The white smoke may not yet have gone up, but the 16 members of the Crown Nominations Commission are trying to decide who should succeed Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury.
It is difficult to imagine such a large committee coming to a very sensible decision, particularly when those assembled under the chairmanship of Lord Luce will have been chosen with an almost painful inclusiveness: High Church bishop matching Low Church bishop, a woman priest matching an evangelical layman and so forth.
Nevertheless, they must come to a decision, knowing that whoever they choose must make decisions that risk pulling the whole Church apart. Rowan Williams is handing on to his successor something like a vase with an irreparable crack. One false move over the question of gay marriage, gay priests or women bishops and the handsome old antique will fall apart in his successor’s hands.
My advice? Leave it in God’s hands and stop worrying! It is God’s Church, and not yours! He knows best, and He will provide.
God’s church? I thought this one was founded by Henry and run by the State- hence it’s huge issues regarding authority.
The one founded on Peter, meanwhile, continues to be united and has a wonderful man at the helm
That may be true, but they’ve got problems, too.
Papal appointment is not a panacea. Two American bishops just retired were raving revisionists and were appointed by Bl. JP II. That doesn’t count real rotters such as Weakland.
I’m unsure whether this is intended to incite praise or blame, but I don’t think it’s really truthful. He surely has a very strong connection to Wales, the land of his birth and the place in which he served as Bishop and then Archbishop. But from the late 60s until the early 90s he lived, studied, taught and ministered in the context of the COE. He was ordained as deacon and priest in the COE and taught at two COE theological colleges.
It’s truer to say he had a limited experience of leading parishes but he’s hardly unique amongst Archbishops of Canterbury in that. Something similar might be said, for example, of Michael Ramsey, Donald Coggan and Robert Runcie.
Indeed AFAIK the only ABC since WWII to have served for a significant time only as a priest leading a parish was George Carey.