THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN

The Archbishop of Canterbury's Pentecostletter to the Bishops, Clergy and Faithfulof the Anglican Communion

1.

'They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other
languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak' (Acts 2.4). At Pentecost,
we celebrate the gift God gives us of being able to communicate the Good
News of Jesus Christ in the various languages of the whole human world.
The Gospel is not the property of any one group, any one culture or
history, but is what God intends for the salvation of all who will
listen and respond.

St Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is also what God gives us so that
we can call God 'Abba, Father' (Rom. 8.15, Gal. 4.6). The Spirit is
given not only so that we can speak to the world about God but so that
we can speak to God in the words of his own beloved Son. The Good News
we share is not just a story about Jesus but the possibility of living
in and through the life of Jesus and praying his prayer to the Father.

And so the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of 'communion' or fellowship
(II Cor. 13.13). The Spirit allows us to recognise each other as part of
the Body of Christ because we can hear in each other the voice of Jesus
praying to the Father. We know, in the Spirit, that we who are baptised
into Jesus Christ share one life; so that all the diversity of gifting
and service in the Church can be seen as the work of one Spirit (I Cor.
12.4). In the Holy Eucharist, this unity in and through the
self-offering of Jesus is reaffirmed and renewed as we pray for the
Spirit to transform both the bread and wine and 'ourselves, our souls
and bodies'.

When the Church is living by the Spirit, what the world will see is a
community of people who joyfully and gratefully hear the prayer of Jesus
being offered in each other's words and lives, and are able to recognise
the one Christ working through human diversity. And if the world sees
this, the Church is a true sign of hope in a world of bitter conflict
and rivalry.

2.

From the very first, as the New Testament makes plain, the Church has
experienced division and internal hostilities. From the very first, the
Church has had to repent of its failure to live fully in the light and
truth of the Spirit. Jesus tells us in St John's gospel that the Spirit
of truth will 'prove the world wrong' in respect of sin and
righteousness and judgement (Jn 16.8). But if the Spirit is leading us
all further into the truth, the Spirit will convict the Church too of
its wrongness and lead it into repentance. And if the Church is a
community where we serve each other in the name of Christ, it is a
community where we can and should call each other to repentance in the
name of Christ and his Spirit - not to make the other feel inferior
(because we all need to be called to repentance) but to remind them of
the glory of Christ's gift and the promise that we lose sight of when we
fail in our common life as a Church.

Our Anglican fellowship continues to experience painful division, and
the events of recent months have not brought us nearer to full
reconciliation. There are still things being done that the
representative bodies of the Communion have repeatedly pleaded should
not be done; and this leads to recrimination, confusion and bitterness
all round. It is clear that the official bodies of The Episcopal Church
have felt in conscience that they cannot go along with what has been
asked of them by others, and the consecration of Canon Mary Glasspool on
May 15 has been a clear sign of this. And despite attempts to clarify
the situation, activity across provincial boundaries still continues -
equally dictated by what people have felt they must in conscience do.
Some provinces have within them dioceses that are committed to policies
that neither the province as a whole nor the Communion has sanctioned.
In several places, not only in North America, Anglicans have not
hesitated to involve the law courts in settling disputes, often at great
expense and at the cost of the Church's good name.

All are agreed that the disputes arising around these matters threaten
to distract us from our main calling as Christ's Church. The recent
Global South encounter in Singapore articulated a strong and welcome
plea for the priority of mission in the Communion; and in my own message
to that meeting I prayed for a 'new Pentecost' for all of us. This is a
good season of the year to pray earnestly for renewal in the Spirit, so
that we may indeed do what God asks of us and let all people know that
new and forgiven life in Christ is possible and that created men and
women may by the Spirit's power be given the amazing liberty to call God
'Abba, Father!'

It is my own passionate hope that our discussion of the Anglican
Covenant in its entirety will help us focus on that priority; the
Covenant is nothing if not a tool for mission. I want to stress yet
again that the Covenant is not envisaged as an instrument of control.
And this is perhaps a good place to clarify that the place given in the
final text to the Standing Committee of the Communion introduces no
novelty: the Committee is identical to the former Joint Standing
Committee, fully answerable in all matters to the ACC and the Primates;
nor is there any intention to prevent the Primates in the group from
meeting separately. The reference to the Standing Committee reflected
widespread unease about leaving certain processes only to the ACC or
only to the Primates.

But we are constantly reminded that the priorities of mission are
experienced differently in different places, and that trying to
communicate the Gospel in the diverse tongues of human beings can itself
lead to misunderstandings and failures of communication between
Christians. The sobering truth is that often our attempts to share the
Gospel effectively in our own setting can create problems for those in
other settings.

3.

We are at a point in our common life where broken communications and
fragile relationships have created a very mistrustful climate. This is
not news. But many have a sense that the current risks are greater than
ever. Although attitudes to human sexuality have been the presenting
cause, I want to underline the fact that what has precipitated the
current problem is not simply this issue but the widespread bewilderment
and often hurt in different quarters that we have no way of making
decisions together so that we are not compromised or undermined by what
others are doing. We have not, in other words, found a way of shaping
our consciences and convictions as a worldwide body. We have not fully
received the Pentecostal gift of mutual understanding for common
mission.

It may be said - quite understandably, in one way - that our societies
and their assumptions are so diverse that we shall never be able to do
this. Yet we are called to seek for mutual harmony and common purpose,
and not to lose heart. If the truth of Christ is indeed ultimately one
as we all believe, there should be a path of mutual respect and
thankfulness that will hold us in union and help us grow in that truth.

