Archbishop Of Canterbury Quotes

The advantage to being a wicked bastard is that everyone pesters the Lord on your behalf; if volume of prayers from my saintly enemies means anything, I'll be saved when the Archbishop of Canterbury is damned. It's a comforting thought.

Some say the Tudors transcend this history, bloody and demonic as it is: that they descend from Brutus through the line of Constantine, son of St Helena, who was a Briton. Arthur, High King of Britain, was Constantine's grandson. He married up to three women, all called Guinevere, and his tomb is at Glastonbury, but you must understand that he is not really dead, only waiting his time to come again. His blessed descendant, Prince Arthur of England, was born in the year 1486, eldest son of Henry, the first Tudor king. This Arthur married Katharine the princess of Aragon, died at fifteen and was buried in Worcester Cathedral. If he were alive now, he would be King of England. His younger brother Henry would likely be Archbishop of Canterbury, and would not (at least, we devoutly hope not) be in pursuit of a woman of whom the cardinal hears nothing good: a woman to whom, several years before the dukes walk in to despoil him, he will need to turn his attention; whose history, before ruin seizes him, he will need to comprehend. Beneath every history, another history.

Thankfulness,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, said, “is a soil in which pride does not easily grow.

Do you wonder then that this man’s behaviour used to puzzle me tremendously? He was an ordinary clergyman at that time as well as being Headmaster, and I would sit in the dim light of the school chapel and listen to him preaching about the Lamb of God and about Mercy and Forgiveness and all the rest of it and my young mind would become totally confused. I knew very well that only the night before this preacher had shown neither Forgiveness nor Mercy in flogging some small boy who had broken the rules. So what was it all about? I used to ask myself. Did they preach one thing and practise another, these men of God? And if someone had told me at the time that this flogging clergyman was one day to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, I would never have believed it. It was all this, I think, that made me begin to have doubts about religion and even about God. If this person, I kept telling myself, was one of God’s chosen salesmen on earth, then there must be something very wrong about the whole business.

Marshall,” he said levelly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but any organization that claims you for a member doesn’t get to call itself sinister, whether you’re left-handed or not. I would be insulted to be offered membership in such a namby-pamby organization. It would be like the Archbishop of Canterbury calling a select club of his compatriots ‘Bad, Bad Bishops’.” Marshall sniggered. “Watch out for the clergy,” Edward said. “They’re absolutely wild. Sometimes they have an extra biscuit at tea.

The vile John Morton, who was now Archbishop of Canterbury, had created a process of extortion known as “Morton’s Fork.” If a man was well off, he had plenty to share with his king. If he had little, he was adept at getting along on less and could give to the king.

In the aftermath of the recent wave action in the Indian Ocean, even the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], proved himself a latter-day Voltairean by whimpering that he could see how this might shake belief in a friendly creator. Williamson is of course a notorious fool, who does an almost perfect imitation of a bleating and frightened sheep, but even so, one is forced to rub one's eyes in astonishment. Is it possible that a grown man could live so long and still have his personal composure, not to mention his lifetime job description, upset by a large ripple of seawater?

No one, I fancy, would discredit a story that the Archbishop of Canterbury slipped on a banana skin merely because he found that a similar comic mishap had been reported of many people, and especially of elderly gentlemen of dignity.

In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an ‘intellectual’ and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior. You and I and the editor of the Times Lit. Supp., and the Nancy poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants – all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel.

The beatings at Repton were more fierce and more frequent than anything I had yet experienced. And do not think for one moment that the future Archbishop of Canterbury objected to these squalid exercises. He rolled up his sleeves and joined in with gusto. His were the bad ones, the really terrifying occasions. Some of the beatings administered by this man of God, this future Head of the Church of England, were very brutal. To my certain knowledge he once had to produce a basin of water, a sponge and a towel so that the victim could wash the blood away afterwards. No joke, that. Shades of the Spanish Inquisition.

scientific knowledge, though difficult, is not mysterious, but open to all who care to take the necessary trouble. The modern intellectual, therefore, inspires no awe, but remains a mere employee; except in a few cases, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has failed to inherit the glamour which gave power to his predecessors.

I have never had better opinions of woman than I had of her.

I thought you did,' said the Mouse. `--I proceed. "Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable--"' `Found WHAT?' said the Duck. `Found IT,' the Mouse replied rather crossly: `of course you know what "it" means.' `I know what "it" means well enough, when I find a thing,' said the Duck: `it 's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?' The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on, `"--found it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling to meet William and offer him the crown. William's conduct at first was moderate. But the insolence of his Normans--" How are you getting on now, my dear?' it continued, turning to Alice as it spoke.

earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable--"' 'Found what?' said the Duck. 'Found it,' the Mouse replied rather crossly: 'of course

The dimensions opened up by this decision were not exclusively those of the afterlife, however. The enthronement as archbishop of Canterbury of a scholar who had studied in Syria provided converts in Britain with the glimpse of a thrillingly exotic world.

