The most revealing moment at the recent meeting of the Church of England's General Synod occurred during an impromptu speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr Robert Runcie was speaking against an amendment urging the Church to delay re-submitting its Clergy (Ordination) Measure to Parliament until 'after the next Parliamentary General Election'. The point at issue concerned not women priests but the anomalous position of divorced candidates for the Ministry - anomalous because, although current clergy can be divorced and continue in their calling, no one under the present rules can be ordained if he has either been divorced or, indeed, is married to a divorced person. On the occasion of his winding-up speech it was not, however, the merits of the argument that concerned the Archbishop. He was preoccupied solely with the unwisdom of the proposed delaying tactic. 'It would seem to me,' he declared in that hesitant but oddly effective manner of his, 'that this amendment depends on certain assumptions about the date of the next election, which I would regard as hazardous, to use a wholly neutral phrase.'

LRB 7 December 1989 | PDF Download