I appreciate that on this issue the Anglican Church may have offered a response that was better than the response offered by the Catholic Church. As I understand it, the situation is made more complicated by the fact that the residential schools were operated by individual dioceses and religious communities, meaning that many people feel that apologies need to be issued by dioceses and communities rather than by the Church nationally or globally. Some dioceses and communities have been willing to apologise, while others have not. Pope Benedict issued something very close to an apology back in 2009, but Pope Francis is seemingly inexplicably reluctant to travel to Canada to issue a formal apology in person as recommended.
It does seem, however, somewhat disingenuous for you to highlight this one issue when it is clear that you have many reasons to feel a degree of antipathy towards the Catholic Church. You suffered sexual abuse as a seminarian and found the response of the seminary rector to be inadequate. That in itself would seem sufficient reason to explain your feelings towards the Church. Further to this, you were bullied in the Knights of Columbus and again found the Church’s response to be inadequate. Again, it is perfectly understandable that this experience would cause difficulties for your relationship with the Church.
You also highlight a number of disagreements with the Church’s doctrine and discipline, e.g. concerning same-sex partnerships, divorce, clerical celibacy, ordination of women, treatment of laicised priests, the involvement of lay people in Church governance, and use of Latin in the liturgy. I sympathise with a number of these points myself.
It therefore seems that you have more than enough personal reasons and reasons of principle to feel more comfortable in the Anglican Church. It is worth cautioning, however, that both Churches have been affected by child sexual abuse. Within the Anglican Church of Canada the cases of Gordon Nakayama and Ralph Rowe, for example, have been particularly shocking. The Church of England is absolutely awash both with allegations of CSA and with accusations of inadequate responses to it. George Carey himself, head of both the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, personally intervened in the case of Peter Ball, a diocesan bishop, to ensure that he would not face prosecution for crimes that led one victim to take his own life. Another noteworthy case is that of Robert Waddington, dean of Manchester, whose alleged crimes were known to the then archbishop of York, who failed to report them to the police. Another would be that of Trevor Devamanikkam, where no fewer than six bishops (including the archbishop of York) are implicated in the failure to deal adequately with the allegations. Cases from the dioceses of Chichester and Portsmouth, where abuse was particularly widespread and the responses particularly weak, are too numerous to list. Recent cases such as those of Julian Whiting and survivor known only as Gilo have highlighted the inadequacy of damages being paid out by the Church of England. Mr Whiting received only £5,000 after being raped at a Church of England school.
