by Charles Moore, Spectator
Cardinals elected the new Pope within a fortnight but it will take almost a year to choose our next Archbishop of Canterbury. The beloved Anglican interregnum is intended to ‘take soundings’. These are unproductive if held in an echo chamber. The chairman of the Crown Nominations Commission for the successor to Justin Welby, Lord Evans of Weardale, is an efficient and discreet public servant. But most of the large group of voting members, including both its C of E bishops (York, Norwich), come from the fastest-declining part of the Church, its liberal wing. Thanks to Welby’s reforms, the commission now has no fewer than five members from the wider Anglican communion, only one of whom is from the burgeoning, usually traditionalist African churches (total membership c. 43 million). The others include an engineer from Argentina (total membership c. 22,500), a Maori hemp farmer and a bishop from the ever-shrinking liberal Church in Wales. Then come six elected by the mainly liberal General Synod and three from the ultra-liberal Diocese of Canterbury. Read the last’s ‘statement of needs’ about ‘the Archbishop we are seeking’, to feel whither the wind bloweth. It orders the next Archbishop to get on well with his or her suffragan, the Bishop of Dover, who shoulders most of the diocesan duties, expressly emphasising the importance of this particular one, the liberal Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a protegée of Archbishop Welby. You would think she had the right of veto over any candidate proposed.
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