[Magdalen] Bishop, please resign

[H Angus]

"the cowardly
and vaguely pitiful attempt to hold onto the shreds of a once-successful
individual life?"

As other USA people have said, she's doubtless trying to hang on to her health insurance, which is tied to employment here. It certainly shouldn't be, but it is.

Without health insurance, she'd just have to show up at AA meetings like any ordinary schlub rather than go to an expensive-looking rehab center.

I doubt she had much of a successful life if, as it appears, her alcoholism is very long-term. Behavior "this anti-social" does indeed come with long-term addiction, but it doesn't always result in the death of an innocent person, nor is the perpetrator generally in such a highly visible office. Selfish, self-serving behavior is standard for alcoholics, as any of my 12-step friends are perfectly frank about saying.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sally Davies" <sally.davies at gmail.com>
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 1:36:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Bishop, please resign

I know it's easy to say from far, far away but I'm thinking that if this
were my Diocese I would be less concerned with her bad behaviour and more
worried about the system that actually picked this very psychologically and
morally challenged individual to be a Bishop in the first place. When you
think how hard it can be to be selected for priestly ordination, and from
there to be elected Bishop...?

Behaviour this antisocial does not come out of nowhere nor is it a
temporary aberration. It's not even a given for people who have addictions.

There has got to be something VERY wrong with the process and that is
surely of more concern in the bigger scheme of things, than the cowardly
and vaguely pitiful attempt to hold onto the shreds of a once-successful
individual life?

As to the question of permanence, I sincerely hope it isn't true "once a
Bishop always a Bishop". To be a priest is perhaps something different but
a Bishop is a functionary within a structure and if not in that structure,
cannot have a function. At least I hope not because there have been some
truly awful Bishops in our part of the world, far worse than Cook - Kunonga
in Zimbabwe comes to mind!!

Sally D

On Thursday, 29 January 2015, Marion Thompson <marionwhitevale at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Much as I bear most bishops scant love and while I acknowledge that Bp
> Cook is not part of my local picture, nonetheless I cannot stand in
> judgement.   My mother would have said, "The mills of the gods grind
> slowly, but they grind exceeding fine."   I think that most of us would not
> enjoy being the target of such judgement and I can be pretty darn sure that
> she is already feeling the fires of hell and doesn't need more.  But that's
> me.
>
> Marion, a pilgrim (soft on crime and a foe of our vengeful ways) ... today
> my sail I lift ....
>
>