When I was ordained almost 37 years ago in Hereford as a young curate, I would sometimes bump into an older incumbent in the town. He was a delightful and slightly eccentric character who always referred to me and all his fellow clergy as “brother”. I found it very touching not least because it spoke of a truth about ministry and the Christian Church. When I was asked, many years later, to become an Archdeacon I sought the advice of an older and more experienced Archdeacon and explained to him that I was worried about the change from being part of the clergy union, as it were, as I would inevitably and rightly have to take on a juridical rôle. “Think of them, always”, he said, “as your brothers and sisters”.

We began this Synod with prayer in which we gave thanks for a number of people and then said the Lord’s Prayer. It has always been my understanding of the Christian faith that the Lord’s Prayer refers not only to my relationship with God, but also my relationship with fellow-Christians: we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

I recognise, of course, that fraternal relationships can be pretty vicious. Cain and Abel spring to mind.

In medieval imagery and texts Cain is frequently portrayed as beating Abel with the jawbone of an ass.

This report is, in my view, another jawbone of an ass: it is clumsy, inept and brutal. It is clumsy because it refers to consultation – (it’s now becoming one of the most slippery words in the Church’s vocabulary): but nowhere in the report does it indicate where changes were made to the text as a result of that consultation. It is clumsy because it arrogates to itself decision-making powers about the distribution of money – and assumes that finance and policy are one and the same.

It is inept because it recommends taking money from Cathedrals, places which are, at the very forefront of mission – and does so in the name of mission.

It is inept because it arrogantly assume that Bishops have nothing to do with mission – when much of my time is spent precisely at points of mission; and treats us as ‘cost centre’ which cannot (and I quote) be “insulated” from cuts.

It is inept because it fails to ask why our costs have gone up and does not explain that being HR departments of dioceses, which our offices largely are, new legislation e.g. on data protection or child protection cannot be instituted without cost.

But above all it is brutal because it joins others in the Church in despising the Bishops as leaders; it despises our rôle in mission; it despises the fact that we have been called by the Church to be Bishops and does so, knowing that for us as Bishops to have to justify ourselves in public is a degrading and humiliating exercise. It is brutality with a smirk.

And it is brutal because it wilfully wants to set one part of the Church against another, Cathedrals v parishes, Bishops v Cathedrals – and there is no concept of Christian fraternity at its heart. No sense of reciprocity.

If I were its author I should want to have the grace to withdraw it now – and then spend time asking before God why such a clumsy, inept and brutal document has been placed before us.

In the interests of solidarity one with another I urge Synod to reject it.