To me, they do not even need to be open for services. Just be open for people to come and pray. I was there from 7:15PM-7:45PM and during that time maybe a dozen people came in and prayed for similar amounts of time as I - some for more and some for less time. People were just coming to pray, to worship. It is sad that more churches are not open for people to take a few minutes, to stop by and reflect. A simple side chapel or space that is quiet with scripture to read, some prayer books, I think it would be of great value to people. A Baptist church near me has a prayer space that is always open. Members have a code to get in the building after hours, but even non-members can call a phone number for access.
There is a 300+ page General Synod Paper on Marriage (and the possibility of monogendered relationships). This has come about as the Bishops, who meet regularly, have become somewhat divided on the issue. This is not isolated from what is happening elsewhere, and it is no doubt the hot topic driving GAFCON at the moment. The Anglican Church of New Zealand has moved on this issue, and as a result there has been a fracturing with the Church there, which has clearly led to some communication with some of the Australian Bishops. Against the other papers I have seen on the subject, I will say that the Australian papers are intelligent (you may need a dictionary), well argued, and balanced. There is quite a good essay in there on disagreements in the Church. The preface to the document calls for irenic discussions, which might be more than we will be able to muster in the long run, but I accept it as a noble aspiration.
How would it fracture the communion when there are provinces still in communion that perform homosexual marriage? It may be another move towards a full break of communion for some of the provinces, but this alone -whichever way it goes - would not fracture the communion....unless you mean fracture the church in Australia, which of course is possible similar to what happened in TEC.
I have no idea, but of course, being an Australian Anglican I don't have the luxury of using the word 'they'.
Yes, that is the point. To date in Australia the Anglican Church has remained fairly well connected, despite our contentious issues. In the national Plebiscite some time back, some Bishops spoke in favour and some against, and indeed one diocese contributed a million dollars to the NO campaign. I see the matter as having a new complexity now that the nation recognises and registers monogendered marriages. The Church is duty bound to recognise those marriages, and indeed honour them, so if someone were to appear wanting marriage where there was an extant monogendered marriage that had not been dissolved, the Church would not be free to ignore the former marriage without it being legally dissolved and a decree absolute being in place. I do see this issue as have the potential to fracture the Australian Church, and I would hope that we don't emulate the fracturing we have observed in North America. Increasingly I see that we have to look to our unity beyond the Institutional expression of the Church.
Correlation does not equal causation? And Benediction in non-CofE communions has not led to any of the other things happening? And I really don't understand how being "Romish" leads to gay marriage, because Rome is definitely "Romish" and I don't see them doing gay marriages anytime soon. If you're complaining about gays playing dress up, fine. But one does not logically lead to the other. So I don't like your insinuation that it does, and so therefore no Anglican should dare do it, and that if you see an Anglican doing it you should be suspicious of the gay mafia. It's really quite rude to ascribe such to those who are honestly engaging in a practice of pure worship.
I find it interesting that you post these comments about the Church of England yet from where you say you are you are not a member of the CofE. You seem to assume that the CofE is all the same . It is not. May be the introduction of liturgical services like Benediction goes against what is officially allowed. However, you draw an exceedingly false conclusion. You will find that those who do have Benediction, Anglo-Catholics, are, together with Evangelicals, the more orthodox members of the CofE. The liberals who have introduced women ministers who will no doubt be the ones in the future that will clamour for the CofE to allow monogender marriage are not the ones who have Benediction. Indeed, I doubt they have the remotest respect for the Body of Christ.
That's all I was saying. I didn't mean to ruffle anyone's feathers over this, but just to point at the historical record. It's not that being "Romish" in this case led to gay marriage, but rather that a habitual comfort with disobedience opened the door to more disobedience. The exact same thing happened in Roman circles. There too, there was something the Roman church forbade, but dissident clerics decided to do it anyway. Over time it became permissible and habituated among the clergy to disobey that church on matters they wanted. They became more open and more comfortable in disobeying it in other things, which now resulted in gay marriage, lgbt services, pedophile priests, what have you. Whatever the source of disobedience was in each particular communion, be it Anglican or Roman, the end result was the same: a comfort with rejecting, and a history of absolute indifference to, Ecclesiastical Authority.
Just to get you right on this: Pedophile priests have always been around since year dot, (well since the church invented 'priests' anyhow), they were, until recently, just not exposed, (in a metaphorical sense at any rate ). And there is no connection between pedophilia, 'gay marriage' and LGBT rites, other than your, (and perhaps God's), abhorrance of them all. You might as well try to suggest that all liars are also probably bank robbers and adulterers, according to your apparent logic. Regards etc. .
