In an article published in this journal in December 1980 I sought to draw out some of the moral and theological implications of a punitive attitude on the part of the Church towards a kind of minority which it could not comprehend and by which it felt challenged. Since that time it has been borne in upon me, both through experience and through discursive reasoning that the implications are far deeper and more terrible than I had thought. For that reason I beg the indulgence of readers for a further exploration. I am aware that such a fusion of introspection and exospection is spiritually dangerous, since the subjective and objective can only coinhere in one who is pure in heart. Nonetheless, I feel that the effort is worth the risk.

I should perhaps explain at the outset that my own theology is rapidly developing in a radical ‘materialist’ direction; that is to say, my understanding of both the Gospel kerygma and Tradition is confirming my intuition that the material, and in particular our being-in-body, has normative spiritual value. I am not at all shocked by Bishop John Robinson’s suggestion in the famous lady Chatterly trial that sexual intercourse has precise sacramental signification. Those who cannot go along with this perspective will not be able fully to appreciate the following argument and may even be offended by it. Reader, be warned!