Yes you can be too careful!

A report commissioned by the Church of England advises us to leave our clerical collars at home because they make us a target for violent criminals. The whole question of the advisability of wearing clericals on the street has been discussed elsewhere. This is different - now we're into the realm of health and safety where we know that......

You can't be too careful

Let's deal with how the report begins. It begins with the pictures of murdered clergy.

It then goes on to state in one of the introductory paragraphs that a 2001 study found that "70% of clergy suffer from some sort of violence". That's a lot! Me, I've got the same package of plasters that I had back in Chibougamau in the late 80's. I'm not even sure that the adhesive works any more. Maybe I've been lucky. The author then states his own findings from 2006 that "48% of them (clergy) had suffered at least one violent incident in the preceding 12 months". Fine.

First you want to know what 'violence' in this context means. I'm just off the phone with somebody with whom I raised my voice. Was I being violent? I was being aggressive. What is violence anyway - being shouted at - given sideways glances? The definition given in the article ends up being pretty wide indeed

4.4 Often in a parish are one or two people who can use violence as described in footnote 2 above [which I can't find]. These can be people who have a grudge against the church, the vicar themselves [sic] or God. The vicar becomes the target of the abuse which can often take the form of anonymous letter writing to the bishop, attempts to discredit the vicar and accusations of improper behaviour. These are often long term problems that are seldom dealt with in a satisfactory manner according to those clergy who suffer from this sort of violence.

Ah. We're back in Britain again.

First - show pictures of four clergy murdered between 1996 and 2007. Truly horrifying stories, all of them.

Second - give statistics for a generalized form of violence which includes disgruntled Altar Guild presidents writing the Bishop under the name of Outraged of Penicuik and saying that the Rector is an utter shit who should never have been sent to the congregation in the first place. I'm sorry - that's not violence. That's the reality of ministry in some places (tho mercifully not Penicuik).

Thirdly - propose a series of over-the-top safeguards.

My favourite? From the appendix at the end:

All front doors should reach the European Standard ENV 1627

(This means that the door should withstand assault with crowbars for five minutes, withstand pressure on the lock of 600 kg and withstand pressure on the corners of 300 kg)

All I have to say is that on the day my Altar Guild starts to assault the front door for five minutes with crowbars I'm gonna start checking the Church Times in earnest for available positions.

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On a more sober note. I had somebody decide to kill me once - back in the early nineties.

His marriage had broken apart, he was seriously manic depressive and we had found alternate accomodation for his wife and daughter when he had beaten them rather badly.

His plan was to lure me to the 17th floor apartment/hotel room he was living in and pitch me off the balcony. He was waaay manic when I arrived after his phone call. He was a round but still very well-built fellow and when I arrived he was sweating profusely and wearing nothing but a small pair of bikini briefs and kept telling me that it was too hot in the room and he wanted to talk to me on the balcony. "Not here" he snapped in a staccato voice, "on the balcony. On - the - balcony!"

I was clever enough not to advance into the room. I backed out slowly on a pretext and got the hell out of there.

I must admit that I had ignored any number of little warning bells in my head as I was driving over to his place. I shoulda known better. The next day he was threatening over the telephone to throw himself off the same balcony and I managed to do a two-telephone trick and have the Montreal cops sneak up and haul him down. On his way to the hospital he told the police about his plans to throw me off the day before.

I'm not sure that risk can ever be completely avoided or should be avoided, for that matter. The cultivation of good common sense pays great dividends, however. My one risky encounter with an unwell parishioner was cleary my own bloody fault.