women bishops: still more reactions
Christopher Landau reported on the latest developments in the wake of the 17 men bishops letter for the BBC Sunday radio programme:
A senior churchman has warned that hundreds of priests may leave the Church of England if women are ordained as bishops. Andrew Burnham, the Bishop of Ebbsfleet [one of the two PEVs for the Canterbury Province] told the Sunday Times that he would quit along with a possible eight hundred priests if proper provision is not made for them.
The Church is on the verge of a major vote on women bishops. Tomorrow, the general synod, meeting in York, will debate whether it’s the right time to start removing the legal obstacles which currently prevent women becoming bishops. It had been thought that the motion would pass easily – but that’s now in some doubt. A large group of bishops has written to the Church press arguing that it would be pre-emptive to act now, before the church has had sufficient time to debate the issue. Interview with reporter Christopher Landau in York.
Listen here with Real Audio (5.5 minutes)
Here is the Sunday Times report mentioned above:
Christopher Morgan Churchmen on brink of exodus over women bishops (this has an unrelated tidbit about Lord Carey at the end of the story).
And the BBC carried this story, Clergy warn against women bishops based on the above two items (and a few tidbits of synod news thrown in at the end). Later the BBC also published this, Women bishops have ‘vast support’.
Fulcrum has published a major article by Colin Craston, a former chair of the Anglican Consultative Council, Women Bishops and the Anglican Communion Process which has links to many relevant ACC resolutions.
Church Society, not content with its earlier diatribe, has issued a further one, just in case you were not clear what CS thinks.
Equally unsurprisingly, Forward in Faith UK supports the bishops’ letter.
5 Commentswomen bishops: further responses
The letter from 17 men bishops provoked the following two items in the Church of England Newspaper
Women clergy express anger at bishops’ Synod appeal
and
A debilitating delay? by Christina Rees which says in part:
Last week’s letter from the Bishop in Europe and other bishops bears closer inspection, not only because of its contents, but also because of its timing and signatories. Of the six diocesan bishops who signed the letter, three – the Bishops of Blackburn, Chichester and Europe – are known as being opposed women’s ordination. It is difficult to understand why they have asked for a longer period of discussion, when they have made it clear that they are opposed to ordaining women as priests or as bishops, now or at any time.
The Bishop in Europe was a member of the House of Bishops Working Party on Women in the Episcopate, which produced the Rochester Report. That Working Party spent over four years in study and discussion and considered over 700 written submissions and a number of face to face submissions.
The Bishop of Blackburn is currently a member of another working party set up earlier this year by the House of Bishops to explore some of the options outlined in the Rochester Report and to report to the House of Bishops in January. It seems particularly odd that these two bishops, both involved with the open processes of the General Synod and their own House of Bishops, should choose to sign a letter asking for that very process to be deflected and delayed.
On the other hand, for Church Society the 17 bishops didn’t go anyway near far enough, OPEN LETTER TO THE ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
Fulcrum had this fence-sitting Response to the General Synod Motion on Women Bishops July 2005 but also re-published this article by Judith Rose to complement this one from Tom Wright.
8 CommentsLondon bombings
Updated twice Friday
The Archbishop of Canterbury issued this Statement on London Terrorist Attacks
The Bishop of London issued this statement on explosions and also this: London Explosions.
Times Online carried this report by Ruth Gledhill Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders condemn attacks
Friday: Telegraph
Jonathan Petre Archbishop and the Pope condemn ‘evil’ attacks
Church Times
Helen Saxbee Religious leaders condemn London bomb attacks
BBC via ACNS
Rowan Williams Thought for the Day
Listen here with Real Audio
BBC Today radio programme
Andrew Hosken has been finding out how London is recovering this morning. The Rt Rev Rt Hon Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, joins us from St Paul’s.
