By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –

Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole

The Bishop has passed on to meet his maker. There will be a requiem mass at the Cathedral at 2.30 pm Monday 08.09.2025. May he Rest in Peace.

From Prince of Wales College, he was a highly educated priest whose Oxford training gave him the ability to read the Gospel in Greek at services. In 1970 he was allegedly encouraging the JVP. The IGP warned Bishop Harold de Soysa of Kenneth’s imminent arrest unless he was removed. So he came to Colombo as Diocesan Secretary. His vast contacts there laid the ground for his election as Bishop.

At the requiem mass all kinds of good words will be said of him, with nary a word of his weaknesses that perhaps are unnecessary as, as it is written (Romans 3:23), “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God;” and (Isaiah 64.6) “We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags.”

Bishop Kenneth Fernando

Such positive eulogies might be comforting for the family left behind but that is contrary to Christian doctrine.

The theme of this article is that the Church has strayed from our stated doctrinal positions and conducts our funerals exactly as non-Christians do.

Likewise, my subtheme is that while the Bible extols martyrdom, the Church exemplifies bowing to clerical authority – a theocracy ignoring Jesus’ words: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8.32). Ephesians 6.10-12 commands us to warfare for the truth against evil:  “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Yet, in the Church no one will stand up against ecclesiastical misrule.

In the sad saga of Rev. Daniel Jeyaruban who has been kept suspended for over a year without pay and banned from stepping into St. John’s College, the entire CMS and Standing Committee Including the two Bishops were seen to have lost their belt of truth. Where is their breastplate of righteousness?  Where the truth on their feet, their shield of faith against flaming arrows that come when they stand up against the attacks on those who speak up.

The Church has lost its doctrinal commitment.

Let me end with an episode showing how castrated of its righteousness and truth the Church is at its highest level. I was a diocesan representative in the late 1990s. Bishop Fernando was the Chairman, Diocesan Council.

I had heard that at Pilimatalawa where most Protestant Clergy are trained, there had been unbearable sexual harassment of Methodist female ordinands. Bishop Fernando Chaired the Pilimatalawa Board.

Bishop Fernando, then chairing the Diocesan Council, was seated on the podium with Archdeacons and Diocesan Secretary Thanja Pieris (as I recall) on either side. I stood up and stated that I had heard that male ordinands harass female ordinands at Pilimatalawa making sexual advances, was highly concerned of our future priests’ behaviour, and asked if this was true.

Kenneth leaned forward looking both ways at those on the podium and answered “I have not heard of it. Have you?” No one replied. I believed him in trust.

I was elected to the Standing Committee (SC)  that year by Council and would soon be elected to the Constitutional Council drafting the Church’s Constitution, Canons and Rules under Kenneth. Shortly thereafter at the monthly SC meeting, Nihal Bhareti, Radio Ceylon’s Director of English Services,  who was also on the SC claimed that I had insulted the Church and should apologise. Kenneth, Bhareti’s Moratuwa Comrade, agreed and asked me for proof.

I asked for time. But the person who told me, another Anglican, denied it saying “You must be thinking of someone else.” He was afraid of ecclesiastical authority.

Month after month, I was reminded and I said I needed more time. When Bhareti insisted on punishment, Kenneth said if somebody would formally propose a punishment he would act. No one did, not even Bhareti.

The traditional excommunication is rarely used in liberal Churches and is reserved for Heresy (public teaching of beliefs that contradict the central doctrines of the Church); apostasy (the repeated and public renunciation of the faith, the Church, or its leaders); and schism and divisiveness.

Bhareti could have tried apostasy but that had the serious risk of going to an FR Petition where I would turn it on the apostate Church.

Moreover, lesser punishments like suspension of membership in Church bodies and parishes could be done but even these are rarely done in a liberal Church – not even for murder. Rev. Fr. Matthew Peiris, convicted of murdering his wife, was not punished by Kenneth, and celebrated the mass for felons in Prison. Nor was punished a senior priest who had an adulterous relationship locking himself up with the wife of a straying gynaecologist in his National Christian Council Office, supposedly counselling her! When Kenneth was forced to act by the husband’s staging a satyagraha in front of NCC, instead of punishing the priest, he  rewarded him by sending him off on a scholarship with leave to New Zealand to read for a doctorate.

Doctrine had been thrown out. No wonder the Church of England said punishments may be issued for moral sins but not for doctrinal sins. The Anglican Communion has no foundation for its morality to rest on.

Although excommunication is rarely done by the Anglican Church, the power to excommunicate is still retained by Bishops. The old service of excommunication is seen in the brilliant enactment by Richard Burton in the movie Thomas Becket. The story is about Saint Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.  The relevant extract from the movie can be seen here.

The clip is about the excommunication of Lord Gilbert for the sin of murdering one of Becket’s priests and the associated sacrilege. I had seen the film at the Liberty and dreaded the words of excommunication:

“We do here and now separate him from the precious body and blood of Christ and from the society of Christians. We exclude him forever from Holy Mother Church in heaven or on earth. We declare him excommunicate and anathema. We cast him into the outer darkness. We judge him damned with the Devil and his fallen Angels and his reprobates to eternal fire and lasting pain.”

Fearful and desperate, I asked everyone I could including other Church-heads who share in the Management of Pilimatalawa. They all pleaded ignorance.

Our last SC meeting was around July. I was getting month by month extensions to furnish proof or show cause why I should not be punished. Then like a prayer answered, Rev. Duleep Fernando who was then Head of the Methodist Church asked me to deliver an invited lecture at their Pastors’ Conference in Warakapola. There, after dinner, remembering I had asked him for information, he pointed to a table where some Methodist priests were seated and told me, “Those people were students there at the time you mention. If anyone, they will know.”

At the next SC meeting I gave the names of Anglican clergy-candidates whom Kenneth himself had sacked and the Methodist ladies  who had left because of the harassment. There was silence as Kenneth moved to the next item on the agenda.

Thanja Pieris dutifully failed to minute this item fully!

It was dark as the meeting finished. The Rev. Godwin Weerasoriya, Archdeacon, Colombo, ran out and met me in the parking lot. He told me, “They all knew you were telling the truth. I am sorry, but how could I speak up in front of the Bishop?”

This admission betrayed the theocracy the Church is.

Lessons

However, after this description we would gain nothing unless we can draw some beneficial lessons – that the Anglican Church has lost balance and has no connection to its founding principles, and that there is no Love for those being trampled down (like Daniel and me) by those in authority. It has no doctrine except to protect  and shore-up theocracy. We need forceful leadership from the current Bishop, Dushantha Rodrigo, to show leadership and come out of this morass.