Updated Monday
The Church Times reports: Second Commissioner responds to MPs’ questions on Prayers of Love and Faith
The full texts of both questions and answers can be found at They Work For You, starting here. For convenience, the substantive content has been copied below the fold.
Update This Church Times article also includes information on voting in the House and College, some of which is additional to that in the previous report:
…In September, the College of Bishops voted 72-26 to “recommend to the House that we continue the work on pastoral provision, to extend this to clergy who enter into same-sex marriages”.
They also agreed, by a margin of 81-17, that there should be “no questions around sexual intimacy” put to “clergy in same-sex civil partnerships”.
The House of Bishops also voted in favour of a motion stipulating that the pastoral guidance should remove all barriers to clergy entering same-sex civil marriages, albeit by a narrower margin: 18 votes to 15.
The House agreed, however, by a vote of 23-13, to delay the publication of such pastoral guidance until “further work” had been done — a decision that was announced last Friday, when an update on LLF was published in advance of the next month’s General Synod meeting…
Q. What physical acts the Church refers to when teaching that sexual intimacy outside of marriage is forbidden.
A. The Living in Love and Faith process has always sought to recognise that the expression of sexual intimacy between two people cannot be reduced to a small set of defined actions.
Q. Whether the General Synod papers on Living in Love and Faith circulated on 20 October 2023 reflect the current position of the (a) House and (b) College of Bishops.
A. Drafts of the material presented in the November Synod papers were seen and commented on by the College of Bishops and House of Bishops at their respective meetings on 18th September and 9th October. The papers for the November meeting of General Synod were drafted and agreed by the Chairs of the LLF steering group based on this feedback and noting the diversity of opinions held by the bishops.
Q. Whether a draft form of Pastoral Guidance for Ministry has been (a) prepared and (b) shared with the (i) House and (ii) College of Bishops.
A. Drafts of the section on Ministry in the Pastoral Guidance were shared with the College of Bishops and House of Bishops and on both occasions they asked for further work to be done. It is hoped that this will be completed as soon as possible, and I recognise that some are disappointed that this is not being brought to the November Synod.
Q. Whether a further letter threatening legal action was sent to the (a) House and (b) College of Bishops between the end of the meeting of the College and the House meeting in October.
A. Several items of correspondence were received over this period from a number of groups with different views, reflecting differing legal and theological opinions, as is widely in the public domain. Some offered a legal opinion on the routes of commendation or authorisation for the Prayers of Love and Faith, but I am not aware that any directly threatened the recipients with legal action.
Q. Whether there are recorded majorities in the (a) House and (b) College of Bishops to (i) allow clergy to enter into same-sex civil marriages and (ii) remove the stipulation that currently requires celibacy for clergy in same-sex relationships.
A. The proceedings of these meetings of the House of Bishops and College of Bishops, including details of votes, are confidential. Both the College and the House decided that further work should be done on allowing clergy to enter into same sex marriages, and on the stipulation that currently requires celibacy for clergy in same-sex relationships. It is stated in the General Synod papers (GS2328 and annexes) , that there is ‘further work on the Ministry elements of the Pastoral Guidance including on clergy in same-sex marriages’. It is hoped that this work will be done as quickly as is possible.
Much reference to “Draft” documents. How much editing needs to take place before a “Draft” morphs into a completely unrecognisable one?
Amen, brother Graham!
“The proceedings of these meetings of the House of Bishops and College of Bishops, including details of votes, are confidential.” Why should they be? Why are things that opaque and vulnerable to manipulation? Democratic process is rooted upon informed consent. When decisions are being made about people’s lives, and when people give sacrificially to the Church (as they do), they deserve full information about decisions being made. With the great affairs of state, we get to see who votes for or against the issues coming up. Why should the votes of bishops for or against not be open and transparent… Read more »
The members of the House of Bishops and College of Bishops have been given insight and guidance that mere lay people wouldn’t understand. There’s a word that comes to mind. Kind of sounds like “no-stick ism”. Something that I thought the early church fought against. Regardless of the theology underpinning the HoB and CoB (the workings of the Holy Spirit, etc), they are both human institutions with bureaucratic privileges and modes of operation. To paraphrase a comment I heard a long time ago about a different large Christian denomination, if Jesus of Nazareth knocked on the doors of the HoB… Read more »
Whatever the individual members of these two elite bodies are like on their own they seem to have developed a system that, when they are together, they feel no shame but just an unshakable conviction that they are Permanently Right.
So of course Jesus of Nazareth would not be allowed in as he would probably be a wretched nuisance and query some of their assumptions
GS Standing Orders, Annex A, Section 13 is quite clear that every HoB meeting is open to the public, so Our Lord would have a statutory right to attend. Unfortunately, Section 14 then goes on to allow the bishops, at the drop of a mitre, collectively to resolve that ” ‘the House do now go into Committee’; and if that motion is carried, the Chair shall ask members of the public to withdraw until such time as, with the general consent of the House, he gives instructions to the Secretary for their re-admission.” I am starting to re-imagine Holman Hunt’s… Read more »
If the HoB’s idea of leadership given the voting figures now confirmed is to kick the can right out of sight, the Light of the World is in for an even longer wait than you imagined yesterday ….
I think we do need some clarity about what we mean when we talk about “sex” and sexual sin, not least because without it we see theology and ethics done by innuendo. And there is an important aspect that some acts seem to be counted as “not sex” between heterosexual couples (eg before they are married) but are assumed by innuendo to be “sex” in homosexual contexts. There is an unexamined dishonesty about this which is itself sinful.
Given that Jesus is reported to have said that even desiring someone sexually other than you husband/wife is akin to adultery… and given that most of us periodically self-pleasure… …those in the socially conservative parts of the Church who found their views on what Jesus said… might reflect on their own sexual ‘sin’ and ask themselves: ‘why do we accentuate gay sexual ‘sin’ while accommodating our own’? Don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe self-pleasure is sexual sin in and of itself, and nor do I believe that gay sex and marriage are wrong. But at least (I think) I… Read more »