Tag Archives: marriage canon

Six views on the Marriage Canon vote

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The Anglican Church of Canada is shying away from making definitive theological statements about issues it considers difficult. For example, the ACoC has made no coherent statements on the rightness or wrongness of abortion, euthanasia or changing the marriage canon. Instead we are exhorted to listen to people’s stories: theology by anecdote. In areas where it should have at least a modicum of expertise, the church is completely at sea; issues such as global warming, whose understanding requires detailed technical knowledge that the church does not possess, are the constant  subject of dogmatic, “binary” denunciations and pious outbursts.

Here are six people’s views on changing the marriage canon, a conundrum which, we are told, has “no easy answers”. Rubbish, there is a perfectly easy answer derived from Scripture, one which has been the foundation of the church’s position on marriage for 2000 years.

Interestingly, of the six people, those in favour of same-sex marriage include a lesbian clergywoman, a lesbian who is “part of the queer community” who doesn’t attend an Anglican church and an openly homosexual layman who does attend an Anglican church. The three supporting orthodox Christian marriage are all Anglican laypeople.

As delegates to General Synod prepare to vote on a second reading of Resolution A051-R2, potential changes to the Anglican Church of Canada’s marriage canon, the Anglican Journal’s editorial staffers have given much consideration to our task. What should we write? What should readers hear before the vote?

Few topics have further challenged the church—in recent years, at least—than same-sex marriage. Is love or tradition more important? Could God make the two mutually exclusive? Should the church hold people back or press people forward, unwillingly in either case?

There are no easy answers to these questions, as acknowledged by the “A Word to the Church” document about the proposed amendment of marriage canon and potential amendments, proposed by Council of General Synod in March, to the resolution considered in 2016.

[…..]

The Journal’s decision was to share the words of people like Natalie: people with lived experiences that extend beyond a yes-or-no question. The Journal’s Joelle Kidd and Tali Folkins spoke with six Anglicans—three in favour of the resolution and three opposed to it—to ask them:

Anglicans tying the Gordian Wedding Knot

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The Anglican Church of Canada is trying to decide how those who worship the gods of inclusion and diversity can get along with those who prefer to worship God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Since it’s impossible, the church is industriously tangling itself into dense knots of confusion in the hope that the resulting impenetrable obfuscation will lull everyone into a passive torpor, unable to think straight, let alone act coherently.

In the latest Council of General Synod meeting, members suggested that there should be a “variety of understandings of marriage”. No one seemed interested in defining the limits of the variety: should it end before or after polyamorous gender-fluid ménages?

It doesn’t help that someone proposed making marriage value-free in a similar vein to the church being doctrine-free. There is nothing more lasting than a valueless marriage:

“any acknowledgement should not include any explicit or implicit value judgment, namely that one form of marriage is somehow better or more virtuous than the other.”

In order to cut through the chaos, Fred Hiltz is proposing an amendment to an amendment – a bit like growing a pimple on a boil – in order to protect the losers in the 2019 Marriage Canon vote. All meaningless twaddle, of course, since, as Bishop William Love discovered, when Presiding Bishop Michael Curry (the excitable “All you Need is Love” wedding preacher – unless it’s a bishop called Love who doesn’t toe the LGBT line) restricted his ministry, nothing stops the Anglican homoerotic rainbow steamroller.

Read about the whole sorry mess here:

A desire to stay together as a church, despite a diverse range of understandings of what marriage is and should be.

That theme arose consistently during discussions across three sessions at the November meeting of Council of General Synod (CoGS) regarding the proposed amendment to the marriage canon.

But exactly how this “theme,” or aim, may be fulfilled is more complicated.

In a session titled “Marriage Canon: Way Forward, Next Steps” on November 25, CoGS members began to consider the potential for an acknowledgement of a variety of understandings of marriage within the Anglican Church of Canada.

At the meeting, CoGS members broke into table groups to discuss the questions, “Do you think it would be helpful if in considering the change to the canon, it would include an expression of acknowledgement of and respect for a continuing variety of understanding of marriage within the Anglican Church of Canada?” and “What might such an acknowledgement include?” All of the table groups reported back on their discussions to say that, yes, it would be helpful to name that there are different understandings and teachings of marriage.

Details of how this acknowledgement might look were more nuanced.

One group suggested that “accommodation should be made for our Indigenous brothers and sisters,” and that Indigenous communities should have the right to make their own decision on the matter.

Another group noted that as soon as accommodations are made for one point of view, questions arise about other viewpoints. “Each of us is perceived as being marginalized depending on where you stand in the story…[if] we’re saying we’re bracketing one particular group, what happens if the motion goes in a completely different direction…maybe we need to create a bracket for someone else. If we’re walking together, how are we really going to do that?” Another group said that whatever is proposed must be clearly laid out, to avoid legal challenges.

“We have to admit that we are different, we have different views…if we’re going to do this, both views have to be clear in saying this is part of the doctrine of our church… and we walk together in love.”

Another table pointed out that careful attention must be paid to language: “any acknowledgement should not include any explicit or implicit value judgment, namely that one form of marriage is somehow better or more virtuous than the other.”

Possible human-rights complaints after marriage canon changes

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From here:

The officer of General Synod who advises the Anglican Church of Canada on canon law and legal matters says he’s “absolutely confident” that human-rights complaints made against clergy who refuse to perform same-sex marriages would fail.

“Human rights legislation recognizes freedom of religion and of religious organizations, and I am absolutely confident that that complaint would be dismissed,” Canon (lay) David Jones, chancellor of General Synod, told Council of General Synod (CoGS) at a session dedicated to the marriage canon Saturday, June 2.

