Dr Rowan Williams's words were understood

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/02/12/dl1201.xml

[Telegraph] 13 Feb 2008--In his speech to the opening session of the Church of England Synod yesterday, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said that he "took responsibility" for any "unclarity" in his contentious comments on sharia law.

His admission that it was his own "misleading" choice of words that had caused public distress and misunderstanding is likely to be taken by his colleagues in the English Church as sufficient contrition to protect him from immediate demands for resignation.

Whether it will be enough to save his position at the Lambeth Conference, scheduled for July, is another matter. On that occasion, Dr Williams will have to face the entire Anglican Communion, many of whose African members - who were already at odds with their North American counterparts over such issues as the ordination of homosexual clergy - are facing threats from Islamic law that are a matter of life and death, rather than abstract debate.

In spite of his words of mitigation, there are still grounds for doubt about whether Dr Williams fully appreciates how justified was the anger that his original remarks provoked.

Certainly, some of his supporters have been quick to blame the media for a "knee-jerk" reaction to what they describe as a "serious piece of academic work", implying that the tide of criticism that has enveloped Lambeth Palace has been simple-minded or deliberately obtuse.

The Vicar of Putney, Rev Giles Fraser, has likened the press to "a pack of dogs" who had not even tried "to understand what [Dr Williams] said". This is quite untrue: the serious media have examined both Dr Williams's lecture and his BBC interview and focused their critique precisely on the legal and theological significance of his views.

It would seem that some of Dr Williams's apologists are simply failing to come to grips with the enormity of what his (perhaps badly chosen) words implied.