Once again it is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to our annual meeting. In particular I welcome our visitors, Brian Parker of the Church of Ireland Press Office, Fr. Stephen Farragher and Dr. Gareth Higgins who is the principal author and researcher of the Scoping Study on Sectarianism that we shall be discussing.

I would like to place on record our sadness at the recent death of our friend Very Revd. Malcolm Graham, formerly Dean of Killala, about whom I have written extensively in the Church of Ireland Gazette and elsewhere.

As you will see, we are meeting today in the cathedral and using the Synod Hall for our refreshments and socialising. This may seem rather odd, but the reason for this is that the acoustics in the Synod Hall make it very hard to hear what is being said: I suppose long ago they must have had stentorian voices [like the Homeric herald, Stentor] or excellent ears, or both. Unless of course they were content not to hear!

As it happens, in my brief address to you today, I want to think about hearing - and not hearing. Perhaps I should use the word listening - and maybe it is a distinction without a difference. But it is quite possible to listen patiently but not really hear; for example: 'you've listened to every word I've said, but you haven't really heard'. The hearing I am thinking about is the sort of hearing that allows a message to sink in, and to change the heart.

To listen is to make an effort to hear, but to hear is to perceive with the ear. It is perception, to understand something anew, or beyond one's usual frame of reference of comfort. The Scoping Study we shall be looking at this afternoon has indicators of this, and the recent Pastoral Letter from the Bishops on Human Sexuality refers to this also.

In Isaiah 28:23, the Sovereign Lord says, 'Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.' That's the sort of hearing I'm talking about.

In the world at the moment, there are so many who are crying out: 'Listen and hear my voice'. The difficulty is that there are genuine and deeply felt viewpoints that are totally opposite on the identical same thing. The debate on human sexuality is a case in point, though not the only one. And we should note that they are sincere Christian viewpoints also, and biblical ones to boot. It may be that we ought not to lament this difference and that it tells us something about the nature of eternal truth. At the same time, we must note that deep religious conviction can make one surprisingly indifferent to the cries of fellow human beings. The problem is especially difficult in the whole area of sexuality, partly because it so very personal.

So the question is, 'how should we progress this?'

The sexuality debate has continued to intensify, and it cannot be ignored within the church, or by the church within society. Please note that in what follows, I am talking about Christian perspectives.

Labels are dangerous to apply, and there is much confusion, but perhaps one can see two genuine, but different, perspectives that together continue to keep the discussion to the fore. For the more 'conservative' Christian mind, the sexuality question has become a Litmus test for biblical and traditional orthodoxy, which is felt to have been progressively eroded in many ways. For the more 'liberal' Christian mind, it is often a test of justice and truly comprehensive inclusivity, which are felt to have been undermined by preoccupation and prurience with sexual issues.

Within these two points of view, there are rightly real concerns for individual people -- for truth but also for mercy. For we know that this is not an Issue, with a capital 'I'; the debate is about real people - with names, and life stories, and hopes and fears - people who genuinely fall in love and yearn to be loved in return. Thus the discussion must be managed, so far as is possible, in a way that is not destructive of people, yet true to the will of God. It is this deeply personal dimension that signals the need for talking and listening.

It seems to me that we should be talking first and foremost about love, and yet it is shocking how little you hear the word 'love' mentioned in discussions of sexuality, as if discussions of practice should invariably be considered in isolation from the loving desire to share and receive. Both these Christian points of view understand, I think, that love is not the same as lust - and that sinfulness distorts our giftedness. I would add that it is the greatest gifts that are open to the greatest distortion. And yet legislating for love is a difficult and error-prone pursuit, at least for human minds.

So there is much to talk about, and I return again to my theme: to listen and hear. The first stage is surely to create a place where people can really hear each other - only then can we discern the mind of the whole church - much of it, or most of it, I would maintain is yet unspoken. The discussion needs to be, where possible, away from pressure points, but aware of them: away from the more strident voices of lobbyists but aware of them also. The discussion needs to be well informed and people need to enter a debate and not a battleground. In the necessary educational process, the perhaps unfamiliar languages of theology and science need to enter the public domain. The process will require great patience from people who desire a major move by the Church, and equally great patience from those who desire the Church to retain and safeguard its core disciplines.

The meeting places for Christians must be in Christ - in fellowship, in worship, in prayer, in study of the scriptures - taking the broadest perspective, but attentive to personal detail also.

When I think of perspectives, I for one cannot escape a feeling of awkwardness that this has occupied so much attention when the world staggers under war, famine, disease, torture, lies in high places, global injustice and possible ecological disaster. Perspectives, as you will have gathered, do trouble me. A recent picture of Baghdad had a smoky urban battlefield of broken buildings and lives - with an enormous red sun rising over it, its radiance occluded by dust. What is our fighting about in the scale of things?

