Archbishop Justin Welby has been speaking in the Lords against the Government's same-sex marriage Bill, but unless I'm very much mistaken he's made an enormous concession to its supporters:
This is not a faith issue, although we are grateful for the attention that government and the other place have paid to issues of religious freedom – deeply grateful. But it is not, at heart, a faith issue; it is about the general social good.The Archbishop's speech argues, in measured but deadly language, that no social good can come of a Bill that is so badly drafted: "Marriage is abolished, redefined and recreated, being different and unequal for different categories. The new marriage of the Bill is an awkward shape with same gender and different gender categories scrunched into it, neither fitting well." All of which is no doubt (a) true and (b) a useful line of attack for a Church that does not want to dwell on the core of its opposition to gay marriage.
But are we now to infer from the Archbishop's speech that there is no theological core to its opposition? I thought the Church of England opposed gay marriage because it believed that it was against God's plan for humanity. Now we discover that it is "not, at heart, a faith issue". And so a very significant gulf opens up between the Church of England and the Catholic Church, which – like it or not – most certainly does believe that this is fundamentally, even exclusively, "a faith issue".
Update: Several Catholics have corrected me on the last point, pointing out that Catholic rejection of gay marriage is based on natural law and reason. Fair enough, but for the Catholic Church to say that gay marriage is "not, at heart, a faith issue" would be disingenuous in the extreme. Let me quote Pope Francis on the Argentinian gay marriage bill: "Let's not be naive: this isn't a simple political fight, it's an attempt to destroy God's plan."
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