Listen here with Real Audio (Bishop Chartres segment is about 6 minutes in and lasts about 3.5 minutes)
9 CommentsBritish Methodists and 'Pilgrimage of Faith'
Official press releases on the discussion of same-sex blessings at the recent Methodist Conference at Torquay give a slightly different view to that portrayed in the press:
Official:
Statement on Press Coverage of the ‘Pilgrimage of Faith’ debate
Methodist Church receives major report on human sexuality
Text of the report Pilgrimage of Faith (This is downloadable only in MS Word format)
Press reports:
Guardian Stephen Bates Methodist leaders vote to bless gay couples
The Times Ruth Gledhill Methodists will bless gays
Telegraph Jonathan Petre Church opens the door to blessings for gays
The Methodists also discussed bishops, as reported by Paul Handley in the Church Times
Methodists will vote on bishops in 2007
Full text of What sort of bishops (This is downloadable only in MS Word format)
Official statement: Methodist Church moves towards Bishops
The Methodists also welcomed the the first report from the Joint Implementation Commission on the Anglican-Methodist Covenant, see Methodist Church welcomes Covenant report
1 Comment17 men bishops write about women bishops
17 bishops of the Church of England have written a letter, which is published this week in the Church Times
Delay vote on women, say bishops
the Church of England Newspaper
Church urged to refrain from allowing women bishops
and also The Tablet (where the letter lacks one signature).
The letter (full text below the fold) is also reported in The Times as Senior clergy move to block ordination of women bishops
The bishops include 6 diocesans, one suffragan (Beverley, PEV for the Northern Province) who is an elected member of the House of Bishops, and 10 other suffragans (the Assistant Bishop of Newcastle is a suffragan in all but name).
Most of these bishops are well known to be opposed to the ordination of women as priests, never mind bishops. The exceptions are Tom Wright (Durham), Peter Forster (Chester) and Michael Langrish (Exeter).
8 CommentsABC and ACC on Zimbabwe
From this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today programme:
0733 Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams on world poverty, Aids and Zimbabwe
Listen with Real Audio (8 minutes)
ACNS Anglicans call on Zimbabwe Government to halt policies of destruction
Full text of resolution as passed is below the fold.
BBC Asylum returns immoral – Williams
The Times Ruth Gledhill Archbishop attacks ‘immoral’ deportations to Zimbabwe
Reuters Envoy wants ‘comprehensive’ picture of Zimbabwe
Press Association ‘Immoral’ to Send Asylum Seekers Back, Says Archbishop
ENS Zimbabwe crisis, Lambeth Conference planning raised by ACC
This includes a note on the presentation by Tom Wright.
Earlier reports on Zimbabwe
Press Association Bishop Backs Zimbabwean Asylum Seekers
Observer Church hits at Zimbabwe deportations
RW television interview with Melvyn Bragg
Rowan Williams was interviewed for an hour (less commercial breaks) by Melvyn Bragg. This was recorded last Thursday, and was shown today, Sunday, at noon on ITV1.
No transcript of this interview is available as yet.
The following news stories have appeared:
Press Association Archbishop Threatens to Reopen Rift on Women Bishops
Observer Woman might head church, says Williams
Telegraph Homophobia is rife, says Archbishop
more on Sentamu
The Yorkshire Post has this column by Michael Brown A life less ordinary for the very different Archbishop together with this front-page news report Archbishop elect calls for visionary church and a leader here (scroll down)
From the London papers:
Guardian
leader Ebor’s handicap
Stephen Bates A cleric’s journey: from Idi Amin’s Uganda to York
The Times
Ruth Gledhill and Andrew Norfolk Church reveals its changing face with choice of a visionary Bishop
Alan Hamilton A fearless campaigner who stood up to terror of Idi Amin
and this online only analysis by Ruth Gledhill The man to help the CofE live again
Telegraph
leader African spice
Jonathan Petre Sentamu becomes Britain’s first black archbishop
Independent
Ian Herbert Judge who fled Amin becomes first black archbishop in C of E
Sentamu to York
The new Archbishop of York is to be the Rt Revd Dr John Sentamu, currently Bishop of Birmingham.
Here is the Church of England press release
Here is the Downing Street announcement
Here is the Lambeth Palace statement
Here is the Diocese of York press release
Here is the Diocese of Birmingham announcement
Church Times ‘Surprised’ choice for York
BBC New Archbishop of York appointed and The Archbishop with ‘street cred’ and Profile
Doug LeBlanc has a roundup of comments about John Sentamu in “You have wasted your saliva”
18 CommentsRW lecture on the media
Rowan Williams delivered a lecture last night at Lambeth Palace, entitled The Media: Public Interest and Common Good.
