The Church of England has succumbed to a two-prong attack, one prong doctrinal, the other sartorial.
The House of Bishops has issued a document densely enveloped in a fog of obfuscation. However, if one manages to disperse it, the message emerges in all its clarity: as early as in 2022 the Church will start officiating homosexual marriages.
The two senior Anglican clergymen, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, co-authored a foreword, instructing the church to be “deeply ashamed and repentant” over the “hurt and unnecessary suffering” it had caused to gay and transgender people.
Contextually, the refusal to debauch a key Christian sacrament constitutes one factor of said hurt and unnecessary suffering. The only way to propitiate for this sin is to have a vicar, ideally a transgender lesbian herself, to pronounce happy couples man and man, or wife and wife, or any other permutation the English language affords.
In this abomination the church follows the lead of the state, which legalised homomarriage during Cameron’s (Conservative!) tenure. However, this Anglican apostate can’t help pointing out the difference between the two bodies.
A state legalising homomarriage deals a blow to the very institution of marriage, thereby stamping on millennia of tradition and tearing yet another hole in the social fabric. However, that isn’t the first such outrage, and it certainly won’t be the last.
The secular state still manages to muddle through for the time being, and in any case it has been secular for so long that no one is particularly surprised when yet another legacy of our civilisation falls by the wayside. That’s what modernity is all about, isn’t it?
The upshot of it is that the state can absorb, just, a large number of charges going off without necessarily collapsing onto itself. However, a Christian church that marries two homosexuals at the altar is no longer a Christian church. Full stop.
When at the altar, the bride and the groom take vows that include the words “according to God’s holy ordinance”. Or at least they do so in the few remaining Anglican churches that still favour the Book of Common Prayer over Mao’s Red Book, or whatever texts today’s clergy hold as sacred.
And God’s holy ordinance is unequivocal on the subject of homosexuality, which is castigated in both Testaments as a deadly sin. A priest represents Christ at the altar and if in this capacity he blesses a deadly sin, he forfeits the right to act as God’s intermediary. And of course the church that instructs him to debauch its sacraments is effectively deconsecrated.
Against this background, the sartorial revolt being launched by female vicars and bishops doesn’t have more than amusement value. Those dubiously ordained Lysistratas are unhappy about the drab clerical garb concealing their more jutting attractions.
They don’t want sombre black robes hiding their bodies from admiring eyes (although, to be unchivalrous for a second, most female vicars I’ve seen don’t offer much to admire). They want sequins, lace and satin. They want skirts cut at least six inches above the knee and ideally slit. They want décolletage. And, as God is their witness, they are going to get them.
So far they have drawn the line on celebrating mass clad in a dog collar and nothing else, but such outdated modesty may be ousted before long. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the House of Bishops issued an edict on female clerical nudity, saying “if you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
And why not? Compared to subverting Christian sacraments, what’s a little sartorial indiscretion among friends? A bit of innocent fun, that’s all. And if the church can’t be fun, what good is it?
As a non-celebrating Hebrew perhaps I should not comment. But I do stumble at the chutzpah with which the Christian church allows (declares?) the reputed events of some thousands of years ago to be the output of an intangible “god” rather than of a bench of whatever passed for bishops at that time. I can see that a god and a bible offer some benefits to Society, though in various times past they (or their interpreters) have mixed many harms with the benefits. Another difficulty, of course, is that there are multiple independent concepts of god-like being and god-given codes of behaviour. These rather devalue the Christian one don’t they? Or so it seems to me.
“as early as in 2022 the Church will start officiating homosexual marriages.”
We are approving even thought this doesn’t necessarily mean we approve. Do I have it right??