I am quite sure that eventually there will be a human-rights complaint against a clergyman who refuses to perform a same-sex marriage. David Jones’s confidence that it would fail misses the point: would the Anglican Church of Canada pay the legal bills and fines of the refusing clergyman? Will pigs fly?

If the church is not legally bound to defend an employee who is being hounded by the HRC, all reassurances are worthless since the hapless cleric could be financially ruined.

On a brighter note, Dean Peter Wall plans to leave the church and crawl into a hole if the marriage canon change does not pass. Liberals love to harp on about “walking together” in spite of disagreements. But that only applies if they win.

Peter Wall, dean of the diocese of Niagara and chair of the General Synod planning committee, said with a strained voice he feared he would leave the church if the vote were to fail.

“My fear is that if the resolution is defeated, I cannot stay in the church,” he said. “I really fear that I would walk away and never come back into a church again, and take all my leadership, and all my experience…And I’m afraid I would crawl into a hole.”

Marriage Canon Machinations

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Anglicans wishing to redefine marriage to encompass same-sex couples will, when they get their way, not only take God out of marriage, emptying it of significance, but drive believers out of their churches with an efficiency that would be the envy of the most rabid atheist. That’s not what is bothering the bishops, though; what is bothering them is that the few remaining conservatives in the Anglican Church of Canada will, when they leave, take their offerings with them.

From here:

A resolution to amend the marriage canon to allow for same-sex marriages may itself be amended to include protections for Anglicans who hold to the traditional view of marriage, said Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

“There is a possibility” that the resolution, which passed its required first reading at the last General Synod in 2016, may be amended when it is presented for a required second reading in 2019, Hiltz said in an interview Thursday, April 19.

Another possibility is that a separate resolution to amend the canon could be made, one that “would enable the church as a whole, as a General Synod, to say something clearer to conservatives who want to remain in our church” in the event the resolution passes, he said.

Preparing for a potentially divisive second vote on the resolution was an important topic of conversation for the Anglican Church of Canada’s House of Bishops at their spring meeting in Niagara Falls, Ont., April 9-13, Hiltz and other members of the house said.

Larry Robertson, bishop of the diocese of Yukon, said he and some other bishops expressed concern that, if the resolution passes its second reading, those who hold to the idea of marriage as between a man and a woman may lose their status within the Anglican Church of Canada. They fear, he said, they’ll be told, “You are not in communion with the church; you are out of sync with the doctrine of our church.’ ”

Larry Robertson’s concern is rather belated. Conservative clergy in liberal dioceses have been laughed at, given the worst jobs and emotionally harassed for years. Usually this is called “inclusion”; sometimes it’s call “diversity”.

I know it’s hard to believe but, during the marriage canon vote at the last synod, the merchants of tolerance, inclusion and homoeroticism were accused of bullying anyone who had the temerity to stand in their way:

General Synod 2016 was marred by complaints of bullying during discussions of the resolution, and a statement released days after the synod by seven bishops contending that the decision endangered their “full communion within the Anglican Church of Canada.”

There are those who are still under the impression that the Anglican Church of Canada can be further “broken and divided” even though the very small piece that remains is homogenously liberal:

“I think everybody is trying to find ways that will enable our church to respect more than one view on marriage,” he said. “Many people, I think, are committed to move in that direction so that we don’t come out of General Synod as a broken and divided church in which people are saying, ‘I’ve had it, I’m gone, and I feel I have no choice but to leave.’ “

There is some good news, though: the Anglican Journal may go out of print and someone is finally questioning whether it should come clean and admit that it is nothing but the mouthpiece of a lost denomination:

Bishops also heard an update from a committee reviewing whether the Anglican Journal should continue to exist in print form and continue its traditional policy of editorial independence.

Marriage canon CoGS still turning

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The Council of General Synod met recently to discuss, among other things, the change to the marriage canon to allow same-sex marriage. The Indigenous representative seems less than happy with the fact that the report “This Holy Estate” has not been translated into Indigenous languages. Moreover, some dioceses are already marrying same sex couples ahead of the 2019 vote to approve them – if they can find any willing specimens, that is.

What the Indigenous member should realise is that, since same-sex marriages are already occurring, the report is irrelevant: it is a fait accompli, no report, listening process, vote, conversation or discussion – respectful or otherwise – is going to make a blind bit of difference. Anglican conservatives have, as usual, been conned and outmaneuvered. Business as usual at CoGS.

During the discussion, one Indigenous CoGS member asked why some dioceses were already marrying same-sex couples, which her people did not understand given that the church was currently debating passing an amendment to the marriage canon to change the rules.

How to get around the marriage canon vote

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The motion to change the marriage canon to accommodate same-sex couples is unlikely to pass at the Anglican General Synod in July, so liberal Anglicans are looking for ways to circumvent the vote.

Michael Coren, who may or may not have inside information on the machinations of the post-Christian contingent of the Anglican Church of Canada, has elucidated in this article a hitherto unexplored way of twisting Scripture to justify the unjustifiable:

In Canada, the most plausible hope is probably some sort of creative compromise where the canon is amended to allow for a marriage liturgy that would include same-sex couples, based around a theology inspired by Acts 10. This is the passage where the Roman centurion Cornelius is accepted by St. Peter, who says, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” The Kosher laws are no longer required; God’s plan extends to all. Applied to sexuality, God’s love is for all: Jew and gentile, straight and gay.

It’s far from ideal, but the reality is that equal marriage simply won’t be achieved in the short-term. If an amendment satisfies enough people and is purely optional it might, just might, be acceptable to all sides. As such it could enable the Canadian church to avoid the treatment handed to the Americans.