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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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
In the latest Council of General Synod meeting, members suggested that there should be a \u201cvariety of understandings of marriage\u201d. No one seemed interested in defining the limits of the variety: should it end before or after polyamorous gender-fluid m\u00e9nages?<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t help that someone proposed<\/a> making marriage value-free in a similar vein to the church being doctrine-free. There is nothing more lasting than a valueless marriage:<\/p>\n \u201cany 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In order to cut through the chaos, Fred Hiltz is proposing an amendment to an amendment \u2013 a bit like growing a pimple on a boil \u2013 in order to protect the losers in the 2019 Marriage Canon vote. All meaningless twaddle, of course, since, as Bishop William Love discovered<\/a>, when Presiding Bishop Michael Curry (the excitable \u201cAll you Need is Love\u201d wedding preacher – unless it\u2019s a bishop called Love who doesn\u2019t toe the LGBT line) restricted his ministry, nothing stops the Anglican homoerotic rainbow steamroller.<\/p>\n Read about the whole sorry mess here<\/a>:<\/p>\n A desire to stay together as a church, despite a diverse range of understandings of what marriage is and should be.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n But exactly how this \u201ctheme,\u201d or aim, may be fulfilled is more complicated.<\/p>\n In a session titled \u201cMarriage Canon: Way Forward, Next Steps\u201d 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.<\/p>\n At the meeting, CoGS members broke into table groups to discuss the questions, \u201cDo you think it would be helpful if in considering the change to the canon, it would\u00a0include an expression of acknowledgement of and respect for a continuing variety of understanding of marriage within the Anglican Church of Canada?\u201d and \u201cWhat might such an acknowledgement include?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Details of how this acknowledgement might look were more nuanced.<\/p>\n One group suggested that \u201caccommodation should be made for our Indigenous brothers and sisters,\u201d and that Indigenous communities should have the right to make their own decision on the matter.<\/p>\n Another group noted that as soon as accommodations are made for one point of view, questions arise about other viewpoints. \u201cEach of us is perceived as being marginalized depending on where you stand in the story\u2026[if] we\u2019re saying we\u2019re bracketing one particular group, what happens if the motion goes in a completely different direction\u2026maybe we need to create a bracket for someone else. If we\u2019re walking together, how are we really going to do that?\u201d Another group said that whatever is proposed must be clearly laid out, to avoid legal challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to admit that we are different, we have different views\u2026if we\u2019re going to do this, both views have to be clear in saying this is part of the doctrine of our church\u2026 and we walk together in love.\u201d<\/p>\n Another table pointed out that careful attention must be paid to language: \u201cany 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s impossible, the church … Continue reading