Only a body as isolated and complacent as the Commissioners could imagine that the solution to the Church’s problems could be found in a reorganisation of well established diocesan patterns and loyalties.
It is classic “displacement activity” which distracts from the Church’s primary purpose of preaching the Gospel.
The quality of thinking and analysis in the Commissioners’ proposals is poor: if this exercise is repeated elsewhere in England, as is threatened, one fears for the future of the national Church.
What Mr McLeod doesn’t seem to have considered is that the Church of England may have no other choice. It is haemorrhaging members, income is dropping, expenses are rising, and disunity is rife. The CofE seems to be going out of its way to drive out the very people that could most help arrest the decline (orthodox evangelicals and anglo-catholics). Expect many more cries of anguish over the coming months and years as reality continues to bite.