The Canterbury Sidestep

It must be terribly embarrassing for the Archbishop of Canterbury to open the International Business Times and read a headline like this:

Archbishop of Canterbury: Church Investment in Porn is Life in the Real World 

But that is what happens when you try to defend the indefensible, which is what the Archbishop did when confronted by a radio interviewer about the fact that the Church of England has invested portions of its $8 billion in endowments in companies that produce pornography and engage in other unwholesome (not to say un-Christian) business practices.  The National Catholic Register described the episode this way:

It came out that the Anglican Church has been investing its money in companies that profit pornography and gambling--  Yes, porn and gambling.  Further, the investment rules of the Church specifically allowed for such investments stating "The Church's fund can invest in a company which holds up to 25% investment in industries such as pornography, gambling and pay-day lending, as well as 10% in weapons."  Well then, its only 25% sinful I suppose.

Ok, so the investments were handled poorly.  To say the least.  But the real death-knell of Anglicanism came from the Archbishop's initial response to something absolutely repugnant to the Christianity they purport to preach.  The Archbishop's response: "We've got to live in the real world and that means life is very complicated and you cannot sidestep the complexity. We've also got to be involved in day-to-day life and ask 'how do you actually live in the reality of the complexity of life today?'"

Try having this conversation with someone who is involved in a sexual relationship outside marriage or in other ways not living according to standards of Christian morality, and you'll probably get the same response:  "You're not living in the real world.  In the real world, everybody's doing it.  Life is more complex than your simple morality.  This is what the real world is like, and you'd better just get used to it."  Only now, we're hearing this same argument being used by the titular leader of a major branch of Christianity.

It seems that,in this and so many ways, such as his support for civil partnerships in the UK, this Archbishop is more interested in following "the real world" than the real Gospel.

[Sigh.]  And to think some conservatives were so hopeful over his election....