I believe you conflate a number of issues here. Paedophilia is not linked to the others. It has always gone on and unfortunately it still will go on. People are more aware of it now, victims are reporting it and the churches are allegedly doing something about it. There will, I am sure always be some dissident priests but what you describe are not all possible. Monogender marriage is not yet permitted in the Church of England but I have no doubt that one day the General Synod will approve it. Until Pope Francis was elected I thought it would never happen in the Roman Catholic Church but committing heresy means nothing to Francis.
Agreed. The only way it could have been stopped is if everyone had an understanding that if the CofE changes on any doctrinal point, then it stops being either Anglican or the Church of England, and those pushing it excommunicate themselves automatically. But the CofE by now has been saddled with a hundred years of clerics 'respectfully disagreeing' with any number of CofE doctrines. There has emerged a whole culture, a tradition of errant clerics dismissing Anglican doctrine and instead lacing their theologies with romanism, or evangelicalism and calvinism, or whatever else happened to be impressive that year. Once the culture has formed, there is no stopping it from corrupting further. Oh we can question the articles of religion? Cool. Can we reject them but still remain orthodox? Appreciate that, many thanks. I find plenty wrong in the book of common prayer, maybe we can reject that too? Well the creeds are starting to feel a little antiquated too aren't they? And why are we stuck within the primitive construct of monogamous marriage? Why can't we stop hurting and rejecting a poor couple of two men who just want to be intimate and wholesome together? The same thing is happening in Rome, as in the CofE. The sources for dissent may be different, but the trajectory is exactly the same as with us. Dissident and heretic clerics 'respectfully disagree' with long-standing Roman doctrines, chopping at the tree where they can, until they finally fell it.
Ephesians 4:1-6 Unity in the Body of Christ I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. 'on any doctrinal point' I think that there is a question about this and I am not sure I know how to frame that question. There are points on which Anglicans have seemingly always been prepared to take contrary views. The Thirty Nine Articles appear to acknowledge some of this in Article 34: It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word. And indeed there seems here to be an acknowledgement that the host culture in which the Church gives expression to the Body of Christ may well in part be shaped by that host culture. There is in Anglicanism a sense in which we are asked to agree on the fundamentals, and to recognise that there are other beliefs that are beyond what must be believed unto salvation. The RCC has sort of followed us in this now speaking of a hierarchy of truths. When it comes to these matters, like monogendered marriage, we are inclined to fracture, to dig in and not give in, and to argue for truth at the expense of unity, however I have to ask myself if marriage is at the centre, or not. Marriage is not referenced in any of the creeds, and I can recall, and indeed the discussion still continues as to whether marriage is a sacrament, and sacramental rite, or a contract - and if a contract is it simply between the two parties, or between to two parties and the community. Yet in the very breath in which the subject is raised in Australia the first thought almost instinctively seems to be schism. In a paper 'Disagreement and Christian Unity : Re-evaluating the Situation' recently Bishop Stephen Pickard raised the subject of acquiescence which I guess is the principle whereby the we agree to disagree about certain things, in order to maintain our unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. I don't for one moment think that that is easy, and I doubt that it ever has been. I imagine that Matthew Parker and Elizabeth I struggled with how to achieve this in their circumstance, and looked at conflict which appeared impossible to rectify. In some sense fracturing is easy, but we also know that it is damaging. One of the difficulties with fracturing is that it becomes very difficult to unfracture. When we look at the great efforts following the great schism, we can see that the best will in the world was not about to do it, and here, a thousand years down the track with finally the excommunications lifted, the matters still lie ultimately unresolved. The the advent of the World Council of Churches we have seen a plethora of now churches, fracturing and refracturing. I guess part of what I ask is if marriage is a matter of doctrine, or tradition and ceremony. I don't think people are intentionally trying to chop down the tree, but I do think they are wanting to engage in the wider community with the truth of the Gospel. As I see it, (and it is not the way everyone sees it), in the secular debate we had recently in Australia, the case for very much saw the argument as a matter of justice (social justice). Parts of the Church invested in the campaign against this, yet in know way were able to present an argument that addressed the justice question at all. The one thing I do know is that at the moment I do not know the answer.
We got women ministers through the social justice argument. But, that is not the way to go. What should matter is theology. It has been the Christian belief always and inherited from our Jewish forebears that marriage is exclusively between two people for life: with one being a man and the other being a woman. Even if you wanted to impose monogendered marriage on the Church through a social justice argument it does not alter the fact we find in Scripture that homosexuality is wrong.
Indeed. Avro Manhattan wrote about the slow rise of Marxism within the ranks of RC priests beginning in the early 1900s. By the time of John Paul II, the RC clergymen in some South American countries were openly flouting that Pope's wishes and decrees. Now we have Francis, and we all see which way he leans.