Here is nature once more at her old game of self-preservation. This train of thought, she perceives, is threatening mere waste of energy, even some collision with reality, for who will ever be able to lift a finger against Whitaker’s Table of Precedency? The Archbishop of Canterbury is followed by the Lord High Chancellor; the Lord High Chancellor is followed by the Archbishop of York. Everybody follows somebody, such is the philosophy of Whitaker; and the great thing is to know who follows whom. Whitaker knows, and let that, so Nature counsels, comfort you, instead of enraging you; and if you can’t be comforted, if you must shatter this hour of peace, think of the mark on the wall.   11   I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, there’s no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.

On December 29 four heavily armed men smashed through a side door to Canterbury Cathedral with an ax. The archbishop of Canterbury was waiting for them inside. They were angry. He was unarmed. They tried to arrest him. He resisted. They hacked the top of his head off and mashed his brains with their boots.

Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More, a justice of the King's Bench, was born in 1478, in Milk Street, in the city of London. After his earlier education at St. Anthony's School, in Threadneedle Street, he was placed, as a boy, in the household of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual for persons of wealth or influence and sons of good families to be so established together in a relation of patron and client. The youth wore his patron's livery, and added to his state. The patron used, afterwards, his wealth or influence in helping his young client forward in the world. Cardinal Morton had been in earlier days that Bishop of Ely whom Richard III. sent to the Tower; was busy afterwards in hostility to Richard; and was a chief adviser of Henry VII., who in 1486 made him Archbishop of Canterbury, and nine months afterwards Lord Chancellor. Cardinal Morton—of talk at whose table there are recollections in "Utopia"—delighted in the quick wit of young Thomas More. He once said, "Whoever shall live to try it, shall see this child here waiting at table prove a notable and rare man.

Christian Fundamentalism. Because the holy texts of nearly all religions hold the seed of violence, fundamentalists of every stripe tend to become increasingly violent, in their attitudes if not in their actions. William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, insisted that if our concept of God is wrong, the more religious we get, the more dangerous we are to ourselves and others.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, but any organization that claims you for a member doesn’t get to call itself sinister, whether you’re left-handed or not. I would be insulted to be offered membership in such a namby-pamby organization. It would be like the Archbishop of Canterbury calling a select club of his compatriots ‘Bad, Bad Bishops’.” Marshall sniggered. “Watch out for the clergy,” Edward said. “They’re absolutely wild. Sometimes they have an extra biscuit at tea.

But such was not the case. In considered statements, the Vatican, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the chief sephardic rabbi of Israel all took a stand in sympathy with—the ayatollah. So did the cardinal archbishop of New York and many other lesser religious figures. While they usually managed a few words in which to deplore the resort to violence, all these men stated that the main problem raised by the publication of The Satanic Verses was not murder by mercenaries, but blasphemy.

Few people would realise that it is much harder to write one of Owen Seaman's "funny" poems in Punch than to write one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermons. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is a greater work than Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and Charles Dickens's creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race—I say it in all seriousness—than Cardinal Newman's Lead, Kindly Light, Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.

In the first place, he is a gentleman," continued Violet. "Then he is a man of spirit. And then he has not too much spirit;—not that kind of spirit which makes some men think that they are the finest things going. His manners are perfect;—not Chesterfieldian, and yet never offensive. He never browbeats any one, and never toadies any one. He knows how to live easily with men of all ranks, without any appearance of claiming a special status for himself. If he were made Archbishop of Canterbury to-morrow, I believe he would settle down into the place of the first subject in the land without arrogance, and without false shame.

There then followed a period of disturbance and danger. There were many lords in this land who longed to be king, and who were prepared to do battle for the crown of England. So Merlin visited the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘Call together all the nobles and knights of the realm to London, reverend sir,’ he said to him. ‘Tell them to assemble in the city by Christmas Day, on pain of excommunication. They will witness a miracle, I assure you of that. The king of the universe will on that day declare who is to be king of the realm.’ So the archbishop sent his summons, and the magnates set out for the city in the hope that they might see their new sovereign. They prayed and confessed themselves on their journey, so that they might be all the more pure.

Each season the people of Canterbury re-enact Becket’s death: it is the monkish version, because till now no other kind of history has been available. Crowds line the streets—excited, as if the tale might come out different this year. Hot pasties are sold. There are processions with drummers and pipes, and then the show begins. The knights get tuppence and some beer, but the lad who plays the saint gets a shilling, for the knights make him suffer, smashing him on the flags as the old archbishop was smashed. As Becket calls on Christ, a child crouching behind the altar squirts the scene with pig’s blood. The actor is carried away. Then everybody gets drunk.

