Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

From Australia

The position of the Church of England, after the latest announcement that clergy in civil partnerships can become bishops if they promise to be celibate, is literally preposterous. Having made a complete fool of itself over women bishops, it now reveals itself, yet again, to be an organisation seriously depraved by an obsession with sex and an assumption of authority over issues in which it has no business.

Sexual drive is a fundamental part of the natural order of things and way outside the influence of the Church. It has no more authority over people’s sex lives than it does over the weather. These are not issues in which it can directly interfere. It can teach, but without any justifiable or credible authority other its own theology, that adultery, divorce, or other social events are either good or bad or forgivable within its terms. What it cannot do is to determine the sexual terms of relationships conducted within its rules. If clergy, male or female, are in civil partnerships or other lawful relationships, it follows that these must have a sexual dimension. That is wholly proper, right and healthy.

Religious celibacy is one of the unhealthiest and most discredited lifestyle prescriptions ever devised. It flies in the face of nature. It is responsible for the fact that in any line-up of perverts and abusers, celibate clergy number among the most prolific. It has nothing to do with any reasonable interpretation of clean living or example. It does, and has done, vast and irreparable harm.

Either the Church of England pulls itself together, to behave with responsibility in the areas where it can and should be active, whilst controlling its obsession with sex and sexual orientation, or bit by bit it will lose all its authority and slide out of the serious business of the nation, in which it enjoys  unique constitutional privileges. If it continues to behave like an irrelevant clique of busy bodies and reactionaries it will become one. If in doing so it labours under the false assumption that it speaks for a God in whom any sane, healthy or compassionate adult would wish to believe, it will be deluding itself.

Its demise will be fully deserved.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2013 at 9:58 am and is filed under Malcolm Blair Robinson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.