Humiliation For Rowan

Again. Why would anybody even want this job? Is pretending to be a bishop that important?

The Archbishop of Canterbury suffered a humiliating blow yesterday after his efforts to force through a last ditch compromise on women bishops was rejected.

Under the proposals, woman bishops would have retained their authority in principle, but in practice would allow traditionalists to serve under acceptable male bishops.

We went over this recently, pointing out that the whole proposition was absurd and bound to be rejected by anyone with an iota of common sense. Naturally, Rowan forced the issue anyway.

Dr Rowan Williams risked his moral authority by attempting to persuade the Church of England's ' Parliament' to accept proposals aimed at preventing thousands of opponents of women bishops quitting the Church.

The Synod's decision to throw out his compromise means that thousands of traditionalists opposed to female clergy are likely to quit the Church when women are finally allowed to become bishops in 2014.

Moral authority? Really? Shouldn't you have to have authority first before we can even begin to consider its moral aspects?

As to the whole quitting the church business, you'd think they would have come to grips with the fact that someone will be quitting the church, whether it's these women or the traditionalists.

But liberals said any such concessions are unacceptable because they would mean women bishops would not be equal to their male counterparts.

And that's exactly right. Either they are real bishops or they aren't.

One senior opponent of women bishops said last night: 'This is a disaster. Many of us will now join the Roman Catholic Church. The Church of England will never be the same again.'

Of course, this is good news as long as they are willing to junk the rest of their Anglican nonsense at the door. Most do. I've had some correspondence with them. We just don't need folks with partial buy-in.

So what's left? I have no idea. I maintain that "not with a bang, but a whimper" is still the path being chosen. The next question, I suppose, is what will the next firestorm issue be. A woman picked as Archlayman of Canterbury? Probably the most likely scenario, though at this right, an outright denial of God's existence wouldn't surprise me either.

Keep praying for the people caught up in all this.