On January 30 of this year the Archbishop of Canterbury (henceforth AbC) delivered the annual Fr. Alexander Schmemann Memorial Lecture at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, itself widely regarded as the “flagship seminary” of American Orthodoxy, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by that same institution.  That signal honor has occasioned a good deal of contentious reaction, not least in the Orthodox blogsphere — see these, for instance:

This curious episode strongly parallels the conferral of similar honors on President Obamagabalus by Notre Dame University.  Mutatis mutandis, of course — but I will not be surprised if the events of January 30 inflict a mortal blow upon any “Anglican Project” that the OCA may have with regard to either ACNA (a forlorn hope, given the theological “latitude” of that coalition) or FtW/Quincy.  This is the man who, in *The Body’s Grace,* clearly stated his support for SS (let the reader understand), and who had never recanted it — but who has only chosen to defer to the “current consensus” in the Anglican Communion as a whole against such an abomination, and not, be it noted, to that “Catholic consensus” which, in respect to SS (and WO) is as clear as any skeptic or “objective historian” could desire; and who has (as must be evident by now) exerted himself to the uttermost to prevent any meaningful “discipline” or “sanctions” to be imposed upon the Episcopal Church by the Anglican Communion at large as the former morphs before our eyes from a high-church “decorated Protestant” body into a Gnostic Revival sect.  One can imagine the puzzlement of dispossed Orthodoxophile Anglican “seekers” on learning of such an event, a sentiment recalled to mind lately by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, who some 22 years ago found himself in just that situation.

Then, too there is the AbC’s constant (“firm” and “unyielding” would be oxymoronic terms if applied to the AbC) support for WO and “women bishops” — or “flaminicae,” to use my favorite term.  He, like the Archbishop of York, has supported making “adequate provision” for opponents of “flaminicae” in the Church of England — provision which the Revision Committee of that church’s General Synod (the body assigned the task of framing the specific legislative proposals) has now declined to endorse and of which the General Synod itself will most likely confirm the rejection at its July 2010 session.  Does anyone doubt that the AbC will support the legislation regardless of its totalitarian overtones and its effect of terminating the 1993 “Act of Synod” which provided a minimally adequate provision (in the view of those who embraced it) for opponents of the ordination of women to “the priesthood” in the Church of England at that time?  True, in an address which he gave earlier today to that General Synod he seemed to deplore the niggardly provision that it appears set to accord these opponents, but it is a rash man who would conclude from these “measured” words that he would actually vote to see the legislation for women bishops go down to defeat because of these deficiencies..

The AbC does have, as his writings attest, an interest, both personal and scholarly, in Orthodoxy.  To recognize this by the conferral upon him of an honorary degree by an institution charged with promoting Orthodox Christian orthodoxy does seem, to this outsider at least, a bit much.  At any event, it would have seemed more fitting for such an accolade to have been conferred upon Dr. Williams by a theological institution of the Finnish Orthodox church rather than one operating under the aegis of the Orthodox Church of America, given the strange “openness” that some Finnish Orthodox clergy and theologians have expressed of late towards accepting “faithful and monogamous” homosexual unions, as has been reported of late here and elsewhere:

http://www.kosmas.fi/PDF-files-veljeston%20paasivu/Finn_Ort_Probl_2009_Autumn.pdf