A posted response to Saturday’s print story on Holy Ghost Church, a story retold as part of PhoenixvilleNews’s “Top Ten” news items of 2008, requires a response.

The post misunderstood what was written about the role of one person named in that story, the person now under order of excommunication. The poster encouraged her to “keep up the fight,” because “we are all behind your cause!”

But one important point of the story was that she leads no fight and she leads no cause. At April 15’s Council meeting, she did not speak. Neither did she speak at later Planning Commission meetings. In constructing its charges against her, the Church constructed and described a role for her in the matter that she had not played. Whether that was by intention or by inattention, I cannot say.

But those charges read then as shots across the congregation’s bow: one letter of excommunication delivered to someone specially singled out was a warning to others.

To encourage her in her “cause” is to grant truth to precisely what it is she denies.

It also lends credence to another easy but unfortunate assumption, that as a leader she came running to the press with her story. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No one did that. The story really “broke” with that Council meeting April 15, but nothing appeared here or in print until September 22. That’s no accident. It took those five months to reach editorial agreement to work on the story at all, and many more sources than a single one to get the story and its background right.

The story was proper to print. The issues it raised could not be discussed constructively elsewhere, certainly not where they had first appeared, before public bodies which, by definition, could not entertain issues internal to a church’s life as material to the matters before them.

The story’s informants — when they allowed themselves to be — were hesitant, often tremblingly fearful of the harm they, family members and friends might suffer if they were to say anything.

She was among them. I sought her out for comment, she did not seek me. She granted me permission to identify her in the September 22 story only after the pastor of the Church chose to read the letter of excommunication, and himself use her name, publicly on September 21. But in no sense did she want the appearance of her name to suggest that she played some larger role in the matter than she did.

For any Holy Ghost member to speak publicly or privately about Church matters has been no easy step. I admire them, and grateful to them, for doing so. Some have made open and public remarks. Some have not, preferring to speak on background only.

Honor their courage, but respect the truth of the matter – and the boundaries they each have felt necessary to set.

Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence