wfn.org | ACNS3490 Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, The Most

["Anglican Communion News Service" <acnslist@anglicancommunion.org>]

ACNS 3490     |     AUSTRALIA	  |	27 JUNE 2003

Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, The Most Revd Peter Carnley AO,
on issues of human sexuality

[ACNS source: Anglican Church of Australia] The view that the Anglican
Communion is about to fall apart, essentially over differences of opinion
about how to care pastorally for gay and lesbian people, is reminiscent of
that celebrated comment of Mark Twain when he said that reports of his own
death were greatly exaggerated.
What is indisputably true is that there is a Communion-wide debate going on
which, without a whit of exaggeration, is extremely lively.

This is certainly what Anglicans should expect right now. The 1998 Lambeth
Conference, while cautiously reaffirming received teaching and pastoral
norms, encouraged the 38-member churches of the Communion to continue to
study what is clearly a complex and difficult matter.

This is exactly what the Anglican Church of Australia is committed to doing.
Our last General Synod at Brisbane in 2001 received a Doctrine Commission
report entitled Faithfulness in Fellowship and commended it to the dioceses
for further reflection. Even the most preliminary look at the chapters of
this report relating to the handful of biblical texts that are relevant to
the homosexual question will reveal something of the wide diversity of
viewpoint about their correct interpretation. Do these ancient texts warn
against undisciplined promiscuous behaviour that is declared to be contrary
to the divine will because it fractures what should be steadfastly committed
personal relationships of love? Or can these texts also determine the
wrongness or otherwise of long-term and committed relationships but among
people of the same sex?

Given that the concept of a homosexually orientated person is a relatively
modern invention of the mid-19th century, can these ancient texts be lifted
out of their original cultural context (which assumed an undifferentiated
heterosexuality) so as to be made to apply to the essentially modern
question about faithfully committed homosexual people? The answer to that
question is not so obvious to some people as it apparently is to some
"Sydney Anglicans".

Despite suggestions to the contrary, all of us agree unreservedly about the
uniquely normative and authoritative place of the scriptural texts within
the Christian tradition. The exact meaning to be read from these texts and
whether they can rightly be made to provide a neat pre-packaged answer to
our contemporary questions is what is at issue.

Meanwhile, most of us also agree that the pre-emptive action of the Canadian
diocese of New Westminster in authorising liturgical texts for the blessing
of same-sex unions (which are explicitly said not to be marriages) is
unhelpfully well ahead of the play.

Similarly, the election of a priest who is said to be in a same-sex
relationship to be the bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire, having
formerly been in a heterosexual marriage, expresses the confidence that the
clergy and people of that diocese have in him. But the question of whether
he is a worthy recipient of episcopal orders now has to be ratified by the
General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the US.

But, because this is not really our question to decide, we might be well
advised not to be tempted into empty moralising. Still less should we be
tempted to send terse and threatening messages to New Hampshire or to the
General Convention or just into the ill-defined ether through the media.
Surely it is better to write a private letter, expressing a well-argued and
rational viewpoint, rather than gallop into the grandstand of self-righteous
indignation.
Likewise, the election in England of a declared celibate person who promises
to uphold current church teaching and practice, even while openly and
honestly confessing to having had a past, is hardly a matter for grown-up
people to stomp their feet or wring their hands over.

In this case the question of worthiness is properly left to the Oxford
electoral college and the Queen who must ultimately approve such church
appointments in the realm of England. Far be it from colonials to question
the royal prerogative. We would certainly need very concrete and substantial
grounds on which to base an objection, lest we get ourselves into a
defamation suit.

Meanwhile, anybody brave enough to claim to know the inner mind of God on
the basis of a personal claim to be privy to the only conceivable
interpretation of some biblical texts is guilty of self-delusion. Literary
texts are rarely as univocal, clear and distinct as we are sometimes led to
believe.

Like Hamlet, there is no one reading of them. The debate itself is testimony
to the complexities of the interpretative task.

What are most needed right now are honesty and humility, and a willingness
to acknowledge the possibility of alternative readings of hotly disputed
texts. A civilised and reasoned discussion can be welcomed as a sign of
vigorous life.

___________________________________________________________________
ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London, is
distributed to more than 6,000 journalists and other readers around
the world.  For subscription information please go to:
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/acnslist.html