An Anglican archbishop has pleaded for "patience with one another" as their worldwide Communion faces schism over the issue of homosexual clergy.
Speaking in Cork at St Fin Barre's Church of Ireland cathedral at the weekend, Archbishop Barry Morgan, Bishop of Llandaff, Archbishop of Wales and member of the Lambeth Commission, pointed out that "it has to be realised that homosexuality only ceased to be a crime in Great Britain in 1968 - up until then even consenting adults could be punished. The same was true of Canada until 1969."
He continued that "it was only in 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association removed its diagnosis of homosexuality as a mental illness. Even in so-called liberal western societies then, tolerance is a fairly recent phenomenon."
Quoting the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, he said: "in recent decades there has been a huge change in the general understanding of sexual activity. Can the Gospel be heard in such a world if it seems to cling to ways of understanding sexuality but has no correspondence to what the most apparently responsible people in our culture believe?"
In a lengthy and wide-ranging lecture Archbishop Morgan reflected on the evolution of Anglican thinking on human sexuality issues generally as reflected in resolutions passed at the Lambeth Conference.
He noted that "in 1908, reaffirming an 1888 resolution, it forbade divorce except in the case of adultery and refused to sanction re-marriage during the lifetime of an existing partner. It reaffirmed this in 1920, 1930 and 1968.
"These resolutions spoke in terms of the indissolubility of marriage and refused to countenance either re-marriage in church or even services of blessing by the church, urging people (in 1968) to remain in unhappy marriages rather than divorce," he said.
"In 1998 however, the resolution says nothing about divorce and re-marriage only that 'it upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union'. In other words, it makes a positive rather than a negative statement," he said.
He continued: "in the same way Lambeth resolutions were more accommodating to contraception in 1958 and 1968 than in 1920." Similarly on the ordination of women, he said: "the Lambeth Conference had rejected the ordination of women in 1920 and in 1958 and even in 1968 all it could say was, 'the theological arguments for and against the ordination of women are inconclusive'."
Looking at how the Lambeth Conference has addressed homosexuality he said its 1998 resolution "is a much harsher resolution than those passed in 1978 and 1988, for it says nothing about taking into account scientific and social factors. Whereas the contraception resolutions have become more permissive with time . . . the opposite has been the case with resolutions on homosexuality."