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"Grant to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful; that we, who cannot do anything that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord."
The Anglican Communion also has a living link: every church represented at Toronto is in communion with the see founded in A.D. 597 by St. Augustine of Canterbury. After a centuries-long struggle for precedence between the two sees of Canterbury and York, Pope Innocent VI (1352-62) made the Archbishop of Canterbury Primate of All England. The Archbishop of York was granted the lesser title Primate of England; the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Donald Coggan is the incumbent. Primacy does not make Canterbury head of his church (the Queen is). Yet as first bishop of England, he ranks, in protocol, next to the royal family and ahead of the Prime Minister; as much as anyone, he speaks the mind of the Church of England.
Beyond the Fringe. At first glance, the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Arthur Michael Ramsey, 100th to govern at Canterbury, may seem like something left out of Beyond the Fringe. "He's one continuous anecdote," says a clerical friend. "He looks like a character, and he knows it."
At 58 he is said to be "the world's youngest octogenarian." With his wigwagging ginger eyebrows, gaitered waddle and "rah-ther"—studded speech, Ramsey is a ripe continuation of England's tradition of clerical eccentrics. He is the type of man who finds mud puddles appearing mysteriously in his path; his bulky purple cassock always seems ever so slightly askew. No one laughs. For warmhearted, avuncular Archbishop Ramsey also exudes the wisdom of a scholar and a deep-rooted faith, and seems every inch what he is in fact if not in name: patriarch of his arm of Christendom.
It is hard now to imagine Ramsey as anything but an archbishop. Yet as a student at Cambridge's Magdalene College, where his father, a mathematics don, was president, Ramsey was an articulate Liberal and toyed with the thought of a political career. He was graduated with a first in theology and a disappointing second in classics—possibly because so much of his energies went into extracurricular affairs. One of them, he told a startled dinner gathering on his U.S. trip last year, was membership in a club "which met once a year for dinner. The high point of the dinner was eating white mice picked up by the tail, dipped in honey, and dropped wiggling down the throat."