Robert MacCarthy

File:Http://www.stpatrickscathedral.ie/images/Dean MacCarthy.jpg

The Very Revd Dr Robert MacCarthy is Dean of Saint Patrick's Cathedral.

Born in 1940, Dean MacCarthy was educated at St. Columba's College in Rathfarnham, Dublin. He continued his studies in Trinity College Dublin, St John's College Cambridge, Trinity College Oxford and Cuddesdon Theological College. He received a Ph.D. in 19th century Irish history from Trinity College in 1983. Prior to his ordination in 1979, he spent twelve years in university administration at Reading University, Queen's University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin, where he became Assistant Secretary. He became curate of Carlow in 1979, a post he held until 1981 when he was appointed Librarian of Pusey House Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College. In 1982 he was appointed Team Vicar in Bracknell New Town. From 1986 to 1988 he was Bishop's Vicar in Kilkenny Cathedral. He became Rector of Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny in 1988. From 1995–9 he was Rector of St Nicholas' Collegiate Church, Galway and Provost of Tuam. He has been a member of the chapter since 1994, as the Prebendary of Monmohenock. His publications include The Estates of Trinity College Dublin (Dundalgan Press, 1992) and Ancient and Modern: A short History of the Church of Ireland (Four Courts Press, 1995).

In October 2005 he gave a sermon which appeared in an abridged form in The Irish Times on October 13th 2005, page 16. It proved controversial, with one commentator in the The Brandsma Review [1] dubbing it The rubber-stamping of buggery. It appears below:

'Back to the Bible' cry no help on gay unions

The world of the New Testament and our own are very different. Has it ever occurred to you how much of the New Testament we do not believe in?

For a start there is healing. People of New Testament times believed all healing came from God without human contribution - for example it is said of Jesus in Luke 5:17 "the power of the Lord was with him to heal", while later in the same Gospel (Luke 14:3) Jesus asks the lawyers and Pharisees if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath day. Both take it for granted that he should heal, the question was "should it be on the Sabbath?".

These are two instances of many which show us Jesus the healer. And it was not peculiar to Jesus or proof of his divine mission, for in the Acts of the Apostles we are shown healings by the apostles as a matter of course. There is the familiar story in Acts 2 of Peter healing the crippled man, and it is said of him in Acts 5:15 that even his shadow falling on the sick would heal them. If we're not Christian Scientists we don't believe in divine healing as something apart from the work of surgeons and physicians, but the people of New Testament times had no knowledge of modern medicine and believed implicitly in healings such as I have described. And indeed so did the people of Tibet until the Chinese invasion of 1950. Heinrich Harrer in his book Seven Years in Tibet tells of his terror of simple appendicitis since without modern medicine he would have died.

People of the New Testament world thought illness was due to the presence of unclean spirits or possession by the devil (which is much the same thing). The writers of the Book of Common Prayer in the 17th century thought all sickness was the result of sin. We don't share either belief no matter how devoted we think we are to the Bible or to the old Book of Common Prayer.

To take something different such as usury - the placing of money to accumulate interest. In the story of the talents in the gospel it is apparently taken for granted but the whole of the law forbade it. I don't suppose it bothers us in the slightest and many individuals and all churches hold investments on which they hope to gain.

The New Testament takes a different line to ours on slavery - we are the heirs of William Wilberforce who had slavery outlawed in all British dominions in the early 19th century. The New Testament takes its existence for granted. It is clear that Onesimus - whom Paul sends back to his master, Philemon - was a slave. Paul calls him "no longer a slave but more than a slave", but nowhere criticises slavery. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul spells out what is infinitely more important - for those who have put on Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek; neither slave nor free".

Thus it is not sensible for Archbishop Akinola, primate of the (Anglican) Church of Nigeria, to say no church can ignore the preaching of the Bible - it seems the case that all churches, including his, have ignored a lot of the Bible's teaching. All doctrine depends on what is credible in a particular culture.

The present fuss is about the institution of marriage and inter-personal relations generally. It is pointless for Archbishop Akinola to expect the Church of England to adopt Nigerian standards where such things are concerned. Nigerians probably need to consider whether polygamy meets the gospel's standards. In contrast, Europeans are painfully coming to the realisation that same-sex relationships need some sort of recognition by church and state.

This is complicated by marriage itself being in a state of flux - it used to be seen primarily as a good framework for the procreation of children. A third reason was "mutual society, help and comfort". Nowadays, whether the church likes it or not, the advent of efficient birth-control means most people experience sexual relations for the first time in their teens, long before they have any thought of marriage. For the bishops in England to assert that within marriage is the proper place for sexual expression is to refuse to recognise reality.

In fact the wheel has come full circle - the wish to have children is probably the reason most people convert their long-term "arrangements" into marriage - they already enjoy "mutual society, help and comfort". In this context it is probably right that same-sex relationships which are perfectly natural (for some people), though different from marriage, should be recognised by the State and why not by the church as well?

I realise in saying this I can be accused of opting for a conservative view. Canada is much further down the road on this than we are and it was a Canadian clergyman's wife who said to me: There would be no trouble with us oldies if everyone accepted that homosexual partnerships were different to marriage, but young people aren't having any of that - they want "gay marriage".

Time will tell but for Archbishop Akinola to shout "back to the Bible" is no help at all.