Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is leaving. At 61. A church leader is actually retiring and not dying on the job, and at a time of life which I consider middle-aged! Popes have to die or be assassinated.
Secondly, the subtext is that he has had enough of the politics and nastiness in the Anglican community over acceptance of homosexuality and the ordination of women. Williams, an academic, seems a nice, gentle sort of fellow, who will be nicely at home in a Cambridge college. He calls the Pope his “friend”, a friend who has made a takeover bid for right-wing Anglicans to cross over to the true church. Who needs “friends” like that, or the neanderthal attitudes and back-biting from his “flock”? Sensible man.
The relationship of this to Epicureanism? Epicureans believe in living, loving and letting live. They have no problems with people who were born with this or that sexual orientation, and were they interested in having priests to tell them what to think (which they are not), they would welcome a female perspective.
This is my own take-over bid to match Mr. Benedict in Rome! Think for yourself and be an Epicurean. You don’t have to join anything, pay anything, listen to threats of the hereafter, just live happily, modestly and without fear. This is the only philosophical or religious group not after your money!
Good heavens! (so to speak.) I’m a decade older than the Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s a daunting thought.
It’s true that Epicurus escaped the sorts of headaches Williams faced. However different his adherents were as measured by social status, color, or gender etc., they were close to each other’s world view. His was a serene Garden of self-selected people eager to hold on to sanity in a violent world.