Rowan Williams, are you doing this on purpose?

[sparkindarkness]

Because, y’know, I think you’re an intelligent man. I also think you’re an aware man. And when you were first chosen you were tipped to be liberal. I get that “liberal” from an organised religion point of view is certainly different from what I consider liberal, but I kind of hoped it would mean more than “yes you can toast marshmallows on the

Comments

[stormcat]

He is making going Catholic look appealing by this point. At least the Catholics are honest about it. :-/ And I can flat-out disagree with them, instead of being tarred with the same brush of vengeful indifference the Anglican Church is.

[sparkindarkness]

I'm amazed that he has managed to make the pope look good here. It's almost like he is competing to be more objectionable

[stormcat]

It's rather disturbing. I'm not at all sure I like the direction the Anglican Church has gone lately anyway. When I'm actually thinking that Emperor Palpatinethe Pope is at least a more honest figure...

Do you suppose it's part of the deal to get more Anglicans to convert to Catholicism? They did have that meeting, after all. Can't you just imagine it?

[sparkindarkness]

He's playing politics. The extreme hard right wingers in Africa and South America are threatening to split - so he's pandering to them. But he's pandering to hate.

Heh, there was a bunch of anglican vicars went to the catholic church (getting special dispensation for celibacy thing - shows you how much the pope is willing to throw out his convictions for point scoring) because the Anglican church was TOO LIBERAL for them.

Frankly if I were Rowan I'd recognise that these hardliners are damaging him and just say "you don't like it - go talk to the damn pope. We won't tolerate your evil"

[suryaofvulcan]

Warning - sweeping generalisation coming up.

Rowan Williams has a problem. On the one hand he has Anglican dioceses in the US ordaining gay and lesbian bishops. On the other, he has dioceses in Africa that are vehemently anti-gay. Above anything else, he wants to keep the Anglican church 'unified', so he needs to somehow reconcile those two extremes. He fears that if he appears to be too 'pro-gay' he will alienate the African dioceses so much that they will split away from the Anglican church. Similarly, if he opposes the US dioceses, he risks losing them. So he sits on the fence, doing his best to say bugger all.

It's entirely political, and for someone who sets himself up as a 'moral leader' not just in this country but in the Christian world as a whole, it stinks like a midden in summer. He's too concern with preventing the divisions within the Anglican communion to stand up and do the right thing.

All of which makes his 'morality' questionable at best, in my view.

[sparkindarkness]

The problem is he has looked at the two sides - and thrown in with not just homophobia but the grossest element of it. He openly criticises homosexual bishops, no delay, no pretention otherwise - then is silent or mealy mouthed when it comes to an openly genocidal bill. It doesn't even look like he's trying to balance to two factions - it looks like he's supporting one

In the end he's going to have to make a choice - because the the moment he seems willing to tolerate or endorse extreme persecution of homosexuals - which undermines him and his church completely