Posted on 05/30/2005 9:13:04 AM PDT by sionnsar
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:
Posted by Simon Sarmiento on Sunday, 29 May 2005 at 12:52pm BSTPurpose 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.
Interesting - clause 3:3:2 would seem to imply that the C of E doesn't have to give same-sex partner rights to civil partnerships if it could show that it's doctrine was against such partnerships. ...
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. 
​ That sound you just heard on the other side of the Atlantic was the million or so people who still sit in pews in the postmodern Church of England picking up a copy of the Times and shouting, in unison, “Say WHAT!?!?!”
This will be followed by a louder response to the same headline at altars in the more traditional Anglican Third World.
The headline on reporter Christopher Morgan’s exclusive says it all: “Church to let gay clergy ‘marry’ but they must stay celibate.” And here is the opening of this amazing story, which will almost certainly infuriate all kinds of people on both sides of the church aisle.
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.
You have to hand it to Williams, that bookish Oxford don with the knack for splitting hairs — poetically. This compromise is really going to calm things down before that tense June 21 conclave that is supposed to sort out all of the loose ends about sacraments and sexuality (and major donations from the rich Episcopal Church in the United States). Things were tense enough in the Anglican Communion as it was.
“Married,” but with mandatory celibacy. I wonder who came up with that compromise? Try to figure out the theological logic of it, beginning on either the left or the right. In other words, Pope Benedict the XVI may want to check his voicemail for calls from England.
Which raises another question. Anyone want to predict what Andrew Sullivan will have to say about this? I asked him, a year or two ago, why he had not left Rome in order to join the C of E. He never answered back.
Well this ought to make +Akinola very happy with the Arch Druid and his fellow men in purple!
The CaNN webelves get it right: "IT HELPS to have a head-injury, delusions, or a substance-abuse problem before you try to think Anglican: “Church to let gay clergy ‘marry’ but they must stay celibate”.. comments ensue. Simon Sarmiento provides some useful background. CWN adds: “Mass Suicide: Parodists Draw Swords, Fall on Them”; and the Prophet Louie weighs in. What on earth were the bishops thinking? Snatching catastrophic defeat from the jaws of waffling? Offering a pinch of incense to the secular liberal leviathan? The UK evos seem to have been caught flat-footed by this– as was most of the Anglican world– but the ramifications of such moves will far outreach the Jeffrey John controversy. The radicals will take a victory, and now set about moving the line in the sand some more. Rowan Williams takes another hit from all this … (Various)"
As an outsider looking in, I do not believe the Anglicans would be in any worse shape if Monty Python was designing it!
Each new pronouncement, each new agreement, compromise, unveiling, and I see how deeply ingrained the spirit of Antichrist can get into a church.
And this is what some people want to do to the Catholic church, too....gives me the shivers.
What a sorrow for those who still understand the truth of the Gospel and see what is happening to their church.
I've had my run ins with Mr. Sullivan myself. I presume that, like many liberal Catholics, they would prefer to try and force the Catholic Church to change her teachings to suit them rather than leave Catholic believers in peace and go to a denomination or faith more consonant with their views. Gay activists have a strong missionary instinct (I don't mean they recruit for their lifestyle, just that they have a need to make sure nobody will believe that homosexual activity is immoral or sinful).
You are right. But it is not to be unexpected. After all, the Bible tells us that there will come a time when men will not be able to stand sound doctrine. So while it is tragic, it is also yet another verifcation of the veracity of Scripture. And a sign that we are that much closer to our Lord's return. So rejoicing, after a fashion, is not completely out of order.
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