Priests in Same-sex Relationships May Become Anglican Bishops

Well, there you have it:

(CNN) – Men in a civil union will now be allowed to become bishops in the Church of England, but they are not allowed to have sex.

Intercourse between two men – or two women – remains a sin.

“Homosexual genital acts fall short of the Christian ideal and are to be met with a call to repentance and the exercise of compassion,” according to Anglican doctrine.

Men and women in same-sex unions were already allowed to serve as priests in the Church of England, but there was a moratorium on advancement to the episcopate – becoming a bishop – while the church considered the issue.

The church announced Friday that if men in celibate civil unions may be priests, then there is no reason for them not to be bishops, as long as they are “living in accordance with the teaching of the Church on human sexuality.”

Rest here.

In other words, the ban on gay male clergy who live with their partners from becoming bishops has been lifted and that with some the flimsy conditions.

 

Speaking of Gratitude…

Someone is grateful to Archbishop John Hepworth for the unfolding Ordinariates.

How might things look different now had all the bishops behaved like good Catholics…

 

 

 

 

Church of England Faces Backlash Over Rejecting Bishopesses

When the Church of England scuttled plans to allow women bishops on Nov. 20, incoming Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby called it “a very grim day for women and their supporters.”Now, that grim day is turning into a church-state nightmare for Britain’s established church.

The Washington Post:

The Times of London quoted from a leaked memo to church leaders from William Fittall, secretary general of the General Synod, who called the public and political fallout “severe.”

After the unexpected defeat, the church said the process to allow women bishops would need to begin anew, and couldn’t start again until a new General Synod is seated in 2015.

According to The Times, Fittall’s memo outlined a plan that could lead to simpler legislation, such as a clause to consecrate women bishops with no provision for opponents. That measure could be put to the current synod when it meets again at the University of York next July.

“Parliament is impatient,” Fittall warned. “Unless the Church of England can show very quickly that it’s capable of sorting itself out, we shall be into a major constitutional crisis in Church-State relations, the outcome of which cannot be predicted with confidence.”

A former archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, upped the ante when he called on church leaders to “rip up its rule book” and speed through the introduction of women bishops. He said it was “ridiculous” to assume that the General Synod could not reconsider women bishops until 2015.

A full 42 of the 44 dioceses of the church voted for legislation that would have made women bishops next year. There are 3,600 ordained women in the Church of England and 37 female bishops in the worldwide Anglican Communion, including Africa’s first Anglican woman bishop, Ellinah Wamukoya of Swaziland, who was consecrated five days before the defeat in Britain.

Meantime, Prime Minister David Cameron has warned the church to think again — and fast — about its “very sad” rejection of women bishops.

Very sad?! It’s a Biblical rejection, not so?

Anglo-Catholics Not Welcomed in the Church of England

And I suppose, the Ordinariate would be (is) a far safer theological / ecclesiastical home for them. William Oddie:

The question of whether or not the Church of England will appoint women bishops drags on and on. (We will of course put to one side here the question of the validity of Anglican orders: though our view has been somewhat softened in its expression by the ARCIC process, it is still, of course, the unavoidable view of the Catholic Church that they are, in Leo XIII’s not exactly tactful words, “absolutely null and utterly void”).

The Anglican bishops have now decided that they will delay the final decision as to whether or not to proceed to legislate on the matter. The reason for this is that those opposed to any special arrangements being made, for those parishes who don’t want to be in the diocese of a woman bishop, object strongly to these arrangements, so much so that they are threatening to vote the whole thing down. This would mean that they would all have to start again from the beginning of the whole weary synodical process; it could take another five years.

