After the furor over the ordination of a gay Anglican bishop in the United States, the Church of England now faces a theological conundrum -- who is the ultimate Christian leader?
The Pope runs the Roman Catholic Church through a rigid hierarchy. In contrast, the Archbishop of Canterbury is spiritual leader to 70 million Anglicans who rules by consensus.
At the General Synod of the Church of England opening on Monday, Anglican-Catholic relations could take a turn for the worse as clerics broach the sensitive issue of whether the pontiff could be some kind of head of all Christians.
Up for discussion in the clerical parliament is the "Gift of Authority," a 1999 statement by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) which explored the possibility of overall papal authority.
To conservative evangelicals, who are gaining increasing sway in the Anglican Church, such a move is anathema.
It could generate as much rage and passion as the ordination of women priests and the recognition of Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Church -- the Anglicans in the U.S. -- as the first openly gay Anglican bishop.
The Church of England's Council for Christian Unity wants to reconsider the Gift of Authority rather than forge ahead with the pioneering discussions it calls for into how the pope could take on a broader role.
While it is not calling for that statement to be repudiated, this return to the drawing board would be a setback to Pope John Paul's ecumenical vision of closer ties with the Anglicans.
Religious commentator Clifford Longley, reflecting on the Synod discussion, said: "It is very likely they will express strong reservations -- both doctrinal and practical.
"The Church of England is more and more evangelical and Protestants are unsympathetic to the papal system," he told Reuters.
"If they were faced with something dramatic like submission to papal authority, that would be immensely divisive and tear them to pieces."
In a 1995 encyclical, the pope said he was willing to seek an accommodation with other Christian denominations on the future role of the papacy if it could help foster unity.
Ironically in such a broad church, many Anglicans may yearn for the rigid Catholic hierarchy as it battles with the divisive issue of gay bishops which threatens to tear Liberals and Conservatives apart.
But sexuality is proving just as divisive for the Catholics, Longley argued.
"The mood would change if there was a pope with a very different approach. Anglicans see a Catholic church ill at ease with papal authority around the world over things like contraception and abortion."
But conservative Catholics praise the pope's unbending stand on sexual issues as precisely what their church needs in turbulent times.
The Church of England's week-long synod mirrors the concerns of a secular society in which clerics are grappling to maintain to their congregations in a materialistic world indifferent to faith.
They will be covering everything from sex to money, from AIDS to asylum seekers. But a spokesman for the synod insisted that the mood was buoyant after the bitter row over gay bishops.
"I don't think they are feeling battered and bruised," he said.