Ex-reverend now.

In 2003 Rev. Robin Barret was rector of Good Shepherd church in St. John’s. He had been married to a woman for 21 years and had three children. Yes, I know that’s unusual for an Anglican priest today – most male priests seem to want to marry men, but these were early days in the homoerotic devolution of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Finally, after 25 years in the closet Rev. Robin decided that he could no longer hide who he “really was”, so he announced to his congregation that he was gay. To put it bluntly, he liked having sex with other men. To pacify his congregation, he invited them to attend a “six-week educational workshop at the church on homosexuality”. Rev. Robin declared he hoped “it helps people to understand how I can be gay and a priest at the same time … there’s no going back.” Apparently, that left some in the congregation unconvinced.  Read more about it here.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of who Rev. Robin “really was”. In 2009 he was arrested for possessing child pornography; some of the images were of babies being molested. Rev. Robin must have decided that it was not yet the right time to come out as a clerical paedophile so there was no course on helping people understand how he could continue to be a priest while enjoying watching babies being raped. In fact, this led to a period of going in: to jail, not a closet.

Elizabeth Barnes, executive officer of the Diocese of Eastern Newfound and Labrador, was disappointed by Rev. Robin’s tastes. “I’ve worked with him directly. I always found him a genuine, caring individual and his call to social causes is exemplary of the kind of man he is” she declared. And Hitler made the trains run on time.

Robin Barret is in the news again. This time because he wants evidence presented at his trial to be excluded; so much for the Anglican mania for inclusion. He believes the evidence should be excluded because the police battered his door down unannounced, not leaving him any time at all to hide the photos of the raped babies.

Barret was jailed for two and a half years and placed on the national sex offender registry for life. You can read about Barret’s appeal to have the evidence thrown out here.

God, through Christ will forgive anyone no matter how heinous the sin. But where is Barret’s repentance? Of course, he may have repented – in the closet, as it were – we have no way of knowing. I do hope so, I would not want to meet my maker with that on my conscience.

Still, at least “his call to social causes is exemplary.”