The Mad Priest – (actually a parish priest in England) has drawn our attention to a post made on a blog of his in response to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech to General Synod today.

Here’s a very interesting point that the poster makes in that comment:

Link: MadPriest likes this, a lot.

Rowan’s ecclesiology is not Anglican. Full stop. Period. The church that Thomas Cranmer and Latimer and Ridley and Laud and Hooker and the other Anglican greats built was a national church that retained its catholicity. We are not an international Roman style church. And the Anglican communion builds on this with a fellowship of national churches in the catholic tradition. We have spent so much time studying Roman and Orthodo ecclesiology that we have forgotten our own heritage and beliefs.

Tis a very interesting question. Are we in danger of chasing so fast after the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic models of relating to one another that we’re forgetting that we’ve something to add too? I don’t know – but I want to think a bit more about the question…