Yet at the moment we face a dilemma. To maintain outward unity at a
formal level while we are convinced that the divisions are not only deep
but damaging to our local mission is not a good thing. Neither is it a
good thing to break away from each other so dramatically that we no
longer see Christ in each other and risk trying to create a church of
the 'perfect' - people like us. It is significant that there are still
very many in The Episcopal Church, bishops, clergy and faithful, who
want to be aligned with the Communion's general commitments and
directions, such as those who identify as 'Communion Partners', who
disagree strongly with recent decisions, yet want to remain in visible
fellowship within TEC so far as they can. And, as has often been pointed
out, there are things that Anglicans across the world need and want to
do together for the care of God's poor and vulnerable that can and do go
on even when division over doctrine or discipline is sharp.

4.

More and more, Anglicans are aware of living through a time of
substantial transition, a time when the structures that have served us
need reviewing and refreshing, perhaps radical changing, when the voice
and witness in the Communion of Christians from the developing world is
more articulate and creative than ever, and when the rapidity of social
change in 'developed' nations leaves even some of the most faithful and
traditional Christian communities uncertain where to draw the boundaries
in controversial matters - not only sexuality but issues of bioethics,
for example, or the complexities of morality in the financial world.

A time of transition, by definition, does not allow quick solutions to
such questions, and it is a time when, ideally, we need more than ever
to stay in conversation. As I have said many times before, whatever
happens to our structures, we still need to preserve both working
relationships and places for exchange and discussion. New vehicles for
conversations across these boundaries are being developed with much
energy.

But some decisions cannot be avoided. We began by thinking about
Pentecost and the diverse peoples of the earth finding a common voice,
recognising that each was speaking a truth recognised by all. However,
when some part of that fellowship speaks in ways that others find hard
to recognise, and that point in a significantly different direction from
what others are saying, we cannot pretend there is no problem.

And when a province through its formal decision-making bodies or its
House of Bishops as a body declines to accept requests or advice from
the consultative organs of the Communion, it is very hard (as noted in
my letter to the Communion last year after the General Convention of
TEC) to see how members of that province can be placed in positions
where they are required to represent the Communion as a whole. This
affects both our ecumenical dialogues, where our partners (as they often
say to us) need to know who it is they are talking to, and our internal
faith-and-order related groups.

I am therefore proposing that, while these tensions remain unresolved,
members of such provinces - provinces that have formally, through their
Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the
moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion and recently
reaffirmed by the Standing Committee and the Inter-Anglican Standing
Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) - should not be
participants in the ecumenical dialogues in which the Communion is
formally engaged. I am further proposing that members of such provinces
serving on IASCUFO should for the time being have the status only of
consultants rather than full members. This is simply to confirm what the
Communion as a whole has come to regard as the acceptable limits of
diversity in its practice. It does not alter what has been said earlier
by the Primates' Meeting about the nature of the moratoria: the request
for restraint does not necessarily imply that the issues involved are of
equal weight but recognises that they are 'central factors placing
strains on our common life', in the words of the Primates in 2007.
Particular provinces will be contacted about the outworking of this in
the near future.

I am aware that other bodies have responsibilities in questions
concerned with faith and order, notably the Primates' Meeting, the
Anglican Consultative Council and the Standing Committee. The latter two
are governed by constitutional provisions which cannot be overturned by
any one person's decision alone, and there will have to be further
consultation as to how they are affected. I shall be inviting the views
of all members of the Primates' Meeting on the handling of these matters
with a view to the agenda of the next scheduled meeting in January 2011.

5.

In our dealings with other Christian communions, we do not seek to deny
our diversity; but there is an obvious problem in putting forward
representatives of the Communion who are consciously at odds with what
the Communion has formally requested or stipulated. This does not seem
fair to them or to our partners. In our dealings with each other, we
need to be clear that conscientious decisions may be taken in good
faith, even for what are held to be good theological or missional
reasons, and yet have a cost when they move away from what is
recognisable and acceptable within the Communion. Thus - to take a very
different kind of example - there have been and there are Anglicans who
have a strong conscientious objection to infant baptism. Their views
deserve attention, respect and careful study, they should be engaged in
serious dialogue - but it would be eccentric to place such people in a
position where their view was implicitly acknowledged as one of a range
of equally acceptable convictions, all of which could be taken as
representatively Anglican.

Yet no-one should be celebrating such public recognition of divisions
and everyone should be reflecting on how to rebuild relations and to
move towards a more coherent Anglican identity (which does not mean an
Anglican identity with no diversity, a point once again well made by the
statement from the Singapore meeting). Some complain that we are
condemned to endless meetings that achieve nothing. I believe that in
fact we have too few meetings that allow proper mutual exploration. It
may well be that such encounters need to take place in a completely
different atmosphere from the official meetings of the Communion's
representative bodies, and this needs some imaginative thought and
planning. Much work is already going into making this more possible.

But if we do conclude that some public marks of 'distance', as the
Windsor Continuation Group put it, are unavoidable if our Communion
bodies are not to be stripped of credibility and effectiveness, the
least Christian thing we can do is to think that this absolves us from
prayer and care for each other, or continuing efforts to make sense of
each other.

We are praying for a new Pentecost for our Communion. That means above
all a vast deepening of our capacity to receive the gift of being
adopted sons and daughters of the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It
means a deepened capacity to speak of Jesus Christ in the language of
our context so that we are heard and the Gospel is made compelling and
credible. And it also means a deepened capacity to love and nourish each
other within Christ's Body - especially to love and nourish, as well as
to challenge, those whom Christ has given us as neighbours with whom we
are in deep and painful dispute.

One remarkable symbol of promise for our Communion is the generous gift
received by the Diocese of Jerusalem from His Majesty the King of
Jordan, who has provided a site on the banks of the Jordan River, at the
traditional site of Our Lord's Baptism, for the construction of an
Anglican church. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of blessing the
foundation stone of this church and viewing the plans for its design. It
will be a worthy witness at this historic site to the Anglican
tradition, a sign of real hope for the long-suffering Christians of the
region, and something around which the Communion should gather as a
focus of common commitment in Christ and his Spirit. I hope that many in
the Communion will give generous support to the project.

