Madam, - I am distressed by the cocktail of ignorance and arrogance in equal parts in your Editorial of November 5th, "A turning point for Anglicans". It is startling indeed in a newspaper dedicated to providing measured and insightful comment into current events.
To equate the ordination of women with the consecration of the non-celibate homosexual Gene Robinson in New Hampshire and then to commend the American Episcopal Church for "prophetic actions" betrays a woeful ignorance of the substance of the serious, ongoing debate in the Anglican Communion.
The Christian scriptures incontrovertibly bar from participation in eternal life people who unrepentantly practice a number of behaviours, including heterosexual and homosexual fornication, whereas the role of women in ministry in the church is never related scripturally to their salvation.
Is the African bishops' stand to be taken as principled, as your leader writer mischievously suggests, only because they may lose money?
Are they not, rather, taking a principled stand on the basis of the transparency of the biblical texts relating to marriage and sexual holiness?
Surely it is the African bishops who cohere with the uninterrupted testimony of the church throughout history. Is The Irish Times aligning itself with Bishop Barbara Harris, the black American prelate, who infamously suggested that the votes of African bishops at the 1998 Lambeth Conference had been bought with "a few chicken dinners"? If it is, then that is a slur beneath contempt, and unworthy of your newspaper.
Furthermore, hackneyed, throwaway lines such as "the Gospels show Jesus had nothing to say about homosexuality" and the tired old clichés about the Book of Leviticus and St Paul having nothing to contribute to the debate amount to an arrogance that is breathtaking. To dismiss the biblical evidence in this way is not worthy of comment in what purports to be a serious overview.
Surely the key question is: what did Jesus have to say about marriage and sexuality? Is that not utterly relevant to the contemporary confusion over human sexuality, including homosexuality?
The division in the Church of Ireland is already serious and may eventually result in realignment of some sort. Increasingly, conservative parishes in the populous North are asking questions about dioceses elsewhere on this island whose liberal bishops evidently feel under no constraint to adhere to the 1998 Lambeth Conference guidelines on human sexuality.
In the future these parishes may be unwilling to contribute as freely and generously as they have to the considerable costs of maintaining financially struggling dioceses in the south and west.
The restatement of the Church's position by the Primate, Archbishop Robin Eames, at his diocesan synod last week could be interpreted on one level as a clear warning to his episcopal colleagues that they should think long and hard before they respond to your Editorial's invitation to speak out against the Church of Ireland's present teaching and practice.
Their future and the future of their dioceses may be at stake. - Yours, etc.,
Rev GORDON FYLES,
Crinken Parsonage,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.