![http://www.archbishopofyork.org/img.php?f=/york/data/images/ABY_Official_/250_Archbishop_speaking_at_Oscar_Romero_Commemorative_Service.jpg&p=toWidth&o=jpg&a[width]=260](http://www.archbishopofyork.org/img.php?f=/york/data/images/ABY_Official_/250_Archbishop_speaking_at_Oscar_Romero_Commemorative_Service.jpg&p=toWidth&o=jpg&a[width]=260)
Frontrunner to replace him is the Church of England's second highest cleric, Archbishop of York John Sentamu. Born in Uganda, he fled to Britain in 1974 to escape from dictator Idi Amin.
To the Bishops of the Church of England, and the members of the Primates Meeting of the Anglican Communion
...But Williams' representative in Rome, the Very Rev. David Richardson, called the Vatican's decision "surprising," given that the Catholic Church in the past had welcomed individual Anglicans in without creating what he called "parallel structures" for entire groups of converts.
"The two questions I would want to ask are 'why this and why now,'" he told The Associated Press. "Why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has decided to embrace that particular method remains unclear to me."
Also unclear, he said, was the Vatican's target audience: those Anglicans who have already left the Anglican Communion, or current members. Levada said it covered both.
"If it's for former Anglicans, then it's not about our present difficulties, then it's people who have already left," Richardson said. If it's current Anglicans, "There is in my mind an uncertainty for whom it is intended..."
Let me hear you say it:
Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
The darling bit of cheerleading above comes from a sermon delivered by the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, newly appointed President and Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chris Johnson brings the appointment, and the homily, to our attention.
There are doubtless Catholic clergy who are in favor of abortion on demand, but in public they have to pretend otherwise. Yet Ragsdale has the enthusiastic support of her hierarchy, who can be in no doubt about her opinions.
This support -- administratively, at least -- extends to Anglicanism's head hierarch, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Doctor Williams' "big tent" approach to doctrinal deviance has earned him the congratulation of the media (and the deviants). But not everyone is equally impressed by this openness. Austen Ivereigh recounted for us a telling anecdote about Williams' visit to Rome on the occasion of Benedict XVI's installation as Pope:
In 2005, the delegation of Christian leaders to greet the new Pope had been split into two categories: the "Orthodox Churches" on the one hand, and the "ecclesial communities of the west" on the other, with whom the Anglicans had been lumped. This was consistent with Dominus Iesus, and for the Anglicans a serious snub: it meant that Rome's official view of Anglicanism was that it did not have valid bishops or Eucharist. Over lunch I spoke to various members of the delegation, and each said the same: that it had been disappointing, insulting and hurtful to them to be lumped in with Protestant churches which lack sacraments and clergy.
Ivereigh tells us that Williams was seething at the judgment implicitly conveyed by the Vatican's segregation:
That's when Dr Williams joked -- it was a sardonic joke, said through gritted teeth -- that he thought he should have worn a T-shirt bearing the words "GRAVELY DEFICIENT". The words had been used in Card. Ratzinger's bombshell 2000 document Dominus Iesus to describe non-Christian faiths.
Precisely this reaction shows that Rowan Williams sees himself as a make-believe bishop renting a costume in a make-believe church. He claims to be in communion with gay bishops, women bishops, and clergy that include truculent pro-aborts, druids, and the occasional imam -- and then he feels offended when the Holy See takes him at his word. This is not the reaction of a serious man. It's the hard-core Protestants who deserved to be miffed by a seating chart that classes them with Williams; they, at least, are capable of making and abiding by an affirmation of Christian faith.
At some point a man has to make a choice: he can either be a critic -- aloof, skeptical, ironic -- or he can commit himself to the battle. But Williams wants to have it both ways, watching the game from the sidelines and then trying to crowd into the team photo when it's over. Reviewing a collection of William's essays, Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson wrote "his fear of closure begins to seem far too obsessive to be truly helpful in the life of faith." That was a scholar criticizing a scholar. When the skeptic in question is a bishop, or pretends to be, the criticism multiplies in force. " Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done!"
You were saying, my lord ...?
The immense damage done to the Archbishop of Canterbury during Monday night's debate on women priests is still sinking in. Dr Rowan Williams had not intended to speak, but he was so alarmed by the lack of provision for traditionalists in the code of practice that he appealed to Synod members to reject it. They ignored him.
It was as if a Prime Minister, having quietly supported a piece of legislation in the Commons, suddenly lost his nerve, appealed to the House to change its mind, and was then rebuffed. Even Gordon Brown has yet to chalk up that sort of disaster.
Rowan being Rowan, the meaning of his intervention was not immediately clear. But, as Ruth Gledhill noted, a cold chill swept across the chamber as it dawned on people that the Archbishop "now wants the whole thing blown out of the water". Which was not, of course, what happened.
And so Cantuar's leadership is further diminished, just before the start of the Lambeth Conference. Andrew Carey, son of Archbishop Carey, has produced a pretty devastating analysis of Monday night's "train wreck" on the American Anglican website Stand Firm:
"While Dr Williams has often given traditionalists hope that he would back a structural solution to their problems of conscience, he seems to have completely ruled out strong leadership on theological and ecclesial issues. Wearing permanently now, it seems, the persona of the mediator, Dr Williams was seen by Synod trying to have it both ways. 'I am deeply unhappy with any scheme... which ends up structurally humiliating women.' But he was equally unhappy about marginalising traditionalists. He therefore came 'not very comfortably to the conclusion', we needed a 'more rather than less robust form of structural provision'.
"The Archbishop by his thoughtfulness, gravity and seriousness carries great weight and affection in General Synod but he failed to use this credit on Monday night. And as for the House of Bishops in general, the one word you will never hear them using these days is 'collegiality'. The Bishops are pulling in all directions at once. It is no surprise then to see that the Church of England is now synodically led and governed."
If I was a member of the C of E, I'd be sick to death now of the Archbishop's haunted hand-wringing. The word that comes to mind is Amletico - "Hamlet-like", as Pope John XXIII described his tortured successor, Paul VI.
I don't think Rowan Williams wants to be Archbishop of Canterbury any more; indeed, I'm not even sure he wants to be in the Church of England.
