THE ONE WE CAN'T AVOID

 

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Noel Coward's "Brief Encounter" (1945)

`Ye heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery;

²⁸ but I -- I say to you, that every one who is looking on a woman to long for her, did already commit adultery with her in his heart.

²⁹ `But, if your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it away, for it is good for you that one of your members may perish, and not your whole body be thrown into the trash-dump fire.

³⁰ `And, if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, and throw it away, for it is good for you that one of your members may perish, and not your whole body be thrown into the trash-dump fire.

³¹ `And it was said, That whoever may put away his wife, let him give to her a writing of divorce;

³² but I -- I say to you, that whoever may put away his wife, save for the matter of prostitution, makes her commit adultery; and whoever may marry her who has been put away commits adultery. (Matthew 5)

Yes, well. From Yeshua on Anger, we go to Yeshua on Marriage. No, not (as you might have thought) on sex; on marriage. The first thing one has to know is that in Yeshua’s world adultery could only be committed by and with a married woman: sex between a married man and an unmarried woman was not technically adultery.

Two points, then, are being made in this passage. First a point about inwardness: the old Torah’s prohibition on adultery is completed by Yeshua in the key of inwardness: just as he goes from murder, an act, to anger, a state of mind, so here he goes from adultery, an act, to desire, a state of mind. Since he uses the word “adultery” we may assume that the desire he mentions is for a woman married to another. And he hammers his argument home with two outrageous bits of hyperbole: if you have looked on your neighbour’s wife with desire, dig your eye out and throw it away; if you have touched her, as we say nowadays, “inappropriately”, cut off your hand and throw it away.

I have read many supposed explanations of this passage, but there is no getting around it: Yeshua is perfectly clear. Desire, lust, what you will, in any case for a married woman, is as bad as Anger. Many of us today do have a real problem with that. Why? we say. Desire is not evil: we may see the wife or husband of someone we know or have met and have a coup de foudre; eyes may meet across a crowded room; whoever loved, that loved not at first sight? And Cupid (whose name means Desire) is known to be lawless, so what are you going to do?

Blind yourself, says Yeshua, implacably. Better do that than have your whole body (and remember that Christianity does not believe in the immortality of the soul, but of the whole person, body and soul!) thrown on the Great Trash-Dump Fire.

We still rebel. Why is Desire so bad? Now I have to imagine what Yeshua would reply, because He didn’t specify. So I imagine him saying, Well, look at Anger. You must have been surprised when I said that Anger was as bad as Murder. But the reason it is is because it opens Pandora’s Box. And Desire, my children, does the same. Just as Anger can lead to Cain killing Abel, so Desire can lead to incest and to rape. If Desire is of the kind, and the strength, that it can consider trashing the bonds of marriage, there is no telling how far it can take you; because you are no longer in charge. As anger can turn into rage, Desire can turn into Lust. And at that point, we are very far down the rabbit hole. As Shakespeare knew:

 

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame 

Is lust in action; and till action, lust 

Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, 

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, 

Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight, 

Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had 

Past reason hated as a swallowed bait 

On purpose laid to make the taker mad; 

Mad in pursuit and in possession so, 

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; 

A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe; 

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. 

    All this the world well knows; yet none knows well 

    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

And since all this is about adultery, and thus about marriage, He gives (as he did with Anger) a specific image. Because someone might have said: OK, get her to be given a divorce. (A woman could not apply for a divorce, but could in some cases demand that her husband divorce her.) At this point we get into the very complex Jewish laws on marriage and divorce, notably the ketubah or marriage-contract and the list of reasons why a man could divorce a woman (the school of Rabbi Hillel held that he could do so if she broke his dishes); but, true to the values of the 1^st-century Middle East, the keys were virginity and sex. 

            But be that as it may, Yeshua relativises it all by going (in His manner) to inwardness again, and saying: if you divorce your wife for any reason other than her sexual act(s) with someone else, you are making her an adulteress. Because if, after such a divorce, she sleeps with or marries another, she is committing adultery. What he is saying is that, in the new completed Torah, divorce can only be valid at all in case of sexual infidelity on the part of the wife. IN NO OTHER CASE. Period. 

            And no, we can’t get around it. We can embroider as much as we like, and historicise till the cows come home, but that’s what He said, and that’s what He meant.

 

So, where does this leave us? Up to and including the 19^th and the first half of the 20^th century, churches tried to maintain this ruling while finding certain ways out, like annulment. And on the other hand, as attitudes on sexuality became stricter, they applied the prohibition to all sex outside marriage. Then, after two World Wars that relativised so much and the Fifties that managed temporarily to put some toothpaste back into the tube, came The Sixties or, as the French say, Soixante-huit. 

