So are his flock defecting in droves [to Roman Catholicism]? “No, they’re not. One or two, and there’ll be more, I think.” Do they write and tell you why? Some do. But I don’t think it’s going to be a landslide and I never thought it would be.” One of the problems with Roman Catholicism is having to sign up to the idea that the Pope is infallible when, surely, to be human is to err? “Better ask my Roman Catholic friends about that.” But one of the reasons you chose to be an Anglo-Catholic was because of that stumbling block? “I couldn’t accept the infallibility of the Pope, no. But back to that situation last year… I think some people in the Vatican had been listening to some groups within the Anglican Communion who were looking for some sort of corporate solution – ‘Let’s all come together and be recognised in a group’ – and they’d worked out a scheme for that… I think, perhaps, slightly overestimating how popular it’s going to be.

“A lot of people in the Anglican Communion don’t think much of me and don’t think much of the way the Communion is going – but that doesn’t mean they want to be Roman Catholics.”

One of your most torturous times in the eight years as Archbishop must have been over the Dr Jeffrey John issue? “Yes,” he says in a very quiet voice. In 2003, Dr John – who is a celibate homosexual – was appointed as Bishop of Reading. … Much was made of Dr Williams speaking out against [lesbian bishop] Mary Glasspool’s election but remaining silent on Uganda’s proposed anti-homosexual bill that would have led to the imprisonment and even death of many homosexuals.

… Dr Williams’s position on this once seemed clear when he wrote, on the subject of homosexuality: “If we are looking for a sexual ethic that can be seriously informed by our Bible, there is a good deal to steer us away from assuming that reproductive sex is a norm.”

When I read this out, he replies: “That’s what I wrote as a theologian, you know, putting forward a suggestion. That’s not the job I have now.”

So your job doesn’t necessarily allow you to be true to yourself? “I think if I were to say my job was not to be true to myself that might suggest that my job required me to be dishonest and if that were the case, then I’d be really worried.

“Put it this way, it means that I’m not elected on a manifesto to further this agenda or that; I have to be someone who holds the reins for the whole debate. Tries to keep people at the table and to do that not just because it’s nicer to have people together than otherwise, but because there’s a real religious, spiritual dimension, saying, ‘Unity matters to all of us; we actually need each other, however much we dislike each other.’?”

Full article: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article2734417.ece (paywall)