As to why many Synod members don’t like these special arrangements — which they say will mean the establishment of a second-rate episcopate for women — it is germane to note that by this stage the arguments against them are entirely secular. The Evangelicals don’t want women bishops because they say that scripture requires male headship in the Church. That’s a theological reason. Anglo-Catholics don’t recognise that they can be bishops at all, because they don’t accept (for recognisably “Catholic” reasons) that women can be ordained priest in the first place. That, too, is a clearly theological reason. Those who want women bishops, by contrast, say it’s now nothing to do with theology, and that it’s a matter of their human rights as women, and that if parishes are allowed to refuse a woman’s episcopal ministry and to opt out of their dioceses into a kind of limbo — serviced by something like the present obsolescent arrangement of “flying bishops” — that will mean that those women the Church of England would raise to the Anglican episcopate would be second-class bishops, since not only would the Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics not fully recognise them: neither would the Church of England.

This objection has nothing to do with theology, and you don’t need to be an Anglican or even a Christian to see the force of it. The arguments in favour of women bishops have nothing to do with theology, says Rabbi Julia Neuberger, and she is dead right: once, that is, you have accepted that the women who have been “ordained” priests really are priests, since if you are a priest there can be no theological reason why you should not become a bishop. And the Church of England has already made a clear decision about that.

The fact is that the Anglo-Catholics who are still determined to stay in the Church of England are in an impossible situation…

Read on here. And from the conclusion:

Anglo-Catholics need to understand clearly that there is no longer a place for them in the Church of England; they are not wanted. They have, however, an alternative, in communion with the one true Church: the ordinariate has been erected precisely for them. If they will not become part of it, they will have simply to accept that they are members of a Church with women priests and women bishops and get used to it. But if they do, they had better stop calling themselves “Anglo-Catholics”: they will have forfeited the right.

 

No C of E Bishopesses… Yet…

Anglicans postpone vote on women bishops.

Times Live:

The General Synod, the governing body of the worldwide Anglican Communion’s mother church, voted instead to hold further discussions on a last-minute amendment that had angered senior female clergy.

A final vote is now likely in November.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion’s spiritual leader, told the meeting at the University of York in northern England that the adjournment would help “lower the temperature” over the debate.

“It is quite clear that the reaction cannot be ignored,” he said.

“When there is a reaction of real hurt and offence in the Church, Christians, and Christian pastors in particular, cannot afford to ignore it.”

The General Synod members voted 288 in favour of an adjournment, 144 against and 15 abstained.

It had as recently as Friday voted to hold the final vote on Monday.

The last-ditch amendment would have given traditionalist parishes the right of access to an alternative male bishop who shares their views about women clergy.

Pro-women campaigners have claimed this would enshrine discrimination against women in law, and therefore threatened to vote alongside traditionalists.

Williams warned last week that the Church was “looking into the abyss” over the issue and said that a vote against women bishops would put it off the agenda until 2015.

The legislation will need a two-thirds majority in all three houses of the General Synod — laity, clergy and bishops — if it is to get final approval.

If it clears the final hurdle it will then go for approval in the Houses of Parliament before receiving royal assent, paving the way for the first women bishops in 2014.

The Church of England — the officially established state church in England — voted to create women priests in 1992 and they now constitute around a third of all its priests.

The 61-year-old Williams will step down as church leader in December after a decade in the post.

 

Divine Judgement?

I’m sure there’s something Biblical

Church of England to Allow Women Bishops

And why not? If you already have women priestesses, then bishopesses are a forgone conclusion.

Church of England bishops last night cleared the way for historic moves to allow women to become bishops – but with a last-minute olive branch to traditionalists.

Strange things happen at night. The Telegraph reports – but before you go on, and look at the following pic - calm yourself, and keep whispering, Anglicanorum Coetibus, Anglicanorum Coetibus…

In a meeting behind closed doors in York, the Church’s House of Bishops gave its approval to legislation to admit women to the episcopacy and rejected a series of attempts to significantly water down the powers of future female bishops.

But they also agreed a key protection for conservative evangelicals and Anglo Catholics who object to women bishops on theological grounds.

In theory the vote clears the way for the church’s General Synod to have a final vote on the issue in July.

But there were signs it has plunged the Church into further uncertainty amid fears that the compromise failed to satisfy either side in the debate.

It remained unclear last night whether the compromise would be enough to see off the prospect of a large-scale exodus of traditionalists to the Roman Catholic Church or a new breakaway Anglican group.

