Restoration of the most severe penalty for clergy guilty of sex abuse or other crimes was revealed after the Most Reverend Justin Welby told a survivors group that the Church is ready to launch its own examination of the extent of child sex abuse by priests.

Getting tough: Restoration of the most severe penalty for clergy guilty of sex abuse or other crimes was revealed by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby (above)

No apology was forthcoming; nor, apparently, any invitation to write an extended piece on the miraculous nature of Jesus Christ. The irruption of God into the world just isn't news, you see. So Justin Welby did what Jesus tended to do: he went to Times Towers and spoke to some of his critics face-to-face. It's so much more Christian than carping behind people's backs and spreading manifest untruths about the Church.

Some are calling on Bishop of Buckingham Alan Wilson to resign after he defended the gay marriage of Rev Jeremy Pemberton. They are also threatening to switch allegiance from the Church of England to the new conservative Gafcon fellowship.

The escalating war of words is a sign that the "conversations" currently taking place over human sexuality in the Church of England come amid a time of intensifying crisis.

Our cathedral buildings will survive, but they won't be true cathedrals because they will have no bishops. The Church of England is declining faster than other denominations; if it carries on shrinking at the rate suggested by the latest British Social Attitudes survey, Anglicanism will disappear from Britain in 2033. One day the last native-born Christian will die and that will be that.