That’s the claim of A.S. Haley, an Episcopalian canon lawyer who is demanding that canonical charges be filed against Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, for accepting, during her time as Bishop of Nevada, into the priesthood an ex-Catholic monk whom she knew to have had a chronic molestation problem. Haley writes:

Both the officials at Penn State University and at the Diocese of Nevada (including its Standing Committee at the time, and its Commission on Ministry, as well as its Bishop) made an apparent decision to ignore the offender’s history, and to place (or leave) him in a position where he would be free to continue his abuses, if he was so inclined (notwithstanding supposed “restrictions” on his ministry, which were soon forgotten altogether).

The chief dissimilarity between the two cases, however, lies in seeing how the two institutions reacted to the news of this decision to hire (or to retain) a self-convicted pederast, once the news of that decision became public. The University fired not only the offender, but also his supervising head coach, an 84-year-old figure otherwise beloved in college football for his record number of winning seasons. And the University’s President, to whom the charges had also been reported, but who had chosen not to take them to the police, was fired as well.

But as for the Episcopal Church (USA)? The former Bishop of Nevada, who now serves as the Church’s Presiding Bishop, has had not one public word to say about her decision to receive Bede Parry as an Episcopal priest. The Diocese of Nevada, in its turn, has published a statement assuring everyone that the canons were “scrupulously followed”, but which ended up raising more questions than it actually answered.

In short, it is the University which has acted in a more open and Christian manner than one of the chief Christian churches in the United States.