There isn’t really any thing more I can say or want to say concerning the new pope, Benedict XVI. Andrew Sullivan say said many good things, and he is one who wants desperately to have hope.
I think we are now approaching a time that is very similar in some specific ways to that of England during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Reformers and the Catholics were warring against one another, and what emerged was the Elizabethan Settlement. A forced settlement, but one that enabled war to be averted.
Today, we are certainly in a different situation. I do think, however, that idea of Via Media, of the spirit of the Elizabethan Settlement, can be reasserted. To the Evangelicals who are sick of their leaders making an idol of America and political power, and to the Catholics who are very disturbed by the direction their church is taking (and perhaps the even faster push for a new inquisition), I say “come to the Via Media.”
Of course we have our own profound problems right now, but within Anglicanism we allow the problems to exist and we allow our dirty laundry to be aired-out before all. I have no desire to steel sheep from other flocks, but many Roman Catholics and Evangelicals will come (and are coming) to a point where they will not be able to abide by the continued politicalization of the faith or a new inquisition of questioning and differences in espoused theology.