One might easily identify with the Latin poet who wondered 'how religion could generate so many evils. The image of spirituality blurs when viewed through the poorly crafted, often fogged lenses of religion. Someone once observed that centuries-old institutions seem to have suffered a fatal fatigue. Both appear to exist in a kind of self-designed splendid isolation. Moralism is one of the most effective shields against the soul protecting us from its intimacy.
Moralistic attitudes keep intimacy, sexual honesty, at a comfortable arms length.
If we clergy were as suspicious of normality, conformity, and morality as we are of the sins of the flesh, we would be healthier, more human, more caring, giving. Frightening in that as we mature in our understanding of ourselves, our universe, we may have to discard the religious crutches and acknowledge that we, and we alone, are responsible for this pastoral planet. The English Romantic writers mentioned earlier were not another wave of panthiests, another garden variety of nature-lovers, seekers of the simple life. They weren't recommending we abandon, desert, retreat from civilization to some garden. Nothing so simplistic or trite.