THE Bishop of Liverpool is urging the Church of England to announce that it intends to invent a rite for the blessing of homosexual ‘marriages’. His lordship hasn’t long to wait. I have neither runes nor crystal ball, so how can I possibly know this? Because the Church has as good as announced it already in its recent publication Living in Love and Faith. Creditably there is no obfuscation in LLF.
It begins with an apology ‘for the damage and hurt caused to the LGBT community’. It proceeds with the launch of a programme of ‘discussions and learning about gender identity’ to be completed this year. The House of Bishops will then bring the process of ‘decision-making to a conclusion’ and their conclusions will be put to a vote in the General Synod. This procedure appears to be no more than a polite charade, for the presenter of LLF, Christopher Cocksworth, Bishop of Coventry, has already declared that the Church’s teaching on marriage is ‘ripe for development’.
Furthermore, Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, who, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, introduced LLF,begins this development process himself:
‘What we can do is recognise that what we know now about human development and human sexuality requires us to look again at those texts to see what they are actually saying to our situation, for what we know now is not what was known then.’
In other words, our contemporary mores and fashions will annul and replace the clear teaching of Scripture in both Old and New Testaments:
‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination’ (Leviticus 18:22).
St Paul deplored and denounced homosexual practices: ‘And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly’ (Romans 1:27).
Had the author of The Book of Leviticus got it wrong then? Or, when their time comes, will the Archbishops and Bishops tell St Paul to his face that he was mistaken? Besides, St Paul preached vehemently against the morality he found in the Roman Empire. And, so far from adopting the values of pagan society, he wrote, ‘Be ye not conformed to this world’ (Romans 12:2).
The early Christians condemned the morals of their day and many met death in the arena as a consequence.
But today’s fantastically liberated Church knows better, eh?