'We have the mind of Christ' says St Paul (I Cor. 2.16); and, as the
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has recently written, this means
that we must have a 'kenotic', a self-emptying approach to each other in
the Church. May the Spirit create this in us daily and lead us into that
wholeness of truth which is only to be found in the crucified and risen
Lord Jesus.

I wish you all God's richest blessing at this season.

+Rowan Cantuar:
Lambeth Palace
Pentecost 2010

Statement from the Anglican Bishops in Southern African on the Imprisonment of Stephen Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga

We, the Bishops of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa call upon the Government of South Africa to seek the release of Stephen Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, who were recently sentenced in Malawi to 14 years imprisonment with hard labour, after they shared in a traditional ceremony of engagement.

As we have previously stated, though there is a breadth of theological views among us on matters of human sexuality, we are united in opposing the criminalisation of homosexual people. We see the sentence that has been handed down to these two individuals as a gross violation of human rights and we therefore strongly condemn such sentences and behaviour towards other human beings. We emphasize the teachings of the Scriptures that all human beings are created in the image of God and therefore must be treated with respect and accorded human dignity. .

These principles are at the heart of South Africa's own Constitution, whose provisions we see as setting an example for the world to follow. We therefore call on our President and Government to pursue the same values and standards for the upholding of human well-being, dignity and respect, in our external relations; to engage in dialogue with their counterparts on the rights of minorities; and to oppose any measures which demean and oppress individuals, communities, or groups of people. In particular we call on our President and Government to lobby the Government of Malawi at every level to uphold the commitment it shares through the SADC treaty to promote human rights (Article 4). We urge them to press for the swift release of these two individuals, who have committed no act of violence or harm against anyone; for the quashing of the sentence against them; and for the repeal of this repressive legislation.

More generally, we wish to reiterate our deep concern at the violent language used against the gay community across Sub-Saharan Africa, and at the increased legal action being taken against gay individuals, communities and organisations. Even in South Africa we are aware of instances of violence against the gay and lesbian community. We therefore appeal to law-makers everywhere to defend the rights of these minorities.

As Bishops we believe that it is immoral to permit or support oppression of, or discrimination against, people on the grounds of their sexual orientation, and contrary to the teaching of the gospel; particularly Jesus’ command that we should love one another as he has loved us, without distinction (John 13:34-35). We commit ourselves to teach, preach and act against any laws that undermine human dignity and oppress any and all minorities, even as we call for Christians and all people to uphold the standards of holiness of life.


Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town

Hans Küng open letter to Catholic Bishops

Posted: Monday, April 19, 2010 5:45 pm

Venerable Bishops,

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.

I deeply appreciated that the pope invited me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly, four-hour-long conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope that my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to promote an ongoing renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Unfortunately, my hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not been fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have pointed this out to him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously performs his everyday duties as pope, and he has given us three helpful encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to facing the major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed up more opportunities than it has taken:

Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.

Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.

The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. The recent comparison of the current criticism faced by the pope with anti-Semitic hate campaigns – made by Rev Raniero Cantalamessa during an official Good Friday service at the Vatican – has stirred up a storm of indignation among Jews around the world.

Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.

Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.

Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.

Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.

Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.

This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:

He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).

He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.

He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.

He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.

Pope Benedict XVI seems to be increasingly cut off from the vast majority of church members who pay less and less heed to Rome and, at best, identify themselves only with their local parish and bishop.

I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.

You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches, empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger “pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church reform in pretense rather than fact!

And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are disastrous. Important church leaders have already admitted this. Numerous innocent and committed pastors and educators are suffering under the stigma of suspicion now blanketing the church. You, reverend bishops, must face up to the question: What will happen to our church and to your diocese in the future? It is not my intention to sketch out a new program of church reform. That I have done often enough both before and after the council. Instead, I want only to lay before you six proposals that I am convinced are supported by millions of Catholics who have no voice in the current situation.

1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your devotion, but rather calls for reform!

2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful.

3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the college of the apostles. In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops. Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old, uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests and of the men and women who make up the church.

4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ). Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious pressure from below.

5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was inherited from the Middle Ages, represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional solutions. It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore:

6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.

With the church in deep crisis, this is my appeal to you, venerable bishops: Put to use the episcopal authority that was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council. In this urgent situation, the eyes of the world turn to you. Innumerable people have lost their trust in the Catholic Church. Only by openly and honestly reckoning with these problems and resolutely carrying out needed reforms can their trust be regained. With all due respect, I beg you to do your part – together with your fellow bishops as far as possible, but also alone if necessary – in apostolic “fearlessness” ( Acts 4:29, 31 ). Give your faithful signs of hope and encouragement and give our church a perspective for the future.

With warm greetings in the community of the Christian faith,

Yours, Hans Küng

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s video addressto the Fourth Global South to South Encounter,20 April 2010

Greetings to you all, in the name of our risen Lord and Saviour.

You are meeting in this most precious season of the Christian year – the Easter season when we give thanks for the new creation revealed and made real for us in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And we meet also praying in preparation for Pentecost for the renewed gift of the Holy Spirit in which alone we come fully alive to God and to one another in Jesus Christ.

I wish you every blessing in your meeting and I’m delighted that it’s happening at this particular moment, not only in the Christian year, but in the life of our Communion. I’m very sorry indeed that it’s not been possible for me to be with you physically. But I know that my greetings and best wishes will have been brought to you by our friends from the United Kingdom who are joining you on this occasion.

I want to comment on one or two things that relate to your agenda, and indeed to the agenda that we share as Anglicans in our worldwide fellowship.

