Updated Friday
The Questions and Answers for this coming weekend’s meeting of General Synod are now available. Question Time is on Friday evening. As usual the questions and answers will be taken as read and the allocated time in the agenda devoted to supplementaries.
Questions Notice Paper
Q3 additional information
Q54 additional information
Update
There is a list of members who have indicated that they wish to ask supplementary questions here.
According to the Index of Questions, the subject of Question 100 is:
“Safeguarding: Percy case”
but the question printed further down the document is entirely generic in nature…
I suspect the original question referred to Martyn Percy and the questioner was asked to reword it.
There’s no mystery. The questioner was Martin Sewell, the author of the current Christ Church topic on the ‘Archbishop Cranmer’ blog.
The Bishop of London’s answer to question 43 is shameful. The question (from Jayne Ozanne) alerted the bishops to potential harm, but the answer ignored this. Truly shameful.
All the answers given seem to be an exercise in seeming to say something but not actually answering or committing to anything. It does not inspire confidence going forward in my view. The answer to the question on so called ‘conversion therapy’ is particularly worrying and shows homophobia and transphobia will be tolerated in the name of religion. Shocking.
Very much so, as several others say below. But I picked this question out because it takes the evasion to a different level. This isn’t obfuscation on statistics or a spin on policy; this is a bishop who is the lead on an area being asked what she is going to do about ongoing HARM to a section of our church. She evaded it. She intends nothing. That’s why it is so shameful.
Kate I agree. All the answers provided by the bishop of London were evasive and obfuscating. It is tragic that she was chosen to chair the covid recovery group. She has failed in that role. The most obvious running sore is the suffocating restrictions still in place in churches, such as the continued ban on singing, when there are no restrictions in pubs.
Q 95 Canon Peter Bruinvels (Guildford) to ask the Chair of the House of Bishops: ‘Recognising that membership of the Church of England has been dropping particularly during COVID-19…’ I realise that Guildford Diocese repeatedly and innacurately uses the term ‘church members’ or says things like ‘X is a member of Guildford Cathedral’ in its diocesan bugle, but would someone with more theological clout than me please tell them – and the rest of the Church of England – that we don’t have ‘members’ and you cannot become a ‘member’ of the Church of England. It’s language like this, giving… Read more »
I agree Alan. And talk of “the Anglican denomination in England” or tth increasing use of the words Anglican Church where heretofore we would have said Church of England.
I understand why this would be upsetting. That said, what does it bespeak? Are people mentally shifting to a different understanding of the church in England and this language is consciously or unconsciously on the tongue?
I fear they are Christopher but I do wonder looking back over the last 50 years whether we decided to go down the more “sectarian” path too enthusiastically and in fact made decline worse.
I have always considered myself a member of the C of E by baptism and confirmation. I don’t look on this in any way as being in an exclusive club – shouldn’t it simply equate to being a follower of Christ? In confirmation classes (do they still happen?) we were told that we became full members of Christ’s church by the laying on of the bishop’s hands in Apostolic succession (incidentally, in my case by the Bishop of Guildford Henry Montgomery Campbell). Apostolic succession was summarily dismissed by someone on TA when I mentioned it, and, of course, Pope Leo… Read more »
Technically (in the dogma of that part of the Church) the Roman pontiff has been protected by infallibiity on only one occasion since the dogma of infalibillity was proclaimed. That was in the 1950 bull Munificentissimus Deus which delared that the belief in the Assumption of Mary was a requirement, an article of the faith. The 1854 bull Ineffabilis Deus regarding the conception of Mary is also regarded by the Roman church as infallible. But as for the rest of us, infallibility is rejected (though some of our number may personally subscribe to the idea). Article 19 explicitly says “the… Read more »
But also defined in Pastor aeternus (1870) during Vatican I, which anathematised anyone who disagreed with it (and led, in time, to the secession of the Old Catholics under Ignaz von Dollinger, chiefly in Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, the Rhineland and the Low Countries), and the painful equivocation of the likes of Lord Acton. The coincidence between the proclamation of 1870 and the invasion by Cadorna’s army of the rump of the papal states little more than two months’ later (and which was known to be imminent as soon as French troops had to abandon Rome for the defence of France against… Read more »
Wirh respect, this is academic to the ruling party in today’s evangelical Church of England. Like the Pope, they don’t believe in Anglican orders either.
I also agree: anyone of any kind has a right to worship in his or her parish church, or to attend other parish churches as a licensee.
TA readers with long memories may recall Mr Bruinvels as a particularly ‘colourful’ and outspoken MP for East Leicester in 1983-87.
Perhaps General Synod members could be given a chance to rate the published answers to questions (not beyond the technology of the present) and anything below 50% approval would need to be readdressed with a fuller answer.
Synod members will have the opportunity to ask supplementary questions, that can expose the obfuscation in some of the written answers, during the ‘Questions’ session at 6.00 pm tomorrow, 9 July. Unfortunately, only 75 minutes have been allocated so, judging by the past ‘remote’ sessions of GS in November 2021 and April 2021, we shall do well to get past Q.50 by 7.15pm. (There are 129 questions this Synod.)
What I was trying to think of was a way of breaking the rather PMQ culture of quite often not answering the actual question which is asked, or dodging the implicit question, and the sense of treating questions as a bit of a game. The questions on subjects I know something about (eg funding ministry training, CDM reform) have answers which dodge the core of the issue – it shouldn’t be good enough.
Don’t you just love the generously engaging and empathetic way William Nye answers his questions? They’re nearly matched by the mechanical and formulaic corporate-speak of the Bishop to the Armed Forces. Overall, I think many (though not all) of these questions paint a fairly depressing picture of the terrain occupied by (what I assume to be) the committed core of the C of E. The answers also serve to demonstrate how much those who insist they’re ‘setting the narrative now’ hate being held to account. If this is an accurate snapshot of the state of the C of E, I… Read more »
If we believe in openness and transparency in Church Governance, perhaps there should be an open General Synod Forum that operates online throughout the year. It could be moderated by people the Synod chooses. There could also be a subsidiary section for local church members or ministers to ask questions, and those could be transferred to the main forum when they get endorsed by 20 likes from Synod members. In fact, if there were too many issues raised, then you could also have a second level Synod page that posts go to first, and they only get raised to the… Read more »