Collisions between immovable objects and unstoppable forces are never pretty, as the Church of England seems anxious to demonstrate. Its General Synod heard a desperate plea this week from Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to pull back from the confrontation over the ordination of women bishops that could see the Church fragmenting into at least three components. These three – Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical and liberal – are modern versions of the three varieties of Anglican churchmanship that have existed side by side, at times comfortably and at times painfully, ever since the shape of the Elizabethan Settlement emerged in the sixteenth century. Now this Anglican “comprehensiveness” seems to have reached its sternest test.

Having decided to ordain women in 1992, a move to open the Anglican episcopacy to them was inevitable. About 40 per cent of Anglican clergy are now female, and some are as well qualified for promotion as their male equivalents. To cope with those who could not accept female ordination on theo­logical or biblical grounds, special arrangements were made so that such clergy, and their parishes, need never come into contact with a woman priest if they did not want to. Most of those who took advantage of this were Anglo-Catholics, and they expected similar arrangements to be made so that they could insulate themselves from women bishops. But this is proving unacceptable to the proponents of women bishops, for the understandable reason that it seems to establish that such women bishops are not proper bishops but at best ­second class, at worst invalid.

There is also a strong objection among conservative Evangelicals, the second of the three elements in the comprehensiveness mix, that the “headship” of women over men in the Church is ruled out by Scripture. Archbishop Williams is probably right that the only way of holding these three elements together is for one or more to climb down ...

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales did not experience first-hand the super-heated reaction of the mass media, whether accurately reflecting public opinion or not, to Pope Benedict’s attack on the “unjust” consequences of British anti-discrimination legislation. For they were in the room with him when he said it, at the end of their routine ad limina visit to the Vatican.

Aggressively ...

Recent developments in the Catholic Church have sparked fears of an imminent counter-revolution against the Second Vatican Council. Anxiety is mainly focused on the new translation of the Mass into English but also on a more fundamental call by the papal master of ceremonies, Mgr Guido Marini, for a “renewal of the renewal” which would entail the recasting of the entire Latin liturgy. But is Vatican II ...

The earthquake that hit Haiti a week ago is a catastrophe of biblical proportions. The people of Haiti were already among the poorest on the planet – apart from the one per cent who owns half the nation’s wealth. The death toll from the magnitude 7.0 earthquake may reach 200,000 or more, and most victims were crushed by falling buildings. This is itself a mark of extreme poverty – it is estimated ...

The polls tell us that immigration continues to head the list of issues of most concern to the British public. What this means is less clear. There is anxiety about community relations and failure to integrate, particularly with reference to Muslims who were, or whose families were, initially from Pakistan. There is the more recent influx from Eastern Europe following the enlargement of the European Union ...