The New Yorker . . .

Carl Olson at Ignatius Insight has an entry in the contest for "... sentence of the month. Nay, year." He's bound to win.

From an April 26, 2010, New Yorker piece, "A Canterbury Tale"—with the subtitle, "The battle within the Church of England to allow women to be bishops"— penned by Jane Kramer (who has emoted for the magazine for nearly fifty years), this gut-splitting bit of rhetorical sputtering:

Rowan Williams, a theologian of huge distinction and, perhaps because of this, almost paralytic reticence, has been trying to broker a peace between his warring priests while Pope Benedict XVI, in Rome, a theologian of less distinction but far steelier entitlement, has seized the chance to publicly invite Anglican clergymen, single and married, and their parishes into the sheltering misogyny of the magisterium.

Be still, and know that she is venting...

Rowan Williams, his extraordinary inability to resist the glamorous appeal of the spirit of the age notwithstanding, has been and probably in many ways still is a respectable theologian. (It's his ecclesiology that is deficient.) But the idea that he is Joseph Ratzinger's theological superior is absurd, but probably no more absurd than the other howlers in Jane Kramer's sentence.

Congratulations to Carl; the prize is his, or does he have to share it with Ms. Kramer?