Putting The Fox In Charge Of The Hen House!

Can you believe it????

 Abbot Cuthbert is on Portsmouth Diocese safeguarding commission!!!!
http://www.portsmouthdiocese.org.uk/safeguarding/

 Talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen house!!!

Apparently he is there to advise on the peculiarities of Religious Life versus diocesan life.

In other words, "Keep Your Nose Out!!"

I received these emails from Portsmouth Diocese Safeguarding:

Angela McGrory <amcgrory@portsmouthdiocese.org.uk>	4 Jan
to me

Dear  Tom

Thank  you  for your  email  and the account  which I  have now read.

Have you  already  contacted the Police ? If  not  do you  wish  me to  pass this on to the Police ? I  can do  so  to  a Police colleague to establish  if there are  any  criminal offences ,they  will not take a formal allegation from myself it would need to  come from you  but  I  can get  an opinion regarding the possibility  of  any  criminal investigation. I  must  warn you that  it  may  be that they  decide that  no criminal offences were committed but  its best  to  get that  decision from them.

I can do  this anonymously  in the first  instance or  just  forward your  email .

Please  let  me know which  way  you  wish me to  proceed.

Kind regards

Angela  .

Dear  Tom

I  am writing  to  confirm that  I have heard  from the Police that  they  have spoken with you  and confirmed that  no  criminal offences have been disclosed in relation to  the Abbot  of  Farnborough.

I  wish to  confirm that  I  have discussed your  complaint  with the Director of  the Catholic Safeguarding  Advisory  Service who  agrees with  me that this  matter  raised by  yourself does not  come within our  Safeguarding  remit.

I understand that you have already contacted Church  Authorities  in the UK  and further  afield and the Abbot  Visitor  for the French  Benedictines.  This is the correct  course of  action for a complaint  of the nature you  have made. 

I  wish  you  well in the future,

Regards

Angela McGrory

Diocesan Safeguarding  Co-ordinator

(The police advise me that the law at the time did not recognise that an adult could be groomed and that the sexual contact therefore, as disclosed, was consensual.)

So that's the legal issue put to bed, so to speak, but what about the moral and ethical? You would think that Portsmouth Diocese from parishoners to clergy to the Bishop to the English hierarchy and to Rome would all be concerned?

Thanks be to God whose concern extends to a single sparrow because the Church doesn't seem to care much!

 Farnborough is Subiaco - Cassinese, not French Benedictines and as such I wrote to the Abbot President thus:

Tom Wood <tgwood9@gmail.com>	9 Jan
to s.ambrogio

Dear Abbot Guillermo Arboleda Tamayo OSB,

 Regarding Dom Cuthbert Brogan OSB Abbot Of Farnborough.

My name is Tom Wood and I was clothed and simply professed at Farnborough UK, during 1988 / 89, becoming, until dispensation, Dom Thomas Wood OSB, sharing my novitiate with the current Abbot.

For many years I believed that Dom Cuthbert and I were peers who fell short of our commitment to celibacy, but whereas I wanted to leave, he wanted to stay. I therefore saw it as my duty to protect him from any scandal within my gift, which I did. I now with the benefit of my years, see things very differently and believe my self to have been sexually manipulated by this man and not just sexually abused but damaged in my adult development in a way that has scarred my life, particularly in my difficulty to form close relationships or to clearly perceive my sexuality.

 All this I would have tried to offer up, were I to see Dom Cuthbert as a humble penitent Man, quietly working to edify and grow his monastic house. I could even accept that he might have become a beloved and respected superior, father in Christ.

 Unfortunately I have found a vain, self promoting, narcissistic man who rather than grow his community has brought it to nigh extinction! He travels the world photographing himself fine dining and seeing the sights. His 19th century religious practices belong in a museum. And to top it all he presumably has charge of the formation of young monks and has demonstrated no conversion of life, in fact his worldly obsessions demonstrate the exact opposite! One has to consider that he may have and may be continuing to hurt others as he hurt me.

Please remove this Man from office and replace him with a devout man and give Farnborough a chance to recover and once more be an apostolate of faith, hope and charity, a beacon in the community and by it's presence, location and liturgy succour the souls of those who walk in it's grounds and live and worship within it's once again hallowed walls.

 Kindest Regards,

 Tom Wood.

 You guessed it, no response!

I have since learnt that the Abbot's Extraordinary status might actually place him under the direct jurisdiction of the Congregation Of religious? http://www.congregazionevitaconsacrata.va/content/vitaconsacrata/it/congregazione/competenze.html

and my next course of action may well be to contact them and I hope they will not replicate the disdain shown to myself and my peers as demonstrated by other primates!

The deafening silence leads one to conclude that those already in the loop are placing their money on this story quickly becoming tomorrow's chip paper!

I'm determined to make sure it does not!!