Theological debates are not always esoteric - sometimes they impinge on the human sphere. The recent Anglican compromise, to allow gay bishops who are celibate, bases itself on a nice distinction between inclination and action which isn't really all that nice at all. By suggesting that heterosexual Anglican priests needn't be celibate, but gay ones must be, the age-old bias against homosexual erotic practices is maintained, the assumption being that the action is sinful, even if (somehow) the inclination isn't. Well, we now know, late in our human civilisation, that gay love is as natural as heterosexual love; and this is the basis of our Western society's new and emerging laws of tolerance. My sense of theology is that as the human consciousness of good expands over time, so too must our interpretations of ecclesiastical law develop and mature - always moving towards greater love and tolerance. In short - this compromise is a half-way house, and a belittling one at that. Until organised religions permit all forms of sexual love between consenting adults, they will remain all-too-human, in a petty and backward way - far from the angelic dance on the head of a pin we might have hoped for.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
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Rowan Williams has a hell of a job on reconciling the conservative (often African) and liberal (often American) wings of the Anglican communion. I think that he is doing a reasonable job under the circumstances. He would need the wisdom of Solomon squared to keep everybody happy. (Let us not forget that the pope called homosexuality a psychological disorder.)
Best wishes from Simon