A Prophecy Fulfilled
By Dwight Longenecker
Last Autumn was the tenth anniversary of the
Church of England’s vote to ordain women as priests. In the hubbub of such
a historic decision a little detail was missed by many. The week
after the momentous vote, a short letter appeared in an Anglican
weekly from the Gay and Lesbian Christian Movement. It read, ‘Dear
Sir, Please note that all the arguments used for the ordination of
women can also be used for the ordination of practising homosexuals.’
It might seem astounding to link the
two issues, but the author of the letter was correct in his analysis.
The arguments for the ordination of women were of three types: sentimental,
utilitarian and political. The sentimental argument went like this: ‘Suzy
is such a compassionate person. She too has suffered by being excluded,
so she can identify with the marginalised in our society. She is
such a good person, not to ordain her is so hurtful!’ The utilitarian
argument was, ‘Janet is a good preacher and a bright theologian.
She can do the job as well as any man. As a woman she brings special
gifts. She will complement the totally masculine ministry.’ The third
argument was political: ‘This is an equal rights issue. Women can
now do any other job in our society. Why not the priesthood?’
Make the necessary changes and you can
see how the same arguments are equally valid for the ordination of
practising homosexuals: ‘Gary is such a compassionate person. He
too has suffered by being excluded. Why be so judgmental and unkind?
Why exclude him just because he lives with Dennis?’ The utilitarian
says, ‘Kevin is a brilliant theologian and a compassionate pastor.
Why should his sexual preferences affect his ability to do the job?’ Richard
Kirker, the chairman of the Lesbian and Gay Christian movement, summed
up the political argument. In a comment to the Church Times a
week after the vote in 1992 he said, ‘The vote now opens the way
for the Church to move with determination to the last remaining major
injustice inflicted among its members: lesbian and gay people, unless
celibate, are not officially accepted into the ordained ministry.’
In the women’s ordination debate any
appeal to the usual sources of Christian authority were whisked away
with the sleight of hand of ‘interpretation.’ So when conservative
Evangelicals noted that St Paul said, ‘I do not permit a woman to
have authority over a man in church.’ (I Tim. 2:12) the authorities
said, ‘this passage may not have been written by St Paul. Besides,
we now know more about gender roles than they did in the first century.’ If
tradition was appealed to we were told that it is the duty of the
church to adapt to fresh understandings and insights of the Holy
Spirit. St Peter’s admission of Gentiles to the Church (Acts 10)
was used as an example of the radical change that the Spirit demands.
The same rubbery attitude to Scripture
and tradition is used to condone the ordination of homosexuals. Do
the Scriptures forbid homosexual activity? Biblical scholars are
wheeled out to show that St Paul probably didn’t write those passages,
and if he did, well, we now know that he wasn’t condemning homosexuality per
se, but promiscuous homosexuality. Does tradition prohibit
homosexual unions? Once again, ‘tradition must change as we come
to understand more and more about human sexuality.’ Thus both Scripture
and Tradition become our flexible friends, and like statistics, they
mean whatever we want them to mean.
I am not here arguing the case against
homosexuality or against women priests. I am simply pointing out
the foundation (or rather lack of it) on which the debate ten years
ago took place. In his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio John
Paul II exposes some of the fault lines in contemporary thinking. He
discusses four trends that contribute to relativism in religion.
The arguments for women’s ordination and the validity of homosexuality
illustrate these four faulty lines of argument. According to the
pope, Eclecticism is the mode of thought that picks and chooses
whatever form of ‘truth’ seems to be attractive or suitable to the
individual. It dismisses the idea that there is a unitive, whole
and universal expression of truth. Scientism dismisses the
idea that there can be any knowledge apart from that which is discovered
by the scientific method. Thus any idea that our religion might be
divinely revealed is dismissed. Historicism says ideas are
always conditioned by the time period in which they were expressed.
Therefore what St Paul wrote two thousand years ago must be
irrelevant for today. Finally, pragmatism is that utilitarianism
that makes decisions simply by what seems easy, good and useful.
Those of us who left the Church of England
after the 1992 vote did not do so because we are Freudian misfits
or misogynists. We are not simply crusty old buffers who don’t want
to let women into the gentlemen’s club. Many of us could acknowledge
the strong sentimental, utilitarian and political arguments in favour
of women’s ordination. We simply couldn’t allow that these were the only arguments.
When we realised that these were the only arguments being acknowledged,
we then realised that anything goes; because these three forms of
argument (when used exclusively) can not only be used for women’s
ordination and homosexuality. With a bit of ingenuity they can be
used to support anything.
No, we abandoned ship because we saw that the ship
was not only headed for the rocks, she had struck hard. Those of
us who left the Church of England did not leave because women were
going to be ordained. We left because a church that claimed to be
Catholic did not have the tools in her toolbox to make such a historic
decision properly. In becoming Catholics we came to a church that
looked wider and deeper than the sentimental, utilitarian and political
arguments. We came to a church that looked to more ancient and venerable
sources of authority. We wanted a church that had the ability to
weigh not only the opinion of the living, but through her veneration
of tradition, was able to value the opinion of that most neglected
of majorities: the dead. Furthermore, this church not only considered
the past, but she looked to the future. She listened to the vociferous
demands of our sad, confused and ageing minority in the West, but
she also considered the needs and the opinions our young brothers
and sisters in Eastern Europe, Asia and the Southern Hemisphere.
Now, exactly ten years after the vote to ordain
women priests a new Archbishop of Canterbury comes to Lambeth. Like
a sombre fulfilment of that obscure letter to the press, the new
Archbishop has admitted to ordaining a practising homosexual and
confirmed that his permissive stance on human sexuality is not up
for negotiation. Furthermore, the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster
in Canada has recently voted to sanction homosexual ‘marriage.’ Similar
moves are afoot in the Episcopal Church and the Church of England.
The Anglican Communion is now in massive crisis over this fresh issue.
It is time for Anglicans of all stripes to see that the fundamental
issue is not women priests or homosexuality, but where you turn for
the answers.
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