Say it ain’t so! The Pope isn’t happy about the actions of the Episcopal General Convention this Summer, and is rattling ecclesiastical sabers at Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who’s visiting the Vatican as part of the ongoing ecumenical dialog between the Anglican and Catholic churches.
The Pope made mention that “new and serious difficulties have arisen on the path to unity” in his talks with Williams. Williams observed that the pope’s stand on the risk to Catholic/Anglican relations “weighs very heavily” on his church going into the emergency Primate meeting in a week or so.
Which is kind of a shame, since it seems that some other, even more fundamental divisions — ordination of women, for example, not to mentioned a married priesthood — would stand as larger barriers to ecumenical progress between Rome and Canterbury.
(On the latter note, having seen Bishop Winterrowd up on stage with his wife Ann, having heard what an inspiration she has been both to him and to the rest of the diocese, and seeing the supportive relationship between our new bishop and his wife, I have to say that the idea that a married priesthood is somehow a negative or a weakness or to the detriment of a church seems utterly bewildering to me.)