is a problem that the Canadian church has a set of complicated, difficult to use, overlapping methods for dealing with clergy misconduct. It is deeply unfortunate that complainants have to choose between a very difficult canonical procedure and apparently largely toothless non-canonical misconduct policies when addressing misconduct – neither of which are easy to navigate!
This problem is made even more keen because of the increasing lack of capacity in overstrained, shrinking institutions. As we’ve seen, neither the diocese nor the province had functional procedures for dealing with misconduct. I do not expect that Diocese of Western Newfoundland’s lack of an actual misconduct policy or the Province of Canada’s failure to set up its provincial misconduct committee were in any way malicious. But these sorts of things happen when shrinking ecclesial capacity meets a proliferation of confusing policies and procedures.
Canadian Anglicans desperately need a system for handling clergy misconduct that is uniform, simple to use, actually followed as written, and has the capacity to enforce its recommendations. Both victims and those accused of misconduct deserve such a system. But without significant reform, I expect that we will continue to see cases like that of Western Newfoundland.
It is my hope and prayer that our leaders use their moral and canonical authority to make that reform happen. It is a matter of vital importance, both to prevent human beings for whom Christ died from being harmed or driven away from the faith by those who are supposed to shepherd them and to avoid further damaging our witness in a land where people desperately need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. TAP
The Rev. Benjamin Crosby is a PhD student in ecclesiastical history at the McGill University School of Religious Studies. This article first appeared in The Living Church and is reprinted with permission of both the editor and author.
WHOM do you look up to?
Everyone has a person or persons they admire or look up to. For some it is an actor, for others it may be a pop star or athlete or a political figure, perhaps a teacher or a parent. For some, their hero may be a biblical figure – someone they learned about as a child in Sunday school.
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In her first comments since accepting the role, the Archbishop said: “As I respond to the call of Christ to this new ministry, I do so in the same spirit of service to God and to others that has motivated me since I first came to faith as a teenager.
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IN RECENT YEARS, the Anglican Church of Canada has been wrestling with a series of scandals related to clergy misconduct.
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