STEPHEN GLOVER: Who can doubt that the many failings of the Church of England have contributed to the alarming collapse of belief and attendance?
Christmas again. In two days' time we will celebrate the birth of Our Lord. Across Europe, pews that were once full will probably be emptier than ever.
But across what was once Christian Europe, in France, Germany, Spain and Italy, congregations will be much sparser than they were a generation back. I feel I can be rude about the C of E because it is the Church in which I was brought up, and which my father and several relatives have served as priests. I love it, and yet it – by which I mean the behaviour of some of its senior clerics – often drives me potty.
Are the authors of these admonitions mad? Or have their accommodating Anglican brains literally turned to porridge? Justin Welby can't be entirely blamed because his power is limited, certainly much more so than the Pope's. But his obsession with the past evils of slavery has fostered a self-lacerating culture intended to burden us with guilt. Yet what can we do about the sins of some of our distant forbears?
Now we learn that the second most senior prelate in the C of E, the Archbishop of York, also showed undue leniency to an abuser, in this case a rogue priest. In his previous role as Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell twice permitted the renewal of the contract of the Rev. David Tudor as an area dean despite knowing that he had paid compensation to a woman who said that, as a child, she had been sexually abused by him. Mr Cottrell's future must surely hang by a thread.
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