Lambeth Palace also issued a press release about it, in advance: Archbishop delivers major address on media.
Reports of this speech:
Ruth Gledhill in The Times Archbishop hits out at web-based media ‘nonsense’
THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has criticised the new web-based media for “paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry”. He described the atmosphere on the world wide web as a free-for-all that was “close to that of unpoliced conversation”.
In a lecture to media professionals, politicians and church leaders at Lambeth Palace in London last night, Dr Williams wondered whether a balance could be struck between the professionalism of the classical media and the relative disorder of online communication.
Dr Williams also extended his wide-ranging critique of journalistic practice to the traditional media, arguing that there are “embarrassingly low levels of trust” in the profession and that claims about what is in the public interest need closer scrutiny. He called for a “more realistic, less fevered” approach to stories by journalists and added: “There is a difference between exposing deceptions that sustain injustice and attacking confidentialities or privacies that in some sense protect the vulnerable.”
He attacked the “high levels of adversarial and suspicious probing” that send the clear message that any kind of concealment means “guilty until proved innocent”, and he challenged journalists and broadcasters to attempt to regain lost public confidence…
Stephen Bates and Owen Gibson in the Guardian Archbishop attacks ‘lethal’ media
The Archbishop of Canterbury last night launched a wide-ranging attack on the media, accusing journalists of distorting debate, contributing to a climate of national cynicism, and unjustly attacking institutions over their secretiveness.
In the most trenchant statement on public life he has made in his three years at Lambeth Palace, Dr Rowan Williams appeared to take in tabloids, broadsheets, weblogs and broadcasters with equal vehemence. He charged all with conspiring against public understanding.
The speech at Lambeth Palace represented a departure for the archbishop, who has been criticised in church quarters for his reluctance to speak out on public matters, leading to accusations that his advisers prefer him to say nothing controversial.
Dr Williams claimed that some aspects of current journalistic practice are “lethally damaging”, contributing to the “embarrassingly low level of trust” in the profession.
The archbishop said: “We need to deflate some of the rhetoric about the media as guardians and nurturers of democracy simply by virtue of the constant exposure of ‘information’ and we need to be cautious about a use of ‘public interest’ language that ignores the complexity and, often, artificiality of our ideas of ‘the public’. “
He accused the media of manipulating fear, exhibiting violent conflict between people for entertainment, and living off internal feuds: “Corrupt speech, inflaming unexamined emotion, reinforcing division, wrapped up in its own performance, leaves us less human: fewer things are possible for us. Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.” His attack encompassed national newspapers which “communicate as if every reader … shared the same fundamental values, preferences and anxieties”, broadcasters for their obsession with breaking news, and weblogs which indulge in “paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry”…
The Guardian also has an editorial about this, which should be read in full, Good news. Two quotes from that:
…Since he has spent much of the last three years avoiding as many journalists as he could, his analysis lacks the kind of practical sympathy arising from shared experience that he believes journalists should show towards their victims. It certainly lacks the snap that might propel it in the market place. But he makes a couple of deep and important points. The first is that the media, just as much as other powerful forces, tend to destroy the autonomy of the professions they write about. A professional, by definition, has knowledge and understanding unavailable to outsiders. Journalists, Dr Williams believes, should be illuminating this kind of inside knowledge and allowing readers to share it imaginatively; instead they concentrate on dragging mere facts into the light, which may well be misleading even if they are correct…
…The archbishop wants a society in which journalists, readers and their subjects all talk back to each other and try to learn from each other. This will strike most journalists and those who have to deal with them as extraordinarily utopian. Yet Dr Williams is right. There is something wrong with a society in which this seems a ludicrous aspiration. He should talk about it with journalists more often – and not just at them.
We don’t often link to the Sun on Thinking Anglicans, but its report is headlined ‘Fever’ call to media.
2 CommentsResourcing Mission Group – 2
The Church of England report from a group with this title has now attracted some press coverage.
Ruth Gledhill wrote about it in The Times Church admits cash shortage threatens one third of clergy
Peter Price the chairman of the group wrote a letter to the editor, taking issue with the article: Church of England’s finances and future
The Church of England Newspaper contained an article in a quite different vein, headlined Church to direct funding to enable mission ventures
The BBC reported this way: Buildings ‘holding back’ Church
In the Church Times Bill Bowder had Out-of-date Church lacks vision, not cash, says report
The report’s own summary of its conclusions is reproduced below the fold.
