Jim Naughton wrote at Episcopal Café about the year ahead for The Episcopal Church.
A number of comments related to this article were made in an earlier thread here, which was about an English subject: Same-sex Marriage and Disestablishment.
In order to stop the discussion on the latter topic being dominated by Americans discussing something quite different, I have created this article.
The issue raised in the previous thread concerned whether the authorization of a trial liturgy for same-sex blessings would be mandatory in all dioceses. Although I have not seen the wording of the proposed resolution at this point, the norm (as in former cases of trial liturgical use) has been to place such trial use under the discretion of the bishop or (in the absence of a bishop) the ecclesiastical authority (often the Standing Committee), as part of the enabling resolution. This virtual diocesan veto on trial use is not mentioned in the Constitution’s description of trial use (Article X),… Read more »
No one picked up my story that Crockfords and the CofE year book have listed the ACNA bishops of Fort Worth, Quincy ( an ex Catholic priest who was never in TEC) as bishops of these sees and members of the Anglican Communion.
I hope that the comments above are widely read. The constitutionality of the BCP is clear, and the Book of Occasional Services is an outlier constitutionally. It states what may be done. This being the case, the idea of GC passing something that in turn required discretion being given a Bishop is inaccurate, as the previous note helpfully indicates. I don’t think, strictly speaking, it is accurate to conjecture that a Bishop ‘will be granted a veto authority’ (or needs ‘arguably’ to forbid anything) Rather, given the status of the Book of Occasional Services, a Bishop wouldn’t be granted anything… Read more »
“In order to stop the … Americans”
Simon, you KNOW we colonials don’t take well to that!
[I kid, I kid. ;-p]
“This means there is no Constitutional mandate for general use, and no requirement that they be used, and it might be argued that a bishop could forbid the use of such rites in that book within the diocese.” (Br Tobias) So what is not mandatory is potentially forbidden? I ask because when +Barry Montreal was given his first synod mandate to authorize blessings of civil marriages, he noted that the rite did exist in our own Occasional Celebrations but he had not yet authorized it (even for hetero couples) in his diocese. At the time, I thought this was a… Read more »
What is not mandatory/constitutional can be ignored as without effect — that is the reality of the status of Book of Occasional Services.
No one need ‘forbid’ anything under such conditions.