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Saint Peter’s Church Folkestone |
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A
Forward in Faith Parish Under the Pastoral Care of the Bishop of Richborough History
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THE DEBATE IN GENERAL SYNOD ON JULY 7th, 2008, AND SOME
CONSEQUENCES I left
Folkestone for York at 8.17am last Monday morning (July 7th, 2008), and
arrived there at 12.30pm - in good time to be admitted to the public gallery
of the hall where General Synod was meeting. At first, as I queued for the
two hours necessary before admission was allowed, standing beneath a concrete
shelter in squally weather, I was surrounded by unfamiliar and anxious faces:
as time passed, I encountered an increasing number of people whom I knew,
both members of Synod and fellow-visitors, and eventually fell in with
Stephen Parkinson, Fr Geoffrey Kirk, and Bishop Keith. We went through the
airport-style security checks, took our seats, and sat from 2.00pm till
10.15pm (with an hour’s break for food) at the back of the Great Hall of York
University, while on the tiers of seats below us the hopes of Catholics in
the Church of England were systematically destroyed. It was an
infinitely disturbing day. We kept up our spirits as best we could, but I can
see how disturbing it was by the fact that when I came to write this piece,
my memories, though clear, were all chronologically awry. Luckily I took
notes of what went on and who spoke, and by referring to them was able to
re-create the day properly. If any of you want to spend quite a long time listening
to the whole debate, you can do so by going to the web address http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/gsjul080707.html,
and clicking on the Audio of afternoon session (part 1 of 2), Audio
of afternoon session (part 2 of 2), and Audio of evening
session links at the bottom of the web-page. It’s a long listen! So
here’s a long procedure cut short… The debate took the following form: the ”substantive” motion, to
ordain women bishops and set up a code of practice to deal with opponents,
was first introduced; and then a series of amendments to that motion was
debated, and each amendment was voted on. Roughly speaking, the pattern of
these amendments ran from most favourable to Catholics (debated first), to
those least favourable (debated last). As the afternoon, and then the
evening, wore one, every proposal to open the door wider than a code of
practice, and every attempt to include within a code the shreds of proper
provision, was knocked down one by one. No dioceses, no legal provisions
written into the text of a Measure, no mandatory transfer, no mandatory
delegation, no “strong code” – just instructions to the Bishops to set up a
drafting group to produce a code before February 2009, a code finally
referred to as “statutory” - an adjective that apparently means nothing in
legal terms when applied to a code of practice. As speakers and votes
followed each other, and especially after the meal break, it was noticeable
that the speeches were evolving from rational proposals into impassioned
pleas, but nothing could bring things to a conclusion but a final vote on the
substantive motion, and that vote was carried by a huge majority. And thus
Synod decided to ordain women bishops and to grant to those who were opposed
the very thing that they did not want, a “code of practice” – to do away with
Resolutions A and B, to rescind the Act of Synod (and thus end “Resolution
C”), to abolish PEVs, and to cater for those who found themselves abandoned
by these actions by a method that they had been told repeatedly would not do
the job. It is a
hard thing to say, and it is hard to recognise that behind the smooth words
and religious clichés of Synod-speak, there are naked struggles for power and
goals, but many of those who worked, lobbied, and voted for the code of
practice option knew that it was not enough, and went for it in the full
conviction that traditionalist Catholics would indeed settle for it after a
brief period of upset. They do not believe that we believe seriously what we
say we believe, and they think – one of their very top leaders told me this!
– that once we’ve simply overcome the shock, we’ll get used to it and accept
it. What the proponents of the ordination of women (bishops and priests) want
is a change, and that desire cannot concede legitimacy to those who refuse
such a change. And on Monday they carried the day. What I
sorely want to happen now is for the PEVs and the Catholic suffragans, and
the Council of Forward in Faith, and the leaders of the SSC, with all other
responsible Catholic bodies, must act together to form a kind of “cabinet” to
co-ordinate policy and to negotiate -
both with those who wield power in the Church of England, and with those
similarly placed in other bodies. Bishop Keith has called a meeting of
stipendiary priests of our integrity in London on July 23rd (I shall go). We
all have to pray and support one another, and those of you who are members of
FiF will already have received a letter from me and the lay chairman of
Canterbury FiF in which we call for this. Meanwhile, the local chapter of SSC
meets next Friday, and – for what it’s worth – I’ve called a meeting of the
FCP National Executive next Thursday in London. What I fear is disunity among
Catholics. I recognise that there will be different reactions and different
paths chosen by different people. But right now it is a time for holding
together in love and in patience. Fortunately there is no need to do anything
immediately. There is no need to take cover now. Holding together now,
though, will make everybody’s chosen course easier when the time comes.
Because come it will. In 1978 the
future Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, said of the ordination of
women, “When the Anglican Church embraces such a fundamental change as to the
nature and character of the ordained ministry without sufficient regard for
those with whom we proudly claim to share the apostolic ministry, it
registers itself as a different sort of Church.” That is just what some
people want. But there are others who do not want that, who want the Church
of England to continue being a church within which it is possible to live the
Catholic life – moreover, who have fought and struggled for twenty years or
more to be able to continue doing so – and who want it recognised as
legitimate to say what Robert Runcie said thirty years ago. This is
exactly therefore what a code of practice will not do, and is designed not to
do. The bishops will not be able to bring anything other than a code back to
Synod, and more than half of them do not want to. The Houses of Clergy and
Laity have scored a constitutional goal and they will not want it declared
offside. The code may – possibly! - be dressed up in the smartest clothes
available, but the genie can not be put back in the bottle. It will still do
what a code does – a code does not incarnate equal status, it manages the
awkward squad. It cannot pass muster
for us. A code of practice in the end will do nothing more than allow people
to hide away, “pretending, for the purposes of local
liturgical celebrations, that women are not ordained as bishops and priests”
(The Bishop of Ebbsfleet). The function
of a code of practice is not (as the existence of the PEVs is) to express
legitimacy: it is to tolerate illegitimacy - and that illegitimacy we shall
be. The Rev’d
Stephen Bould SSC S. Peter Folkestone, July 12th, 2008 |