Total immersion

A correspondent responds to a previous blog saying, "The Adelaide anglican church seems to have jettisoned it's (sic) principles, if media reports are anything to go by!"
By this, I guess they are referring to yet another delay in resolution of the issues to do with the abuse to young boys by Bob Brandendurg wqhile he was a leader of the boys group CEBS. Reports on Monday suggested that one of the lawyers, Peter Humphries, acting for some of the victims had notified the media that the victims had formally rejected the church's three tier level of compensation of $25K, $50K, $75K for various levels of culpability.
I would not want to suggest that I know more than I do.....the general issue was made known to members of the Synod who met some weeks ago.
Any way my response to my correspondent was:

Jeffrey Driver (the new Archbishop)..... who will be commissioned on Friday will have a baptism of fire...not that he will be unaware of that....
I am happy to go on record again as saying we (the Church) must do everything we can to respond to the hurt and pain that our sisters and brothers have felt at the hands of the church.
I am aware that this is not straight forward, and that should be a sadness to us all.

The baptism will be vigorous, total immersion, I suggest, and it will be a measure of the man to see how he runs with this. It should be remembered, however, that he will not have all the solutions on Friday nor even in a couple of weeks. He will be running a race which has largely been predetermined for him by the actions of those who have been steering the ship before he got here. He will no doubt take firm control and move us onto a some what different course but that will take a little time.

I would also note that the issue about the rejection of the offers (paltry as they seem to me) has been known (at least in principle) for some weeks and it has at least crossed my mind that Mr Humphries has made his move in the week of the Archbishop's commissioning quite deliberately to maximise publicity and focus the issue. This is as it should be, Humpries has a job to do and does it quite well it seems to me.
In the original bishop election weblog there is a subtitle: "Give us a shepherd after your own heart" which is a quotation from the traditional prayer for the election fo a bishop. I believe this prayer has been answered in Bishop Jeff, those of us who pray should pray that it be earnestly realised in these early days of his ministry here.