"We may focus so closely on the rights of human persons that we lose sight of their beauty and dignity, the beauty and dignity that help to feed us."

I like to think that I am fairly fluent in English, but I have to admit that I have no idea what this sentence means.

I was not aware that human rights and human dignity and beauty were at odds. How can the focus on the rights of women and gays and nonwhites, of the disposed, cause us to lose sight of the dignity and beauty of humankind?

And I can see the dignity and beauty of the opponent of full inclusion of gays, or women bishops while at the same time saying those views should not delay justice. Rowan's sentence is fuzzy enough that it makes me fear that he is saying we must continue to delay -- not that that would be surprising given he actions.

As we say in the BCP Baptismal Covenant,

Celebrant - Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

People - I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant - Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

People - I will, with God’s help.

Has Rowan totally lost it? For centuries many men appreciated women's beauty without caring anything for their dignity or rights. How is caring about rights losing sight of dignity and beauty?

I'm increasingly puzzled by Rowan's inability to express himself in clear terms. You can't claim it's because the subject-matter is hard; Augustine, for instance, manages to be fairly lucid, and Aquinas manages to express it all in Latin that'd be understandable to your average high school freshman in Latin I.

I fear more and more that he's playing hide-the-ball intentionally. In Tokens of Trust, he talks in the first chapter about cynicism, defining it as the assumption that people are not acting in the interest they say they are; and in On Christian Theology, he defines having integrity as having your positions be taken for the reasons you say you take them. I tend to think he's right on both points. His fuzzy language—and his willingness to repudiate his past positions with regard to feminism and other matters (for instance, in The Body's Grace) have made me read this speech with much cynicism about its integrity.

This makes me sad.

Mike Lockaby

Tricia, agreed. Although Rowan was probably thinking in Christian terms - that all persons have dignity and beauty as creatures of God.

One way to parse the sentence is to consider that Rowan is suggesting that just as men generally compartmentalized appreciation of beauty of women, it is possible in the abstract that secular notion of rights would cause us to forget the sacred in every person.

If proponents of rights in the church were going down that purely secular path that would be a concern. But they most decidedly are not. Indeed, the church brings the possibility on itself when, as has happened, secular society is well ahead of the church on human rights.

Not to mention that straight white men have had rights for some time and no such concerns were expressed.

Or it could be that the man's just dissolved into total incoherence.

I vote for that.

I have been in Vienna, Austria all week for the International AIDS Conference. Having heard this week from women who have no rights over their own bodies--who are raped and abused (and infected with HIV) because there is no one to stop or punish the men who do it--I have to say that reading +Rowan's "poetic nonsense" makes me ill.

There is no beauty and dignity in grinding poverty, illness, and violence. Everything I know about the Gospel leads me to believe that they are an offense to God, as well as an affront to the human spirit.

A focus on rights--to bodily autonomy, a decent standard of living, healthcare, etc.-- does not, in ANY way, obliterate the beauty or dignity of human beings. Those rights simply protect that beauty and dignity and impose consequences on those who would violate them.

Only a privileged, straight, white, male could spout +Rowan's nonsense and have it called "spiritual." I call it BS at best, and simply evil at worst. I am so glad to see that other privileged men are challenging it here.

Paige Baker

To add to what Tricia said: or one may appreciate a gay man's floral arrangements in front of the altar (Yay, Beauty and Dignity!), but God forbid he and his partner want to marry there (Feh, Human Rights!).

JC Fisher

I'd think that the "sight of their beauty and dignity" might actually inspire one to "focus...on the rights of human persons". I join the rest of you in puzzlement at the words.

It occurs to me that Rowan may be attempting to justify certain of his own recent words and actions, but I could be wrong.

June Butler

I would like to think that the good Archbishop is talking to people who are so consumed with the giving of rights to those who lacked them before (and threatening to leave the communion) that they are missing the dignity and beauty of those persons.

Granted, that is a very generous reading. Another less generous meaning would be that he’s attempting to justify the denial of rights by pointing out that the people whom he won’t help gain their rights are still OK with him, even though he won’t fight for them and will stand with those who miss their dignity and beauty.

Either way it is inelegant discourse and needlessly opaque.

Who knows what +Rowan is trying to say? Does +Rowan even know? In my opinion, he wields the art of obfuscation on purpose, so that no one can ever quite pin him down. Maybe he believes in his heart of hearts that this somehow reflects the mystery of God? That we can never quite say anything--finally--positively--before the great mystery? Honestly.

Actions speak louder than words.
I've given up on either generous or damning readings of his occasional poetic mumblings. His actions show where he really stands, and I'm simply not interested anymore in what he's trying to say.

Jason Cox

It seems to me that the lecture was wonderfully academic and abstract. It also seems to me to be looking toward a quality of community that the Church hasn't achieved yet. As a corollary, we recognize our own dignity as the community reflects it - and so not as an inherent individual quality.

I'm a fan of Volf's Exclusion and Embrace. He writes of a quality of reconciliation that he acknowledges we don't attain, but to which we are called. This paper seems to me very much in the same vein.

As an idealized understanding of Christian community and of how we as individuals participate in it, I can follow it. I don't know that I can actually buy it, even in the abstract, and certainly not in our experience. However, the level of reconciliation he speaks of may well be something to pursue - with an expectation that we won't see it until the Kingdom comes.

Marshall Scott

Priscilla, I like your generous reading. As I go back and read the full paragraph it's possible to imagine that's what he had in mind. I hope so.

It's certainly true that lessons have been learned about thinking about human rights to food, safety and shelters without also building in a human relationship. Pure handouts are demeaning and strip the recipient of dignity.

But (arguing with myself) it's not at all clear those are the human rights Rowan had in mind.

JCFisher has it right--LGBT people can design beautiful church vestments, make great music, produce fine food, and do the flowers--but be full participants in the life of the church? Good gracious, no! (It's like the grim old line about women being allowed in the sanctuary just to polish the brass.)

I find this very telling. Read in the context of the current struggles of women and gay people in the church, as is unavoidable at this moment, he sees our struggles as but a distraction from a true focus on God and "our readiness to offer all we have and are for the feeding, material and spiritual, of a hungry world." He wants us to feed, but ignores how we are (not) fed. He says "we need each other for our own nourishment," but sees only how we (fail to) nourish him. He wants us to "offer all we have" but doesn't see his need to offer himself to us. He completely misses the point that our struggle for "rights" in the the church has everything to do with our relationship with God and our spiritual feeding as fully human persons, that what hasn't been "offered" to us we have to fight for it ourselves. He implies that we idolize the "rights of human persons," and thereby makes us into idols, and by trying to separate "rights" from "human persons" he denies our full humanity.

Does not matter to me if Rowan thinks I am beautiful and dignified - just give my my rights and forget the rest. What a statement.

You have beauty and dignity and help to feed me with the contributions you make to the beauty of the liturgy and the numberless contributions you make in the healthcare and other caring professions and in the way you care about and contribute to your communities and caring for your sick parents and the care you give in group homes for developmentally disabled persons or juvenile offenders and on and on and on.

But don't ask me to validate unconditionally your place in the Body of Christ. All that other stuff is all well and good--but you're still...well.....ewwwww.