The Archbishop [Thomas Becket] was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on the evening of the twenty-ninth of December. The body lay in the Cathedral all night, and was prepared for burial on the following day. The Archbishop was dressed in an extraordinary collection of clothes. He had on a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s-wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, cowled robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious haircloth, covered with linen. As the body grew cold, the vermin that were living in this multiple covering started to crawl out, and as MacArthur quotes the chronicler: ‘The vermin boiled over like water in a simmering cauldron, and the onlookers burst into alternate weeping and laughter.

this I say,—we must never forget that all the education a man's head can receive, will not save his soul from hell, unless he knows the truths of the Bible. A man may have prodigious learning, and yet never be saved. He may be master of half the languages spoken round the globe. He may be acquainted with the highest and deepest things in heaven and earth. He may have read books till he is like a walking cyclopædia. He may be familiar with the stars of heaven,—the birds of the air,—the beasts of the earth, and the fishes of the sea. He may be able, like Solomon, to "speak of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows on the wall, of beasts also, and fowls, and creeping things, and fishes." (1 King iv. 33.) He may be able to discourse of all the secrets of fire, air, earth, and water. And yet, if he dies ignorant of Bible truths, he dies a miserable man! Chemistry never silenced a guilty conscience. Mathematics never healed a broken heart. All the sciences in the world never smoothed down a dying pillow. No earthly philosophy ever supplied hope in death. No natural theology ever gave peace in the prospect of meeting a holy God. All these things are of the earth, earthy, and can never raise a man above the earth's level. They may enable a man to strut and fret his little season here below with a more dignified gait than his fellow-mortals, but they can never give him wings, and enable him to soar towards heaven. He that has the largest share of them, will find at length that without Bible knowledge he has got no lasting possession. Death will make an end of all his attainments, and after death they will do him no good at all. A man may be a very ignorant man, and yet be saved. He may be unable to read a word, or write a letter. He may know nothing of geography beyond the bounds of his own parish, and be utterly unable to say which is nearest to England, Paris or New York. He may know nothing of arithmetic, and not see any difference between a million and a thousand. He may know nothing of history, not even of his own land, and be quite ignorant whether his country owes most to Semiramis, Boadicea, or Queen Elizabeth. He may know nothing of the affairs of his own times, and be incapable of telling you whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Commander-in-Chief, or the Archbishop of Canterbury is managing the national finances. He may know nothing of science, and its discoveries,—and whether Julius Cæsar won his victories with gunpowder, or the apostles had a printing press, or the sun goes round the earth, may be matters about which he has not an idea. And yet if that very man has heard Bible truth with his ears, and believed it with his heart, he knows enough to save his soul. He will be found at last with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, while his scientific fellow-creature, who has died unconverted, is lost for ever. There is much talk in these days about science and "useful knowledge." But after all a knowledge of the Bible is the one knowledge that is needful and eternally useful. A man may get to heaven without money, learning, health, or friends,—but without Bible knowledge he will never get there at all. A man may have the mightiest of minds, and a memory stored with all that mighty mind can grasp,—and yet, if he does not know the things of the Bible, he will make shipwreck of his soul for ever. Woe! woe! woe to the man who dies in ignorance of the Bible! This is the Book about which I am addressing the readers of these pages to-day. It is no light matter what you do with such a book. It concerns the life of your soul. I summon you,—I charge you to give an honest answer to my question. What are you doing with the Bible? Do you read it? HOW READEST THOU?

But why, an impatient critic will immediately object, should our forgiveness depend on Christ’s death? Why does God not simply forgive us, without the necessity of the cross? ‘God will pardon me’, Heinrich Heine protested. ‘That’s his métier [his job, his speciality].’4 After all, the objector might continue, if we sin against each other, we are required to forgive each other. So why should God not practise what he preaches? Why should he not be as generous as he expects us to be? Two answers need to be given to these questions. The first was given at the end of the eleventh century by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. He wrote in his magnificent book Why God Became Man: ‘You have not yet considered the seriousness of sin.’5 The second answer might be: ‘You have not yet considered the majesty of God.’ To draw an analogy between our forgiveness of each other and God’s forgiveness of us is very superficial. We are not God but private individuals, while he is the maker of heaven and earth, Creator of the very laws we break. Our sins are not purely personal injuries but a wilful rebellion against him. It is when we begin to see the gravity of sin and the majesty of God that our questions change. No longer do we ask why God finds it difficult to forgive sins, but how he finds it possible. As one writer has put it, ‘forgiveness is to man the plainest of duties; to God it is the profoundest of problems’.6 Why may forgiveness be described as a ‘problem’ to God? Because of who he is in his innermost being. Of course he is love (1 John 4:8, 16), but his love is not sentimental love; it is holy love. How then could God punish sin (as in justice he must) without contradicting his love? Or how could God pardon sin (as in love he yearned to do) without compromising his justice? How, confronted by human evil, could God be true to himself as holy love? How could he act simultaneously to express his holiness and his love? This is the divine dilemma that God resolved on the cross. For on the cross, when Jesus died, God himself in Christ bore the judgment we deserved, in order to bring us the forgiveness we do not deserve. The full penalty of sin was borne – not, however, by us, but by God in Christ. On the cross divine love and justice were reconciled.

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, expresses it this way: “To desire my joy is to desire the joy of the one I desire: my search for enjoyment through the…presence of another is a longing to be enjoyed…[Romantic] partners ‘admire’ in each other ‘the lineaments of gratified desire’. We are pleased because we are pleasing.

The Archbishop of Canterbury: “Jesus is the Son of God, you know.” Jane Fonda: “Maybe He is for you, but He’s not for me.” Archbishop: “Well, either He is or He isn’t.” Conversation on the Dick Cavett Show

It is something like what happens when we are invited to lunch by a family. We do not just sit at their table and take some food but we are embraced by that family, we have a share in the joy, the love, the warmth of the relations between husband, wife and children.

