Justin Welby: the secret of being an archbishop is to be reconciled to your own embarrassment

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said it is “embarrassing” that posts in the Church of England are being advertised for less than the living wage despite the Church’s declared commitment to the principle.

[….]

The living wage commitment was included in the controversial bishops’ pastoral letter, ‘Who is my Neighbour?’, released last week.
Speaking at a conference in Birmingham today for business and Church leaders, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the revelation was “embarrassing”. However, the Press Association reported: “But in the light of transparency, which I welcome, I will say we are a complex institution and every parish church and cathedral is an independent charity, as is every diocese.

“We don’t have a centralised method of control.

“I’m not very keen on centralised control where, from far away, you tell people what to do.”

If only Welby took the same view when it comes to the government. The Pastoral Letter issued by Church of England Bishops expends a torrent of verbiage on telling everyone what to do – when it isn’t waxing lyrical on the virtues of centralised control.

As it happens, I reported on the Church’s stingy salaries in July 2014, so Welby has no excuse for being unaware of this: he just needs to read Anglican Samizdat.

4 thoughts on “Justin Welby: the secret of being an archbishop is to be reconciled to your own embarrassment

  1. Good one David. The funny thing about Justin is that he never seems to say anything about God. Do you think he may not have heard of Him?

  2. Might I respectfully suggest that Justin’s background is that of an economist………..not a theologian. I have come to the conclusion, rather late I suppose, that the theology taught is weak anyway.

  3. Seems to be a lot of socialists societal engineering coming from the ABC and not much Gospel.

    I for one am not interested in attending a left wing-nut lobby group pretending to be a Church.

  4. I respectfully ask, just what does the term socialist mean. Why does the term bring with it a sorts of negative baggage? The term capitalist is seen as some sort of utopian answer to the worlds problems. Really? I have often thought that the U.S.A. and its government seem to think that the version of capitalism and democracy as practiced there is good for everyone in the world. That to me is arrogance and yet again a profound notion of exceptional-ism that seems to pervade American culture.

Leave a Reply