The Feb. 4 edition of the Washington Post headline and leading paragraphs over Michelle Boorstein’s byline constitute a moral mind-boggler:
“Church Officials Suspected Alcoholism”
“Under fire for not doing more to rein in a bishop accused of killing a cyclist while driving drunk, Episcopal officials said Tuesday that they didn’t push Heather Cook to discuss her alcoholism to respect her privacy.”
Which Episcopal Church officials could possibly regard privacy protection as ground for covering up a hit-and-run killing by this recently consecrated Maryland bishop?
The Post also reported that Bishop Cook is charged with manslaughter in the December death of Baltimore bicyclist Thomas Palermo.
“According to the timeline, Bishop Eugene Sutton – Cook’s boss and the chief bishop of the diocese – suspected that Cook was drunk during a pre-consecration dinner two nights before she was officially made a bishop in the fall.”
Consider the brand new morality of a pre-consecration-of-a-bishop dinner where the woman to be consecrated shows up drunk. But two days later, she is made a bishop by being consecrated. What kind of moral discipline is that?
There’s also the report:
“The timeline also says Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, leader of the Episcopal Church, who presided over the Sept. 6 service that consecrated Cook, was also made aware that Cook may have been drunk during the dinner.”
That by means of national scandal includes the tolerance and cover-up of this scandal by the top prelate in the 2 million-member denomination, Presiding Bishop Schori.
As if that were not enough, officials of the diocese have said for weeks that they knew before her election as bishop that Heather Cook was arrested for drunken driving previously, in 2010. But the Post reports:
“They have declined to answer questions about whether they had any reason to be concerned about her drinking during the period between her election and the fatal incident in December.”
Spokeswoman for Presiding Bishop Schori, Neva Fox, declined to comment on Tuesday. And she would not say when the probe of Bishop Cook might be done – or whether its conclusions would be made public. Cook is in an inpatient facility and not reachable.
Officials in the diocese – and in her previous Eastern Shore diocese of Easton – have said little about what they did after an incident in 2010.
That time, no one was killed. But the Rev. Ms. Cook was pulled over by police in the middle of the night, driving on three tires and too intoxicated to pass a sobriety test.
The Post reported, “On Tuesday, Daniel Webster, a diocesan official for evangelization pulled in to deal with the increased media attention, said that before Cook was elected, the search committee that picked Cook in the spring and Bishop Sutton knew only that she had been arrested in 2010 on drunken-driving charges.”
And, believe it or not: “They did not know the details, he said, and did not know that she had sought treatment at the time for an alcohol problem.”
The Baltimore Sun quoted Cook telling the judge in 2010: “I am regarding this as a major wake-up call in my life, and I’m doing things now that I was not able to do without this motivation.”
The Post also reported:
“The church’s handling of Cook has angered many Episcopalians who don’t understand why church leaders didn’t gain access to details that were public record. The church was also criticized for not sharing the 2010 arrest with the wider body that elected Cook last year.”
Diocesan official Webster said it was up to Cook to disclose such details.
“It’s part of the Episcopal Church’s respecting the privacy of individuals to a point that gives them the freedom to be able to share what’s going on in their life,” Webster said.
Think about that.
Bishop Cook shared, all right.
She shared roads in which she was twice arrested for driving drunk – in the second instance, killing a man.
The Post also reported:
“Cook’s most-recent employer – the Diocese of Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore – recommended her ‘without hesitation or reservation.'”
The Diocese of Maryland also contended it was not Bishop Sutton’s responsibility to put Cook’s consecration on hold, even if he was worried about her drinking: “When it comes to matters of ‘suitability’ to serve as a bishop, Cook is under the authority of the presiding bishop, not the diocesan bishop (of Maryland). The presiding bishop would have had to make that decision.”
That raises yet another question: Is it possible to believe that Presiding Bishop Schori knew nothing at all of Bishop Cook’s two different arrests for drunken driving?
The probability – that she did know but failed to move decisively – makes this one of the Episcopal Church’s most scandalous episodes in its more than two centuries of existence.
Media wishing to interview Les Kinsolving, please contact [email protected].
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