But as for me, I trust in you. 20 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise –in God I trust and am not afraid. 21 Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. 22 Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you. 23 I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ 24 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life. 25

The politicians are the guilty ones," said one cavalry officer. "I am all for revolution after this bloody massacre. I would hang all politicians, diplomats, and so-called statesmen with strict impartiality." "I'm for the people," said another. "The poor, bloody people, who are kept in ignorance and then driven into the shambles when their rulers desire to grab some new part of the earth's surface or to get their armies going because they are bored with peace." "What price Christianity?" asked another, inevitably. "What have the churches done to stop war or preach the gospel of Christ? The Bishop of London, the Archbishop of Canterbury, all those conventional, patriotic, cannon—blessing, banner-baptizing humbugs. God! They make me tired!" Strange words to hear in a

It is certainly of service to a man to know who were his grandfathers and who were his grandmothers if he entertain an ambition to move in the upper circles of society, and also of service to be able to speak of them as of persons who were themselves somebodies in their time. No doubt we all entertain great respect for those who by their own energies have raised themselves in the world; and when we hear that the son of a washerwoman has become Lord Chancellor or Archbishop of Canterbury we do, theoretically and abstractedly, feel a higher reverence for such self-made magnate than for one who has been as it were born into forensic or ecclesiastical purple. But not the less must the offspring of the washerwoman have had very much trouble on the subject of his birth, unless he has been, when young as well as when old, a very great man indeed. After the goal has been absolutely reached, and the honour and the titles and the wealth actually won, a man may talk with some humour, even with some affection, of the maternal tub;

as Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson later noted,1 “in all probability . . . hocus pocus is nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus (“this is the body”), [a] ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Once upon a time our politicians did not tend to apologize for our country’s prior actions! Here’s a refresher on how some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our great country. These are quite good JFK’S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60’s when De Gaulle decided to pull out of NATO. De Gaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible. Rusk’s response: “Does that include those who are buried here?” De Gaulle did not respond. You could have heard a pin drop. When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ‘empire building’ by George Bush. He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.” You could have heard a pin drop. There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?” A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?” You could have heard a pin drop. A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Germany and France. At morning tea the Frenchman complained that the conference should be conducted in French since it was being held in Paris. The German replied that, so far as he could see, the reason that it was being held in English was as a mark of respect to the other attendees, since their troops had shed so much blood so that the Frenchman wouldn’t be speaking German.

The endless fights among the faithful had prompted Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, to write that “unity is a gospel imperative when we recognize that it opens us to change, to conversion: when we realize how our life with Christ is somehow bound up with our willingness to abide with those we think are sinful, and those we think are stupid.

As the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the monarch is the defender of the faith—the official religion of the country, established by law and respected by sentiment. Yet when the Queen travels to Scotland, she becomes a member of the Church of Scotland, which governs itself and tolerates no supervision by the state. She doesn’t abandon the Anglican faith when she crosses the border, but rather doubles up, although no Anglican bishop ever comes to preach at Balmoral. Elizabeth II has always embraced what former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey called the “sacramental manner in which she views her own office.” She regards her faith as a duty, “not in the sense of a burden, but of glad service” to her subjects. Her faith is also part of the rhythm of her daily life. “She has a comfortable relationship with God,” said Carey. “She’s got a capacity because of her faith to take anything the world throws at her. Her faith comes from a theology of life that everything is ordered.” She worships unfailingly each Sunday, whether in a tiny chapel in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec or a wooden hut on Essequibo in Guyana after a two-hour boat ride. But “she doesn’t parade her faith,” said Canon John Andrew, who saw her frequently during the 1960s when he worked for Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. On holidays she attends services at the parish church in Sandringham, and at Crathie outside the Balmoral gates. Her habit is to take Communion three or four times a year—at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and the occasional special service—“an old-fashioned way of being an Anglican, something she was brought up to do,” said John Andrew. She enjoys plain, traditional hymns and short, straightforward sermons. George Carey regards her as “middle of the road. She treasures Anglicanism. She loves the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is always used at Sandringham. She would disapprove of modern services, but wouldn’t make that view known. The Bible she prefers is the old King James version. She has a great love of the English language and enjoys the beauty of words. The scriptures are soaked into her.” The Queen has called the King James Bible “a masterpiece of English prose.

With laws against heresy once more in place, trials of leading Protestants began. On 4 February 1555, John Rogers became the first priest to be burned to death under the revived laws, but he was followed by hundreds of others, including several bishops. The most notable was Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and a noted theologian.

Prayer is all about trust in God, a trust full of hope and desire, a loving trust. Prayer is all about entrusting ourselves, our lives and our cause to the Father. The depth of our prayer depends on the depth of our trust in God; our ability to persevere in prayer depends on the endurance of our trust; our determination to cling to God depends on the strength of our trust. Of

Binary debates and ‘othering’ ultimately prevent us from searching for justice and constructing the world together. And if the world is not constructed together, it almost inevitably means that some will be excluded or silenced, and feel aggrieved or unjustly treated, thereby perpetuating a cycle of bitterness and conflict.

