Demonstrative church?

While I've been off on an unwired holiday on Colonsay there's been a great conversation over on Kenny's blog about same-sex marriage ceremonies. At least, it was such a ceremony which started the discussion, but having entered it rather late I felt like thinking here as well.

I can see that it seems provocative for a couple of male priests to celebrate just before Lambeth what looks to all intents like a wedding. I can see that there's a good old demo involved in inviting Bishop Gene Robinson to St Mary's Cathedral at the same time as the Lambeth Conference to which he's not invited. I can see why a cool head might suggest that such actions will only serve to drive the wedge further into the riven Anglican Church, and that better progress might be made by a softly, softly approach.

But I see also, and far more clearly, that to pussyfoot around and advocate subtlety can only really be advocated by someone who cares more, perhaps, about the whole than about the parts. Does it not come down to putting the Anglican Communion before common justice? Do we really care about staying in the same tent as people who would deny the humanity of their fellow-Christians? Perhaps it's because I was not a cradle Piskie that I don't really care about the worldwide Anglican Communion - at least, not nearly as much as I care about affirming the rights of all God's people to answer the call to serve God as priests, to demonstrate their love for one another in the way that everyone else does, and to celebrate that love before God and among their friends.

I suspect that it’s harder for men than it is for women to accept gay men, and harder still for ordained men to understand the frustrations of people who have for reasons of gender or orientation been denied what they have attained. But that doesn’t make it all right. It just means more self-examination and self-awareness – and the self-discipline never, ever to allow themselves to dismiss the struggles in this area as unimportant in the face of whatever horrors the world throws up. That, I’m afraid, is too easy.