{"id":24245,"date":"2016-07-21T23:28:09","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T03:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=24245"},"modified":"2016-07-21T23:28:09","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T03:28:09","slug":"the-anglican-church-of-canada-opens-pandoras-marriage-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-anglican-church-of-canada-opens-pandoras-marriage-box\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anglican Church of Canada opens Pandora\u2019s marriage box"},"content":{"rendered":"

In justifying his pressing ahead with same-sex marriages even when it appeared the vote to allow them failed, Michael Bird said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In the words of David Jones, the chancellor of General Synod, our current marriage canon \u201cdoes not contain either a definition of marriage or a specific prohibition against solemnizing same-sex marriage.\u201d At the same time, it is clear that our Anglican conventions permit a diocesan bishop to exercise episcopal authority by authorizing liturgies to respond to pastoral needs within their dioceses, in the absence of any actions by this General Synod to address these realities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, according to its chancellor, the Anglican Church of Canada recognises no canonical definition of what marriage is or who can marry whom. Some time ago, the Diocese of Niagara used to chant this incantation at every available opportunity: \u201cdraw the circle wide, draw it wider still\u201d; the more they chanted, the more people fled.<\/p>\n

Now, it seems, the marriage circle has been drawn so wide that, providing there is a \u201cpastoral need\u201d<\/em>, anyone can marry anyone \u2013 or thing.<\/p>\n

A woman could marry a horse<\/a>, a man could marry a goat<\/a>, or a pillow<\/a> or himself<\/a>. We are assured by the ACoC chancellor that there is nothing in the canons that prevents this \u2013 so why not? Personally, I\u2019m delighted to see that there is absolutely no prohibition against solemnising a union between a man and his guitar<\/a>; none at all!<\/p>\n

There are two ways to render something meaningless: one is to make it mean nothing, the other is to make it mean anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In justifying his pressing ahead with same-sex marriages even when it appeared the vote to allow them failed, Michael Bird said: In the words of David Jones, the chancellor of General Synod, our current marriage canon \u201cdoes not contain either … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1075,1390],"class_list":["post-24245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican-church-of-canada","tag-michael-bird","tag-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}