The Rt. Reverend Eugene Taylor Sutton’s Lenten message to the diocese acknowledges that “repentance is not a solitary act”:
Repentance is a corporate act of righting things within a spiritual community so that community can restore its right relationship with God…
For me personally and as your bishop, the process of repentance must begin with the Palermo family who suffered the unbearable loss of Thomas Palermo on December 27. I’m sorry for their loss and regret his death was by all accounts caused by the extreme impairment of my recently-installed bishop colleague Heather Cook.
I regret that my sister in faith, Heather apparently caused so much damage and suffering due to her disease of alcoholism, and sorry I was unable to recognize warning signs of her illness. I humbly repent not learning more about the “cunning, baffling and powerful nature of alcoholism. I pledge to do everything I can to educate myself and churches of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland about the insidious nature of addiction.
The full text can be read here.
Posted by Cara Ellen Modisett