The archbishop of Canterbury was waiting for them inside. They were angry.

2. The Ontological Argument Nothing greater than God can be conceived (this is stipulated as part of the definition of “God”). It is greater to exist than not to exist. If we conceive of God as not existing, then we can conceive of something greater than God (from 2). To conceive of God as not existing is not to conceive of God (from 1 and 3). It is inconceivable that God not exist (from 4). God exists. This argument, first articulated by Saint Anselm (1033–1109), the Archbishop of Canterbury, is unlike any other, proceeding purely on the conceptual level. Everyone agrees that the mere existence of a concept does not entail that there are examples of that concept; after all, we can know what a unicorn is and at the same time say, “Unicorns don’t exist.” The claim of The Ontological Argument is that the concept of God is the one exception to this generalization. The very concept of God, when defined correctly, entails that there is something that satisfies that concept. Although most people suspect that there is something wrong with this argument, it’s not so easy to figure out what it is. FLAW: It was Immanuel Kant who pinpointed the fallacy in The Ontological Argument—it is to treat “existence” as a property, like “being fat” or “having ten fingers.” The Ontological Argument relies on a bit of wordplay, assuming that “existence” is just another property, but logically it is completely different. If you really could treat “existence” as just part of the definition of the concept of God, then you could just as easily build it into the definition of any other concept. We could, with the wave of our verbal magic wand, define a trunicorn as “a horse that (a) has a single horn on its head, and (b) exists.” So, if you think about a trunicorn, you’re thinking about something that must, by definition, exist; therefore, trunicorns exist. This is clearly absurd: we could use this line of reasoning to prove that any figment of our imagination exists.

The Archbishop of Canterbury even endorsed the idea. Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan, (Encounter Books, 2006) writes that “Instead of acknowledging that Muslim values must give way wherever they conflict with the majority culture, they believe that the majority should instead defer to Islamic values and allow Muslims effectively autonomous development.

When I asked the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, “Is God in cyberspace?” he joked at first that God must be in cyberspace because every time he is in the London subway, “I hear people saying into their cell phones, ‘Oh God, why doesn’t this work!’” Here

Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, nourishment of mind by His truth, purifying of imagination by His beauty, opening of the heart to His love, and submission of will to His purpose, and all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.' -William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury (1881-1944)

The most highly promoted of all was William Laud, who directed Church affairs as Bishop of London from 1628, although he had to wait for Canterbury until Archbishop Abbot had the good taste to die, in 1633. Laud was prominent in a royal regime which after 1629 ceased to trouble itself with meeting Parliament and instead tried to sort out England’s problems with royal proclamations, Privy Council orders and the decisions of law courts. Its enemies sarcastically named the period ‘Thorough’, and looked back on it as the ‘Eleven Years’ Tyranny

So, Andrew, what you are basically saying is that the theological issue regarding homosexuality boils down to a disagreement between those who think that the sodomy laws are part of Levitical code about cleanliness, holiness and ritual purity, which are not binding on Christians, and those who think that they are part of a more general moral law, which is." I guess I am. "Gee. It's so simple when you put it like that. Why didn't the Archbishop of Canterbury explain it at the beginning and save us all a lot of trouble?" I don't know. But if it turned out that he didn't think that understanding the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament was very important; or that he didn't think that the people in the pew really cared very much about the difference between Law and Grace, or if – if – he himself doesn't believe in it – then I would be very worried indeed.

It is possible to see Anglicanism as a kind of global brand with a quality control office based in Lambeth, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Just as transnational companies like Nike or Dell have shifted production across the globe but have retained control over the design of the product in developed countries, so Anglicanism’s centres of productivity have shifted away from the old heartlands.

It was another watershed event for a woman who had for so long believed herself worthless, with little to offer the world other than her sense of style. Her life in the royal family had been directly responsible for creating this confusion. As her friend James Gilbey says: “When she went to Pakistan last year she was amazed that five million people turned out just to see her. Diana has this extraordinary battle going on in her mind. ‘How can all these people want to see me?’ and then I get home in the evening and lead this mouse-like existence. Nobody says: ‘Well done.’ She has this incredible dichotomy in her mind. She has this adulation out there and this extraordinary vacant life at home. There is nobody and nothing there in the sense that nobody is saying nice things to her--apart of course from the children. She feels she is in an alien world.” Little things mean so much to Diana. She doesn’t seek praise but on public engagements if people thank her for helping, it turns a routine duty into a very special moment. Years ago she never believed the plaudits she received, now she is much more comfortable accepting a kind word and a friendly gesture. If she makes a difference, it makes her day. She has discussed with church leaders, including the Archbishop or Canterbury and several leading bishops, the blossoming of this deep seated need within herself to help those who are sick and dying. “Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can,” she says. Visits to specialist hospitals like Stoke Mandeville or Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children are not a chore but deeply satisfying. As America’s First Lady, Barbara Bush, discovered when she joined the Princess on a visit to an AIDS ward of the Middlesex Hospital in July 1991 there is nothing maudlin about Diana’s attitude towards the sick. When a bed-bound patient burst into tears as the Princess was chatting to him, Diana spontaneously put her arms around him and gave him an enormous hug. It was a touching moment which affected the First Lady and others who were present. While she has since spoken of the need to give AIDS sufferers a cuddle, for Diana this moment was a personal achievement. As she held him to her, she was giving in to her own self rather than conforming to her role as a princess.

