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I’m going to wait until there’s a more detailed article about what Rowan Williams said today than the fairly short article in the Guardian. But on the face of it, he’s conflating paedophilia with homosexuality, and saying that an inevitable consequence of gay people no longer being oppressed is that people like him are more tolerant of paedophilia. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either.
Interested Observer,
the link to today’s transcript of IICSA is here https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/4421/view/14%20March%202018%20Anglican%20Public%20Hearing%20Transcript.pdf
The exchange reported in the Daily Telegraph is on pages 142-144.
Thanks, Erica. It’s somewhat incoherent. Can anyone untangle:
“it won’t do to talk about sexual problems of the clergy as if they were something that were the clergy’s problems”
I’m struggling to imagine how “the (abstract noun) of (concrete noun)” and “(concrete noun)’s (abstract noun)” can ever be both on the one hand meaningful and on the other hand NOT exact synonyms.
G.B. Shaw is supposed to have said, ‘The right word is a power and lends definiteness to the action.’ I find Stephen Parsons’ term helpful when it comes to what we are seeing in the IICSA hearings – and in some of the debate around them. Bishops, archbishops, officials almost all seem unaware – and sometimes unconcerned – about the enormous harm done to those who are abused. Rowan Williams spoke yesterday of the abusing priest who had spoken to him and subsequently committed suicide. Understandably he was profoundly affected by that, but he gave it as a reason why… Read more »
Interested Observer In distinguishing the problems of the clergy from the clergy’s problems we may have to do as Luther was accused of doing and add the word “alone”. I think ++Williams meant that if a priest is experiencing personal issues (possibly including inappropriate feelings) then, although he deserves support, with his problem, the Church has to recognise it is not a problem for him alone because of the possible effect on others. In the same way an airline cannot treat a suicidal pilot as an employee welfare issue. The sexual problems of the clergy cannot be talked of as… Read more »
It certainly seems as if the questioner is conflating homosexuality with pedophilia. Urgh. When the victims are girls, does the questioner conflate heterosexuality and pedophilia?
T Pott Just caught up with your comment here with I find very helpful. I do not think ++Rowan is conflating anything though I agree it sounds perilously close to that. But while we think that will be missing what he was actually trying to say – which I think you have identified and helpfully commented further on.