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If our Archbishop spent less time fretting about climate change, he might notice the pope is about to mug him
 Can the Church of England be doomed? Would it matter if it were? Would anybody notice? These questions are prompted by the news that Pope Benedict XVI is attempting to persuade Anglican clergy and even entire parishes to defect en masse to the Roman Catholic Church. Good Lord! It's a Papist plot! This is a manoeuvre which, according to one's point of view, could be described as audacious, unfriendly and even predatory. Or just picking up somebody else's pieces... The Pope looks at our national Church and sees an increasingly fragmented institution, some of whose clergy and laity are longing for strong and decisive leadership. Or any leadership at all... So he turns poacher. Poachers set traps and snares or go creeping through the woods with guns. All the Pope seems to be doing is whispering "here, priesty-priesty!" in a Christiany kind of voice...
 Since the Pope regards the Roman Catholic Church as the one true Church, and does not even acknowledge the validity of Anglican orders, I suppose we should not be too surprised by what he has done, though it is difficult to imagine his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, making an open overture of this sort. The interesting question is why Pope Benedict should feel emboldened to so. I've heard of Anglican priests who've gone over to the Papists, some of them married -- the celibacy thing doesn't carry over if they've alrady got a wife. I don't think they even have to go through reprogramming. "High church" Anglicans are considered close enough to Catholics. I am afraid much of the explanation has to do with the leadership - or lack of it - of Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. While the Church of England had many problems before he was enthroned, and will continue to have them long after he has gone, it can't be denied that they have multiplied during his watch. I don't think it's a given that there will be a Church of England after he's gone. He might well be the Romulus Augustulus of the church.  Unsurprisingly, he appears to have been caught off-guard by the Pope's machinations. "Whut? Whut? Sorry! I wuz havin' a nap! Whuddya say?" Any Primate would admittedly have experienced difficulties in his position. He has tried in vain to bridge the gap between those who favour homosexual priests and those who abhor the idea. Right. What's it say in the Book? A sizeable minority of Anglican clergy dislike the prospect of women becoming bishops, and these are the people in particular whom the Pope hopes to lure to Rome. As the Church of England becomes more womanly its more manly members look for something a little more testicular...  And it must also be granted, in Dr Williams's partial defence, that no Archbishop of Canterbury is in the position of a Pope, who is able to issue encyclicals and can generally command at least public obedience among Catholics. On the other hand, you'd think that as head of a major denomination he'd spend a bit more time reading up on religious precedents and taking a firm stand here and there. He doesn't have to do it on every issue, but since he does it on not much of anything people do tend to notice. Many of the same people then look for something a little more substantial. The Primate of the Anglican Church is merely primus inter pares, So's the Pope, in theory... and is supposed to take into account the views of other bishops, clergy and even laity. The Queen (and by extension the Prime Minister and the Cabinet) is nominally head of the Church of England, not he. The Queen, the PM, and the Cabinet dont' spend a lot of time debating matters religious, nor are they trained to do so...  Still, when these points have been duly noted, Dr Williams has not been an impressive Archbishop. A reputedly brilliant academic, he has never served as an ordinary parish priest. I have no idea whether he's a "brilliant academic." He doesn't appear to be even a mediocre theologian, and as a leader he's squat. You can't lead if you don't know where you're going.
Who told you he was brilliant? Polysyllables don't make a genius, and they might even cover up a dullard.
Maybe there's no point to what he's saying? Maybe it's mush? Somehow people were able to make out what Calvin was saying, or Wesley. For that matter, the Pope somehow seems to get his message across. So here we have an inarticulate fellow with diabolical eyebrows who sometimes wears a funny hat and other times consorts with druids. You sure he's a genius?
