B2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022
religionBY JACK JENKINSSince San Francisco Archbish-
op Salvatore Cordileone barred
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
from receiving the Eucharist in
his jurisdiction last week, three
other bishops from the conserva-
tive wing of the U.S. Catholic
Church have followed, citing her
support for abortion rights as
cause to invalidate her from
receiving the sacrament.
The same day that Cordileone
determined in a public letter that
Pelosi (D-Calif.) was “not to be
admitted to Holy Communion
unless and until she publicly
repudiate her support for abor-
tion ‘rights’ and confess and
receive absolution,” Bishop Rob-
ert Vasa barred the speaker from
Communion in the Diocese of
Santa Rosa, which borders the
archdiocese of Cordileone.
“I have visited with the pastor
at St. Helena and informed him
that if the Archbishop prohibited
someone from receiving Holy
Communion then that restric-
tion followed the person and that
the pastor was not free to ignore
it,” Vasa said in a statement.
Vasa was joined by Bishop
Michael Burbidge of the Diocese
of Arlington in Virginia and
Bishop Joseph Strickland of the
Diocese of Tyler in Texas. Strick-
land is known as a conservative
firebrand.
Cordileone, Vasa, Burbidge
and Strickland are part of a small
but increasingly strident group
in the U.S. bishops conference
that feuded with their colleagues
last summer over whether clerics
should deny the sacrament to
President Biden for his support
of abortion rights. More liberal-
leaning bishops, such as Bishop
Robert McElroy of San Diego,
accused supporters of the idea of
having “weaponized” the Eucha-
rist.
A report on the issue delivered
months later chiefly recom-
mended that American Catholics
be given more education on the
meaning of the Eucharist.
In his statement, Vasa invoked
an article of canon law that, in
his words, “makes it clear that
providing sacraments to some-
one prohibited from receiving
them has its own possible penal-
ties.” According to Vasa, canon
law says a person can be “pun-
ished with suspension” for inten-
tionally administering a sacra-
ment to “those who are prohibit-
ed from receiving it.”
Canon 915 states, “Those who
have been excommunicated or
interdicted after the imposition
or declaration of the penalty and
others obstinately persevering in
manifest grave sin are not to be
admitted to Holy Communion.”
The Rev. John Beal, a canon
lawyer and professor at the Cath-
olic University of America, was
dismissive of the argument by
Vasa, which contradicts the com-
monly held belief that Commu-
nion denials are limited to the
diocese of an individual bishop.
“Bishops are rarely punctilious
about procedural niceties,” Bealsaid in an email.
Burbidge appeared to echo
Vasa when he declared on a
podcast that he intends to re-
spect Cordileone on the ban on
Pelosi because “he is her bishop
and as that bishop the direction
and guidance he provides is not
limited to just a geographical
area.” Representatives of the Ar-
lington Diocese said they could
not confirm whether Burbidge
was making the same argument
as Vasa.
Strickland, for his part, said in
an email that he is less con-
cerned with the canonical issue,
referring to it as a “question of
jurisdiction” and acknowledgingthat “interpretations of canon
law will differ.” But he insisted
his own ban arose primarily from
his “desire was to emphasize that
what Archbishop Cordileone is
doing is considered to be ‘medici-
nal’ ” for Pelosi.
Asked about the new bevy of
bans levied against Pelosi, a
spokesperson for the Diocese of
San Diego replied, “We do not
really go out of our way to
comment on what is going on in
other dioceses.”
On Sunday, two days after
Cordileone posted his letter,
Pelosi received Communion at a
Jesuit church in Washington,
where Cardinal Wilton Gregory,the archbishop of Washington,
has signaled his opposition to
the idea of barring politicians
from Communion because of
their views on abortion.
Later, Pelosi rebuked Cordile-
one on MSNBC, railing against
his antiabortion advocacy and
his resistance to LGBTQ rights,
noting his role in facilitating the
since-defunct state ban on
s ame-sex marriage in California.
She also questioned why the
bishops had not refused the
Eucharist to politicians who dis-
miss other Catholic teaching on
life issues. “I wonder about death
penalty, which I am opposed to,”
Pelosi said. “So is the church, but
they take no action against peo-
ple who may not share their view.
So we just have to be prayerful.
We have to be respectful. I come
from a largely pro-life Italian
American Catholic family, so I
respect people’s views about
that. But I don’t respect us
foisting it onto others.”
During the debate last year on
giving the Eucharist to politi-
cians who support abortion
rights, Bishop Kevin Rhoades,
then-chair of the U.S. bishops
committee on doctrine, suggest-
ed denying Communion could be
extended to issues beyond
a bortion.
“Even though a lot of the
publicity has been about pro-
abortion politicians, I think we
would also look at, let’s say,
someone who is involved in hu-
man trafficking,” Rhoades said.
