Once again he mentions the issue of the Catholic adoption agencies who, under the provisions of the Equality Act regulations of 2007, were forced to abandon their effective discrimination against would-be gay adoptors. This time last year Dr Williams wrote in support of the Catholic Church, arguing that “rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well-meaning”. And again he mentions those doctors who are permitted to exercise their consciences in the matter of performing abortions. “It is difficult to see,” said the Archbishop, “quite why the principle cannot be extended in other areas.”
Well, no it isn't, actually. These “rights of conscience” have unmentioned corollaries: the gay couple denied a chance of adoption and the woman who - if surrounded by Catholic doctors - may not get the treatment to which she is entitled. It is only if such exemptions are rare that they can be at all tolerable. The implication of the Archbishop's speech is that he wants them to be less rare.
The second main problem is that members of the community who may wish or need to remain in communion can be effectively coerced into accepting inferior supplementary justice. But he never tells you how such an outcome can be prevented. How would the spread of Sharia not be accompanied by pressure on Muslims to conform to its rulings? As for the rest of us, already we are affected in myriad small ways by the supplementary decisions of religious authorities. Children can gain or be denied places at state schools as a consequence of almost arbitrary rulings on their religious status by church and rabbinical authorities. But so far we've gone along with it.
The final problem is that the Archbishop's whole approach, if adopted, would change this, not least because the new religious minorities are so much bigger than the old ones. Acting as the effective general secretary of the National Union of Priests, Rabbis, Imams and Allied Pontiffs (or PRIAPus)*, he privileges religion over all other kinds of identities, but fails to point out why his proffered leeway should not also be taken up by Scientologists, Mormons, football clubs, political parties and any other community that offers “social identity and personal motivation”. Why should certain doctors not refuse to see women patients? Or deny blood transfusions? Why should Spurs- supporting cab drivers not dump Arsenal passengers in South London?
He meant well. In T.S.Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, before Dr Williams's predecessor Thomas à Becket gets hacked to death, he is visited by various temptations. “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” Eliot was mistaken; even worse is to do the wrong deed for the right reason.