0 CommentsChurch of England Canons
The first supplement to the 2000 edition of the Canons of the Church of England has been published. This has been incorporated into the online version available here.
Unlike the earlier versions, it is now possible to copy extracts from the pdf files of the Canons.
0 CommentsAnglican-Methodist Covenant
The interim Report of the Joint Implementation Commission under the covenant between the Methodist Church and the Church of England – In the Spirit of the Covenant – has just been published. It is online here. It’s quite substantial – 112 A5 pages plus appendices.
The report will be debated at the Methodist Conference later this month and at General Synod In July.
The Methodist Church website carries a news item on the report here.
0 CommentsCivil Partnerships: CofE statement
Updated Friday 10 June
According to the Church of England Newspaper a spokesman for the CofE said this week:
“The Church of England’s position on same-sex relationships has not changed and is not about to change in the light of the Civil Partnerships (sic) Act, that comes into effect in December. It is set out in the General Synod motion of 1987 and the House of Bishops’ statement, Issues in Human Sexuality.
“The Church’s approach to civil partnerships will reflect the fact that they will not be marriages, nor based on the presumption of sexual relations between the two people making the legal agreement.
“A working party of the House of Bishops has been drafting a Pastoral Statement in response to the Act. This was discussed at the House of Bishops meetings in January and May. The House has agreed its broad approach and the statement is being amended to take account of those discussions. It will be published in the course of the summer.”
The report is headlined Bishops decide clergy can register gay partnerships
(Graham James is the bishop of Norwich not Norfolk).
The Norwich Evening News carries this further report: Bishop’s role in new gay guidelines
The Living Church carries a version of this story at Civil Partnerships for British Clergy Clarified
Update The Church Times carried Same same-sex policy
21 CommentsResourcing Mission Group
Hidden away at the bottom of the Church of England’s papers webpage is this item.
Resourcing Mission Group
The Resourcing Mission Group was one of the groups created by the Archbishops in 2004 following the adjournment by General Synod of the consultation document GS1529: “Future use of the Church Commissioners Funds”. This is the Group’s interim report, on which the Church’s views are being invited. Its final report will be prepared in the autumn after the consultation process has finished.
Main report 179kb
Annex A 26kb
Annex B 72kb
Annex C 27kb
Annex D 36kb (Excel document)
Additional Annex 49kb
The terms of reference of the group were “to identify achievable ways in which the financial and other resources of the Church of England might be best deployed (a) to secure their equitable distribution across the Church and (b) to facilitate local mission objectives and plans”.
Nothing about the consultation process has appeared on the CofE news page or on the rather obscure Church Commissioners’ own news page so it is unclear where comments should be sent. I suggest “Resourcing Mission Group Secretariat” at Church House Westminster.
0 CommentsCivil Partnerships and the CofE
In view of the forthcoming Pastoral Statement on Civil Partnerships it may be of interest to read what the Church of England said formally to the UK Government back in 2003 when the government was holding a public consultation on this matter.
The document is on the CofE website in Word format though its location here is not very obvious. An accessible copy of it is available here.
The government document to which this was responding is this one (very large – 1.5 Mb – pdf file). The report on this consultation is another similar sized document. One item from it is this:
2.13 Of those representing nationally-based religious groups:
- For example, the Church of England, the Catholic Bishops Conference, the Salvation Army, the Methodist Church and others
- 53% (9 responses) supported the principle of a civil partnership scheme
- 47% (8 responses) opposed, or did not offer an opinion on, the principle of a civil partnership scheme
2.14 Of those representing individual religious groups and congregations:
- These were largely Baptist, Evangelical, Free and Congregational churches
- 85% (17 responses) opposed the principle of a civil partnership scheme
- 15% (3 responses) supported the principle of a civil partnership scheme
The legislation that was then drafted and subsequently passed differs from what was in the consultation document in various ways, so the CofE comments should not be interpreted as applying to the legislation as it now stands.
