What future for Anglicans and the Archbishop?

Yesterday the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury met together at the Vatican. They talked frankly about Church of England and Anglican matters that have set back the unity prospects between their two churches. His Holiness stated the position bluntly: "There is much in our relations over the past 4O years for which we must give thanks...recent developments, especially concerning the ordained ministry and certain moral teachings, have affected not only internal relations within the Anglican Communion but also relations between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. We believe that these matters are of vital importance for the preaching of the Gospel in its integrity, and that your current discussions will shape the future of our relations". There was no doubt that the references were to women priests and an openly gay bishop in the Anglican Church. Undoubtedly these are serious obstacles in any hope of further unity.

At the same time......

The Sunday Times
November 19, 2006
Pope plans recruitment drive among disaffected Anglicans
Christopher Morgan
THE POPE, who is this week meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury, is drawing up plans to welcome disaffected Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI is keen to reach out to conservative Anglicans who have been antagonised by their church’s stance on women priests and homosexuality. Senior Vatican figures are understood to have drawn up a dossier on the most effective means of attracting disenchanted AnglicansThe recruitment drive is a potential embarrassment for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is travelling to Italy for his meeting with the Pope. It is understood that Fr Joseph Augustine di Noia, undersecretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the most powerful of the Vatican’s departments, has led a team analysing the current schism in the Anglican world. The ordination of the openly gay priest Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 caused outrage among some Anglicans. It threatened to cause a split in the church, which has 70m members worldwide. In America, some of the 2.5m Anglicans have already left the church and become Catholics. In some cases, entire parishes have “defected”, but they have been allowed to continue with some of their Anglican traditions and prayers. John Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, who has been involved in supporting former Anglicans who have converted to Catholicism, has been helping di Noia with his recruitment dossier. He travelled to Rome last month to suggest ways of appealing to Anglicans.The Pope’s enthusiasm for bringing traditional Anglicans into the fold was expressed powerfully three years ago when as Cardinal Ratzinger he sent greetings to a group of conservative churchmen meeting in Texas in protest at the election of Robinson. Williams was involved in a controversy last week when it was reported that he had suggested the church might reconsider the issue of women priests. He insisted he had been misquoted. While the Pope is keen to welcome any conservative Anglicans, he is also keen to forge good relations with Williams. “The Vatican will do nothing to undermine Williams at such a precarious moment in Anglican history,” one source said. Despite the friendly overtures, the Pope believes the Anglican Church faces a difficult future. Graham Leonard, the former Bishop of London and now a Roman Catholic monsignor, said: “The Pope’s view is that theologically Anglicanism has no guts in it.”

Further......

Two consecrations in Australia -->Nov 24, 2006
The Chairman of Forward in Faith Australia, Fr David Robarts OAM, and Vice Chairman, Fr Harry Entwistle SSC, were this morning being consecrated to the Episcopate in Adelaide, South Australia, by the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, the Most Reverend John Hepworth.
Forward in Faith Australia is co-operating with the TAC in the consecration of these two bishops. The Consecration of Bishop David Chislett last year attracted widespread interest due to the involvement of Anglican Communion bishops with bishops of the TAC. The Right Reverend Ross Davies, Bishop of The Murray in South Australia, was one of the co-consecrators on that occasion and his Report to the FiF UK National Assembly which explains the position in Australia and the relationship of FiFA with the TAC can be heard here. For the sake of the unity of his own diocese and relations in the Anglican Church of Australia, Bishop Davies did not participate in the consecrations of Fr Entwistle and Fr Robarts. Bishop Davies, who supports in principle the co-operation of FiFA and the TAC in providing alternative episcopal oversight, today released the text of an e-mail which he sent earlier this week to the bishops of the Anglican Church of Australia:
Dear Brothers,
As much as we would all like to minister in a Church where misinformation, whether intentional or not, never occurs, I hope you will forgive me for reminding you, that whatever you may hear, I am fulfilling my undertaking which I made to you at the Bishops' Meeting earlier this year. This means that I will neither be participating in, nor attending, the consecrations of the Reverends Harry Entwistle and David Robarts to the episcopate, which will occur in Adelaide this coming Friday 24th November. These are taking place in a church building which is not part of the property of the Anglican Church of Australia in the Province of SA.
Also to allay any misunderstanding I will explain about licences held in The Murray. At present there is only one bishop assisting me in episcopal functions. This is the Rt Rev'd Stuart Smith, formerly Bishop Assistant of Adelaide. He does this, in retirement, by holding my licence as an archdeacon and is permitted to assist in ordinations, officiate at confirmations and represent me and act 'in loco episcopi'. My legal advisors inform me that I am within canon law to grant a PTO, which may be exercised as a priest, to the Rt Rev'd David Chislett and to the two new bishops (Robarts and Entwistle). They are rarely in my diocese and are only ever invited to preach, celebrate the eucharist or other offices at which a priest is authorised to officiate.
Despite the differences in our church on the issue of Holy Order, I will continue to co-operate with you all to the highest degree possible in areas where we all have common cause.
Christine and I wish you and your families a happy and holy Christmastide and the blessings of Christ in the new year. We all share a great burden and probably join with the bishops of the early church in their cry of 'nolo episcopare'.
in Christ,
X Ross The Murray”
The Chairman of Forward in Faith International, Bishop John Broadhurst, also released today the text of a letter which he wrote to the two new bishops prior to their consecrations:
“Dear Fathers,
I write to assure you that you are both in my prayers today as you prepare to be ordained as bishops in the Church of God in Adelaide tomorrow.
It has long been clear to me that the treatment afforded to members of Forward in Faith Australia by the Anglican Church in Australia has left you with little option but to pursue the course you have chosen. It is, then, my fervent hope that your future ministries will be richly blessed as you endeavour to serve all faithful Anglicans throughout Australia and that we will continue to work in close collaboration in the years to come.
With every blessing,
X John Fulham
The Right Reverend John Broadhurst
Bishop of Fulham
Chairman, Forward in Faith International”

Poor old Archbishop, as though that wasn't enough....