The text of the Anglican Covenant has now been available for discussion for several months. As you know it’s the fruit of long, careful, prayerful discussion; the fruit of a sustained attempt on the part of so many people throughout our Communion to determine not only what it is that binds us together in terms of our faith, the authority we accord to scripture and tradition, but also what binds us humanly and specifically to one another in our fellowship, in our Communion – what it is that makes us one body, one community, able to speak to the world in the name of Christ.

The text of the [Anglican] Covenant is a whole. It is something which lays out the foundations of our faith, the language that we share, and the hopes that we share, but it also—we hope and pray—sets out a path for the future, a path of mutual attention, mutual respect, the kind of obedience to one another that the New Testament proposes for us, but so much in the Christian tradition also suggests – the careful listening to one another’s needs, and discernment of what we can say together, that is part not only in the life of the Church from time immemorial, but that has also been an important part of the life of many religious communities in the Benedictine tradition in which that mutual listening and obedience to one another has been so crucial. So one of my prayers for your meeting in these days is that you will discover something about that mutual obedience, the covenant with one another that comes out of our grateful acceptance of the covenant God makes with us in the blood of Jesus Christ.

Covenant, as many people have said, is an extraordinarily rich word. In your discussions during these days you’ll have had many opportunities to think about the richness of that word in Scripture and in the theological tradition. But as I reflected on it myself, one of the texts that I looked to was the association that St Paul makes in Romans 9.4 between adoption¸ glory, and covenant. He’s speaking there of the Jewish people: ‘from them’, he says (v.5), ‘comes the Messiah’, the Lord, the Incarnate God. In their life they have discovered adoption as children of God, the revelation of the glory of God, and the covenant reality which holds them to God and to one another. And I would like to think that as we Anglicans together reflect on covenant, we think also about adoption and about glory.

As Anglicans we, like all other Christians, understand our lives in Christ as being brought into that glorious liberty which belongs to the children of God – the liberty from self and sin, the liberty to pray and to praise without hindrance; to stand where Christ stands; to call God ‘Abba! Father!’ (Mark 14.36, Romans 8.15, Galatians 4.6), to speak with his voice and to breathe in his Spirit. We are adopted sons and daughters of our heavenly Father. And in that being drawn into the adoptive relationship with the Father, what happens is glory – the glory that in St John’s gospel Jesus assures he will give to his disciples because they have come to share his relation with God the Father (John 17.10).

So, to the world we show a new pattern of human life reconciled with the Father, free in the household of the Father to come to him with our prayer, with our praise, our petition, whenever we need and whenever we wish, confident of his reconciling and forgiving love. We show to the world that model of reconciled, forgiven life, and of bold and intimate prayer. And in doing so, the glory of God is reflected in us: the glory that Christ has with the Father before all time and to all eternity, now made real in the faces and the lives of ordinary people like you and me.

That new life is made real in us, and that glory is shown in us, because God has made a covenant with us – has promised in Jesus Christ to be with us when we turn to him, has promised that his merciful, forgiving, renewing strength will always be there for us, that his Spirit is never exhausted in re-creating us. It’s the covenant that makes us aware of our new status as the adopted sons and daughters of God, the covenant that is the foundation of glory being shown in us. And therefore it’s God’s covenant with us that is the basis of our mission, our confident readiness to share with the whole needy world the promise of being adopted as sons and daughters, the promise of glory. And as so much in Scripture hints, as we rediscover again and again that covenant that God has made with us, so we rediscover the covenant that binds us to one another. We share in that status of sons and daughters. We see glory in each other’s faces. And in our unity and our commitment to one another we show that God not only has a purpose for individuals, but that God has a purpose for the human family.

So when, as an Anglican Communion we seek to bind ourselves in covenant, we’re not simply making a contract, we’re not simply trying to solve problems. We’re trying to find a way of grounding our mission in a new way, in the recognition of that inter-weaving of adoption and glory that all Christians share.

So as you discuss the Covenant—and as the Covenant is discussed in your Provinces—I hope that that larger dimension will always be in people’s minds. I was particularly pleased to see the ways in which the titles of the various bible studies and lectures during your meeting reflected that sense that we need to go deeper into the idea of covenant. Few things could be more important for us. So, in all those discussions and reflections I wish you every blessing, and I look forward with great eagerness to hearing what you have discovered in your thinking and praying together.

But of course we are reflecting on the need for a covenant in the light of confusion, brokenness and tension within our Anglican family – a brokenness and a tension that has been made still more acute by recent decisions in some of our Provinces. In all your minds there will be questions around the election and consecration of Mary Glasspool in Los Angeles. All of us share the concern that in this decision and action the Episcopal Church has deepened the divide between itself and the rest of the Anglican family. And as I speak to you now, I am in discussion with a number of people around the world about what consequences might follow from that decision, and how we express the sense that most Anglicans will want to express, that this decision cannot speak for our common mind.

But I hope also in your thinking about this and in your reacting to it, you’ll bear in mind that there are no quick solutions for the wounds of the Body of Christ. It is the work of the Spirit that heals the Body of Christ, not the plans or the statements of any group, or any person, or any instrument of communion. Naturally we seek to minimize the damage, to heal the hurts, to strengthen our mission, to make sure that it goes forward with integrity and conviction. Naturally, there are decisions that have to be taken. But at the same time we must all—as indeed your own covering notes suggest for your conference—we must all share in a sense of repentance and willingness to be renewed by the Spirit.

So while the tensions and the crises of our Anglican Communion will of course be in your minds as they are in mine, I know from what you have written, what you have communicated about your plans and hopes for this conference, that you will allow the Holy Spirit to lift your eyes to that broader horizon of God’s purpose for us as Anglicans, for us as Christians, and indeed for us as human beings.

Adoption and glory: these are the treasures given to us in the very earthenware vessels of our discipleship with its varying failings and confusions. And yet God has promised to be faithful. And it’s his faithfulness that we celebrate at this Easter season, and as we wait for the seal of the Spirit at Pentecost.

