Anglicans have a great capacity to agree to disagree agreeably and, hastening slowly, adapt
NOT FOR the first time, Joe Joyce was right on the money in his choice of report for the From The Archives column in this newspaper last Saturday. He chose from the edition of May 12th, 1982, all of 30 years ago, when the Church of Ireland General Synod was wrestling with its conscience on another issue and procedure got in the way, so to speak.
Then, it was women priests. Now, it is gay priests. Back then there was suspicion on the part of unworthy souls that slow progress towards women’s ordination was not just a matter of procedure.
Similar thoughts crossed minds in Christ Church Cathedral when a point of order blocked a motion affirming the church’s traditional teaching on marriage, but particularly when the same motion was reintroduced, almost intacta, on Friday.
But those gay members of the church and their supporters who were disappointed at the outcome of the General Synod which has just ended can take consolation from that 1982 news report.
Where they see a setback, older heads will recognise another step on a road to change where the motto must always be a simple “hasten slowly”.
It is, of course, the Anglican way. It is how our Anglicans sustain their remarkable capacity to repeatedly do what so few others can do here in Ireland.
As Archbishop of Armagh Most Rev Alan Harper put in one of his many wise asides on Saturday, it is that capacity “to agree to disagree, agreeably”.
So those who had expected murder in the cathedral on either Thursday, Friday or Saturday, even on all three, were predictably disappointed. What they got instead was . . . sex!
It is such a preoccupation with the churches these days. As Bishop Paul Colton of Cork, Cloyne and Ross said on Saturday, in his 14 years as bishop he has not yet attended a meeting of bishops where sex was not discussed.
He regretted this, as there were so many other important things to be done, such as proclaiming the gospel, tending to the sick and dying, and teaching children.
Even his 83-year-old mother had noticed. “All you did in Cavan was chat, chat, chat about sex and now you’re going to Dublin to chat, chat, chat about sex. I wish ye’d get on with it,” she said.
Bishop Colton added, promptly, “With the work of the church, of course!”
Nor was everyone comfortable with all this sex. Archbishop of Dublin Dr Michael Jackson admitted to being “as squeamish as is any of you about using the two words ‘sexual intercourse’, particularly in addressing the General Synod.” In such a setting too. But “it had a legally defined meaning”, in the context, he said.
One of the more impassioned speeches against change of any sort where sexuality was concerned came from Rev Alison Calvin, rector of Killeshandra, Co Cavan. She spoke of the hurt and distress felt by ordinary church members by such talk. “They feel betrayed,” she said.
Yet, as she spoke, it was difficult not to wonder how such church members felt on the very first occasion they saw a woman like her with a Roman collar around her neck leading prayers in their church.