 Paradoxically, he is capable of being direct to the point of triteness when he feels moved - as he often does - to discourse on secular matters. Y'mean when he's talking about things outside, sometimes far outside, his field? I'm always struck that he's holding the same seat Cranmer held. The thought kinda takes my breath away. Some will remember how not very long ago he incautiously suggested during a radio interview that officially sanctioned Sharia courts might be allowable for Muslims in this country. It did not help that in a subsequent lecture this statement was hedged about with caveats. The damage had been done. Seems like history's outside his field of expertise, doesn't it? The whole idea behind English law has been one set of laws for everybody. Far too often he sounds like a Guardian leader writer in full flood rather than a divine. In other words he's a pedestrian intellect masquerading as somebody really, really smart? One of his pet subjects is global warming. Lemme see... That's in Galatians, right? Or is it in Isaiah?
You'd kinda think that, wouldn't you? In an interview only last week with The Times, Dr Williams suggested that it was 'unsustainable' to airfreight vegetables from Africa because of the effect of aircraft emissions on global warming. I imagine he believes that climate change threatens the integrity of our God-given world, and is therefore a moral issue. I'm still looking for the echoes of Thomas Aquinas here... The trouble is that thousands of poor Africans will be impoverished if we do not buy their produce. This is not a matter about which a sensible Archbishop should be emphatic. Cause, meet effect. I think the Church got it by way of the Greeks, who got it from the Hittites, who got it from the Assyrians, who got it from the Babylonians, who got it from the Sumerians, who invented the concept when Gilgamesh and Enkidu conked Humbaba with a rock and he died.
"'e wuz goin' 58 miles an hour, yer honour!" "To the Tower wiv him!" Amusingly, Dr Williams's predecessor but one as Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, was once fined for driving at nearly 100mph on the Stevenage by-pass when he was Bishop of St Albans. I hope he is not roasting in Dr Williams's version of Hell. Does Dr. Williams have a version of Hell? Has he ever said? There are already more than enough politicians and pundits telling us what we should, and should not, do in the way we live our secular lives. Surely the proper function of the senior Archbishop of the Established Church is to provide Christian guidance on profound moral questions, and to carry the flag for Christian values in an age in which science pretends it has all the answers. Yes, but taking a position on moral questions can be controversial. Look at all the people who haven't become Catholic! We don't want a rent-a-quote Archbishop popping up every day of the week. I understand, too, that senior clerics do not have a hotline to God, and may sometimes be themselves unsure as to the true Christian path. On the other hand you'd think they should spend a lot of time thinking on that very subject... Nonetheless, I long for an Archbishop of Canterbury who spares us his fashionable advice on the secular issues of the day, and tells us how we should respond as Christians to the moral challenges of our age. I can see that Dr Williams does not want to be divisive, and he probably fears that strong guidance, for example on assisted dying, might alienate some Anglicans who are instinctively in favour of it. They're the ones who won't become Catholics, so there'll likely still be a Church of England, until the last member assists the second last in shuffling off the mortal coil. But the Church of England is not a club intended to keep a diminishing band of members happy. If it is to justify its continued existence as our so-called national Church, it must speak to the whole nation - or at any rate the whole of England. In his moral timidity and preoccupation with fashionable secular issues, Dr Williams exemplifies the worst traits of the modern Church of England. He's talking about its similarity to lukewarm dishwater. You can't drink it and it's not even very good for washing dishes. And yet a Church which at a national level appears so shaky in its beliefs is sometimes remarkably strong in individual parishes. In my home-town of Oxford, for example, there are Anglican churches where it is difficult to find a seat on Sundays. I'm guessing they still use the Book of Common Prayer, though I could be mistaken... Young people in particular yearn for guidance. Some will become Muslim, some will become Catholic, and the remainder will become communists or Greens... Many of them are not satisfied with the secular pieties of our age. If they cannot find a home in the Church of England, some of them will turn to the Roman Catholic Church, where doubtless they will be welcomed with open arms. That's what I just said, only he left out the Muslims... But the Church of England is surely worth preserving, partly because it is so bound up with our history and even now has a special place in the English nation, and partly because of the beauty of its liturgy (even though the beauties of the Authorised Version and the 1662 prayer book have regrettably been largely set aside) and of its choral music. So much for the Book of Common Prayer...
Posted by: Fred 2009-10-23 |
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