“The scandal that would be cre-ated if someone publicly was
involved in that, or was a leader
in a white supremacist group or
whatever, going up and receiving
Holy Communion. Obviously
that would be problematic.”
In the wake of a mass shooting
that took place this week in Texas
where 19 children and 2 adults
were killed by a gunman, some
Catholics have asked whether
bishops should also withhold
Communion from politicians
who oppose legislation to curb
gun violence.
“Will any bishops ban politi-
cians who don’t support gun
control laws from receiving Com-
munion? We protect the lives of
the unborn,” read a tweet on
Wednesday from the Rev. James
Martin, an author and consultor
to the Vatican Dicastery for Com-
munication. “How about, as Pope
Francis said, ‘those already
born’?”
This week, Cordileone came
out strongly in favor of measures
to curb gun violence when he
tweeted, “There have to be sensi-
ble gun regulations to help stem
the pandemic of gun violence,
such as stronger background
checks, restrictions on AR-15s,
and raising the age of purchasers
to 21.”
The Archdiocese of San Fran-
cisco did not respond to a re-
quest for comment on whether
Cordileone would also support
barring people from Commu-
nion who refuse to support gun
control legislation.
— Religion News ServicePelosi barred from Communion in at least four dioceses around the country
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), pictured above this month,
was barred by the dioceses due to her support for abortion rights.BY BOB SMIETANAFor three minutes last summer,
a call to investigate how Southern
Baptist leaders have dealt with
sexual abuse was dead in the
water.
Then a little-known denomina-
tional bylaw and a pastor from
Indiana saved it.
“I just had to do it,” said Todd
Benkert, pastor of Oak Creek
Community Church in Mishawa-
ka, Ind. “It was me or nobody.”
About 15 minutes into a morn-
ing business session at the South-
ern Baptist Convention’s June
2021 annual meeting in Nash-
ville, Southern Baptist leaders an-
nounced that a motion to set up
an independent sex abuse investi-
gation was being tabled.
Because the motion dealt with
the internal workings of an SBC
entity — in this case, the denomi-
nation’s Nashville-based Execu-
tive Committee — denomination-
al officials, relying on bylaw 26 of
the SBC’s constitution, decided to
refer the motion to that entity.
In other words, the Executive
Committee would be put in
charge of investigating itself.
J.D. Greear, then the SBC’s
president, was ready to move on
when Benkert stood up at a mi-
crophone with a motion of his
own, based on another section of
bylaw 26.
“I would like the opportunity
to make a motion to overrule the
Committee on Order of Business
at the appropriate time,” he said.
Benkert’s motion was met with
applause. Then a second and,
then, almost all of the 15,000 local
church delegates, known as mes-
sengers, raised their yellow vot-
ing cards in the air — far more
than the two-thirds majority
needed to overrule the commit-
tee.
Those messengers would later
approve the abuse investigation.
A report from that investigation,
released this week, would show
that, for decades, Executive Com-
mittee leaders had done every-
thing in their power to protect the
institution from liability.
“In service of this goal, survi-
vors and others who reported
abuse were ignored, disbelieved,
or met with the constant refrain
that the SBC could take no action
due to its polity regarding church
autonomy — even if it meant that
convicted molesters continued in
ministry with no notice or warn-
ing to their current church or
congregation,” the report con-
cluded.
The report, compiled by out-
side investigation firm Guidepost
Solutions, was an “apocalypse,”
according to former SBC ethicist
Russell Moore, who had been
hounded out of the denomination
in part because of his support for
survivors of abuse. Al Mohler,
president of the Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, called it a
sign of God’s judgment on the
nation’s largest Protestant de-
nomination.
The existence of the abuse re-
port is a triumph of congregation-
al polity — the idea that people in
the pews, rather than leaders,
should have the final say — aided
by the minutiae of church bylaws
and the fierce determination of
survivors and advocates to say
enough was enough.
And, yet, the abuse investiga-
tion almost never happened.
From the moment it was pro-
posed, Executive Committee
leaders actively tried to shut it
down or, if that was not possible,
to defang the report so the com-
mittee’s secrets would never be
known.
Even with overwhelming ap-
proval from messengers for the
investigation, Executive Commit-
tee members spent tens of thou-
sands of dollars to resist waiving
attorney-client privilege, which
would allow investigators to re-
view communications between
SBC lawyers and committee
members. They also tried to con-
trol the final shape of the investi-
gation’s report and warned that if
their secrets were revealed, the
SBC would be ruined.
The story of the report begins
in the fall of 2019, when Rachael
Denhollander, an attorney and
advocate whose testimony helped
send former USA Gymnastics
doctor Larry Nassar to prison,
spoke at the SBC Caring Well
conference on addressing sexual
abuse. During the conference, led
by Moore, Denhollander criti-
cized SBC leaders for mistreating
a survivor named Jen Lyell.
