Homosexualism and Holiness

The debate rages within the Anglican Church about the acceptance of practising homosexual priests and my friends on the Continuum blog continue to elucidate the orthodox line about how the issues of the female "priesthood" and acceptance of homosexuality are in fact the same thing. They are both concerned with the corruption of the Natural Order.

The main trait of Anglicanism seems to be what the Young Fogey calls Tolerant Conservatism, and I wonder just how well that is being brought to bear in this argument which is turning out to be quite bitter. Archbishop Akinola seems to be the proponent of Conservatism, and Dr Jefferts-Schori claims to be "tolerant". It seems clear to me that Dr Jefferts-Schori is certainly not conservative (nor is she especially tolerant, but then what did you expect?), and Archbishop Akinola certainly not tolerant. Both, in my honest opinion, have attitudes which are quite repugnant to the word of God.

I cannot accept that it is any way loving for an Archbishop not to shake the hand of a homosexual just because he is a homosexual. Christ ate with sinners. He would eat with me, with Hitler, with Mother Theresa, Gene Robinson, Akinola and Mrs Jefferts-Schori preferring not one of us above the other, all this despite our vileness. Yet clearly we have to respond to His reaching out to us for the Grace to be efficacious, and this means complicity with the rule of His Kingdom that lies within us. The Kingdom within Robinson and Mrs Jefferts-Schori seems very much like the British idea of Constitutional Monarchy in which the Queen is the nominal head, but the realm run by bureaucrats and politicians geared more to pleasing the people rather than running a healthy country. That's true of all of us, but only the leaders of the extremes in this matter are exhibiting this most clearly.

For Akinola, he should look and see what would happen if the roles were reversed. What if the Natural Law was homosexual, and he remaining firmly heterosexual? What then?

Perhaps Akinola needs to walk a mile in Dr. Jeffrey John's shoes. He, if you remember, is the homosexual Dean of St Albans who maintains a celibate relationship with another man, and who had to withdraw from the race for Bishop of Reading. While the ramifications of Dr John's relationship are dangerous and contrary to Divine Ordinance, I believe that Akinola needs to look at the situation like a doctor examines a tumour and see where the malignancy lies, not shunt the patient straight to the hospice. We should be trusting our bishops to behave like spiritual physicians as St Benedict says with skill, firmness, love, patience and complete orthodoxy.

It must be desperately hard for homosexuals who are, after all, as human as every other sinner. The human being was created to be loved, and that is precisely what all of us crave, except everything is skewed by Original Sin, and thus do not recognise that at the heart of this yearning is that of wanting to be loved by God. Most of us feel that strange sensation that occurs when we see someone utterly desirable, but we can't pinpoint what it is about them that we desire. That desire can burn and burn unless it is acted upon, but the question remains - how?

This desire can be utterly selfish - a lust, a desire to make the object do what we want and be powerless to exercise any of their desires in the matter. The trouble is that this lust comes clothed in much more acceptable terms. The lust is augmented by a desire to please, to protect, to comfort the object. There is no desire to hurt or to harm, only desire for what is holy and good, but it still comes tainted with this lust which offsets the balance and threatens to take away the humanity of the other.

This is if the desire is unrequited, so imagine the joy when the object feels exactly the same way about us! It is therefore quite reasonable to think that it is meant to be, that there is some Divine approval for the end of this deep-seated lonliness.

But God, while blessing the love, does not approve when it becomes the excuse for sex outside of marriage.

Yes, it seems evilly unfair, and I myself struggle to believe that there is no way that homosexuals can in anyway express their love for each other in a physical sense. However, the Natural Law is quite clear, the Holy Scripture is quite clear, the Holy Tradition of the Church is quite clear, homosexuality is not physically expressible.

Why? I used the phrase in my previous post below: sexuality is the beginning of life for someone else. As Fr Robert Hart kindly pointed out to me, there is no way that there can exist a love that is both holy and erotic (in the proper sense of the word) without there being a sexual dimension, and a sexual dimension is necessarily geared to beginning a life. That's what it is there for. Thus there is no sexuality-free version of romantic love.

This doesn't address the passion within each one of those unable to express themselves physically. I believe that it is to these individuals that a great commission has been given, namely to find new expressions of love in holiness. Since so many people of this orientation are gifted with new visions, artistic skills, sensitivity and creativity, surely they have been invited to a great and wonderful calling to find ways of expressing love beyond the confines of human physicality and yet within the Divine Ordinance.


As for the Anglican Church, well, parts of her continue daily to leave the path of Tolerant Conservatism, i.e. keeping faithful to the Catholic Faith yet bearing in love the humanity of others. But there is a true and faithful remnant both in the C of E but mainly in the Continuum where the stance is made clear. Is that stance made lovingly? Perceptably so?

With thanks to Fr Robert Hart and Ed Pacht from the Continuum.