This article was first published in The Catholic
Herald
The Root of the Present Anglican Crisis
By Dwight Longenecker
A friend of mine who has never been a member
of the Church of England has been shocked by the recent developments
in the
Anglican Church. Within one month an Anglican Diocese in Canada has
authorised and conducted the first official ‘same-sex weddings’, a
homosexual man who has left his wife and children to live with his ‘partner’ has
been elected the new Anglican bishop of New Hampshire and Canon Jeffrey
John, a homosexual activist who maintains a relationship with his long
time lover, has been appointed a bishop by the Bishop of Oxford.
The present crisis is not confined to Anglicans
of a lavender hue in the rarefied air of Oxford. An American correspondent
of mine who is a Catholic deacon told me that at his clergy fraternal
he asked how many of his fellow clergy would perform a ‘homosexual
marriage’. The ministers of all the mainline Protestant denominations
put their hands up. Only he and the Baptist demurred.
But this week the headlines are focussing
on the Anglicans. ‘What
on earth is going on?’ my friend asked. ‘Do the Anglican bishops really
think this sort of thing will bring ordinary people back to church?
Are they totally ignorant of Scripture and the church’s teaching? Are
they being vulgar, stupid and offensive on purpose?’
I had to re-assure my friend that Anglicans like Rowan
Williams and the Bishop of Oxford do not mean to be offensive. They
are clearly not stupid, and above all they are never vulgar. Indeed,
for these apostles to the chattering classes, vulgarity would be the
worst crime of all.
In fact, an examination of the present crisis’ root
causes are fascinating, and reveal some disturbing truths not only
about Anglicanism, but modern Western Catholicism. We can get to the
root by asking why intelligent, tasteful and spiritually minded men
like Rowan Williams and Richard Harries would ever wish to support
openly homosexual men and women to be Christian leaders.
On one level, they treat this issue in the
same way that they approached the issue of women’s ordination ten years ago.
Then three forms of argument were predominant: the sentimental, the
utilitarian and the political. The sentimental says, ‘Canon Elton is
a good, prayerful man with a lovely sense of humour. Why shouldn’t
he be a bishop? It would be hurtful and unkind to exclude him.’ The
utilitarian recognises that Canon Elton is a good administrator, an
able theologian and a charming pastor and concludes that he would do
a good job. The political is that not to ordain Canon Elton would be
discriminatory. Indeed, one of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s officials
said, ‘We are not in the business of discriminating against people
due to their sexual preference.’
The reasoning runs deeper than this however,
and it is this deeper level which is most revealing. Archbishop Williams’ own
views are outlined in a paper called The Body’s Grace which
was originally delivered as an address in 1989. It is
now part of a series of essays collected in Theology and Sexuality
(ed. Eugene Rogers, Blackwells 2002). In his essay Dr Williams
argues that ‘good sex’ is simply the sort where each partner desires
their own arousal to generate a mutual arousal in their partner. The
absence of any desire for this mutual arousal is why rape, paedophilia
and bestiality are "bad sex.” The Archbishop then argues that
biblical Christianity endorses this understanding of sex. He says that
God's intention is that sexual experience should help us understand
that our needs can only be met by giving to others.
So human sexuality is simply the Golden
Rule for bedtime: ‘Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ That seems to be it.
Any sex is okay as long as you hope your partner is having fun too.
Thus the whole mystery of human sexuality is reduced to a ‘spiritual
lesson’ of the sort that might be found on an inspirational greeting
card.
Dr Williams’ conclusions might seem incredibly
trite, but he is no slouch theologically. He has done his homework.
He condones
homosexuality because he has thought things through and followed his
own logic home. It is in his concluding comments in The Body’s Grace that
he reveals the prior assumptions that bring him to his conclusions.
He concludes his essay by writing, ‘In a church that accepts the
legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex
relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist
deployment of a number of very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic
and nonscriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly
and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological
structures.’
In other words, if we accept that there
is no necessary link between the sexual act and pro-creation it is
impossible to condemn
homosexuality except by recourse to crude Biblical fundamentalism or
shallow arguments about the ‘complementarity’ of male and female that
are really only personal preferences. If sex is for recreation and
not pro-creation, then why shouldn’t homosexual sex be a valid form
of sexual expression for those who are so inclined? The Archbishop
understands the underlying issues perfectly, and for this he must be
admired. If only some of our own Catholic theologians were as clear
minded.
When Dr Williams’ links homosexuality with
contraception one cannot help but think of that most unpopular, subversive
and difficult
of papal encyclicals: Humanae Vitae. At the heart of the document
is Pope Paul VI’s prophetic insistence that the sexual act cannot be
separated from pro-creation without doing violence to the whole concept
of marriage and sexual love. In a paradoxical way, Rowan Williams proves
Paul VI’s point when he says that a church that accepts the legitimacy
of contraception cannot logically ban homosexuality.
No matter what struggles and quarrels we may have with Humanae
Vitae, we must admit that it was a clear and courageous pronouncement.
Paul VI refused to change the church’s teaching because he saw where
it would lead. Happily, the Catholic Church has not been resting
on her laurels since 1968. Lest Humanae Vitae be understood
as merely a negative statement, Pope John Paul has used his amazing
teaching ministry to amplify and expound the profound meaning of
human sexuality.
Between 1979 and 1984, during his Wednesday audiences,
he has given a systematic theology of the human body. His reflections
are grounded in his phenomenological philosophy, scripture and tradition.
They discuss the history of humanity, who we are and who we are meant
to be as men and women. He applies his wisdom to the vocations of marriage
and celibacy to bring out a rich understanding of how our sexuality
is interwoven with our spirituality. John Paul II, both in his Theology
of the Body and his earlier work Love and Responsibility picks
up the baton from Paul VI and show us a creative way forward in this
most troublesome of areas. The church’s teaching may not be to our
liking. Her views are extraordinarily difficult to explain and to live
out, but we should give them a fair hearing, because rejecting them
will lead us into the same moral morass into which our Protestant brothers
are now sinking.
This article was first published in The
Catholic Herald—England’s leading Catholic weekly.
