From The London Times-
The Archbishop of Canterbury today writes off the Noughties as ten “terrible and gruelling years” and pleads for humankind to change its ways.
In his new year message Dr Rowan Williams lists terrorism, war, natural disaster and the financial collapse as being among the disasters that have bedevilled the past decade. More recently, he was disappointed by failings at the Copenhagen summit on climate change.
In a characteristically apocalyptic message that reflects the frustration among church leaders that developed countries are not doing more to forestall environmental and economic disaster, Dr Williams urges a traditional Christian response of pulling together to stave off disaster, arguing that it would be wrong to despair.
“Before we shrug our shoulders and lower our expectations, let’s not lose sight of one enormous lesson we can learn from the last decade,” he says. “The needs of our neighbours are the needs of the whole human family.”
His own Church, the Anglican Communion, has also suffered its share of problems in the past decade, precipitated by the consecration of the gay bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire in 2003. However, the new year message is addressed to wider society and is understood not to refer to internal church difficulties.
In the message, broadcast on BBC One at 12.35pm and repeated at 4.55pm on BBC Two, Dr Williams reflects on the UN millennium development goals, key objectives for tackling poverty and disease agreed on in 2000 by more than 200 nations and international bodies that “summed up for a lot of us the hopes we had for a new look at our world”.
More here-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6972895.ece
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