            Make Love, Not War. Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll. Some of us were there; some us are the children of those who were there; and most of us have absorbed a whole new culture of sexuality and marriage. And a permanent trouble in our relation to those words young Matthew the excise-man noted down in shorthand. Let’s be honest. Most of us can no longer follow straight-up what Yeshua says. But let’s be honest about ourselves also, and not repress a few questions – even if we don’t have easy answers. It is worth watching Brief Encounter. How many of us are comfortable about our divorces, even if things turned out well afterwards? How many of us are comfortable about the proportion of what we must now call “single-parent families” in our societies? The general feeling is that that train has left the station. But in the register of a Torah completed in inwardness, we cannot deny that the Pandora’s Box argument exists, and that in that respect at least the parallel with Anger is not fanciful. 

            The final word should, as always, be humility and prayer. Let us not proudly affirm our prejudices; let us pray for discernment and courage; and let us remember that God is, and creates, and maintains, Love. Make Love, not Lust. 

 

  

 

 

IT'S 2018. I HAVE JUST BEEN APPOINTED . . .

I have updated this post from 3 1/2 years ago, because I still like it.

St Mary's Church, Kersey, Suffolk

IT’s 2018. I HAVE JUST BEEN APPOINTED ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

Oh dear. Now what? I have an indeterminate term ahead of me, I am about to be appointed by the Sovereign, and I need to know what to do to, for, and with the 77 million Anglicans of whom I will soon be the titular spiritual head. Not in any authoritative sense, for, true to traditional Anglican muddle, Canterbury is in no way a Pope. He has no power; he has no authority other than moral and traditional; he cannot order much and can command less. And nowadays, most Anglicans will be sure to disagree with him vehemently on almost all issues they consider important. So?

This has its good points, too. Canterbury can, if he likes, be individual, eccentric, and stubborn; and if he is seen to have a touch of holiness, or even greatness, he may get away with it. Rowan Williams, on the other hand, showed us all exactly what to avoid when he said that any successor of his should proceed ‘with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other’. Under that reportedly saintly man, the Church let its agenda be set by the media, and was thus always seen to be behind. Michael Ramsey, who admittedly lived in the prehistoric age Before Twitter, is a better example. When asked by a bratty Oxford undergraduate ‘Your Grace, what’s wrong with the Church of England?’ he murmured not one word about sex, gender, or LGBT, but said crisply, ‘It doesn’t preach enough.’

So here I am, with two short months before my intronisation, and some serious praying to do. I’ll start with Don Camillo. That only slightly fictitious Italian parish priest talked frequently with the crucified Christ on the wall of his church, and dealt with local ex-virgins and would-be Communists on the strength of it. We may think him pawky, but those conversations will, I suspect, be a good way to start. Right, Lord?

What (few will ask because most think they know) is wrong with the Church of England? And those other churches in our Communion? I’d begin by showing people what’s right. It is a national Church, and one of the few; because it has the vocation to be a national Church, it cannot hide itself in a comfy closed doctrinal closet but must worry the issues until they succumb. It is on the whole a tolerant Church, a reasonably kindly Church, an unpretentious Church, a Church that functions best when assembling many people of different points if view for a liturgy of Matins or Communion followed by coffee or sherry, and cake.

It is not good at taking positions on knotty problems beloved by television talk-show hosts. It is not good at dealing with morals beyond the Great Commandments. It is not good at being Cool. It is not good at being political. It is not good at being Progressive, or Liberal, or Conservative. It is not good at being Ecological or Diverse.

So I think that I will not try to be any of those things. Journalists with microphones and enormous cameras will try to make me, and I will prepare a few good one-liners to send them home with. But I will not bite.

Instead, I will surprise them. I will give each of Britain’s parishes the choice of being, like the hexes in Jack Chalker’s Well World novels, Wild, Half-Wild, or Tame, the choice to be made by all members in a parish referendum. Wild parishes will permit everything, from gay marriage to djembe-rock services; Half-Wild will choose from a small list which changes they will adopt, but will then be stuck with those for twelve years before a review; Tame parishes will be traditional (and BCP) in every way, whether Low, High, or Broad. Once those choices are made, I will put a twelve-year moratorium on all discussions of ‘modernization’, whether of morality or of liturgy, in the Church.

