The Pope's Current Move will Harm Dialogue. Well, good!

There are already complaints and concerns being aired on the Pope's new move, not least of which is being voiced by the faint hearted Timothy Bradshaw at The Times.

He identifies the docuement, "Gift of Authority" which urged the Anglican Community to accept the Primacy of the Papacy. It's a surprising document and many Anglicans are now making good on it, so, could it be that Archbishop Rowan is merely overseeing the disintigration of the Church of England? Queen Elizabeth has already voiced her displeasure for the 80 Million large Church of which she is the head, and many Anglicans are quite rightly disgusted with the handful of liberals hijacking of their Church over matters of homosexuality and women's ordination. It's time to take a stand.

John Allen at National Catholic Reporter, simply reported the facts and identified the potential damage some were concerned about. He gave what is probably a more accurate portrayal of Cardinal Casper's characterization of the event as not "poaching" but a respect for one's personal conscience. He rightly says, "if someone is knocking on the Church's door, we have every responsibillity to let them in." For once, we find ourselves agreeing with the good Cardinal in that sense. It's difficult to get out of a vicious habit of predicting liberalism and bad faith in someone we've come to distrust.

Father Richard McBrien, the enfant terrible of Notre Dame, on the other hand, has a more nuanced view, while describing Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Catnerbury's own opposition to same-sex unions, he goes on to describe William's attempt to create a two-tiered system to accomodate, unsatisfactorily as far as the TAC is concerned, both sides of the issue.

Rather than focusing on the source of the tension in the first place, McBrien insists on pointing out the difficulties of authority that are a problem for both churches, suggesting subtly, that there is a similiar, perhaps much larger divide within the Catholic Church on these issues concerning central authority and who defines correct practice and doctrine.