That led to a backlash from
leaders like Ronnie Floyd, then
president of the Executive Com-
mittee. In a meeting with Moore
after that conference, Floyd said
“I am not concerned about any-
thing survivors can say,” accord-
ing to a recording of the meeting.
“I am not worried about that,”
he said. “I’m thinking the base. I
just want to preserve the base.”
Moore later wrote to trustees of
the Ethics and Religious Commit-
tee about his clashes with other
Southern Baptists, saying he had
been criticized and harassed for
supporting abuse survivors and
saying the culture of SBC leaders
was unsafe for abuse survivors.
His letter became public when it
was leaked to Religion News Serv-
ice.
After reading Moore’s letter,
Grant Gaines, a pastor from
Murfreesboro, Tenn., said he sent
a text to his friend Ronnie Parrott,
a pastor in North Carolina, saying
the Executive Committee “had
some explaining to do.”
“He said to me, ‘Yeah, but who
is going to get them to explain it?’
” Gaines said in an interview.
The two decided to draft a
motion for the SBC’s annual
meeting to set up an investigation
to do just that. They consulted
with experts on SBC governance
to make sure the motion was in
order and talked to advocates
about what was needed.
Among the suggestions: get-
ting access to communication
with SBC lawyers. Those commu-
nications would show what
Southern Baptist leaders were up
to.
David French, an author and
lawyer who has written about
abuse, said that in crisis, church-es and other Christian groups
often delegate their decision-
making to their lawyers. Those
lawyers generally think about
preserving the institution first.
“The attorneys don’t have a
fiduciary duty to the Gospel,” he
said. “And they don’t have a fidu-
ciary duty to preserve the integri-
ty of the church. What they have
is a fiduciary duty to the corpo-
rate entity that retains them and
to the preservation of that entity.”
French called the SBC decision
to waive privilege as “extraordi-
nary” for churches. “It was one ofthe strongest signals I’ve seen
from a church that they want to
know the truth,” he said.
From the beginning, Gaines
said, Executive Committee mem-
bers were against any kind of
independent investigation or the
idea of waiving privilege. Days
before the start of the SBC annual
meeting in June 2021, the com-
mittee hired Guidepost Solutions
to review its processes in dealing
with abuse.
“The SBC Executive Commit-
tee commits to providing full sup-
port and transparency to Guide-
post Solutions, including making
individuals available for inter-
views and providing relevant doc-
uments,” the committee said in a
statement at the time.
That arrangement would have
given Floyd and other leaders
control of the investigation and
any report that came out of it.
When a member of the Executive
Committee called for that investi-
gation to be expanded, the idea
was shot down at a meeting of the
committee in June.
When Gaines and Parrott de-
cided to go ahead with their mo-
tion, Floyd and another staffer
met with them less than an hour
before they were set to make the
motion, asking them to change it.
In particular, Gaines said, they
wanted to remove any mention ofwaiving privilege.
Gaines and Parrott refused.
When Gaines learned a day
later that the motion would likely
be referred to the Executive Com-
mittee, he made a speech from the
floor of the convention, this time
urging the Executive Committee
to do the right thing.
“Because the Executive Com-
mittee is the one under investiga-
tion, the Executive Committee
can’t be the ones that control the
investigation,” he said. “That
would be the wrong way to do
this.”Greear was sympathetic to
Gaines’s concerns. As president,
Greear had been a strong advo-
cate for abuse survivors and had
urged the denomination to take
sexual abuse seriously in the
wake of a 2019 investigation of
the SBC by the Houston Chronicle
that found hundreds of cases of
abuse. He had set up a task force
to create resources to help
churches prevent abuse and care
for survivors. Still, the bylaws
seemed to dictate that the issue
should be referred.
“Under the convention’s rules,
these motions are referred to as
indicated by the Committee on
the Order of Business,” Greear
determined at the time.
The motion’s fate seemed
sealed.
At the time, Gaines had no idea
that messengers could overrule
the decision to refer his motion.
He also did not know Benkert was
waiting in the wings. A pastor for
more than two decades, Benkert
said he had been at other church
meetings where decisions had
been overruled. So he made a
split-second decision to get to a
microphone.
“If I had not got up, it was
dead,” he said. “I’m glad God used
me.”
Getting the motion passed
proved to be only half the battle.Though Floyd told messengers
the committee respected them
and would not oppose the mo-
tion, soon after the meeting he
went to work to regain control of
the investigation.
In public statements and let-
ters to Executive Committee
members ahead of their fall meet-
ing, where they would vote on
whether to waive privilege, Floyd
tried to dissuade them.
