Informed Catholic View

I doubt that Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester is bothered by the fact that his latest denunciation of homosexuality - “repent!” - coincided with the Gay Pride marches. Judging by the homely leather queens, shirtless pretty boys and beaming lesbians dancing down Oxford Street, repentance was the last thing on their minds. Sunday morning, on the other hand, could be a de profundis moment, depending on how many pints they sank, or what was in those pills.

No: Bishop Michael has his eyes on the General Synod, which is meeting in York next weekend. And, with fiendish cunning (his enemies would say) he has pulled the ultimate weapon out of his arsenal: the clear verdict of the Bible that homosexual acts are wrong, presented in the context of 2,000 unbroken years of Christian teaching.

Now, you can try to get round this awkward fact by setting aside the teaching: that was the route taken by Dr Rowan Williams on more than one occasion when he speculated that same-sex relationships were acceptable to God. And the Anglicans of the semi-schismatic “provinces” and “coalitions” that oppose gay relations remember this very well. (If you want some homework done on an opponent, ask a born-again Christian.)

Rowan’s withdrawal of support for gay ordination is also a sore issue in the semi-schismatic, semi-skimmed latte “Episcopal Church” of the United States (TEC), which reckons that the Bible was just plain wrong about homosexuality. Nearly every liberal Episcopal theologian has produced an unreadable tome on the subject, plus a picture book for a multi-ethnic playgroup.

I’m so tired of all this. There was a time, 15 years ago, when I knew the name of every Anglican faction, but that was before the C of E threw itself at the mercy of an international “Communion” in the advanced stages of theological schizophrenia.

My colleague Jonathan Wynne-Jones does a grand job of explaining what’s going on, but my basic reaction is: this is so over. The Anglican Communion does not have the structures, the consensus, the money or the guts to police the boundaries of doctrinal diversity. Soon, it will become - at best- a federation of independent Churches.

And the C of E? Yes, I think it will survive, but in a stripped-down, protestantised form: the great Anglo-Catholic parishes are collapsing like a souffle, letting out exotic but slightly stale smells as they sink. If the Church of England is lucky, an Archbishop will emerge who will proclaim striking evangelical teachings and concentrate his energies on fighting anti-Christian Islam, not some nebulous secularism. That will play well with the public, who are not even aware of the existence of a few (often saintly) diehards who perform self-taught liturgies, episcopi vagantes-style, in big empty churches.

Mark my words, in five years’ time, many of the Gothic revival parish churches of our inner cities won’t be offering Anglican Sung Mass at 11 on Sunday mornings. Nope, Friday will be their busy day. And they won’t be called churches any more. (Damian Thompson blog)