One evening she can be immensely mature, discussing death and the after-life with George Carey, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the next night giggling away at a bridge party. “Sometimes she is possessed by a different spirit in response to breaking free from the yoke of responsibility that binds her,” observed Rory Scott who still sees the Princess socially. As her brother says: “She has done very well to keep her sense of humour, that is what relaxes people around her. She is not at all stuffy and will make a joke happily either about herself or about something ridiculous which everyone has noticed but is too embarrassed to talk about.” Royal tours, these outdated exercises in stultifying boredom and ancient ceremonial, are rich seams for her finely tuned sense of the ridiculous. After a day watching native dancers in unbearable humidity or sipping a cup of some foul-tasting liquid, she often telephones her friends to regale them with the latest absurdities. “The things I do for England,” is her favourite phrase. She was particularly tickled when she asked the Pope about his “wounds” during a private audience in the Vatican shortly after he had been shot. He thought she was talking about her “womb” and congratulated her on her impending new arrival. While her instinct and intuition are finely honed, “she understands the essence of people, what a person is about rather than who they are,” says her friend Angela Serota--Diana recognizes that her intellectual hinterland needs development. The girl who left school without an “O” level to her name now harbours a quiet ambition to study psychology and mental health. “Anything to do with people,” she says.

At the same time, the Establishment and their media allies were in full cry. Lord McGregor, the Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, issued a statement condemning the hysteria that the book immediately generated as ‘An odious exhibition of journalists dabbling their fingers in the stuff of other people’s souls.’ In fact, this criticism was never made of the book itself; indeed, Lord McGregor has since told me that the issue was the ‘most difficult’ of his tenure. The Archbishop of Canterbury worried publicly about the effects of the publicity on Princes William and Harry; Lord St John of Fewsley condemned the book’s publication, while a pot-pourri of MPs were keen to see me locked away in the Tower; it was, too, a torrid time for Diana’s supporters. As loyalists rallied to the flag, ignoring the message while deriding the messenger, the public gradually began to accept the book’s veracity through statements by Diana’s friends, further confirmed when she visited her old friend Carolyn Bartholomew, who had spoken about the Princess’s bulimia. Unfortunately, that casual call upon an old and trusted friend had bitter consequences for Diana. Senior courtiers, including the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, pointed accusing fingers at Diana when they saw the front-page coverage of the visit. Aggrieved and hurt, the Princess flew by helicopter to Merseyside for a visit to a hospice, her first official engagement since Diana, Her True Story hit the headlines. It proved to be an emotional meeting between Diana and her public for, touched by the show of affection from waiting wellwishers, she burst into tears, overcome by the distressing echoes of her morning meeting with Palace officials, and by the underlying strain of the decision she and Prince Charles had taken. As she later told a friend: ‘An old lady in the crowd stroked my face and that triggered something inside me. I simply couldn’t stop myself crying.’ The public tears did not surprise her close friends, who knew only too well the private anguish of her lonely position, the strain she had borne for 18 months. As one remarked: ‘She is a brilliant actress who has disguised her private sorrow.

Early in 1959 he ordered the words “unbelieving” and “perfidious,” which were used with reference to Jews and Muslims, to be deleted from the Good Friday liturgy. Additional outreach followed. A pope had not met with the Archbishop of Canterbury for 400 years, ever since Elizabeth I had been excommunicated. Pope John met in the Vatican with the current Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, for approximately an hour on December 2, 1960. Then, for the first time in history, a Shinto high priest was received by a pope.

Thankfulness,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, said, “is a soil in which pride does not easily grow.”9

I’m going to focus on your hands, Mr. Harrison. Hands can be complicated.” He smiled as if she’d just explained to the Archbishop of Canterbury that Christmas often fell on the twenty-fifth of December. “I like hands,” he said, taking his seat. “They can be windows to the soul too. What shall I do with these hands you intend to immortalize?” She hadn’t thought that far ahead, it being sufficient challenge to choose a single aspect of him to sketch. Fleur and Amanda came skipping back into the room, each clutching a sketch pad. “You will sketch the girls, and I will sketch you, while the girls sketch whomever they please.” The plan was brilliant; everybody had an assigned task. Amanda’s little brows drew down. “I want to watch Mr. Harrison. Fleur can sketch you, Aunt Jen. You have to sit very still, though.” “An unbroken chain of artistic indulgence,” Mr. Harrison said, accepting a sketch pad and pencil from Fleur. “Miss Fleur, please seat yourself on the hearth, though you might want a pillow to make the ordeal more comfortable.” Amanda grabbed two burgundy brocade pillows off the settee, tossed one at Fleur, and dropped the other beside Elijah’s rocker. Jenny took the second rocking chair and flipped open her sketch pad. Her subject sat with the morning sun slanting over his shoulder, one knee crossed over the other, the sketch pad on his lap. Amanda watched from where she knelt at his elbow, and Fleur… Fleur crossed one knee over the other—an unladylike pose, but effective for balancing a sketch pad—and glowered at Jenny as if to will Jenny’s image onto the page by visual imperative. “Your sister has beautiful eyebrows,” Mr. Harrison said to his audience. “They have the most graceful curve. It’s a family trait, I believe.” Amanda crouched closer. “Does that mean I have them too?” He glanced over at her, his expression utterly serious. “You do, though yours are a touch more dramatic. When you make your bows, gentlemen will write sonnets to the Carrington sisters’ eyebrows.” “Papa’s

