Godly conversation
From Robert Triggs The hypocrisy surrounding the ordination of homosexuals within the Anglican communion is breathtaking (Portrait of the week, 18 October). Without homosexual priests, the diocese of London, to name but one, would be unable to function.
Until the recent media obsession with homosexuality, a very familiar adornment of the Church of England episcopate was the 'bachelor-scholar-priest'. A former headmaster, for 23 years, of my old public school, Cranleigh, was just such a man. He was married to the school. He was devoted to some of the pupils. To have formally cross-examined him on his sexual orientation would have been regarded as an impertinence. He was a faithful priest, a Select Preacher, and was subsequently, for 14 years, the Suffragan Bishop of Dorchester in the Oxford diocese.
The present task of the Anglican communion is not to have a witchhunt of practising homosexuals within its ranks, nor to decide who can be in the Anglican club or who has to be thrown out. It is, perhaps, more difficult than that. It is to decide on the rules for a spiritually courteous, biblically integrated and godly conversation. If the Anglican Church can succeed in this, it will have set a standard of maturity for others to follow.
Robert Triggs
London NW3
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