GOD BLESS THE BISHOP OF FULHAM!
Asked what his views were on giving up his title as bishop, Bishop Broadhurst said: “Who cares. Soon I’ll be in a wooden box in front of the altar. What matters is the bigger picture. God matters, the truth matters. We as individuals don’t matter. We think we matter but we don’t.”
Bishop Broadhurst: The kind of Anglican for whom Benedict XVI's opening is primarily intended.
Anglican bishop refutes
former Canterbury prelate's
criticism of Benedict XVI
by Richard Kerbaj
Oct. 24, 2009
A senior Church of England bishop has attacked the former Archbishop of Canterbury as a “moaner” for complaining about the timing of the Pope’s offer to Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England to join Rome.
The Bishop of Fulham, the Right Rev John Broadhurst, told
The Times that
the Church of England, including the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had been aware for years of the Vatican’s plans to admit disaffected Anglicans.
“The Archbishop of Canterbury knew that this was happening, but didn’t know when,” Bishop Broadhurst said.
Asked about complaints by Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, about the Pope not consulting widely enough and seeking Dr Williams’s advice before announcing the plan, he said: “Well, he’s just moaning. Rowan is big enough and old enough to speak for himself.”
Bishop Broadhurst, chairman of the Forward in Faith traditionalist group and a campaigner against women priests, said Rome’s offer must be viewed as a positive step in the name of religious unity.
“I think that a major chance for realignment is sitting around, and I think that’s what God wants,” he said.
Yesterday Bishop Broadhurst appeared poised to lead a mass exodus of clergy to the Catholic Church.
He told
The Times that the Pope’s willingness to reach out to the traditionalists was a lifeline to an institution that had been “struggling for its existence for the last ten years”.
His views are in line with those of several other traditionalist clergymen — the former Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, and the Bishop of Chichester, the Right Rev John Hind — who welcomed Rome’s offer.
Last week the Holy See announced its intention to set up personal ordinariates, or extra-geographical Catholic dioceses, to bring into the fold former Anglicans who accept the Petrine ministry of Rome and oppose women bishops.
Bishop Broadhurst met his group’s Australian and American leaders yesterday to discuss Rome’s offer. “We have to decide what we do,” he told
The Times yesterday after Mass at St Augustine’s Church in Kilburn, northwest London.
“I want my organisation to collectively come to a decision. And I will make my decision in consultation with them. I will be encouraging them to very seriously consider the implications of what the Holy Father has offered.”
Anglican bishops who cross over would probably have to relinquish their title.
Asked what his views were on giving up his title as bishop, Bishop Broadhurst said: “Who cares. Soon I’ll be in a wooden box in front of the altar. What matters is the bigger picture. God matters, the truth matters. We as individuals don’t matter. We think we matter but we don’t.”
Everyone seems to be beating up on Archbishop Williams For a failure of leadership in the Anglican Communion. He did choose to straddle the fence, after all, instead of deciding unequivocally one way or the other whether the Church of England would officially adopt the liberal trend to ordain women and homosexuals as priests and bishops.
Pope’s coup may rid
Archbishop of Canterbury
of turbulent priests
by Ruth Gledhill
Oct. 26, 2009
Rowan Williams must be starting to wonder if he has any friends left. He is like the academic boy at school who no one wants to play with because he doesn’t understand the rules of fisticuffs.
In Rome, he has been regarded with great respect. His theology and learning mean he is considered a Catholic, albeit a liberal one. He has now learnt that respect counts for nothing when souls are at stake.
The cardinals in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith could not stand by when Anglican bishops came pleading for clemency after the General Synod vote in July to proceed with the consecration of women bishops without legal provisions for the opponents.
Now, as if reversing at a stroke the iconoclasm of the Reformation, the Pope has with one decree smashed 40 years of ponderous ecumenism that was going nowhere.
Dr Williams’s predecessor, Lord Carey of Clifton, is urging him to protest at the “appalling” injustice done him by Rome’s failure to consult before
the tanks were parked on his lawn.
[Gledhill is obviously enamored of the unfair and misleading metaphor she used for her commentary soon after the Vatican decision was made known.] But perhaps Dr Williams should instead offer up a prayer of thanks for his salvation.
The Church of England, and the Anglican Communion, has been in danger of crumbling away along the faultline between Reformed and Catholic. Liberal bishops are exasperated by Dr Williams’s failure to advocate the causes of women bishops and gay priests with enthusiasm. Evangelical leaders are frustrated, the latest disappointment being the cancellation of a long-scheduled meeting with Dr Williams at Lambeth Palace.
Anglo-Catholics, long sidelined, suddenly find themselves
sought after by Rome [They sought out Rome!] and courted once more by an Anglican Communion desperate not to lose them.
Dismayed by the lack of leadership, some critics of Dr Williams had been calling for his resignation.
With one gesture, breathtaking in its brilliance, the Pope might just have rid him of this turbulence.
[I don't know whether to be glad Gledhill has found a way to say something positive of Benedict XVI, for a change, or remain cynical because she is only using it as a way to twist the dagger in Williams's back.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/10/2009 16:38]