LOURDES 5

Back to Archbishop Rowan and the double act he did with Kasper. Correct me, those of you who were there, if I got it wrong, but I have a distinct recollection that he expressed the conviction that Community is more important than Ideas. He got this, with his usual unfailing felicity and elegance, out of the narrative of Luke's Infancy narratives, where the Annunciation sets up Community between Mary and her enwombed God, and the Visitation extends that Koinonia. [[I think he used the Greek word; I thought the less well of him for doing so: I have a rooted aversion to the game of impressing the troops with hellenisms. But I applaud his apparent belief that Luke's Infancy narratives are 'historical', just as I do his definition of the Resurrection: 'Empty tomb and no Body'.]]

Being nasty, however, I did discern within myself an unworthy suspicion that he had in mind the Current Crisis ... Oops, Crises. So did a highly intelligent laywoman sitting beside me, who observed, as I stroked her knee with my left hand, that he shouldn't have brought his problems (and our crises) to Lourdes. Was he saying that we should hang around in the C of E because Community is more important than Ideas?

Because if he was, perhaps there is a question he could answer. Why, if Togetherness is more important than being sure about your intellectual integrity, does the Anglican Community, en bloc, not submit to the See of Rome? And why do his own problems (hinted at in the following debate as they have been in obiter asides over the years) with the Petrine Ministry not merit being set aside in the greater cause of Christian Unity?

It would be fun to be a fly on the wall at a meeting of the House of Bishops at which Rowan unfolded a policy, based on blind submission to Vatican I (Pastor aeternus), for Corporate Togetherness with the biggest Christian communion.