stood at Ground Zero in January 2002. The World Economic Forum had been moved to New York from Davos for that year and the archbishop of Canterbury, the chief rabbi of Israel, imams, gurus from all over the world stood at Ground Zero and we said prayers together. And I suddenly realized that this was the great defining choice that humanity would face for the next generation: religion as a force for coexistence, reconciliation, and mutual respect or religion as a force for hatred, terror, and violence.

service in Wales, which was regarded by some Church of England people as a pagan act. So there was one newspaper headline, which said, and I doubt that this has ever been said before or will ever said be again, “Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Rabbi Accused of Heresy.

He would like to hear the archbishop of Canterbury cry, ‘Unlock the doors!’ and General Synod breaking into song, and the song flooding the entire C of E. But that’s not going to happen any time soon, is it?

The archbishop of Canterbury declared that Christians were allowed to pray for victory, but the archbishop of York disagreed. While the war was a righteous one, he said, it was not a holy one: “We must avoid praying each other down.

There was something aesthetically beautiful about the self-effacement the people on that program displayed. The self-effacing person is soothing and gracious, while the self-promoting person is fragile and jarring. Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space—self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry. Humility is infused with lovely emotions like admiration, companionship, and gratitude. “Thankfulness,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, said, “is a soil in which pride does not easily grow.”9

Human beings have an infinite capacity for self-deception and selective hearing when it comes to the words of Scripture.

William Temple, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury during the difficult days of World War II. He wrote, “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.”3

This came after the Archbishop of Canterbury and two of his fellow bishops had indicated to the Prime Minister that the attitude of the Church of England towards Catholic Emancipation, symbolized by their persistently hostile voting in the House of Lords, had not changed.

For the time being, however, two additional bishops was as far as the pope’s ambitious scheme was able to progress, and his command that London be the seat of the archbishop was never fulfilled. Canterbury, Æthelberht’s own capital, retained that distinction, with Augustine serving as its first incumbent.

Moneylenders have always received a bad press. Over the centuries all – well, nearly all – the greatest minds have been aligned against them. Aristotle, Plato, St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Luther and Shakespeare have each had a go at the wretched usurer. Criticism has come from the left and from the right. Marx detested interest, but then so did Hitler. A few years ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury launched an attack on a UK payday lending firm, which he believed took advantage of the needy and desperate. ‘The War on Wonga’ (the name of the financial firm) is a campaign without end. Many economists, in particular the experts on inequality, side with the angels. The taking of interest is depicted as robbing the weak and the needy. What’s more, by demanding back more than has been given, the usurer stands accused of injustice.

Owing to his [the Archbishop of Canterbury’s] zeal and that of other clerics in the country, England was the first nation in Europe to adopt the infamous Jew Badge in 1218.

There was. The problem was not somnolence; it was subservience. The members of the Board of Trade itself knew little about ships or safety at sea. They were mostly decorative luminaries like the Archbishop of Canterbury. On nautical matters they deferred to the professional staff of the Board’s Marine Department. But these men were bureaucrats—better at carrying out policy than making it. When it came to such questions as whether ships should provide lifeboats for all on board, these men deferred to the Department’s Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee. This group was dominated by the ship-owners themselves, and they were only too happy to make policy. They knew exactly where they stood, and they did not want boats for all. In the luxury trade, “boats for all” meant less room on the upper decks for the suites, the games and sports, the verandahs and palm courts, and the glass-enclosed observation lounges that lured the wealthy travelers from the competition. On the Titanic, for instance, it would sacrifice that vast play area amidships and instead clutter the Boat Deck with (of all things) boats.

between 1586 and 1607, the historian William Camden wrote that the “small market-town” of Stratford-upon-Avon owed “all its consequences to two natives of it. They are John de Stratford, later archbishop of Canterbury, who built the church, and Hugh Clopton, later mayor of London, who built the Clopton Bridge across the Avon.” Camden was clearly aware of the poet Shakespeare—he referred to him elsewhere as one of “the most pregnant wits of our time”—but he apparently did not regard Stratford as the poet’s origin.

We come here to the dilemma at the heart of the perfect Protestant society, such as the Pilgrims and those who followed them wished to create. To them, liberty and religion were inseparable, and they came to America to pursue both. To them, the Roman church, or the kind of Anglicanism Charles I and his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, were creating in England, were the antithesis of liberty, the essence of thraldom.

