Tim Blair

The best comment would be no comment.
The Archbishop of Canterbury does not live in the real world. Ignore him.
Gadfly

I've got serious moral goal too:
Help every Islmaic extremist to meet Allah ASAP.

Yes, but Gadders is drawn to comment quand même.

Williams may be a loser and a tool, but he
is not alone in hijacking the churches to run a personal political agenda.

This from today's Melbourne Age.

'We live in an increasingly totalitarian society ... they (the churches) are quietly forging alliances with other groups. ... On the Iraq war they have already been proven right ... one thinks of the warm reception (in Melbourne) for Rowan Williams ... groups are springing up everywhere to nurture poetry (and) religious dance ... the churches in other words have said their goodbyes to Christendom.'

Goodbye Christendom, hello religious dance and empathy with terrorism.

Hello Morris dancing!

Does anyone know how many children were killed on September 11 and October 12?

Pod posted " Yes, but Gadders is drawn to comment quand meme".

Pourquoi?

Gadfly

ABoC: "If a state or administration acts without due and visible attention to agreed international process, it acts in a way analogous to a private person. It purports to be judge of its own interest."

So America is totalitarian because it went to war on Iraq without the consent of China? Brilliant.

Williams is like the Ruler of the Queen's Navee:

He Polished up the handles so carefully
That now he is the Archbishop of Canterbury

You're all missing an important possible subtext. Williams is in emergency meeting today and tomorrow with the heads of the 38 world-wide units of the Anglican Communion -- the 'Primates.'

Roughly two-thirds of these primates (mostly from Africa, Asia, and Latin America) are prepared to expel the Episcopal Church (USA) from the Anglican Communion for having elected a bishop who is unrepentant about having committed adultery and who is now living in a sexual relationship outside of marriage.

The Primate of the Episcopal Church, Frank Griswold (a pitiable character in his own right) is a flaming Left-Over who made numerous questionable statements about the Iraq Campaign, and even said that he was embarrased to be an American.

Griswold was also a strong supporter of the bishop elect in question.

Until I see evidence to the contrary, I'll assume that Rowan William's pig-slobber was tossing a bone to his ideological soulmate in advance of siding with the traditionalist Primates at the Lambeth meeting.

Williams obviously believes this nonsense, but he's probably re-stating it now for internal church reasons.

Well, if the Archbishop would just replace the word "warfare" with the word "welfare" he would be right on target...

;-)

Tyler

[America] purports to be judge of its own interest.

Is there no one else who is astonished that Williams finds it suspect that a country, or a person, should wish to decide where its/his interests lay? What else could he mean by that?

The prat is an insult to Chritians and Druids...yeesh what an arse!

Looking the way he does how can the Archbish not hold loopy leftish views. A shave and a jolly good haircut would set him on the right road, if I'm not mistaken. He's a victim, poor dear, after all.

Looking the way he does how can the Archbish not hold loopy leftish views. A shave and a jolly good haircut would set him on the right road, if I'm not mistaken. He's a victim, poor dear, after all.

I thought I would get up today, shower, shave, and go to work. Then I realized that in deciding to do these things I was purporting to be a judge of my own interest, and therefore I was not able to make a judgement objectively. So I stayed in bed and ate Froot Loops out of the box, waiting for the Archbishop of Canterbury or perhaps the People's Political Consultative Conference to tell me to get my ass out of bed.

This vile logic is borne from the incorrect assumption that evil is necessarily and rationally reactive of still greater evil. May the Archbishop point me to the round table around which to discuss mutual liberties with those who aim to maximise civilian casualties. Otherwise, may he remember the bell also tolls for thee.

Michael Dukakis, presidential candidate for the Democrats in '84, once famously said, "The fish rots from the head first."

Hey Americans, just think: if you alter your constitution to allow you to have an established church, you too can officially be represented by a national church that says things like the Archbishop of Canterbury does, and you too can have church political issues like those Bart Hall pointed out. (Thanks, Bart.)

It's funny - Americans who want to suppress religion in public life seem to assume an established religion would be a fire-breathing menace. But it would probably just be an offensive, pathetic shambles, on the English model: well worth stopping before it starts, but for different reasons than those that the first amendment's writers might have had in mind.

OOps!! My mistake. Dukakis ran in '88, Walter Mondale in '84.

I actually agree with Williams on his first comment. I have no doubt al-Qaeda are very serious in the belief that their goal to force every last human to convert to Islam under the threat of death is moral.

Williams is beyond parody. He sounds like Archbishop Spacely-Trellis from Michael Wharton's Peter Simple columns. As an atheist, I couldn't give a stuff if the entire C of E flies round in ever-decreasing circles (with the Rt Rev. Beardy Weirdy at the helm) until it disappears up its own arsehole.

"A new panel of legal experts should be introduced to advise where military intervention was necessary, rather than relying entirely on the UN Security Council, he said."

Now there's a brilliant idea. Knowing the UN's track record this panel would undoubtedly include "legal experts" from countries like France, Syria, Libya, and Russia-- all of whom could be counted on to objectively decide whether or not the United States was authorized to go to war.

The Archbishop lives in a Fool's Paradise.

As a "hawk", so-called, I wince whenever I read Williams encomiums.

As a Roman Catholic, however, I tend to smirk rather smugly to myself. How quickly, in broad historical terms, has that schism run out of ideological steam.

Eeeeeew! When did all these guys become leftists?

Surely the ends the terrorist seek are irrelevant to the moral question as to the evil or otherwise of their means. I should have thought it a fundamental Christian principle that ends never justify evil means.

It is true that unspeakably wicked means can be rational, but that is irrelevant to the validity of any criticism.

If bin Laden and the other terrorists just preached the need for us all to convert to Islam then they wouldn't get criticised, just as nobody seems to be criticising all the other muslims who push that view, of the Christians for that matter.

Rick, don't discriminate between the Christian sects. For every Protestant froot loop there's a Catholic equivalent. Look at the Australian Catholic Church's gratuitous meddling in the issue of asylum seekers. These people are not even Catholics! If the Catholic Church spent more energy purging itself of paedophile priests, it might earn some respect.

What the world has to recognise is the overwhelming evil and destructiveness resulting from the prosletysing religions that came out of the Middle East. The differences in evil between Chritianity and Islam are ony minor gradations.

I'm more qualified to be Archbishop of Canterbury than Rowan Williams - and I'm a Southern Baptist.

Lordy, Lordy! What inane prattle from such a Rowan-oid one...

NO ONE has suggested that 'hideous, immoral acts are NOT possible in pursuit of morally valuable goals...'

What I've heard is, 'hideous, immoral acts INVALIDATE and DEMEAN and OBVIATE the pursuit of morally valuable goals...'

Say, Archi, who'd you take thimking lessons from, Numb Chumpsky?

When did the Church of England make Anglo self-loathing a sacrament? I'm an American Roman Catholic, so not up on these things.

After ranting about this article earlier, I feel better. In one (small) way I feel sorry for the bastard. All that education, great intentions, and his moral compass wouldn't let him find his rear end with both hands.