Equally campaigners for women bishops privately voiced disappointment at the compromise. They fear attempts to make women “second class bishops”

Parishes and dioceses have already signalled strong support for ordaining women as bishops.

But a significant minority of traditionalists cannot accept the authority of a women bishop on theological grounds.

Complicated arrangements have been drawn up to allow to request to opt out and answer to a specially chosen male bishop instead.

The House of Bishops agreed last night that the alternative bishop’s authority would be “delegated” from the woman rather than independent from her and that this arrangement would have legal force.

But they also agreed that traditionalist parishes would have more say in who the alternative bishop would be – potentially undermining the powers of the woman bishop.

In statement the House said: “The legislation now addresses the fact that for some parishes a male bishop or male priest is necessary but not sufficient.

“The House rejected more far- reaching amendments that would have changed the legal basis on which bishops would exercise authority when ministering to parishes unable to receive the ministry of female bishops.”

Are you still saying it? Anglicanorum Coetibus…

The Church of England press release is here.

 

Bloggers Play ‘Critical Role’ in Defending the Church

From here:

Relations between Catholic bloggers and Church officials have at times been quite strained as the new media has developed in the last couple years. Some prelates, clergy, and chancery officials have expressed strong reservations about the Catholic blogosphere, with some even speaking quite derogatorily.

Church leaders have been angered by the penchant of many bloggers to call them out on their failures to expound and defend controversial Catholic teachings on moral issues like contraception, homosexuality, and abortion.

The difficulties got to the point that last year the Vatican convened a special conference for bloggers to try to build bridges and learn more about this new method for advancing the Gospel.

But now even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is saying Catholic bloggers have a “critical role” in defending the Church.

The Bishops’ Statement is here (pdf.).

If only all Bishops would realise this, instead of perpetually blaming the bloggers.

HT:  Fr Z

 

There is Now Only One Way Out for Catholic Anglicans: It’s Over the Tiber

If a woman is a priest, she can also be a bishop: if she’s not, she can’t.

And so, the notion of setting up another ghetto for dissidents is simply ludicrous:

Is there any spectacle more absurd than that of the Church of England’s remaining Anglo-Catholics desperately attempting to negotiate “special arrangements” which will allow them in good conscience to remain within the Church of England once that body’s General Synod finally authorises women bishops?

Firstly, there is the prior question of women priests. Anglo-Catholics are already members of a Church which ordains these ambiguous beings. Are they priests, or aren’t they? (For the moment, put to one side the question of whether or not anyone in the C of E is a validly ordained priest.) If you believe they’re not, you are already yourself in an ambiguous condition, since you are a member of a Church which has arrogated to itself the power to ordain them, a power which even the Pope (like the Orthodox) denies that he possesses. You are a member, that is to say, of a Church which has already finally divorced itself from any possibility of reunion with the Universal Church of which it has thus far claimed to be a part. So, what kind of a Catholic does that make you? It is a question you must already have asked yourself; and to that problem there is now only one solution: the ordinariate. The existing arrangements for “flying bishops” were a temporary measure, which allowed a constituency of non-jurors to gather itself in preparation for secession: those temporary arrangements are no longer necessary and have now therefore morally lapsed.

But if you accept that women may be priests, that those women already ordained as such by the Church of England are validly ordained (and I actually heard a member of the Catholic group in Synod actually saying on the radio that he did accept them as priests, but that he didn’t want them to become bishops), then what are you on about? If a woman is a priest, then she is eligible to be a bishop. If she’s not, she isn’t. Either way, you are a member of a Church in which there are now hundreds of women priests: and whether you put yourself in a ghetto which doesn’t accept them or not, you are still in full communion with them (and don’t give me that stuff about “impaired communion”: you are in full communion with your own bishops (flying or not), who are themselves in full communion with the male bishops who ordained all these women, so you are in full communion with them: get used to it, or leave…

William Oddie has more here.

 

Follow the Church of England General Synod as they Debate Female Bishops – Live

If you are so inclined, here.

To me, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion… They’ll have their Bishopesses soon enough…