Jonathan Wynne-Jones

I’ve just got off the phone from a well-placed contact in Rome who has made the most fantastic suggestion.

Rowan Williams may well be among the clergy who decide to leave Anglicanism for the Roman Catholic Church, he speculated.

When I laughed at this, he said he was deadly serious, pointing out that Graham Leonard, the former Bishop of London, left the Church of England for Rome after the ordination of women.  Why not the Archbishop of Canterbury?

The archbishop has admitted previously that he considered becoming a Catholic, but always held back because he couldn’t accept the concept of papal infallibility.  

“I have visions of saying to Pope Benedict: ‘I don’t believe you’re infallible’,” he told the Church Times before his visit to Rome in 2006.

Could he manage to swallow this for a quiet life in the Catholic Church? No more trying to keep the peace between evangelicals and liberals warring over gay clergy…. Read More

You’ve got to feel sorry for Rowan Williams.

If he’s not trying to prevent the Anglican Communion from splitting over gay bishops, it’s traditionalists warning they’ll leave the Church of England when women bishops are introduced.

And now, just when things seemed to be starting to calm down, the Pope has only gone and offered to accept these traditionalists into the Catholic Church. Talk about a slap around the face.

But the archbishop seems not to have seen this coming. In a letter to Anglican bishops that Damian Thompson has posted on his blog, he makes it clear that he only learned of the announcement at “a very late stage”.

When I broke the initial story last July that talks were already taking place, it would be putting it mildly to suggest that the Lambeth Palace press office was rather upset. They claimed I’d made it up and said that the archbishop had asked the Vatican… Read More

Is Rowan Williams looking to follow the lead of General Sir Richard Dannatt in becoming an advisor to David Cameron? I only ask because of the archbishop’s condemnation of the Government’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

One minute Gordon Brown is receiving a bashing from the head of the army, or former now, the next minutes it’s the leader of the Church of England.

While I agree with the points that the archbishop has made, I had hoped that Rowan Williams might be able to pass up on the chance to score political points at today’s memorial service for the 179 British personnel who died in Iraq. But I knew it was unlikely, as I suspect did most of the congregation in St Paul’s cathedral, including Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

I was told last week that senior figures in the army were concerned that the archbishop would use the service as an opportunity… Read More

There was a debate last night at St Peter’s Church, Vere Street, London, over the future of Thought for the Day. The motion: humanist speakers should be included on Radio 4’s god slot.

Chaired by the urbane Ed Stourton – why was he ever dropped from the Today programme? – it pitted Nick Baines, the Bishop of Croydon, and Giles Fraser, a canon at St Paul’s, against Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association and the Guardian’s Ariane Sherine (or Ariel Sharon, as one member of the audience called her).

If anyone from the BBC Trust had been there, they would have been left in no doubt as to which side of the argument they should come down on.

I had started the evening with an open mind, and was impressed by the case made by Copson, who was witty, personable, and persuasive. He effectively said that humanism should be included on TFTD because it… Read More

It must be fairly gutting for James Newcome, the new Bishop of Carlisle, that he’s not going to get to move in to Rose Castle.

The 14th century palace has been home to the previous 66 bishops of the diocese, but the Church Commissioners have finally announced that it can no longer afford to keep it – a decision I revealed last year.

A Grade I listed building with 16 bedrooms, a state reception room and a drawing room with 18th century Chinese wallpaper, it’s easy to understand why the Commissioners have taken this step. The only surprise may be that it’s taken so long.

At a time when the Church is facing a crisis in covering pensions for its clergy, as well as struggling to maintain funding for its mission work, surely so crucial to its long-term health, keeping the bishops’ palaces is hard to defend.

However, I was told that the former Bishop… Read More

Bernard Longley will be announced as Archbishop of Birmingham on Thursday.

That’s the word from a normally reliable source and there’s much sense to it.

The bishop is centre-right like the diocese and has experience of inter-faith dialogue from his time as assistant secretary to the Bishops’ Conference, which should stand him in good stead for a city as diverse as Brum.

It’s also been suggested that the Oxford graduate would be the perfect person to have in Birmingham with the visit of Pope Benedict XVI next year.

Donnish and diplomatic, he is a “priest’s priest” and is likely to be a popular appointment.

However, while it would no doubt be good for the diocese, such a move would not necesarily be as good for the Catholic Church’s prominence in this country.

While Vincent Nichols guaranteed stories when he was in Birmingham, whether in challenging the BBC or the Government, Bishop Longley is a much more reticent… Read More

A Christian version of the card game Top Trumps, called Testament Trumps, has been released, apparently to help children learn more about biblical characters. Not to be outdone, the humanists have also launched their own version, called God Trumps.

A pack has been sent to me from the New Humanist magazine, and it’s brilliantly satirical, as you’d expect. With the caricatures by the Guardian’s excellent cartoonist, Martin Rowson, it pitches Catholics against Anglicans and pagans against Mormons.

It goes without saying that the Anglicans, represented by a jam-holding woman cleric who looks suspiciously like June Osborne, the Dean of Salisbury, are thumped by the Catholics, beaten in every category, from age and wealth to follower dedication and daffiest doctrine.

In fact the Church of England, whose followers are summed up as “hobbyists, hedge-betters, people who like a song on a Sunday morning”, is one of the worst cards in the whole pack…. Read More

Could the American Church be about to start planting churches in England? That’s the intriguing possibility raised by one of its most influential clerics, who has indicated that this might be the only option given that Rowan Williams has sided with the conservatives.

Geoffrey Hoare, the Eton-educated vicar of All Saints Atlanta, one of the largest churches in TEC, has asked colleagues to consider how they could begin “seeking partners throughout the world” if effectively evicted from the Anglican Communion.

Given the Archbishop’s comments last week, which were much bolder and firmer than many expected, it looks as though the liberals would be second-class citizens in any two-tier Church. This should come as no surprise considering how they have continually defied the agreed position of the Communion and refused to heed the archbishop’s warnings.

It clearly came as no surprise to Hoare, who saw the way things were going last year and started… Read More

The reaction to Archbishop Vincent Nichols’s comments on social network sites has been revealing.

If the archbishop was concerned about the decline of personal communications and the impact of this on society, maybe he should also be worried about the apparent inability of people to read. Or maybe it’s just an inability to get past prejudice and overcome intolerance.

As David Aaronovitch pointed out yesterday, archbishop-baiting is a cheap sport and judging from the number of anonymous posts on blogs giving Nichols a kicking, it’s a popular one.

Those who have moaned about the archbishop believing in a “sky-fairy” can be dismissed at once, but the more interesting and serious charges have been those that have completely misrepresented him.

Archbishop damns Facebook, a number of blogs have reported. How exactly? Some have trotted out the line that his comments reinforce that churchmen are out of touch with the modern world and then others argue… Read More

It’s encouraging to see Rowan Williams condemning the murder of six Christians in Pakistan who were burnt to death.

While it may not have commanded many column inches in today’s papers, it’s important that he is seen to be standing with the persecuted Church.

His visit to Bethlehem on the eve of Christmas in 2006 has no doubt had an impact on the archbishop, who at the time wrote powerfully about the exodus of Arab Christians from the Middle East.

In the same breath as deploring the attacks against the Christians, he argues that these “actions are not the work of true Muslims”. Maintaining the peace and keeping dialogue alive has always been the way with the archbishop and commendably so.

However, the atrocities were carried out by “a Muslim mob”, according to the BBC, after unfounded rumours that members of the Christian community had desecrated a copy of the Koran.

Arguing that… Read More