Telegraph: Rowan Williams will not be driven out of office

[...] The General Synod approved the principle of the ordination of women in 1975; the first women priests were ordained in 1994. As with Parliament, new legislative proposals would normally go to the House of Bishops before being aired in public. So it's interesting that the Manchester Report has appeared suddenly and quite precipitately.

I suspect that this relatively rushed exercise in consultation has an ecumenical eye to Rome.

Women's episcopacy is not an issue for the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is a diocesan issue, a provincial matter. It is Church House's hot potato, not Lambeth Palace's.

But, I would guess, there would be a desire, for diplomatic reasons, to have the Manchester Report out of the way well before the Vatican's representative arrives as a guest of the worldwide Anglican Communion's bishops at their 10-yearly Lambeth Conference in July.

As to the hoo-ha surrounding the report's publication, it is driven by those variously described as traditionalists or conservatives, who are intent on Dr Rowan Williams having as difficult a Lambeth Conference as possible, in the hope that he can be traduced and driven from office.

He won't be. Dr Williams considers the See of Canterbury as not just his calling, but his cross to bear. He'll not be driven from it short of illness or an act of God. Read more
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