An Omnishambles

The Catholic Church. with worldwide membership of about 1,406 BILLION, elected a pope in just 16 days.  Of course, it was obvious that the pope was elderly, and very ill, and could not live forever, but that’s still an amazing feat of global organization.

The papal election is an example of how a hierarchy can triumph over other forms of organization. Only Cardinals are involved in the election of a pope, and they can easily be assembled from all over the world and accommodated at the Vatican. It is also an example of how nearly two thousand years of tradition can become a steamroller of efficiency. The Roman Catholic church has had a long time to perfect the process.

The Anglican church, of which the Episcopal Church is a member, has somewhere around 90 MILLION members throughout the world and is going to take over a year to elect a new Archbishop of Canterbury. The process is messy and much less hierarchical and has been gradually developing over less than five hundred years, which is only a couple of heart beats in historical time.

The former Archbishop, Justin Welby, resigned on November 12, 2024, with his departure set for Jan 6, the Feast of the Epiphany.  WE were told that a new Archbishop would be elected in the autumn of 2025. One whole year later.

After I read the news, I began to wonder about the process of electing new Archbishop of Canterbury. Even though I am a life-long Anglican and ordained into the Episcopal church, I did not know how it was done. So, I looked it up.

First, a nominating committee is formed, (the Crown Nominating Committee, or CNC) consisting of up to twenty clergy and lay people, men and women, from all around the world. The CNC suggests, interviews, and selects a candidate.

In step two, that candidate is put before the Prime Minister who presumably has some input.

In the final step, the Prime Minister puts the candidate before the King for approval. (The King is the head of the Anglican Church.)

We have come a long way from the days when the monarch gathered some bishops in a chamber and named the Archbishop from among them, and I am grateful for that.

The process of selecting an Archbishop is necessarily longer than the papal process because it is far more democratic.  But here’s the thing, it is already mid-May, and we haven’t even had lift off with the selection of the CNC! The irony is that the process was stalled at the selection of the three required candidates from the Diocese of Canterbury because of a procedural error!  How embarrassing.

I certainly do not know all the ins and outs of how our church is run at its top level, but it seems to me that the CNC should always be in place, elected at each triennial General Synod, at the very least, and with members replaced as and when necessary. We have easy communication between all four corners of the world today.  There really is no excuse for why we are in this slow step march toward selection of our Archbishop. My hat is doffed to a member of the General Synod of the Church of England, who called the process of electing the ordained leader of our church an “Omnishambles”. She hit the nail on the head.

It is unfortunate that the Anglican Church is in the position of having to elect our global leader in the same year as the Roman Catholic church elected theirs. Comparisons can’t help but be made. Maybe when we next elect an Archbishop of Canterbury it will be less of an omnishambles.