BRITAIN: Anglicans have sent back to the drawing board plans that could give the Pope more authority over all Christians.
"I think further work is needed," the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said after clerics contemplated the thorny question of who could rule whom. The doctrine of papal infallibility was one of the big sticking points.
After much soul-searching, the Church of England Synod sought further clarification on a report broaching the sensitive issue of who was the ultimate leader of the Christian Church.
"I feel rather like someone who has to walk a tightrope over a minefield," the Bishop of Peterborough, Dr Ian Cundy, confessed to the Anglican parliament yesterday.
Dr Cundy heads the Church of England's Council of Christian Unity which now wants to reconsider the ground-breaking Gift of Authority document first put out in 1999.
That statement by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (Arcic) explored the possibility of overall papal authority.
"Real progress has been made, emotionally and intellectually, but serious questions remain to be resolved," Dr Cundy told fellow clerics meeting at Church House in London.
Asking for clarification, he said: "We should not try to be back-seat drivers but, as those who are also committed to making the journey, the passengers very properly have views about the destination and the best route to get there."
The Pope runs the Roman Catholic Church through a rigidly structured hierarchy. In sharp contrast, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of 70 million Anglicans, rules his broadest of broad churches by consensus. - (Reuters)