Recently J.K. Rowling revealed that she always thought of Dumbledore as gay, and that he had fallen in love with the (eventually) evil wizard Grindelwald as a youth, which partly explains his ideological mistakes made with that wizard. The revelation came when a student asked her if the headmaster who always spoke so highly of the power of love had ever fallen in love himself. I think that this is an opportunity for a wise person to say something about the current debate on homosexuality in culture and church, esp. in the Anglican communion. Unfortunately, I will speaking on the matter instead.
Archive for the 'LGBT' Category
Update 9/14/07: Per Caritatem has a new post on the Orombi’s article here.
So much has happened this week in several blogs that we all frequent, not to mention outside or prodigious circle. Moreover, several noteworthies from the summer escaped my mention one way or another. Take this posting as my unofficial and abridged “I Don’t Know What You Did This Summer, But Here’s What You Should Have Been Reading.” I reserve the right to add to this list, to expect you all to follow up on the items herein, and to mock the many, dare I say most, of you who don’t. We’ll start with this week and work backward.
August 8. Fr. Edward T. Oakes published a charming and timely piece on the First Things blog on Wednesday called “On Canons”. If you’ve been keeping up with Janet and the most recent discussion over at Deep Grace of Theory, or you’ve been following the discussion on the nature of Christian philosophy or the comments under the Balthasar podcast, or you haven’t had your head buried in the sand, you might find his article illuminating. You’ll at least be tickled by such lines as: “No one disputes Hegel’s status as a canonical philosopher; but anyone who has tried to work through his rebarbative prose quickly comes to see how little literary merit counts when it comes to admittance in the ranks of canonical philosophers.” Ok, that’s hilarious to me. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what “Rebarbative” means. Hell, my spell checker doesn’t even recognize it. So, for all you playas out there -
Rebarbative: adjective; from French rébarbatif, from Middle French, from rebarber to be repellent; REPELLENT, IRRITATING
Thanks to links from Generous Orthodoxy and Medius Temporis, I direct your attention to a recent speech by Marily McCord Adams, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford (Christ Church), on the fate of LGBT and female ordination in the wake of the recent Primate Meeting.
Adams offers a helpful, while opinionated, reading of the situation. I say helpful because she attempts to present a broad scope reading of the situation before launching into detailed critique and suggestions for ways forward. She also makes the theology behind many of her clear to the audience. However, she fails in one area: she begs the question about the equivalence between sexual identity and personal identity. Yet, I admit that had she stated from the get go that such was her presupposition, I believe I probably could hang with the arguments that she had built from the presupposition.
Nevertheless, I think its safe, and sad, to say that many will be drawn to the mercifully irenic tone of her argument when compared with the alternative offered by Forward in Faith, which spends much less time telling a convincing story and much more time bickering details.
Aron said the other day that he thought the way forward in this argument is not the political bashing and name calling that even the Anglo-catholics have resorted to these days. Rather, the solution must come from well-reasoned and charitable theological formulations. Hopefully, Adams can continue to move in this direction and encourage others to follow.
Moreover, as recently re-iterated to me by a much loved priest, the Church is once again becoming embroiled in another difficult controversy to which many are directing much attention when they should be attending to the details and needs of their own parishes and dioceses.
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