May your prayers and your thoughts be part of a new Pentecost for the Anglican Communion, which will bind us in communion more deeply than ever, make us more faithful, effective and imaginative witnesses to God’s truth to the ends of the earth.

May God the Father bless you all, through the risen Christ, showering upon you the power of his Holy Spirit.

+ Rowan Cantuar:

MadPriest's sermon For Palm Sunday 2010

When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

They said, “The Lord needs it.”

Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road.

As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”

He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

***

At first glance Lent and Passiontide might appear to people outside of the Church as just a huge chunk of monotonous sameness. They could easily conclude that all that happens is that Christians start being miserable and feeling guilty on Ash Wednesday, continue being miserable and feeling guilty for 42 days until Good Friday when they become even more miserable and feel even more guilty. Probably the only thing most non-Christians know about Lent is that it is a time of fasting, of not enjoying oneself.

Regrettably, for many Christians and for long periods during our faith's history, this was, and still is, what this part of the liturgical year is all about.This is due to the fact that at various times in the past the Church has been hijacked by holier than thou people who have somehow managed to convince most Christians that being miserable, feeling guilty and not enjoying oneself is the way to please God and get into heaven. I expect this assertion was made by some right at the beginning of the history of the Church, but it gained a major foothold in our thinking when the desert fathers started hiding themselves away, on their own, in the middle of nowhere and sometimes even spending their whole lives sitting on top of pillars or in holes in the ground. This extreme asceticism was popular during the 3rd Century but it has been carried through to our times in the monastic movement that based its rules of life on the practices of the desert fathers. It may appear to us that the three main rules of monastic life, celibacy, poverty and obedience were given to the Church by God written on stone tablets, but the truth is that they are purely accidents of time, place and culture decided upon by a small group of extremely antisocial men.

Being miserable has been a main defining part of the Christian mindset at other times during our history. It was particularly popular during the later Middle Ages. This was a time of war, pestilence and very short lives for most people. Many believed that they were living during the last days or that all the pain and suffering they were enduring was a punishment from God because they had sinned. Asceticism, fasting and self harm were regarded as being a sacrifice both the individual Christian and the Christian Church could make in order to appease this vengeful lawmaker of a god.

In some parts of the Church this idea that the pain of human beings pleases God has persisted into our modern era. That people outside of the Church regard Christians as a miserable lot is not an accident. It has to be admitted we appear to spend an inordinate of our time complaining about people enjoying themselves and trying to stop them doing so. There are many examples of even more bizarre practices. In some places men will literally nail themselves to a wooden cross in order to suffer like Christ did. And you can still come across such silliness right in the heart of the Church. I read the other week that the last pope used to regularly self-flagellate. He had a special implement for doing this hidden away in his closet.

Of course, none of this has any basis in the teaching of Jesus Christ. He advised us to live simple lives so that we could be generous to others less well off than ourselves but he never told us to cause ourselves harm and he didn't cause harm to himself either. Jesus fasted at one point in his life for a specific reason but for the rest of the time he eschewed such extreme actions. And the idea that Jesus would want people to suffer like he did is a bit sick if you ask me. It's like somebody going down with a bad case of the flu and saying to their friends and family, "I hope you all get this." If we, weak humans that we are, don't want others to go through the same pains we endure during our lives, why should we think that our merciful Lord would ask for us to endure his pain. Most humans will expend a lot of time, energy and money trying to make sure the people they love don't suffer from avoidable pain and distress. And, Christ did the same. He suffered and died so that we didn't have to. Deliberately embracing suffering when we don't have to is an insult to Jesus. Worse still, it is stating that the suffering of Christ was not sufficient for our salvation.

Lent is a time of simplicity not a time of misery. We get rid of the clutter from our lives so that we concentrate our thoughts on that which Christ achieved for us. Any dwelling on our sins and our guilt should be done fully in the constant awareness that God has graciously forgiven us. Lent should be a time of contemplative joy not a painful time.

And it should not be a dull, static time either. Lent celebrated in the English, Anglican, Catholic tradition is not monotonous, it contains light and shade, it is dynamic. We switch between times of sadness and times of joy. For a start every Sunday in the Church year is a festival and we are not supposed to fast on festivals because festival means feast. And there's Mothering Sunday at the beginning of the fourth week of Lent when we celebrate motherhood, our families, our communities and new birth. We say thank you to our mothers for giving us life by giving to them symbols of new life, flowers, the first new birth of spring. Mothering Sunday is a little Easter in the middle of Lent.

And then, of course, there's today, Palm Sunday. A day on which the Church emerges itself into the bittersweet joy of Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Bittersweet because, although we feel the happiness of the crowd that cheers Jesus, we know what that same crowd will demand to be done to Jesus in just a few days time.

However, Lent is not a season of isolated celebrations. It is also a season during which there is constant linear movement. During Lent we hear the story of Jesus' journey towards the climax of his ministry in Jerusalem. And we not only engage with this story we actually become actors in it. To some extent, in this Lenten journey, we are Jesus and Jesus is us. If you remember, the other week, we looked at how we all face our own Jerusalem at different times in our lives. But mainly we identify ourselves with Christ's disciples as they accompany their Lord towards and into Jerusalem. We identify with the disciples because they were as we are. Human beings capable of acts of great altruism and bravery but also capable of being fearful to the point of betraying that which they love most.

This year I have ditched the Passion reading from our Palm Sunday service so that we can concentrate on the events that should be celebrated today. The Passion should be comemorated on Good Friday and we have a service on that day during which the Passion will be read. The details are on the news sheet. As Common Worship has given in to modernity by celebrating Good Friday on the previous Sunday so that people don't have to go to church more than once a week, I had to go back to the Book of Common Prayer for a correct liturgical reading for today.