The archbishop's days are numbered By Damian Thompson
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 24/11/2006
Dr Rowan Williams's first official encounter with a Pope was a sad affair: he had to lean close to John Paul II in order to decipher his whispers. On being asked how the meeting had gone, he replied: "Well, I won't see him again."
Yesterday's discussions between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Benedict XVI were more lively. The Pope has been transformed. Not only is the role of the pontiff being played, Doctor Who-style, by another man; but that man, Joseph Ratzinger, has also managed to shrug off his own saturnine image and emerge as a beaming pastor with possibly the finest theological mind in the Church.
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Moreover – although he offended Muslims by declining to describe Islam as a religion of undiluted love – he has been careful not to rant about bioethics or sex. His view is that Catholics cannot explain what they are against until they do a better job of explaining what they are for.
As for the archbishop, more and more commentators are arguing that he is not the same man who met John Paul II three years ago. In the words of one Church source: "He is so weakened. In 2003 there was only one Archbishop of Canterbury. Now there are effectively three."
Perched uncomfortably on the chair of St Augustine, Dr Williams is constantly aware of two figures on either side of him: his predecessor, Lord Carey of Clifton, and his probable successor, Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York. We do not know whether Dr Sentamu wants the post, but the chances are that he will be offered it, and sooner rather than later.
Clergymen spend a lot of time on the internet, mostly for innocent purposes, such as following ecclesiastical backstabbing. The "Anglican blogosphere" is a rich source of speculation – very well-informed speculation in the case of the blog written by Andrew Brown, Church Times media correspondent. On November 13 – days before Dr Williams got himself into a pickle by implying that the Church of England might backtrack on women priests – Brown wrote: "It is the sensible bet that Rowan will retire, defeated if not broken, after the formal schism at the Lambeth Conference [in 2008], and Sentamu will be his successor."
The idea that Rowan Williams will step down in two or three years' time – a decade before he is required to – is being discussed in many quarters. It was first floated on Ship of Fools, a theological internet chat site, by someone calling himself "Spawn", who also predicted that the coming Lambeth Conference would be the archbishop's swansong. Does Spawn have inside information? He makes no secret of the fact that he is Andrew Carey, son of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury.
Like the Pope, Lord Carey has surprised everyone by reinventing himself. As Primate of All England, he was dismissed as a self-important booby: Captain Mainwaring in a mitre. Since his retirement in 2002, however, he has become "the king over the water" for conservative evangelical Anglicans, who – thanks to mushrooming churches in Africa – now far outnumber communicants of the Church of England.
Carey has done this partly by offering moral support to anti-homosexual Africans and Americans, even to the extent of travelling to Virginia to confirm opponents of Gene Robinson, the gay Bishop of New Hampshire. According to one Sunday newspaper, "a personal feud between the Archbishop of Canterbury and his predecessor has burst into the open" – a claim to be taken seriously, given that the commentator who made it, Christopher Morgan, was Rowan Williams's best man.
But, to give Lord Carey his due, he has also developed a knack that eluded him in office: of talking common sense. He was the first senior churchman to attack moderate Muslim leaders for not condemning Islamic suicide bombers "clearly and unequivocally"; this week he criticised the wearing of full-face veils by Muslim women.
Such outbursts fly in the face of every convention governing the behaviour of retired primates. Lord Carey's conservative admirers are not concerned; they continue to regard him as the real Archbishop of Canterbury. But that baton is now about to be passed, over Dr Williams's head, to a prelate whom African conservatives can truly consider one of their own: the Ugandan-born Dr Sentamu, who in his previous incarnation as a judge was a ferociously brave critic of Idi Amin.
Actually, it is not just Africans who look to Dr Sentamu as the de facto leader of the Church of England.
As Brown notes, he has been "anointed" by the tabloid press for speaking out on topics that his boss has sidestepped or overlooked. It was York, not Canterbury, that issued a long-overdue condemnation of the BBC's anti-Christian bias; it was York that attacked British Airways' fatuous ban on employees wearing a cross.
In other circumstances, Rowan Williams could have relied on liberal bishops to come to his rescue. But his equivocation over gay clergy and his private criticism of the calibre of women priests have alienated them.
If Rowan is so clever, they ask, why does he tie himself in rhetorical knots every time he opens his mouth?
Certainly, the archbishop will not have got far if he has tried to play intellectual games with the razor-sharp Benedict, who knows that the pursuit of Anglican-Catholic unity is now a waste of time (and BA jet fuel). And he also probably knows – since he has an impressive network of spies in England – that the archiepiscopate of Rowan Williams is itself a lost cause.
This time, it may be the Pope's turn to say: "Well, I won't see him again."