Victoria Coren has written this: Bashing the Bishop.
… Dr. William’s oeuvre has caught the imagination, snatched headlines and triggered a national debate. Maybe we should swap jobs? Except I’d make a terrible archbishop.
It’s exactly what he should be doing, of course: getting stuck in to matters of public ethics, questioning the national conscience, being a strong and relevant voice on issues of social concern. I can understand why some in the press feel obliged to disagree with him – and this is a good thing; we all want to live in a country of robust debate – but the way that some have slammed him for speaking out at all is just embarrassing. It’s like they don’t understand who he is, what he does or what the role’s about…
(The NoTW article she mentions is here.)
Paul Vallely wrote at the Independent on Aid and what the Archbishop should have said.
Those naughty people at the New Statesman. Apparently when the Archbishop of Canterbury arrived to do his week as guest editor he was planning to write the main editorial on aid to Africa. But Rowan Williams was persuaded to offer, instead, his thoughts on the state of the coalition government one year in. The paper got the headlines it wanted but we have been deprived of his thoughts on the place we used to call the dark continent. So what might he have said? And why does it matter?
At least one other bishop has spoken up in support of the archbishop:
John Pritchard of Oxford is reported in the Witney Gazette Bishop John joins attack on ‘disastrous’ Government cuts.
Only 70,000 a year? It means he took a cut when he left academia — for a much more difficult job. And is Lambeth Palace really a 5 star residence?
The people trying to make Rowan Williams a class war enemy are in the pay of the Murdochs, and using standard divide and conquer tactics to keep the poor mystified.
Most people I know will never make 70,000 a year, whether in US dollars or Euros. He’s still an ivory-tower denizen speaking to promote his own public relations agenda.
It is well known, around the empire of his world, that Rupert Murdoch is not interested in embracing the cause of the poor and disenfranchised. One only has to read his newspapers to see that.
His view of the ABCs advocacy of the poor will be perpetuated in his papers. Don’t take them too seriously. Rowan is at least pursuing the Gospel message of ‘inclusivity’ here, if not for LGBTs.