What Scares Them Most

Last week, I was contacted by a diocesan Archdeacon outside Toronto, and by outside counsel from a Bay Street law firm representing the Anglican Diocese of Toronto.

One informed me that if I attended a diocesan service, I would not be welcome to vest or process with clergy.

The other threatened to circulate communications clarifying that I am no longer an officeholder in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Which is fascinating.

Because I publicly relinquished my orders years ago.

I wrote a book about it in 2020.

I have spoken openly for years about trauma, addiction, institutional failure, mental health, and the complicated grief of loving a Church that could not hold together what it claimed to proclaim. I work frontline healthcare now. I worship quietly in a Roman Catholic parish. I still get invited into churches to speak from time to time, which probably says something about how hungry people are for honesty.

None of this is hidden.

So what exactly are they afraid of?

No one seriously believes I am attempting some secret return to ecclesiastical office through a robe and a procession.

The reaction is not about order.

It is about control.

Institutions built on moral authority become deeply uncomfortable around people who no longer require institutional permission to speak. Especially former insiders. Especially wounded ones. Especially those who know the difference between protecting the vulnerable and protecting the brand.

The Church is often very compassionate toward suffering in the abstract.

Actual wounded people are harder to manage.

Particularly the ones who survive without disappearing quietly.

I suspect that is the real tension underneath all this.

Not whether I vest.
Not whether I process.
Not whether I hold office.

But whether someone who once carried authority inside the system might still possess moral credibility outside it.

Because once a person has already lost status, reputation, career, and belonging, institutional intimidation loses much of its magic.

The prophets were rarely dangerous because of official power.

They were dangerous because they remembered the difference between God and the institution claiming to speak for God.

“Me thinks thou dost protest too much” comes to mind.

I already left.

They are the ones still performing the separation.