If no sane person of sufficient quality wants to be archbishop of Canterbury, then why not simply leave the see vacant? The Church seems to be getting on perfectly well, albeit with its customary quotient of moral failure and scandal, without a primate of All England. Why is one necessary? In the early modern period it was not uncommon (though not with respect to the see of Canterbury) for bishoprics to be left vacant, albeit so that the crown could harvest their temporalities. Another option might be to take suitable laypeople and ordain and consecrate them within a short period… Read more »
I’ve been rather enjoying life without unhelpful archiepiscopal interventions.
Geoff M.
1 hour ago
Canon Fraser’s repeating of the ahistorical trope of a “gentler” Celtic church mitigates the seriousness with which I can take his piece.
It’s also curious to me that he (rightly) sees safeguarding snafus as disqualifying, yet still stumps for +Londin when the buck stops with her in the Alan Griffin affair.
Back in the day I led a module on spirituality – Benedictine, Franciscan, Celtic and so on; when twice the number turned out for the Celtic evening. As it was in Torbay, I suggested we should go down to the harbour and recite all 7 penitential psalms up to our necks in the sea. There were no takers.
Poor Fr Alan Griffin, a vulnerable man who committed suicide after fbeing abused by the Church of England’s officers. As the Coroner put it in her Report: “He killed himself because he could not cope with an investigation into his conduct, the detail of and the source for which he had never been told. The investigation had been ongoing for over a year and was being conducted by his former Church of England diocese and subsequently also by his current Roman Catholic diocese (to whom the Church of England had passed a short, written summary of allegations that contained inaccuracies… Read more »
David Hawkins
1 hour ago
“The Last Post was played and we sang the British and the Israeli national anthems, back to back, many in the congregation proudly wearing their medals.”
(Giles Fraser)
The National Synod was noisy in its condemnation of the suffering of white skinned Ukrainian babies but it will be silent about the deliberate starvation of Palestinian babies who ironically look exactly like baby Jesus would have done.
Fraser’s Zionist Christianity has most certainly done its part in the poisoning of the Church of England Chalice.
He has written of his journey from being an ally of Palestinians to an apologist for Israel, as well as from responding to trans people with pastoral affirmation to becoming a self-styled “TERF”. In both cases, I’m struck by how he describes those trajectories not in terms of evolving principles but simply as the result of being close to people on the wrong sides of the issues and feeling bad to see them criticized.
Allan Hugh Ronald
1 hour ago
Dr Fraser paints a bleak picture. We’ll know how bad it is when the CNC starts looking at any scholar who has produced an edition of a Greek play recently.
If no sane person of sufficient quality wants to be archbishop of Canterbury, then why not simply leave the see vacant? The Church seems to be getting on perfectly well, albeit with its customary quotient of moral failure and scandal, without a primate of All England. Why is one necessary? In the early modern period it was not uncommon (though not with respect to the see of Canterbury) for bishoprics to be left vacant, albeit so that the crown could harvest their temporalities. Another option might be to take suitable laypeople and ordain and consecrate them within a short period… Read more »
Indeed. Hands up those missing having an Archbishop of Canterbury.
I’ve been rather enjoying life without unhelpful archiepiscopal interventions.
Canon Fraser’s repeating of the ahistorical trope of a “gentler” Celtic church mitigates the seriousness with which I can take his piece.
It’s also curious to me that he (rightly) sees safeguarding snafus as disqualifying, yet still stumps for +Londin when the buck stops with her in the Alan Griffin affair.
Back in the day I led a module on spirituality – Benedictine, Franciscan, Celtic and so on; when twice the number turned out for the Celtic evening. As it was in Torbay, I suggested we should go down to the harbour and recite all 7 penitential psalms up to our necks in the sea. There were no takers.
Yes. See Caitlin Corning (inter alia), The Celtic and Roman Traditions: Conflict and Consensus in the Early Medieval Church. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Poor Fr Alan Griffin, a vulnerable man who committed suicide after fbeing abused by the Church of England’s officers. As the Coroner put it in her Report: “He killed himself because he could not cope with an investigation into his conduct, the detail of and the source for which he had never been told. The investigation had been ongoing for over a year and was being conducted by his former Church of England diocese and subsequently also by his current Roman Catholic diocese (to whom the Church of England had passed a short, written summary of allegations that contained inaccuracies… Read more »
“The Last Post was played and we sang the British and the Israeli national anthems, back to back, many in the congregation proudly wearing their medals.”
(Giles Fraser)
The National Synod was noisy in its condemnation of the suffering of white skinned Ukrainian babies but it will be silent about the deliberate starvation of Palestinian babies who ironically look exactly like baby Jesus would have done.
Fraser’s Zionist Christianity has most certainly done its part in the poisoning of the Church of England Chalice.
He has written of his journey from being an ally of Palestinians to an apologist for Israel, as well as from responding to trans people with pastoral affirmation to becoming a self-styled “TERF”. In both cases, I’m struck by how he describes those trajectories not in terms of evolving principles but simply as the result of being close to people on the wrong sides of the issues and feeling bad to see them criticized.
Dr Fraser paints a bleak picture. We’ll know how bad it is when the CNC starts looking at any scholar who has produced an edition of a Greek play recently.