A Different View Of Abp Hepworth

A visitor, former ACA/TAC priest, comments,

A few years ago, there was a terrible controversy caused nationwide in Australia by Abp. Hepworth’s legal suits against some prominent Roman Catholic priests for homosexual molestation while he was a seminarian. That whole sordid matter gave me pause, to say the least. Furthermore, I have little knowledge of the primate’s day-to-day conduct while he was still the official primate of the Church in Australia and the TAC, financial circumstances included.

All of that notwithstanding, for what it is worth, I would like to vouch for the archbishop’s performance during a couple of trips that we made together to Japan in the early ‘00s to help found the Nippon Kirisuto Seikokai. I was there on my own dime as the interpreter.

The first trip was made toward the end of Abp. Falk’s long reign as primate of the TAC. That was when he and Abp. Hepworth converged on Yokohama with disaffected Japanese Anglicans in revolt against the recent action to ordain a woman priest. We were met by Fr. Furukawa, of recent memory, God rest his soul, and Fr. Furutaké, my tutor from my freshman year in seminary, who sadly fell off the radar soon thereafter. Bp. Kajiwara, longtime ordinary of Yokohama, the largest and most Anglo-Catholic diocese in the Nippon Seikokai (Anglican/Episcopal Church in Japan), was present as an observer. I recall that Abp. Falk acted petulantly, but Abp. Hepworth appeared to be more worldly, accustomed to the rigors of international travel and political negotiations, and eager to take the reins of the TAC.

The second trip came a year or two later, after Abp. Falk was out of the picture. and Abp. Hepworth had been selected as the new primate. Hepworth was a master preacher, clearly steeped in a knowledge of theology and bearing a compassion for fellow rejected Anglicans. He proved himself a deft negotiator, assuaging Bp. Kajiwara’s apprehensions, and paving the way for the latter to become the leader of the breakaway Anglican province, such as it was with a dozen members spread out all over the country. And, what an uproarious sense of humor Hepworth had! Still, all the while, one could sense the tremendous responsibility that he felt, especially as he coaxed the TAC toward on his mission toward some form of full communion with Rome, which came to fruition and exploded in our faces in the form of Anglicanorum coetibus. Hepworth was one of those men who are bigger than life.

Bp. Kajiwara has since gone on to become the first Catholic priest in Japan under the auspices of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross (Australia), but now an octogenarian, he confines his ministrations to his own household and the few who may gather in his house church in Tokyo. A protegé of mine and priest of the makeshift N.K.S.K.K., Fr. Yamaoka, has been (re)ordained a Roman priest in the Diocese of Hiroshima, with the blessing of the previous ordinary and the papal nuncio, but he has had to endure bullying from the other diocesan clerics in that diocese. Church politics never dies, what!

My own sense is that John Hepworth is much like the protagonist of a Greek tragedy: inspired, passionate, and determined. I hope that our narrow Anglican history will treat him kindly, for my own brief encounters with him proved to be rare brushes with genius, if not purity and holiness.