I Love that Dirty Water

Is Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester in the Church of England, dropping broad hints the time may be nearing for Anglicans to start rummaging around for their swim trunks? (A wetsuit might be more appropriate, the waters of the Tiber are not pristine.) Ruth Gledhill of the Times heard him speak recently and took some notes. The Bishop seemed to have the Holy Catholic Church on his mind.

'Anglicans to their credit have never claimed to be the one, true Church.' [Nazir-Ali] noted that successive Lambeth Conferences had accepted that Anglicanism stands ready to disappear in the cause of Catholic unity, 'that is, it [Anglicanism] is not an end to itself but a means towards the greater Catholicism which is God's will.'

(Roger on that. As a young boy I was taught that belief and held it all my days as an Anglo-Catholic.) Nazir-Ali continues:

'Robert Runcie used to say he did not want the Archbishop of Canterbury to be turned into a Pope because one Pope was sufficient.

'What we need is first of all to recognize that there is a proper universal ministry for unity, that it is the Bishop of Rome that exercises that historic ministry for today, and to find a way for all Christians to accept that ministry.'

I think the Nazir-Ali's message might be especially pertinent to those Episcopalians weary of the power-mad woman at 815 Second Avenue, who see herself as Pope Joan redux. I also wonder if Bishop Nazir-Ali might someday quietly reconsider his views on women's ordination; putatively, he's for it but I wonder how great his enthusiasm these days.



(h/t William Tighe.)