“We should seek to understand
these best practices before we
decide which practices to apply,”
he wrote in a letter to committee
members. “For example, if we do
this incorrectly, will we be, as a
nonprofit organization, denying
our rights to effective counsel in
the middle of litigation?”
The Executive Committee
would eventually hold three hotly
contested meetings over the issue
of waiving privilege, with a vote to
do so failing repeatedly.
A group of committee mem-
bers, including Joe Knott, Rod
Martin and other members who
have ties to the Conservative Bap-
tist Network, which says the SBC
has become too liberal, adamant-
ly opposed waiving privilege, say-
ing it would lead to the conven-
tion’s ruin.
At one point, Rob Showers, a
committee member and attorney
from Virginia, said the committee
could not legally follow the will of
the messengers and waive privi-
lege.
“I’m saying the motion that
says for us to violate our fiduciary
duties would not be legal,” he
said.
Mississippi pastor Adam Wyatt
disagreed. He voted for waiving
privilege last fall, a decision by
which he stands. Following the
will of the messengers was the
right thing to do, he told RNS in
an interview.
After one of the stalled meet-
ings, Lyell reached out to a num-
ber of Executive Committee
members, inviting them to an
informal Zoom discussion about
the importance of having an inde-
pendent and thorough investiga-
tion.
“It is still not too late to do the
right thing,” she wrote. “All it
takes is a willingness to ask the
questions to get the information
needed to ensure the facts are
known, then act accordingly.”
The committee approved the
waiver in a third meeting, on Oct.- But even then, opponents tried
one more gambit. After the vote
was taken, Idaho pastor Jim
Gregory appealed to the chair of
the meeting, saying the commit-
tee’s decision was out of order.
His appeal was denied.
After the meeting, 16 commit-
tee members resigned in protest.
Floyd quit, as well, saying his
reputation was at stake. After the
Guidepost report was published,
Floyd told Baptist Press he stood
by his actions, saying he was
concerned with good governance,
not obstruction. He pointed to
comments he made in his resig-
nation letter about his disdain for
abuse and about the hard work of
Executive Committee trustees.
“One of the most grievous
things for me personally has been
the attacks on myself and the
trustees as if we are people who
only care about ‘the system,’” he
wrote in that letter. “Nothing
could be further from the truth.”
Denhollander said the Guide-
post report shows the importance
of waiving attorney-client privi-
lege when investigating abuse.
Many of the most important facts
in the report came from commu-
nications with lawyers, she said.
Those facts would have remained
secret if attorney-client privilege
had not been waived.
“Southern Baptists would have
been kept in the dark about what
was really going on in their con-
vention without the waiver of
privilege,” she said.
Bruce Frank, who chaired the
task force that hired Guidepost,
said the report revealed why
some Executive Committee staff-
ers and members did not want
communications with lawyers
made public. Not everyone who
voted against waiving privilege
had nefarious intent, he said. But
some knew what they were hid-
ing.
For example, he said, the re-
port revealed Executive Commit-
tee staff kept an informal list of
abusers while claiming the SBC
could not set up a database to
track abusers, something he
called beyond belief.
If privilege had not been
waived, then the task force would
have told Guidepost to go ahead
with its work. But few people
would have trusted the report
such an inquiry produced.
“People would have known
that you had the proverbial fox
protecting the hen house,” he
said.
Lyell, a former vice president
for Lifeway Christian Resources,
the Southern Baptist publisher,
whose life and career fell apart
after she made her abuse experi-
ence public, doubts anything will
change, even after the report.
Lyell supported the abuse investi-
gation but said it revealed only
the tip of the iceberg.
“We have not fixed anything,”
she said.
She also said the convention is
inherently flawed. The conven-
tion, she said, is a billion-dollar
operation, overseen mostly by
volunteer trustees and with al-
most no accountability. The Exec-
utive Committee, for example,
which oversees the business of
the SBC between its annual meet-
ings, is run by a few dozen staff
and about 80 volunteer trustees.
There’s too much money from
too many people flowing into the
hands of a few people, who are
overseen by volunteers, she said.
“That cannot be fixed,” she
said, adding that any reforms put
in place at the upcoming SBC
meeting in Anaheim, Calif., will
be too little, too late.
“If they think they can go to
Anaheim and change the script or
throw in some prayer, they have
lost their minds,” she said. “I
guarantee you that the Jesus
who’s in the scriptures would
shut Anaheim down. Period.”
— Religion News ServiceSex abuse report on the Southern Baptist Convention almost didn’t happen
WILLIAM DESHAZER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
J.D. Greear in 2021, then Southern Baptist Convention president.“The attorneys don’t have a fiduciary duty to theGospel. ... What they have is a fiduciary duty to thecorporate entity that retains them and to thepreservation of that entity.”
David French, author and lawyer who has written about abuse