9 CommentsCivil partnerships and the clergy
Update Tuesday
Here is a good critique of this newspaper report: Get a Clue
According to Christopher Morgan of the Sunday Times the Church of England will respond to the issue of clergy who wish to enter into a Civil Partnership in the following manner:
Church to let gay clergy ‘marry’ but they must stay celibate
HOMOSEXUAL priests in the Church of England will be allowed to “marry” their boyfriends under a proposal drawn up by senior bishops, led by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The decision ensures that gay and lesbian clergy who wish to register relationships under the new “civil partnerships” law — giving them many of the tax and inheritance advantages of married couples — will not lose their licences to be priests.
They will, however, have to give an assurance to their diocesan bishop that they will abstain from sex. The bishops are trying to uphold the church doctrine of forbidding clergy from sex except in a full marriage. They accept, however, that the new law leaves them little choice but to accept the right of gay clergy to have civil partners.
The decision is likely to reopen the row over homosexuality that has split the worldwide Anglican communion. It may also overshadow an international meeting of senior bishops next month designed to heal rifts between liberals and conservatives over the issue.
The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement estimates that within five years 1,500 homosexual Anglican clergy will have registered under the new law, which comes into force on December 5.
The Church of England proposal is contained in a draft Pastoral Statement on Civil Partnerships, drawn up by Graham James, the Bishop of Norwich. It was discussed at length and provisionally agreed at a meeting last week at a hotel in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire.
A final draft with some amendments will be produced for approval by the House of Bishops, the upper house of the church’s General Synod.
Under the proposal, a priest intending to register a civil partnership would inform his or her bishop in a face-to-face meeting. The priest would then give an undertaking to uphold the teaching of the Church of England, outlined in the 1991 document Issues in Human Sexuality. This paper prohibits sex for gay clergy.
Although no sanctions are included in the new proposal, it is expected that a breach of the rules may lead to disciplinary action or the possible suspension of clergy.
Some bishops, however, are uncomfortable about subjecting their priests to the proposed interviews.
One said this weekend: “We all have clergy in gay partnerships in our dioceses and there is a genuine reluctance on the part of a number of us to make their lives more difficult.”
…The bishops have also agreed to a government request to change ecclesiastical law to favour civil partners. A change to the Pluralities Act of 1838, for example, will enable gay partners to occupy vicarages for up to two months after the death of a priest.
This matter was the subject of questions at the General Synod in February, and the answers were published exclusively on TA here. The Civil Partnership Act can be read in full here.
The government is also proposing to amend the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003. Clause 3 (defines the meaning of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation) and Clause 25 (benefits dependent on marital status) are the sections affected. The purpose of the first of these amendments, which would add a new sub-clause 3.3, is explained thus:
Purpose and effect
1. The purpose of this new provision is to make it clear that, for the purposes of the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, the status of a civil partner is comparable to the status of a spouse. The effect is to enable a civil partner who is treated less favourably than a married person in similar circumstances to bring a claim for sexual orientation discrimination under the Sexual Orientation Regulations. New paragraph 3(3) prevents the discriminator from being able to say, by way of defence, that being married is a material difference to being a civil partner. The discriminator would have to show that the married person and the civil partner were not in a comparable position for some other reason, for example, that they were doing different jobs.
2. An employer etc would not be able to justify less favourable treatment of a civil partner as compared to a spouse in similar circumstances unless he could show that being heterosexual was a genuine occupational requirement (GOR) of the job within the meaning of reg 7(2). The additional GOR exception in reg 7(3) for employment for purposes of an organised religion permits an employer to apply a requirement “related to sexual orientation” (rather than to be a particular sexual orientation). It may therefore permit a narrow range of employers, such as religious organisations, to require that an employee be married (rather than a civil partner) but only where such a requirement is necessary to comply with the doctrines of the religion, or because of the nature and context of the job, to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers. It is likely that these defences will only be available in a very limited number of circumstances.
The proposed wording of the clause is as follows (the consultation is now closed and this might change when the proposal is formally published for parliamentary approval):
15 CommentsNew regulation 3(3)
3. Discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation
“(3) For the purposes of paragraph (2), in a comparison of B’s case with that of another person the fact that one of the persons (whether or not B) is a civil partner while the other is married shall not be treated as a material difference between their respective circumstances.”
recent Church Times features
Last week, David Edwards explained why The Church of England should not break communion with any Anglicans, in It was never meant to be perfect:
SO WHAT are the lessons for 2005? One is that the Church of England should not be ashamed to be as comprehensive as it has been and is, and ought not to break off communion with any Anglicans anywhere. If any Anglican group is defeated, the Church is impoverished.
