Dr Rowan Williams challenged Catholic doctrine by claiming that even the dispute over whether women can be priests should not be a serious dividing issue between the two major Christian denominations.
He held up the Anglican Communion, which has been driven to the brink of collapse over homosexuality in recent years, as an example of how a family of churches can remain connected despite the differences between them.
The archbishop made his provocative comments at the Gregorian University in Rome, at a meeting to celebrate the centenary of Cardinal Willebrands, a former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
What an incredibly, I’m sorry, dumb remark from somebody who is in the highest position in the Anglican Communion. How can one be so educated, so long an ordained priest and be so absolutely ignorant of Catholic sacramental theology? “In what way does the prohibition against ordaining women so ‘enhance the life of communion’, reinforcing the essential character of filial and communal holiness as set out in Scripture and tradition and ecumenical agreement, that its breach would compromise the purposes of the Church as so defined?†Other than eliminating the ability to serve the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Our Lord – one of the most central parts of the Catholic experience – to the faithful? Well, no big deal, I guess.
Let’s hope he was simply working on only a few hours of sleep.
Sometimes you find the most handy amunition for an argument is handed to you on a silver platter. Let the man speak! Tell us more!
[i]How can one be so educated, so long an ordained priest … [/i]
Uh, well, one can start by denying the second … but in any case perhaps Williams hasn’t actually read [i]Ordinatio Sacerdotalis [/i] ?
[blockquote]Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.[/i]
[blockquote] He held up the Anglican Communion, which has been driven to the brink of collapse over homosexuality in recent years, as an example of how a family of churches can remain connected despite the differences between them. [/blockquote]
Simply unbelievable.
My goodness! He really is, without any exaggeration, utterly clueless.
Slightly edited-ed.
Clearly, he understands the Roman Catholics just as well as he understands the Anglo-Catholics.
My oh my.. the CofE has actually BECOME The Church of the Divine Looney from Monty Python..
Is it so obvious as the ABC claims that women’s ordination is agreed to be a Gospel imperative within Anglicanism (in other words compromising on it is agreed to be a denial of the essential character of the church) . Back in 1978 women’s ordination to the presbyterate was, as I understand it, considered an adiaphoron by the Lambeth Council. I believe this remains the formal position of the Communion – if it were not so one might have expected Provinces that do not ordain women to face rebuke. When women were ordained in England in 1992 I recall hearing the phrase that it was a development that needed to be “received” by the church. Presumably this “reception” has in the ABCs mind ended though not even the whole Anglican Communion has received women’s presbyteral ministry and most Anglican provinces have not felt it appropriate to consecrate women as bishops.
I note in passing, the glissando between the views of the Church of England and those of the wider Anglican Communion – it’s a movement that seems not infrequent in Anglicans’ ecumenical conservations – and may not quite convey to our dialogue partners those things upon which the Communion as a whole genuinely has settled views.
Bizarre. Rowan has not been keeping up with either Rome or Orthodoxy on the WO thingy, obviously. Rather puts the rest of his “thought” in perspective………….or in his lack of comprehension of reality.