The place of these will be taken by an enormous effort of spirituality, accompanied (but not replaced) by active charity. Discussion will be allowed of matters of theology, but not encouraged: I will try to steer my fractious Church in the direction of being a praying Church rather than a forum for disagreement. I will put huge effort into encouraging vocations, both priestly and religious, and maintain and encourage all Anglican religious orders. Since my appointment coincides with the 350^th anniversary of the Restoration (1668) Prayer Book, I will direct that for one year it be used in all prime-time parish services, with Common Worship relegated for that time to 8 a.m. I will institute part-time seminars on preaching for all Church of England rectors and curates, and encourage longer, text-based sermons in all Sunday services.

An easily-overlooked feature of these changes is that they are low-cost financially. On that front, I will encourage a new form of tithing compatible with high taxation, and I will appoint a committee to study the feasibility of part-time curates. I will encourage Government to increase its assistance in maintaining historic churches and their fabric, and encourage the creation of lay readers and Matins and Evensong services led by them.

Finally, I will initiate a large effort of promulgating the knowledge of Anglican spirituality and its history, including the lives of persons to be venerated; I will institute popular courses on the thought of Hooker and Burnet, on the sermons of Donne and Newman (even though he left for Rome), and on the poetry of Herbert and Watts.

Thinking about this has almost made me eager to begin. Thanks, Lord.    

Christmas Carol Service, Canterbury Cathedral

 

FIDDLING ON THE TITANIC OR SINGING ON THE ARK?

I have been reading the admirable French daily La Croix’s decennial survey of the state of the French Catholic church and its presumed development over the next ten years. It is dire, of course: the number of baptisms is falling, the number of committed lay persons is falling, the number of those calling themselves Catholic is falling, and the number of vocations is plunging.

The suggested remedies are many, various, energetic and coming from all over. They include foreign priests, more work by the laity, reorganising dioceses, etcetera. And yet there is a vast and dense silence on a number of possibilities that instantly suggest themselves to a non-Roman-Catholic.

In the first place, married priests. Admittedly, that would prove complicated in terms of salaries, pensions, and adaptability to movement. But it would instantly augment the number of vocations, and in the face of 450 years of Anglican experience it is impossible to maintain that married men make less good parish clergy. To do the Pope justice, he did recently tell a bishop from Amazonia that the church would not exclude the consecration of viri probati, “proven” married men. But only in such extreme cases.

Secondly, women priests. This would double the pool of vocations if not triple it. And again, as the Anglicans are discovering, women make excellent priests.

Thirdly, a conservative redefinition of celibacy. Conservative in the sense of going back to medieval practice. Celibacy should mean not living in the context of a marriage and a family, and thus being available on a permanent basis. It should not mean giving up all sexual relations for the rest of one’s life. That is a great deal to ask of young males: and such a demand may be fine when there are many – in ages where priesthood confers status, education, and security --, but it should be completely reconsidered when the flood of vocations is reduced to a trickle.

Fourthly, the possibility of couples, straight or gay, both serving as priests, perhaps in the same parish or neighbouring parishes.  

Pope Francis memorably said, a year or so ago, that it would be wonderful if the Church could stop thinking about sex all the time. Notice that all the solutions I’ve mentioned as not being discussed or (publicly) envisaged have to do with sex.

As for the dwindling of the laity, I have long suspected that it had something to do with the Church’s (no: the churches’) relentless “updating” and “modernizing” of their habitus. And I notice that all the suggested remedies in the La Croix issue go in the same direction.

If each diocese decided to have a number of churches where a traditional liturgy was used – and not only at 8 a.m. -- , these might stop the drifting away, or the not turning up, of those whose faith is best served by a liturgy of reverence, of formal beauty, and of some distance. At the moment, such believers are faced with the choice of either post-Vatican II liturgical chumminess or Lefebvrist theological archaism. An unfair choice, that I’m sure alienates a larger number of the faithful than the Church realizes.

Finally, a number of French dioceses are moving in the direction of laymen getting together for church services without a priest. I have attended one or two of those, and they are embarrassing in their lack of direction and form. Once again, if there were more contact between French Catholics and Anglicans, the latter could suggest a translated version (which exists already) of their Prayer-Book Matins and Evensong services (minus the prayers for the Royal Family), which would meet the case admirably. This would also mean going back to an earlier conception of Communion, or Mass, as an occasional, say monthly, liturgical high point; something the Reformation instituted but has been moving away from.

In a time when the seas are rising, Christians should reflect on the nature and course of the ship they are manning. Are we bound for an iceberg or for Ararat?