hitting a snag

By Fr. Wilson ( articles ) | Jun 05, 2003

Well, it's like this. On October ninth, a priest of the Church of England, Canon Jeffrey John, is to be consecrated Bishop of Reading. Traditionalists are infuriated because Canon John allegedly is a homosexual sympathizer. But he is a friend of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, who assured trads that Canon John is NOT 'in a relationship.' Which makes it awkward that it has come up that he is indeed, by his own admission, in a decades long relationship which apparently his good friend Archbishop Williams never noticed ("Oh, my word, I thought he was the gardener, or perhaps the pastry-chef").

This is not to cast stones at Anglicans. Solid, committed Anglicans are among the most inspiring believers I have known. This is to say that, whatever communion we find ourselves in, it has gone on far, far too long that God has been mocked and basic Christian morality undermined and ignored. And I do not understand how it can be that there are still Catholics speaking as though pointing this out is "negativity." We have not yet seriously begun to deal with our problems. Not yet begun.