Just Fancy That...

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph fulminates:

internal Church documents – leaked to The Sunday Telegraph – show that even if churchwardens, who are lay officials, are found to have previous allegations against them, the Church has no power to suspend them.

Perhaps the secret document is the Daily Telegraph of 25 May 1999, which vigorously led the charge, successfully, against proposed legislation which would have given bishops powers to suspend churchwardens:

John Gummer, the former Tory minister and a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee, said: "The Church of England has not needed provision to suspend churchwardens for 700 years and it does not need it now. They have come up with a solution for a problem that does not exist."