Anglican Leader Irish Catholic Church Has Lost All Credibility, CNN, April 3, 2010

Anglican Leader: Irish Catholic Church Has Lost "All Credibility"

CNN
April 3, 2010

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/03/uk.anglicans.catholic.abuse/

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams presides over a service at the Baptism site at the River Jordan, on February 20, 2010.

(CNN) -- The Irish Catholic Church has lost "all credibility" following the abuse scandal, the head of the Anglican Church says in an interview to be broadcast Monday.

Archbishop Rowan Williams called the issue "a colossal corporate trauma" for the Catholic Church, especially in Ireland.

"An institution so deeply bound in to the life of society suddenly becoming -- suddenly losing all credibility," said Williams, the head of the Church of England. "That's not just a problem for the church, it's a problem for everybody in Ireland, I think."

Williams was speaking on the BBC radio program "Start the Week," airing Monday, as part of a general discussion about religion.

Ireland has been rocked by a series of child abuse reports, both physical and sexual, by Catholic clergy going back at least seven decades.

A recent Irish government-backed report found the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Irish Catholic Church authorities covered up abuse by priests from 1975 to 2004, and that child sexual abuse was widespread then.

Two Irish bishops have resigned over the scandal, and Pope Benedict XVI issued a pastoral letter to the Irish church last month saying he was deeply sorry for the abuse.

In his letter, the pope said "misplaced concern" for the Catholic Church's reputation and the avoidance of scandal contributed to the problems.

Williams said that has been a lesson for the Anglican Church as well.

"I guess that for an awful lot of Christian institutions, until fairly recently, the default setting would be, 'We've got to try and hang onto the institution's credibility,'" Williams told the BBC. "We've learned that that is damaging, it's wrong, it's dishonest, and it requires that very hard recognition which ought to be ... natural for the Christian Church, based as it is on repentance and honesty.

"We've had to learn, well, honesty and truthfulness are the only way in which we can survive in any way as an institution."

The pope plans to visit England and Scotland in September, but Williams said that will not be a "big deal" for the Church of England.

"The pope will be coming here to Lambeth Palace," Williams told the BBC, referring to the archbishop's historic London residence. "We'll have the bishops together to meet him. I'm concerned that he has a chance to say what he wants to say in and to British society, that we welcome him as a valued partner, and that's about it."

It will be the pope's first state visit to the United Kingdom, according to the British Foreign Office. A 1982 trip by Pope John Paul II was officially a pastoral visit.

Relations between the Anglican and Catholic Churches have been strained following the Vatican's outreach to disaffected Anglicans last year. The plan would enable groups of Anglicans to become Catholic and recognize the pope as their leader, yet have parishes that retain Anglican rites, Vatican officials said.

Some observers said the Vatican's move would shatter more than 40 years of efforts to reconcile the two churches.

The move came 475 years after King Henry VIII broke from Rome and created the Church of England, the forerunner of the Anglican Communion.