Looking at Mars recently, and the great Milky Way -- and I am not talking about chocolate! -- I often reflect on this. I do so wonder whether we are straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel; whether we are pointing to the sawdust in someone else's visual perspective, unaware of the plank in our own; and whether collectively our Christian light is giving the world a murky message of the true light that comes into the world. As Jesus warned of Christian perspectives: 'If the light that be in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness' Mt 6:23. An awesome warning indeed.

The matter of attention to detail and making sure that all voices are heard has been difficult enough for many reasons.

Reading the papers recently, with their frequent fondness for adversarial comment and headlines, one is bound to ask, 'Is this really all that is being said'? Surely there are voices that have not been heard? Are there not people in the middle of the road - and mark those words 'middle of the road'- who know it to be a dangerous place and stay under the manhole cover for fear of being run over? I confess to having been one of these. Are there not many fence sitters who find that position acutely uncomfortable (who wouldn't?). Yet, in defence of the fence, the top of the fence is the only position from which one can see both sides clearly. It is also a position where one can be shot at from both sides as well! I confess to having been one of these.

So it is surely the voice of the huge and very varied middle ground that not been properly heard. Therein lies an unheard wisdom yet to come forward, and I want to try to work towards making it safe enough for such voices to be listened to and heard. What voices might they be? Well, some I have heard might include the family with a gay child who spent years plucking up the courage to come out, terrified of exclusion; discussion of the rate of suicide, self harm, and drug abuse of young lesbians, gay men and bisexual people which is much more common than the average for young people; descriptions of the places where physical violence was tolerated but the homosexual is thrown out. There will be stories of celibate same-sex friendships and practising ones; Christian people who struggle with their homosexuality and are determined to be celibate for biblical reasons; other Christian people who want to celebrate it openly and not live a lie. Christians who, in the face of rampant promiscuity and underground culture, want to model a homosexual lifestyle that is faithful, exclusive, committed, lifelong and true to their nature. Yet other Christians will be deeply concerned that this is out of the question, and will say so, however unpopular it may make them. Courage is required on all sides, and it is not difficult to see how, depending on your standpoint, this will make for very uncomfortable listening.

So the discussion must be extraordinarily generous, open, attentive, sensitive - and committed to trying to find the truth together - in a word, Christian. It needs to be cleared of the voices of the more strident lobbyists from both sides; it must be pastoral and not adversarial. With this complex and deeply human matter, adversarial argument may not be a servant of the truth. Neither is the truth served by an assumption that the argument must have an inevitable conclusion. It must involve hearing without prejudice as to the outcome. We must indeed try to create a safe space, and it is possible and deeply enriching let me say. The bishops of the Church of Ireland have discussed and differed, yet always in the deepest mutual respect. Indeed, I met with most of my clergy only this week, and I was so moved by the sincere diversity in what I heard and the attention of all for each. It can happen. It happened at the Glenstal Conference earlier this year entitled "Inclining The Ears Of The Heart" in Benedictine phrase, in the context or worship and prayer. I say it again, it can happen.

So, we somehow need to let all sides know the genuine and deeply felt viewpoints of the others; we cannot simply allow people to pretend that the opposite point of view does not exist or is to be dismissed out of hand. It will be problematic - complex issues demand complex and careful argument; and the discussion will need to employ many disciplines: theology, biblical interpretation, social sciences, psychology and more.

It is dialogue we need, not mutual monologue. For this, one must make oneself vulnerable to the opinion of another. This is not only the area of counselling and listening skills; important though they may be. These skills assume that the other person needs to change. But we have to listen in such a way that what we hear works into our own conclusion. Our own mind must be open to be changed - in either direction. For myself, I have found it extraordinarily difficult to surrender my liberal inclination, and in my thoughts and prayers to say, in effect, 'Lord I surrender and will obey and go where you will'. Yet I think this is the attitude we need if we are truly to hear with the heart - to allow our gut instincts, and long-term intellectual convictions to be challenged.

A few years ago, in our Diocesan Synod, I likened our church to the story of Peter the apostle. May I remind you of that now? Peter was blessed with extraordinary insight (recognising Jesus as the Messiah), and yet could be very blind too (the Messiah, in his view, could not possibly suffer). Blindness and insight can together be a Christian predicament - we who see through a glass darkly - even, perhaps especially, when faced with Christ himself. Peter made rash promises and was utterly reduced when he could not keep them. So he was fallible, and corrigible - yet his faith did not fail. In this condition, no more, no less, he was recommissioned by Christ - on the deepest and most important terms - the terms of love, of love for Jesus and care of his sheep.

He went on, and in the power of the Spirit he taught and preached and thousands came to faith. Yet subsequently he still needed his old assumptions challenged; in the face of him seeing God working in a new way and with new people. Peter with such honesty declared 'God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between them, and us for he purified their hearts by faith'. Acts 15:8-9.

Now there is a man of faith, someone who listened with the heart, and acted on what he heard.

We in the church should do likewise.