(no subject)

[fpb]

After his astonishingly stupid remarks, a campaign has been started by The Sun newspaper (owner: Rupert Murdoch) to have the Archbishop of Canterbury sacked. (I am not even sure he can be sacked, but his position can certainly be made untenable.) Since he was essentially elected by heavy public pressure from The Times newspaper (owner: Rupert Murdoch), there is a sorry kind of irony here.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

He has more seniority than any other Anglican bishop, but all Anglican bishops are otherwise equal. There is no mechanism for any bishop to be disciplined, and indeed the bishops themselves have trouble keeping the more difficult of their clergy in line. The heart of the Pope's powers is in being the chief judge of the Church, the ultimate court of appeal: all controversies that are not solved at a lower level of judicature, or that do not die down of their own accord, must ultimately be solved by him. And since the Council of Sardica (352AD), he is the sole authority who can judge bishops. The Anglican schism consisted, essentially, in giving most of the Pope's powers to the King, that is, in practice, to Parliament. In the few occasions when Anglican bishops have been tried, it has been Parliament who tried them. Parliament has also undermined the Church's own courts of justice over lesser church members, by overturning decisions properly reached by Church courts for political reasons. As a result, the disciplinary structures in the Church of England are very weak indeed.

This arrangement, however, is badly outdated. The English state church is now at the centre of a worldwide communion of churches. Parliament has not only lost interest in it (parliamentary debates about the Church used once to be an entertaining staple of English politics, and as late as the 1930s could become serious matters), but would not now even dare to interfere with the concerns of a great worldwide body where its writ does not run. At the same time, thanks to the threatened schism and certain split within the worldwide communion, the demand is growing for some sort of pan-Anglican system of discipline. The time is ripe for a new worldwide settlement of Anglican matters.