The reading in the Prayer Book is taken from the Gospel of Luke which is useful as the account of Christ's entry into Jerusalem is subtly different in Luke's gospel to the accounts in the other gospels, which gives us the opportunity to learn something from our reading that is not obvious in the other gospels. You see, there are two things missing in Luke's account that most people would probably assume are in all the gospels. Firstly, there are no palms. In fact there are not even branches cut from trees. The only things that are placed in front of Jesus as he makes his way into Jerusalem are the cloaks off the disciples' backs. Secondly, the crowd that greets and cheers Jesus does not come out of Jerusalem to meet him. The cheering crowd in Luke's account is made up entirely of of Christ's disciples who had journeyed with him, at least some of the way. And bear in mind we are not talking about just the twelve disciples, we are talking about a much larger group of followers, men and women, that had become part of Christ's entourage during his ministry.

This restriction of the crowd to members of Christ's community only, makes the whole episode a lot more intimate and personal from our point of view. It makes the entry into Jerusalem an action of the people of the Church. It also emphasises the pilgrimage aspect of Lent - the journey that Christ and his disciples make at the end of his earthly ministry. A journey, that through our observance of Lent, we have become very much a part of. Our identification with the disciples places us in that crowd at the gates to Jerusalem, cheering our Lord and placing our coats on the ground in front of him.

Unfortunately, there is a downside to this. By restricting the crowd at this point of the story to just the disciples, Luke places everyone who is not a disciple of Christ at some distance. The only outsiders mentioned by Luke at this point are some Pharisees who are shown, by the words they utter, to be definitely not followers of Christ. This emphasis on Christ's disciples at this point carries on in Luke's gospel into his Passion narrative. John, in his gospel, includes non-disciples in the crowd that greets Jesus and so he is able to subtlety shift a lot of blame for Christ's execution onto the general mass of people in Jerusalem. I think Luke wants to make the point that, although outsiders were part of Christ's story at the end of his life, they were involved more as onlookers and actors and maybe not even in control of the parts they play in the drama.

For Luke, it was Christ and his followers, the precursor of the Church, who were centre stage a place they would maintain throughout the rest of his gospel and which the disciples of Christ would continue to occupy into the Acts of the Apostles. I think Luke sees the story of Peter denying Christ before the cock crowed three times and the betrayal of Jesus by Judas as being of far more importance in his account of Christ's Passion than the role played by Pilate and the people of Jerusalem. Luke wants his readers to identify with the disciples not with Pilate and the Roman soldiers and, if we accept that we are one with the disciples in the narrative at Christ's entry into Jerusalem, we will remain one with disciples throughout the rest of the story and view the action through the eyes of the disciples, not through the eyes of the crowd.

The downside then is that we become identified with the disciples who fled when things got too hot for them, with Peter who denied his Lord and even with Judas who betrayed his friend.

So, by celebrating Palm Sunday correctly and not ignoring it just so that we can celebrate Good Friday at our convenience, we place ourselves alongside Jesus as he journeys towards his destiny on Calvary Hill. And, if we are to understand why we are Christians, we have to make that journey with him. We have to be with him as he ministers to the people of Jerusalem. We have to be with him at the Last Supper and in the Garden of Gethsemane. We must stand by him at his trial and watch at the foot of the cross as he dies. We also have to betray him and deny him and run away in fear as the time of his brutal execution approaches. We have to endure all this so that we can know, not only what Christ endured, but also what his endurance meant, and still means, to his disciples, his people, his Church. Our pilgrimage must include Holy Week, it must include our identification with those weak, fearful disciples, so that, on Easter morning, we know in our hearts, not only that we are raised with Christ but why we need to be raised with Christ. Because then, still as one with the disciples, we can move as they did out of fear and weakness towards their and our true vocation of proclaimers of Christ's gospel and builders of Christ's Church and God's kingdom on earth.

The Bishop of Liverpool,The Rt Reverend James Jones,Presidential Address, Synod March 2010

The Equality Bill which is before Parliament has raised again the issue about how the Church engages in the debate on sexual ethics.

In my Presidential Address today I want therefore to return to the debate on human sexuality. The thought of it may make your heart grow heavy because many feel that this issue has consumed too much of our time and energy and even deflected us from other equally important areas in the mission of God.

You may think that with a General Election coming up I should be addressing some of the major political issues of our time. I did this in a lecture in Ripon Cathedral three weeks ago and have made copies available to you today. You may think that I should direct attention to Jesus and address the matter of faith. I am doing this each Wednesday evening in our own Cathedral during Lent.

However, for some in the church homosexuality has become the defining issue of orthodoxy; it has become the benchmark on how you interpret Scripture and apply it authoritatively to the modern world. For others in the church, especially but not exclusively for those who are gay, homosexuality and the church’s attitude have become the touchstone of the church’s seriousness in wanting to include in the Kingdom all God’s children.

Put like that this summary of the two positions sounds perfectly reasonable and irenic. But we all know that the division of opinion has caused much bitterness and enmity and continues to aggravate the worsening relations within the Anglican Communion. The question which exercises me and which I wish to address today is whether we in the church can have a division of opinion without bitterness and a diversity of conviction without enmity.

Of all the ethical dilemmas that face human society the most basic and fundamental questions centre on the taking of human life. Beginning and end of life issues are at the forefront of our moral debates today and come to a head in legislation that permits abortion and in proposed legislation about assisted suicide and euthanasia. Synod will recall that to the latter subject I devoted a Presidential Address in June 2006. At the time of the Iraq War there was also animated debate about whether or not that military engagement fulfilled the criteria of a just war. Historically the famous five principles of a just war probably go back to 4th and 5th Centuries with the writings of Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo although it was Thomas Aquinas who gave the theory definition in the Middle Ages.