There is an old tradition that after the battle of Hastings William the Conqueror marched toward Dover, whereon Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Egelsine, the Abbot of St. Augustine's, assembled the people of Kent in arms at Swanscombe. Every man had a green bough in his hand, and when William approached he thought he saw a forest on the march. Then the people cast down the boughs, and sent a messenger to the Conqueror offering him peace if he would guarantee their ancient liberties, or "war, and that most deadly, if thou deny it them". Probably this legend is the earliest source of the incident of Birnam Wood in Shakespeare's Macbeth.

In 596, Augustine, with 40 Benedictine monks, sent by Pope Gregory I, landed in Kent and began the missionary work among the heathen in England which was to bear such abundant fruit. The two forms of missionary activity in the country, the older, British, and the newer, Roman, soon came into conflict. The Pope appointed Augustine Archbishop of Canterbury, giving him supremacy over all British bishops already in the land. A national element accentuated the struggle between the two missions, the British, Celts, and Welsh being opposed to the Anglo-Saxons. The Church of Rome insisted that its form of Church government should be the only one permitted in the country, but the British order continued its resistance, until in the 13th century its remaining elements were absorbed into the Lollard movement

And yet, floating above it all is a language which is not Standard Pronunciation, nor anything like Ideal Pronunciation, but it is nevertheless, as Shaw implies in a letter, the ruling tongue. “It is perfectly easy,” he wrote, “to find a speaker whose speech will be accepted in every part of the English-speaking world as valid 18 carat oral currency . . . if a man pronounces in that way, he will be eligible as far as speech is concerned for the post of Lord Chief Justice, Chancellor of Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury, Emperor, President or Toast Master at the Mansion House.” It was that eighteen-carat voice, on the back of unparalleled industrial wealth, which took English yet more intensively over the globe.

Some may think tht connection between prayer and angelic assistance or other miracles is just a coincidence, but William Temple, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, pointed out, "When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I do not, they don't.

Sir Montague Fowler (1858-1933) fourth (and last) Baronet of Braemore, was the third son of Sir John Fowler. Coming from the family of a very wealthy and eminent engineer, he might have been expected to pursue some career along the same lines, or go into politics, or even - as his younger brother Evelyn seems to have done - become expert at doing nothing. Instead, he entered the church. He attracted public approbation for several charitable acts before the war and was rector at various churches in London; but the high point of his ecclesiastical career was his appointment as chaplain and purse-bearer to the Archbishop of Canterbury. And he wrote books: Some Notable Archbishops of Canterbury (1895), Church History in Victoria's Reign (1896), Christian Egypt (1901), The Morality of Social Pleasures (1910) and others. In 1913, he founded the Church Imperial Club in London, which had 'an imposing list of divines and Church dignitaries as patrons'. In 1889, he married his first wife, Ada Dayrell Thomson, a niece of the Archbishop of York. She too was an author, a bit like the Countess of Cromartie, but more racy: her several works written under the pseudonym 'Dayrell Trelawney' included The Revolt of Daphne, The Robbery of the Pink Diamond and The Secret of the Haunted Road. She also wrote several plays under the nom de plume 'Gaston Grevex', and a marvellously patriotic poem, Femina Imperialis 1900 ('Awake! Imperial daughter of a race/That rules the sea...') appeared under her own name in the Revelstoke Herald of British Columbia in 1900. Ada died in 1911. In 1914, Montague married his second wife, Denise Chailliey, a Frenchwoman thirty-four years his junior; she wrote neither novels nor church histories, but produced two daughters, bred toy spaniels and outlived her husband by sixty years.

Intellectually, [punctuation matters] a great deal. For if you are getting your commas, semicolons and full stops wrong, it means you are not getting your thoughts right and your mind is muddled’ – William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury 1897–1902

Sometimes there are things we never understand, that are best left alone. - Wise Archbishop of Canterbury

I studied the Bible very carefully in those days, but there was little that was favourable to dogs in the Old Testament. Tobias took his dog with him on his journey with the angel, but it played no part in the story at all, not even when a fish tried to eat Tobias. A dog was an unclean beast, of course, in those times. He only came into his own with Christianity. It was the Christians who began to carve dogs in stone in the cathedrals, and even while they were still doubtful about women’s souls they were beginning to think that maybe a dog had one, though they couldn’t get the Pope to pronounce one way or the other, not even the Archbishop of Canterbury

Someone once said that the deepest problem in prayer is often not the absence of God but the absence of me. I’m not actually there. My mind is everywhere. —ROWAN WILLIAMS, FORMER ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

Forget knighthood, kingdoms, battles. The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, the murder that Henry now did penance for. The murder that he, Sir Benedict Palmer, had been present at. What mattered now was to keep his family safe.

The Parliament of 1401, at the special request of Arundel, the persecuting archbishop of Canterbury, passed a statute authorizing the burning of heretics, the Statute De Hoeretico Comburendo, which was the first law passed in England for the suppression of religious opinions.

Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space—self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry. Humility is infused with lovely emotions like admiration, companionship, and gratitude. “Thankfulness,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, said, “is a soil in which pride does not easily grow.”9