“Rowan Williams returns to Old Labour sloganising as he desperately tries to distract himself from Anglican meltdown” – Damian Thompson
Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a “blood-crazed ferret”. He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. In today’s Daily Tlegraph he states:
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s highly politicised and biased criticisms of the Coalition lessen the dignity of his office. But here’s the key point. This is displacement therapy, designed to take Dr Williams’s mind off the shocking crisis of morale in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.
He can’t hold his Church together. His authority diminishes by the day. So what does he do? He retreats to the comfort zone of guest editing the New Statesman and Left-wing scaremongering over the Government’s modest reductions in planned spending.
It’s one thing to dismiss the Big Society as a meaningless slogan (though I don’t think it is). It’s quite another to suggest that it’s an “opportunistic” excuse for spending cuts. Do you remember Dr Williams protesting when Gordon Brown was hosing down the public sector with money, fundamentally weakening the economy – and the weakest people in it? Me neither.
Here’s the reality. The Anglican Communion has disintegrated on Rowan Williams’s watch, partly thanks to his habit of saying one thing to fundamentalist Africans and quite another to liberal Americans. His own bench of bishops is hopelessly divided on key moral issues, and Rowan’s hand-wringing isn’t uniting them.
Out of four bishops commissioned to look after traditionalist congregations, three have left the C of E to become Catholic monsignors. Over fifty Anglican ministers are being ordained RC priests this month.
You may or may not sympathise with their decision. But one thing’s for sure. When Pope Benedict is confronted by a major crisis in his Church, he doesn’t take time off to guest edit a secular magazine in the hope of impressing his mates.