As my colleague John Burns reported on Saturday, the archbishop of Canterbury said in an interview with the BBC that sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church in Ireland had led to “an institution so deeply bound in to the life of the society suddenly becoming — suddenly losing all credibility.”
Those remarks by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the leader of the Anglican Communion, were recorded last week but only broadcast in full — and posted online — by the BBC on Monday morning. Near the beginning of a discussion of the difficulties facing Christian institutions and the role of religion in society, Archbishop Williams said:
It’s been, I think in Ireland especially, a colossal corporate trauma, hasn’t it? I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that, you know, it’s quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now. And an institution so deeply bound into the life of the society suddenly becoming — suddenly losing all credibility. And that’s not just a problem for the church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland, I think.
Those comments angered Catholic leaders and prompted an apology from Archbishop Williams. In the complete discussion broadcast on Monday (which is also available for download), the archbishop added:
I think it’s a lesson we’ve all had to learn the hard way, really, because, I guess that for an awful lot of Christian institutions until fairly recently the default setting, it would be: ‘Got to try and hang on to the institution’s credibility.’ And, well, we’ve learned that that is damaging, it’s wrong, it’s dishonest and it requires that very hard recognition, which ought to be, 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.
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