reactions to CP statement
Updated again Wednesday
News reports and press releases will be collected here as they appear.
The Times published this before the release of the statement
Gay clergy can ‘marry’ but no sex
and this onine (only?) afterwards (both Ruth Gledhill)
Catch 22 for gay clergy in new church sex code
LGCM issued this statement
Guardian Stephen Bates
Church struggles with the concept of celibacy in same-sex partnerships
and this column Stop the denial
The Church of England has announced that it will support civil partnerships for gay priests, as long as they don’t have sex for the rest of their lives. Here, Richard Haggis, a practising priest and homosexual, calls for his superiors to see the error of their ways
Letters in response to the above item
Telegraph Jonathan Petre
‘Marriages’ but no sex for gay clergy
Letters in response to this report
Eastern Daily Press (local paper in Norwich)
No blessings for gay marriages
Agence France-Presse
Church of England bans clergy from blessing gay civil partnerships
Scotsman
Church row over gay unions
(perhaps more a local reaction to this entirely separate Scottish story from the Herald Episcopal gay clergy row heads for tribunal hearings)
BBC Today radio programme
Two segments:
0724 Has the Church of England changed its policy towards recognising same-sex partnerships? Our Religious Affairs Correspondent Robert Pigott reports. Listen here (Real Audio – 3 minutes)
0856 Canon Dr Chris Sugden, Executive Secretary of Anglican Mainstream, and Rev Colin Coward, Director of Changing Attitude, discuss the Church of England’s stance on gay marriage. Listen here (Real Audio – 5 minutes)
Affirming Catholicism has Bishops’ statement on Civil Partnerships ‘deeply disappointing’
Ekklesia says Affirming Catholics challenge C of E on same-sex unions
Manchester Evening News
Church bans same-sex blessings
BBC Radio 4 News World at One:Interview with David Page, also short clip of Graham James Bp of Norwich, and comment from Ruth Gledhill.
This segment starts some 23 minutes into the 30 minute programme.
This link is no longer available.
InclusiveChurch has Bishops’ Pastoral Care Lacking
Anglican Mainstream has Need for clear teaching
BBC
Gay couples ‘will not be blessed’
The Times Ruth Gledhill comment column Bishops in the mire
2 CommentsCivil Partnerships statement
As expected the Church of England bishops issued their pastoral statement on civil partnerships this morning. You can read it here.
Another copy is here
civil partnerships and the CofE
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.
9 Commentswomen bishops: more radio discussion
The BBC Sunday programme had this piece:
Women Bishops
On Monday, The Church of England took its most significant step yet towards enabling women to become Bishops. Its General Synod authorised the drafting of legislation to remove obstacles that prevent women being enthroned. But a significant minority remain adamantly opposed to such a move. They have long argued for the creation of a separate or third province of the church to be created for them, which would have only male bishops and priests. Now the Bishop who leads them has said that if their demands aren’t met, they will consider setting up a church of their own. Christopher Landau reports.
Listen here with Real Audio
(nearly 6 minutes)
women bishops: Tom Wright
The Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright has a letter to the editor of The Times published today in which he explains his position:
20 CommentsBishops’ views on women
From the Bishop of Durham
Sir, Anthony Howard (T2, July 12; see also report, same day) describes my action in signing, with 16 other bishops, an open letter pleading for fuller debate on women bishops as a “defection”. This is a complete misunderstanding. I have for some years argued strongly in favour of women bishops, in public and private, in person and in print. I have not changed my mind.The motion before us at the General Synod was not whether we were in favour of women bishops, but whether we favoured a particular way of proceeding towards that goal. I want the train to get to that destination not only as soon as it can, but with as many passengers as possible still on board. I therefore agreed with the other signatories not that we should have further delay for its own sake, but that we should have what synod had specifically asked for when commissioning the Rochester report on the subject, namely proper theological discussion before taking steps which presupposed such discussion.
The Church now copies the world in treating all issues in monochrome, with goodies, baddies and “defectors”. Like an examination candidate on a bad day, synod was determined to discuss the question it wanted to discuss rather than the question on the paper. I could not vote for the actual motion, but could not vote against the perceived one, and I therefore abstained.
That was not a “defection”. It was a silent vote for that reasoned discourse which, in company with the Archbishop of Canterbury, I still believe is the best hope as we move forward into uncharted territory.
THOMAS DUNELM
Auckland Castle, Co Durham
synod press coverage
Updated Wednesday
Robert Bergner ACNS Archbishop asks synod to focus on respect
Matt Davies ENS Church of England moves closer to ordaining women bishops
TLC England’s General Synod Approves Women Bishops
Michael Brown Yorkshire Post
Women bishops a step nearer after Synod vote
Archbishop of canterbury warns against looking for scapegoats
Jonathan Petre Telegraph
Church of England agrees to have women bishops within seven years
‘We can avoid a split over homosexuality’
also Anglicans and Methodists edge closer towards unity
Stephen Bates Guardian
Barriers to women bishops removed
Ruth Gledhill The Times
Church votes to prepare way for women bishops
Also in The Times Anthony Howard has this opinion column: The last overt sex barrier will stay until at least 2010
BBC
Women bishops come a step closer
Women bishops vote angers critics
Robert Pigott Church faces women bishops split
Radio 4 Today programme
The General Synod of the Church of England has voted to remove the legal blocks to the ordination of women bishops. News report by Robert Pigott. Listen here
Could a vote towards allowing women bishops split the Church of England? Christina Rees and David Houlding discuss. Listen here
Wire services:
Reuters Church of England votes to back women bishops
Press Association Church faces split on women bishops
Associated Press Church of England considers women bishops
women bishops: press reports
Monday morning reports:
Jonathan Petre Telegraph Hundreds of clergy ‘will leave church over women bishops’
Christina Odone The Times guest contributor Say a prayer for the C of E today (more a plug for tonight’s Channel 4 TV programme than anything else)
BBC Anglicans vote on women bishops
And a synod report that deals with something else:
Michael Brown Yorkshire Post Grace of God falls on victims, Synod told
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 Comments