The Church of England bishops are about to issue their promised pastoral statement on civil partnerships. This is expected to occur tomorrow. Two excellent briefing items have appeared.
The BBC Sunday programme had this item:
Gay Anglicans
Tomorrow the Church of England will reveal how it will deal with clergy who are in same sex relationships and who want to register their partnerships.
Report by Christopher Landau.
Listen (4m 35s) (Real Audio)
Fulcrum has published a Fulcrum response to the Civil Partnerships Act by Andrew Goddard. This is a comprehensive analysis of the UK civil partnership legislation and its implications for the Church of England, and also indicates the potential for a positive way forward.
Although I suspect Goddard and I might come to somewhat different theological conclusions about “the third way”, he does ask the right questions and seems to be working from correct premises about the ontology of homosexuality. It’s too bad that I don’t hear this kind of talk on the other side of the Atlantic, even though the situations in Vermont, Massachusetts, and soon Connecticut are similar.
Ahh, good old “fuzzy liberal” policies from the HoB, if leaks to the BBC are to be believed. But I wonder how long before we end up with the ECUSA scenario – the orthodox progressively “sliced up”: women priests/women bishops/priests in gay partnerships/blessing of gay partnerships/bishops in gay partnerships… etc
If orthodox christians don’t stand up now to the HoB’s disproportionate (self-appointed) liberal elite, the CofE can easily slide into the same pit as ECUSA: faithful christians pushed out… (and no-one else joining!)
Andrew Goddard’s piece indicates a “way forward”? (I sure didn’t it. Only more of the same ‘ol, same ‘ol: prejudice masquerading as “historic faith”).
Typical bit:
“The problem here is that it requires of the church what it currently lacks [:] a positive account of godly same-sex relationships.”
{sigh}
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Good on the Blair government for having the courage. Perhaps one question I feel gets begged in this discussion (Goddard simply mentions it) is why exactly “marriage” needs protection? So-called faithful christians might consider the paradox that they pose when they confront issues of sex: that it’s either in an ‘approved’ context, or it doesn’t happen (i.e.: celibacy/abstinence). Clearly there is a lot of fuzzy emoting going on when gay people are effectively told that furtive promiscuity is the only real option, with the implication that any relationships they might form mean nothing. Perhaps it’s ‘orthodox’ christians who need the… Read more »
Good point, k1eranc. A cleryman once said to me that in all of his considerable years of counseling people in unhappy marriages, never once was the problem identified as “the lesbian couple down the street.” 🙂
The problem isn’t the Lesbian couple down the street. Instead, the approval of the Lesbian couple down the street is a symptom of the problem. The problem is the complete collapse of any sexual standard of conduct beyond consent. The open affirmation of homosexuality … at least for other peoples’ children anyway … is an indication of how deeply entrenched the attitudes have become. Whether this problem can be overcome is problematic. One can argue about whether homosexuality (as opposed to cohabitation for example) is the proper place to try and re-assert traditional norms. So perhaps this is not the… Read more »
ECJ, Sorry, but your argument doesn’t follow. Too many fallacious assumptions, incl. elements of Slippery Slope, Complex Question, Prejudicial Language and Argumentum ad Consequentiam.
See http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/ for details.
But, Dave, the ‘orthodox’ won’t be sliced up – they will have followed Akinola and his band of premoderns out of the CofE. So it won’t be an issue for them. Sooner the better, I’d say!
Simeon: your dismissive list is not an argument but a mere parade of terms. You don’t engage with anything that ECJ says, nor catalog each of the asserted errors. Where, for example, is the ‘prejudicial language’?