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Rowan Williams Throws A Hissy Fit
 Like a Druidic emissary from Tuatha Dé Danaan, the mythic inhabitants of Ireland, the Archbishop of Canterbury will lob a spiritual depth charge at Pope Benedict XVI on Monday when he damns the Catholic Church in Ireland as having lost all credibility.Dr Williams also reveals on the BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week that he is withholding his blessing from Anglicans who choose to take advantage of the Pope's offer of a special home in the Catholic Church for disaffected Anglicans. "God bless them. I don't," he says, witheringly. What a contrast with the joyful ecumenical greetings between the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie and Pope John Paul II during the last papal visit in 1982, when they entered Canterbury Cathedral together, greeted each other with the sign of peace, knelt in prayer before the nave altar and then moved to the high altar where they kissed the Canterbury Gospels, a gift from Pope St Gregory the Great to St Augustine. This time, although Benedict's visit has the status of a state and not a mere pastoral visit, his welcome from the primus inter pares of the much smaller and itself divided Anglican Communion will be less effusive. Dr Williams has plenty of problems of his own. Next month the Episcopal Church of the US will consecrate its second openly gay bishop, Canon Mary Glasspool, as a bishop in the Los Angeles Diocese. Dr Williams's efforts to keep Anglicans united have succeeded to the extent that none quite knows if schism has occurred or not. New churches keep being formed, but to the extent that all 39 church leaders are expected to be invited to the next primates' meeting, they are all still in the same Anglican boat, even if that boat seems barely to be staying afloat. Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-04-03 |
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