SETTING THE BOUNDARIES ON CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
This article was sent to the Deputy Chair of the Disciplinary Tribunal of the Anglican church Sydney Diocese in November 2008. In response, the director PSU Mr. Phillip Gerber telephoned the writer one morning and treated me to a 45 minutes abusive harangue, to which I listened with some fascination that he would be so unprofessional as to telephone me and speak in such a way to a fellow lawyer. He was upset by this open letter and a previous open letter I sent to the Members of the Professional Standards Committee (PSC) and by a raft of other articles written and published along with the open letters on my then website, transferred to www.churchdispute.com , which demonstrated that there had never been a viable case against Dr. Dobbs and that the responses of the FAC leadership and that of himself, other diocesan personnel, lawyers, committee members and senior clergy had been abusive, incompetent and unprofessional.
I have revisited this letter now in 2018 as the case of Figtree Anglican Church and the Dobbs family is under review by the present Archbishop of Sydney, who wishes to make an announcement to the FAC congregation and to give his personal apology to the Dobbs family for the injustice with which they have been treated. For them, it has been a long 10 years.
Open Letter to Disciplinary Tribunal Nov 2008 revised Jan 2018