Good News Friday #2: The Bishop and The Priest

Terence Finlay [l] and James Ferry

Twenty years ago, Terence Finlay was Anglican Archbishop of the Diocese of Toronto, and  James Ferry was a priest at St. Philip’s Church in Unionville. James Ferry was also a gay man, and in 1988, he met a man named Ahmad, a refugee from Lebanon: "It was love at first sight. I did not believe in love at first sight. But when it happens, well, it happens.”
James Ferry and Ahmad began a committed relationship, which became widely known in his parish. When some people declared their contempt for the couple,  Ferry went to discuss his relationship with Archbishop Finlay.
As Ferry says today: “And the rest is history.”
Finlay ordered him to end the relationship, but Ferry refused. Angered by Ferry's refusal, Finlay wrote a letter to be read at all Anglican parishes, in which he 'outed' James Ferry as gay, and forced him from to stop performing his pastoral duties. Ferry was, in a way, fired, and made “an outcast” in the church.
But Finlay wasn't done, just yet. He brought charges against Ferry and, in early 1992, a rarely used "bishop's court" was convened. After hearing both sides, the court concluded that the only thing James Ferry did wrong was to disobey his superior.
But Terence Finlay still wasn't done. He withdrew the priest’s licence.
James Ferry lost almost everything--his livelihood, his faith that the church loved all its people. And, for a while at least, he also lost Ahmad. Lebanese culture was not exactly welcoming to gay men, and Ahmad's family didn't even know he was gay. So the story of The Priest and The Archbishop, which gained worldwide attention, also effectively outed Ahmad to his family. 
The two men separated for a while, but reconciled a few months after the bishop’s court ruling, and the subsequent furor had passed. They remained together until Ahmad’s death from lung cancer in 2007 at the age 43.

James Ferry: “A person is fortunate once in a lifetime to find somebody who’s their soulmate.”

But it wasn't only James Ferry who suffered the last twenty years after his 'outing'. Finlay spent much of the last two decades thinking about what he'd done. He realized he'd caused great pain, and shame, to both James Ferry and Ahmad. 
And Terence Finlay changed. He began speaking out about the “local option,” which allows individual dioceses to determine whether or not they would bless same-sex couples. After doing the unspeakable, Terence Finlaybegan to change.
In 2006, he officiated at a same-sex marriage in a United Church in Toronto, for which he was admonished and disciplined by his successor: “I’ve moved in different directions. And I have been very supportive of the gay and lesbian community, and also the whole question of gay marriage.”

When he became the special envoy to the church’s reconciliation with First Nations survivors of residential schools in 2004, Terence Finlay decided that he must reconcile with James Ferry over what he had done some twenty years earlier.

So, this next Sunday, Terence Finlay and James Ferry will participate in a rare public service of personal reconciliation at the Church of the Holy Trinity. For Finlay, now 74, the service is a “personal opportunity for me to express my regret” for Ferry’s suffering. “It was a very, very difficult time for both of us.” 
The reconciliation service--the Eucharist, prayer, scripture readings, and statements from both Finlay and Ferry--is “something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Finlay says.“I felt this was something I wanted, to reach out to Jim and to do and to express my regrets or that pain and what was experienced then and continued for him, I’m sure, these past years.”
As the Anglican Diocese of Toronto says about the Finlay-Ferry service, “when deep pain has been caused, it is important to have an opportunity to share our sorrow for that pain and seek a renewed relationship.”
Ferry says the two have been in touch “from time to time” over the years and that the relationship is “amicable enough.” When he was forced from the church, Ferry had to find another way to make a living, and began working as a rights adviser to psychiatric patients at area hospitals.
James Ferry: “One of the things that one has to do is to learn how to let go of pain,” he says. “Not to fixate on events of the past and let them take over your life.”Last summer, however, twenty years later, almost, James Ferry's licence was reinstated and he was appointed by Archbishop Colin Johnson as an assistant priest at Holy Trinity, though he is not on the church payroll.
James Ferry: “I don’t know how things are going to unfold. I’m 59 now. There’s a 20-year gap in my ministry as licensed clergy. But I know that I have a calling.”
While he believed, back in 1992, that the church had abandoned him, he never abandoned the church. As he says, he remained “on the margins, as a voice crying out for justice, love, and full inclusion in the life of the church family.
I started out just loathing Terence Finlay for what he'd done, but then you realize that this was twenty years ago, this was something that went against the church's teaching, against what Finlay believed with all his heart and soul. But Finlay evolved, and changed his mind, and understood, really, what i think religion means: to treat everyone as you would be treated; to love one another, and accept one another for our differences; to understand, that, if you believe in God, that we are all here because of Him, or Her.
I like this story.
I like the story of people changing and learning and growing and understanding. Though i wish it hadn't taken so long.
I like that James Ferry says, today: “I believe it will not be too many years before my hope and faith will be vindicated.”  

source