THE challenge of meeting demands for transparency while protecting the privacy of individuals was aired during a webinar this week exploring recent events in the diocese of Liverpool.

During the discussion, organised by the Religion Media Centre, the journalist Mick Ord said that the absence of the Bishop of Warrington, the Rt Revd Bev Mason, for 18 months, had not been explained to clergy or congregations: “That built up a feeling among many clergy, so I’m told, that a veil was being drawn that only a small number of people in the hierarchy were aware of.”

“In what other industry would somebody have 18 months of study leave?” asked the Vicar of St Matthew the Apostle, Burnley, the Revd Alex Frost, a General Synod member. “It just doesn’t. To other people it just looks ridiculous. . . That trust is eroded because we are not giving clarity about the actual situation.”

The Archdeacon of Liverpool, Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, said that she had not known “exactly what the situation was”, and that she had chosen to respect Bishop Mason’s privacy. The diocesan director of communications, Canon Stuart Haynes, said that there was a need to “protect the individual”. He said: “It’s not for us to break the confidences of individuals”.

Dr Threlfall-Homes said: “What we want to say as the people within the diocese is we have no way of knowing what the truth is behind these allegations. It would be totally improper for us to be making a judgement. We haven’t got the information and it’s not our place to do so. . .

“The appropriate thing would be for them to be investigated fully and properly; that’s something we know the Church of England’s systems are not particularly well set up to do.” This was something that Synod members were “trying to change”.

The Bishop of Liverpool, Dr John Perumbalath, had been “put in an impossible position”, she said. “We used the word ‘untenable’, and I think that was factually true [News, 31 January]. Whether that is the Church, whether it’s the whole situation, whether it’s the media, I think everything just came together to make it a really difficult and impossible situation, and there couldn’t be any winners or any losers at that point.”

Both Dr Perambalath and Bishop Mason were receiving pastoral care, Canon Haynes said. The diocese had deliberately referred to Dr Perumbalath’s retirement rather than resignation, as that was the term that he himself had used. It was for the Church Commissioners or Archbishop of York’s office to “establish what the position is”. Dr Perambalath had been asked only to step aside.

The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, said: “I can totally get why trust in bishops is at such a low ebb. . . We’ve seen poor judgement, quite possibly poor behaviour. We’ve felt trapped, I think, quite often by systems and structures and processes that appear often to be controlling us.” The meeting of the College of Bishops last week had been “very, very deeply shaken”.

The Book of Common Prayer last Sunday had marked the Feast of the Purification, he said. “It does feel like the Church is being purified, and it does feel like God is working through this kind of media frenzy that is happening at the moment.”

The Church needed to look “much more deeply at clergy terms and conditions”, he suggested, “and the HR processes that should stop these slow heavy legal processes that so much distress people”. Bishops needed to look at “how we lead differently. . . and relearn the art of humility”.

Panellists were asked whether there had been a presumption of guilt in the media coverage of events. The Vicar of Huddersfield, Canon Rachel Firth, a General Synod member, agreed that this had been her impression.

“There has also been a quite disturbing polarisation: the words ‘bandwagon’, and ‘pitchfork’, and ‘torch’ have been used a lot as people have assumed based on what they do know, and what they don’t know, things that have happened in this particular situation.

“I think that’s been dangerous and disruptive, and it doesn’t help us to help anyone who has been hurt in a situation like this. A little bit more care and nuance and compassion would be really helpful.”