A cursory glance at the history of the just war theory and the ethics of pacifism show that for the last two thousand years the church has been exercised about whether or not it is ever right for a Christian to take up arms and to take the life of another human being. Although it has been agreed that the early church (from the period of persecution within the Roman Empire until the conversion of Constantine) was the age of pacifism, since then the church has not only allowed but embraced a breadth of ethical opinion on the taking of life.

Augustine made the point that Jesus ruled out Malatia (hatred) not Militia (military service) and the church, without compromising the principle of the sanctity of human life, has made space within the Body of Christ for a variety of ethical positions.

I suspect that within our Synod there is a similar spectrum of moral conviction about whether or not it is ever justified to take the life of another. No doubt should our nation ever find itself in another period of compulsory conscription to military service we would have lively debates on the floor of this Synod to argue the case and to discern the truth. Meanwhile, on this the most fundamental of all ethical issues in spite of any divergent views, we sit comfortably with each other, recognise each other’s integrity, respect one another’s faith and moral judgement and enjoy communion in Christ with one another.

I have to say that I am not fazed by this for with you I recognise that in a complex world of absolute moral principles the application of them is rarely a straightforward process. That is why our courts are presided over by people and not computers.

Even though we live in a society tempted to reduce every decision to a box-ticking exercise that can be processed through a computer, when it comes to making moral judgements about a person’s behaviour we have to hear the human story and form a moral judgement with regard not only to the nature of the action but also to the intent and the consequences. And although I am not a lawyer I know enough to see that context frames a deed and can either mitigate or aggravate the seriousness of an action.

The histories of the First and Second World Wars when conscription was in force show how many wrestled with their conscience as they sought to apply moral principles to their own particular context. As we look back, our society and the church both approve and salute the courage shown by both pacifists and conscripts even though at the time there were passionate debates, fierce division of opinion and great hostility shown to conscientious objectors.

The fact that conscripts and pacifists divided along one moral line does not detract from our admiration now nor deflect us from acknowledging now the moral courage of both. We may sympathise with the soldier yet we can salute the pacifist; we may identify fully with the pacifist yet admire the sacrifice of the soldier.

In other words, we can now stand on either side of the moral argument and still be in fellowship despite disagreeing on this the most fundamental ethical issue, the sixth of the Ten Commandments.

I know that especially for those who are gay this is not an exact moral parallel for our sexuality like ethnicity is not a matter of choice. It is a given. In Christian terms a grace. Yet, conceding that important distinction, here is an area of ethical dispute where the church has contained disagreement.

Just as the church over the last 2000 years has come to allow a variety of ethical conviction about the taking of life and the application of the sixth Commandment so I believe that in this period it is also moving towards allowing a variety of ethical conviction about people of the same gender loving each other fully. Just as Christian pacifists and Christian soldiers profoundly disagree with one another yet in their disagreement continue to drink from the same cup because they share in the one body so too I believe the day is coming when Christians who equally profoundly disagree about the consonancy of same gender love with the discipleship of Christ will in spite of their disagreement drink openly from the same cup of salvation.

This is I believe the next chapter to be written in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. It is the chapter that is already being written in our Partnership in Mission with the Diocese of Virginia and with the Diocese of Akure in Nigeria. At our last Synod we renewed and approved the continuation of our partnership with the Diocese of Akure. In the appendix of the report considered by the Synod was the exchange of letters between me and my brother Bishop Michael Ipinmoye of Akure. I will include them as an enclosure to this address and draw attention to the paragraph where I set out how I see the debate on sexual ethics in the Diocese of Liverpool.

“Furthermore, I was able to explain to you that I thought that the Diocese of Liverpool was on the way to achieving a position similar to the church’s attitude to pacifism in matters of homosexuality. In other words, there will be people of equal sincerity and equal conviction who believe and do not believe that homosexuality within a stable and faithful relationship is consistent with Christian discipleship. Again, I was encouraged that you seemed able to respect this likelihood even though I know that you were at pains to demonstrate to me that the Church of Nigeria could never countenance something which was against the law of the country. “


The point of significance in this is the response of Bishop Michael. He restates his own position and that of the Diocese of Akure and of the Church of Nigeria and calls on us to continue to reflect on the Biblical material. Having done this he reiterated what he said to me personally in our private meeting that he and the Diocese of Akure wish to continue the Partnership in Mission. This is a partnership between an African Diocese taking a traditional stance on gay relationships and a Church of England Diocese which is moving toward embracing a range of ethical convictions on this issue and which is also in partnership with a Diocese in the Episcopal Church of America.

In the Diocese of Liverpool there are churches and individuals who identify with the traditional stance on gay relationships held by the African Church, although I know of no one who shares the homophobic hatred expressed in the proposed legislation that has been before the Ugandan Parliament which I take this opportunity to criticise and abhor. To our shame in Liverpool we have seen outbursts of homophobic violence which the Church Leaders have unanimously condemned in the following statement:

“The Leaders of the churches in Liverpool believe that it is wrong for anyone in the community of which we are all part to be victimised, or threatened with victimisation, on account of their race, creed, colour or sexual orientation. We affirm our commitment to work with others to build a community where all can have their place of belonging, feel welcome and live in safety. As Church Leaders, we represent a rich variety of Christian traditions, with different perspectives on some issues, but we stand together in condemning the use of violence and other forms of intimidation against minority groups which are especially vulnerable. The City of Liverpool has a long history of welcoming people of difference. In the past we have discovered, sometimes painfully, the importance of learning to live peacefully together. This lesson we must never forget.”


In his most recent Presidential Address to the General Synod of the Church of England the Archbishop of Canterbury said, “The rights and dignities of gay and lesbian people are a matter of proper concern for all of us, and we assume with good reason, even, I should say, with good Christian reason, that the securing of these rights is obviously a mark of civilised and humane society. When those rights are threatened – as in the infamous legislation that was being discussed in Uganda – we quite rightly express repugnance.” If from a Christian point of view we can advocate this breadth of moral conviction for society at large I believe it is consistent theologically and ethically to allow the same diversity of moral conviction within the Church herself.

