Hi James,

You were drawing an analogy with the counseling field.  In the counseling field, confidentiality is between counselor and client…not third parties.  Since none of the people involved had that relationship, then it is a moot point.

Sam, if I accidentally send you a personal email, then, yes, you can read it.  What can I do to stop you?  Would it be in bad taste for you to publicize it?  I think so.  Could you use better judgement than to publicize it?  Probably.  Would it be very Christian of you to publicize it?  Probably not.  But you could and there’s not anything I could do to stop you.  That’s the risk of internet communication.

More to the point, weren’t these folk intending to release this document anyway?  I don’t recall there be anything all that egregious in their emails.  It was the document and its timing that I found problematic as I’ve noted elsewhere.

In Christ,
Shawn

Well, ok, but “that’s the risk of internet communication” isn’t quite right; the riskiness doesn’t really say anything to the moral question.  That’s blaming the victim.  And in fact in secular terms laws are rapidly being adapted to protect electronic communication in the ways that paper communication already is.

And yes, you’re right that there wasn’t anything particularly sensitive in the emails, but that also doesn’t speak to the moral question (or the question of “conduct unbecoming of clergy”).  It’s totally irrelevant.  If I wrote an email to my friend and said, “Hey, let’s get together next week for a beer,” and then somebody accidentally got ahold of it and published it all over the internet saying, “Look at this cretin meeting his friends for beer!  Clearly he is trying to destroy the Episcopal Church,” well then I wouldn’t be too upset (how silly), but I would at least attempt to point out that I would expect better from Christian priests.  I don’t really think the ACI folks are making a big deal out of it; I think they’re trying to respond to something after it was made into a big deal.