And if any group triumphs, the victory is short-lived because, in reaction, another group grows in conviction, as the Evangelicals are currently taking advantage of the radicals’ self-inflicted disaster and the Anglo-Catholics’ disarray.
If a mission to England is really wanted, it has to be acknowledged that the ordinary English are never going to become completely what popes or Puritans, Evangelicals or Anglo-Catholics, liberals or radicals want.
One reason for this reluctance is that some 70 per cent of the English believe that they are already Christians — and also believe that what they know about Jesus Christ (which may not be much) does not fit neatly into the picture painted by any of the ecclesiastical parties.
Yet the vision of a complete Anglican consensus is utopian. This is partly because the English do not like to be told what to think or do by any dictatorship, whether personal or corporate. But a more edifying reason is that Anglicanism at its best has always tried to be not a theological or denominational system, but merely Christian.
The back page interview was of Mark Russell youth worker, lay preacher, and youngest member of the Archbishops’ Council. I particularly liked his comment on Leviticus.
Keith Ward argues that Christians must join the most important debate — about the universe in How science supports faith:
2 CommentsMANY of us are still afraid of science and of what it might do to faith. We would rather close our minds to discoveries, and stay with the old “certainties”. The best example of this is American creation science, which still tries to defend the first chapters of Genesis as scientific fact, in defiance of virtually all informed scientific opinion. That is why many physicists say that their God, their intelligent cosmic mind, is not the biblical God, the God who made the universe 6000 years ago, and who deprived snakes of their legs.
Here is the point. That is not really the biblical God. Christians should not be tied to primitive myths for ever, while much of modern science longs to open up a vision of a beautiful 15-billion-year-old universe, with billions of stars and galaxies, singing the glory of a Creator beyond all spaces and times.
This is the real debate for the Churches. There are many prominent Christians engaged in it. Pope John Paul II was a leading figure in opening up conversations between theology and science. John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke are just two of the best-known Anglicans who lead the field, and their books are a good place to start.
But Anglicans must be trained and ready to take on board the best of modern science; to separate ancient myth from scientifically informed knowledge; and to tackle head-on the problem of whether the universe is cruel, terrifying, and pointless.
The modern scientific view of the universe will set this problem in a different light — one, perhaps, for which the laws of the universe have to operate as they do in order for life-forms like us to exist at all. Perhaps the universe can be seen to be both beautiful and dangerous — but never pointless. Perhaps it can be seen as the basis for a transformation into new and greater forms of life, as Romans 8 implies.
Whatever the upshot, it is probably true that all our thinking about God will have to be done in a new way. That is because all our traditional thinking was done before modern science told us the truth about the physical universe, when people had a different (and largely mistaken) idea of what the universe was like.
recent Church Times features
Several items that appeared in last week’s Church Times are now available:
The Road to Bishopthorpe by Adrian Leak. In May the Crown Nominations Commission meets to choose the next Archbishop of York. This article examines the history of the office.
Not married to the monarchy by Sam Wells who says that the establishment of the Church of England should be provisional.
Back page interview with John Flack director of the Anglican Centre in Rome by Rachel Harden and see also Red shoes, 21 to lunch.
0 CommentsRipon controversy ends
The problems reported earlier (Dean of Ripon suspended and more on Ripon) have been resolved without going to a public ecclesiastical trial.
The Church Times has: Charges dropped as Dean agrees to quit Ripon.
The diocesan press release is here.
The Yorkshire Post carried two stories by Michael Brown
‘Autocratic’ Dean quits over wine and women
Wine, women and evensong: Claims that rocked cathedral
The picture from the Yorkshire Post is captioned:
Requiem: Dean Methuen pictured at the High Altar at Ripon Cathedral, reading from the mid-13th century Latin Bible during a requiem Mass similar to the funeral service of Richard III in 1485 – part of a Richard III symposium held at the cathedral in 2002.
0 Comments