An Exercise in Stopping
In a little over four weeks time, when the World Cup Competition has finished, I’ll be shutting down this website and pretty much withdrawing from any ministry outside of my parish in Canterbury.
I really don’t want to give a long essay on the reasons for this decision. Needless to say, I don’t have the time between a busy job and growing family to also spend time trying to input into the area of human sexuality and also into the life of the Church of England (for example the Twurch of England Twitter project which I have tried to nurture for half a decade and which I shut down on Thursday), things which should be a job in themselves. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, it’s become too emotionally exhausting to try to give myself to an institution and a constituency leadership that doesn’t want to resource the ministry that it claims it so much admires. It’s not that I don’t want to do the things that I’ve been doing, it’s just that I am no longer capable of resourcing them to the degree that they deserve (and that, frankly, I deserve).
This is it then folks. We’ll do some death and see what God resurrects (if anything). But for now, without any of the above changing, in a month’s time I’ll be out of here.
Well, I really doubted that the Bishop would have the b**** to rescind Pemberton’s PTO. It will be to your lasting credit that you went on record saying it was happening:
https://www.peter-ould.net/2014/05/08/canon-b30-change-uphold-or-ignore/
And it did: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/church-of-england-tells-samesex-married-clergyman-canon-jeremy-pemberton-to-stop-leading-services-9555319.html
Here’s an observation from the last General Synod session.
By GS 1947, a clerk in holy orders will now incur discipline for expressing a lawful opinion or engaging in lawful activities in support of a legally formed BNP. Simply by saying, ‘I believe that the BNP has a point when they say…’
The reason: it’s incompatible with the teaching of the CofE in relation to the equality of persons or groups of different races’ CDM 2003 Section 8(4).
In its Pastoral Guidance on SSM, the Church stated: ‘Getting married to someone of the same sex would, however, clearly be at variance with the teaching of the Church of England’.
Nevertheless, some will happily challenge the church’s right to discipline a clerk in holy orders who makes a legal marriage that is incompatible with the teaching of the CofE. Presumably, the difference is because, according to them, the current teaching is at variance with equality.
Remember this from the CofE Commons Second reading briefing?
Civil partnerships have proved themselves as an important way to address past inequalities faced by LGBT people and already confer the same rights as marriage. To apply uniformity of treatment to objectively different sorts of relationship – as illustrated by the remaining unanswered questions about consummation and adultery is an unwise way of promoting LGBT equality.
So, any HoB reluctance to initiate disciplinary action on the same-sex marriage of its priests will demonstrate that it is departing from its stated position.
Sorry not to have commented earlier. (I’ve only just got back from Italy, where I’ve kept away from the Internet.) I will certainly miss your website. Although I strongly disagree with you on certain things, your website is a most valuable source of information. Not only that, it’s one of the few traditionalist Christian websites dealing (although not exclusively) with human sexuality which is honest and doesn’t block dissenting comments. But your family must come first; there’s no question about that. I wish you and your family all the best.
this is pretty sad…
I’d love to host this page as an archive if you’d send me the files.
And if not, I’m currently in the process of backing all the content up, just in case..