Living in Fallibility and Indeterminacy

The question will now be whether the shaky and open-ended compromise statement the College of Bishops is recommending to the Synod on human sexuality and equal marriage or its absence will get through it: you will remember that the last time they proposed something of this kind, it failed, and I am not at all sure the Synod will be in any more a mood to compromise this time. I refrained from making any comment a couple of days ago when the main points of the bishops' report were leaked because I wanted to see something more than the headlines, and read some of the reasoning.

Of course - lest it go without remark - at the very core of this report is a gaping inconsistency. The bishops apologise to LBGTQ+ people and 'welcome same-sex couples unreservedly and joyfully'. It will immediately be asked how, if they continue to regard same-sex relations as sinful, they can possibly say this, and, if they don't, what reason they can have for not treating homosexual individuals the same as everyone else. People are not stupid: they can see that question is unanswered.

The reason is, as the bishops say repeatedly, they cannot reach a consensus and the line they are proposing to Synod is the most radical one they can agree on. Frustrating though it may be, this humility and recognition of reality is somewhat refreshing. 'We are pursuing unity and not imposing it', they plead, and when you remember that once upon a time the Bench of Bishops was baying for Anglo-Catholic priests to be imprisoned because they put candlesticks on their altars, you can see how far we have come. 

I would be happy to bless a same-sex couple along the lines the bishops propose, though I can't see any turning up to ask me to anytime soon. Why would they? I have (as I've said before) an inkling why God might want the Church only to marry people of different sexes, but the report doesn't give any reason beyond the fact that the bishops can't agree, and that's not likely to make anyone feel very welcome and accepted. The bishops are right to say that more theological work is needed: my own position has itself arisen from asking what the sacrament of matrimony actually means, what it implies to pronounce a blessing, how sexual differentiation might reflect what God wants for human beings. I am delighted that the bishops even recognise these questions as ones that need to be asked; I am encouraged that they approach the task with seriousness. I do wonder whether the gigantic areas of theological work they identify at the end of the report are a bit ambitious. Perhaps it aims at more systematic organisation of thought than we need, and maybe we just need to ask Why does the Church marry people, and what is happening when it does so? Oh, and come up with an answer that makes sense. When I say what I think my impression is that people blink and have no idea what I mean.