And, just as the rights and dignities of gay and lesbian people are a matter for proper concern for both church and society so are the rights and dignities of those who out of theological and moral conviction believe that the gift of full sexual expression is given only to those in marriage. This is one of the reasons why I voted for the amendment to the Equality Bill which allows the Church to continue to appoint people who uphold their historic stance on moral and doctrinal issues. It is why I also spoke in the debate in defence of the right of the church to appoint Head Teachers who can uphold the Christian ethos of church schools. Although I do find myself in sympathy with Lord Ali’s amendment which allows other religious organisations to conduct civil partnerships on the grounds that other people should also be free to follow their own conscience and theological and moral convictions.

The heartache for those who take the traditional stance is that it can be used to fuel homophobic attitudes. This is particularly painful for Christians who are homosexual and who accept the traditional ethic for themselves; they feel the negativity personally. It is an agonising cross. As you can imagine, they do not come lightly to the interpretation that their homosexual condition is a call to celibacy. In my view, the debate over the last twenty years has not given sufficient attention to their situation or to their theological, ethical and spiritual insights.

In the Diocese of Liverpool there are also churches and individuals who identify with the stance on gay relationships held by the American Episcopal Church. In my essay and previous Presidential Address “Making Space for Truth and Grace” I have sought to understand some of the dynamics at work in American culture. I will not rehearse them here except to say that any church, ours included, that has been so implicated in the slave trade, slavery and racism will understandably want to go to all lengths to demonstrate unequivocally their stance on human rights, civil rights and equal rights for all groups in society. Furthermore, we cannot disentangle easily our reactions to the American Church from our reaction to the dominance of America in the world today. There are many dynamics at work in international relationships. This is one of the reasons that I have consistently argued both to you and the wider church that it is far better to locate ethical and doctrinal debates in the context of established and proven relationships within the Anglican Communion rather than through megaphones across oceans and continents. It is why I am so committed to our relationship with Virginia and Akure. What this partnership recognises, indeed it is predicated upon this principle, is that the diversity of ethical opinion is in itself legitimate.

Over the years as your Bishop I have shared with you my thinking especially on this subject, always promising that as my own understanding developed I would share it with the Synod and the Diocese. I laid this address before the Bishop’s Council in January.

I bring it to you today to say that this is where I now am, and where I believe the Diocese of Liverpool now is and where I hope that the Church of England and the Anglican Communion might also move.



Over the last twelve years we have gone forward in mission with a remarkable degree of unity. This was very much in evidence at the great Clergy Conference last June; it was there again in the recent excellent conference of Church Wardens. By God’s grace we seem able to contain our differences as we rise to the opportunities for mission that come from being the Church of England; we also delight in the unique opportunities for mission that come to our brothers and sisters of other traditions, most notably the Catholic Church. Like the rest of England ours is a culture of diversity. One of the positive aspects of a rich ecumenical landscape is that we have a variety of doors through which different people might enter into the Christian faith.

I think this appreciation of diversity has helped us to accept each other and to work together as a Diocese refusing to allow anything to undermine our oneness in Christ.

That which I have stated explicitly in this address I believe we are already living out implicitly, namely that we do already as a Diocese accept a diversity of ethical convictions about human sexuality in the same way that the church has always allowed a diversity of ethical opinion on taking human life. Within our own fellowship we are brothers and sisters in Christ holding a variety of views on a number of major theological and moral issues and we are members of a church that characteristically allows a large space for a variety of nuances, interpretations, applications and disagreement. I know that sometimes it stretches us, but never to breaking point, for it seems to me that there is a generosity of grace that holds us all together.

If on this subject of sexuality the traditionalists are ultimately right and those who advocate the acceptance of stable and faithful gay relationships are wrong what will their sin be? That in a world of such little love two people sought to express a love that no other relationship could offer them? And if those advocating the acceptance of gay relationship are right and the traditionalists are wrong what will their sin be? That in a church that has forever wrestled with interpreting and applying Scripture they missed the principle in the application of the literal text?
Do these two thoughts not of themselves enlarge the arena in which to do our ethical exploration?

This address has been about how we handle disagreements about ethical principles within the Body of Christ. It is also about how we promote a Christian humanism whereby we discover before God both how to flourish as human beings in Christ and how to treat each other humanely in the process of that discovery. It is my plea that the Church of England and the Anglican Communion must allow a variety of ethical views on the subject as in this Diocese we do and that to do so finds a parallel in the space it offers for a diversity of moral positions on the taking of life. Although it will doubtless remain a disputed question for some time in the wider church I hope this approach will continue to allow for the development of a humane pastoral theology here in the Diocese of Liverpool.

I have not addressed today the implications of this position for the ordering and governance of the church but I wish you to know that in due course we will discuss these in parishes, deaneries and in the Diocesan Synod as we continue to do together our pastoral theology on this subject recognising that decisions belong ultimately to the General Synod and to the House of Bishops.

As Bishop called to “maintain the spirit of unity in the bond of peace” in the Diocese of Liverpool where we have the full spectrum of moral opinion on human sexuality I believe that to have “diversity without enmity”, as the Dean put it at the Bishop’s Council, provides a safe and a spiritually and emotionally healthy place for Christians of differing convictions to discern the will of God for our lives. To know and to do God’s will is our calling. The place for that discernment is the Body of Christ where the different members, differentiated by the diversity of our graces, gifts and experiences, are called to be in harmony and love with one another. It is to that end that I offer you this Address. It is also offered in the hope that we will let nothing deflect us from mission, the sending out of us all to embrace the world in the love of God.