Unity and Sacrifice, Rowan and Caiphas

The following is an excerpt from a London Times interview with Archbishop Rowan Williams. Unity is necessary for truth, and the sacrifice if LGBT people is the price of unity. Caiphas would be proud. Fr. John

MAS
Does that mean then that the convoy, the Communion, is always going to have to move at the pace of the slowest member?
RW
It's never just done that. For the Communion as a whole, where it wants to move on this issue is still formally an open question, I think. You can't assume it will go one way. Let's say the ordination of women. Actions in certain provinces brought others along. For whatever reason, though, that wasn't seen, by many people, as a matter affecting the authority of the Bible in quite the way this is [homosexuality]. Nor did it have quite the same cultural intensity that this seems to have.
MAS
It did for some people.
RW
I mean outside Europe. I didn't sense that in Africa, for example, although there were very different policies on women's ordination, it had quite that intensity. I know it's been a hugely difficult cultural question in some contexts, but for some reason it doesn't seem to have the effect on people of compromising the integrity of Christian witness in the same way that this is perceived to have.
MAS
And does that mean, then, that you don't think it will end up being feasible to have the same sort of arrangements in terms of oversight that you've had for women priests?
RW
I don't know at the moment. I really don't know. The American Church is trying to find its way on this at the moment. We'll learn something from that.
MAS
You're not going to expel it then?
RW
In the middle of the Commission's work, I really don't want to make any prediction.
MAS
What about the idea of a sort of Lutheran federation?
RW
It has practical attractions. The question is whether it's cutting the Gordian knot. Trying to be in communion, trying to have a very strong reciprocal relationship, for instance where ministries are received, where there are instruments of working together, and lots and lots of local relationships between parishes and so forth, all of that is a big investment in being together, and it's a high-risk one. Communion is a high-risk enterprise, because it runs into exactly the problems we've been talking about. I think it's worth trying that high-risk enterprise because it seems to me to go a bit closer to the heart of the New Testament than just a slightly shoulder-shrugging coexistence. Although I think it's worth trying our very best to maintain the Communion in those terms, in terms of interchangeability, interrelation between local communities, and all the regular structures that keep it going, it's worth trying and trying very hard and I guess again that's the job on the table.
MAS
Is it more important than anything else?
RW
You mean more important than truth?
MAS
Yes
RW
People sometimes talk a little bit easily about sacrificing unity to truth or truth to unity. I suppose Christians are supposed to believe that unity has something to do with truth, that the work of holding together is itself a converting and transforming thing, a way of recognising a level at which we're necessary to each other in the Christian community, and so it's not just a matter of getting some kind of workable compromise and shrugging your shoulders about truth or integrity. It's trying to find how we can genuinely be involved with one another and learning from one another within dependable long-term structures. So to try and work for the sake of unity is not to say, " Anything for a quiet life " because it isn't in the least quiet. In fact, it's a recipe for what can be quite a tension-ridden and difficult relation. But I do feel that federation, loose parallel processes, are less than we've got, less than we could have and, in the very long run, less than what God wants in the Church.
MAS
But it might be better than a complete split?
RW
It might be. We'll see. But what I'm really trying to set out is what I think the priority has to be, the desired priority in terms of unity.
MAS
In that case, would you be prepared to sacrifice the effect that this has had on gay believers and gay priests in the interests of unity?
RW
Whatever solution we come to is going to cost somebody and it has been said that the interesting moral decisions are not about whether anyone gets hurt but who gets hurt, which is a very painful thing. Very. And whatever shape the unity takes, there's going to be cost. It's very difficult to compose that cost.
MAS
Well, you're going to have to decide who gets hurt.
RW
I'm going to have a very large role in doing it, yes.
MAS
How do you feel about that?
RW
Again, it's probably an extreme case of what any pastor has to do at times in the parish or a bishop in the diocese.