Time heals

Twenty years ago a Canadian priest was fired for being gay and in a relationship. In 1981 Jim Ferry went to his bishop expecting understanding and instead met a church court which expelled him from the ministry.

The Toronto Star reports that they are now to meet again in a ceremony of reconciliation.

For Finlay, now 74, the service is a “personal opportunity for me to express my regret” for Ferry’s suffering. “It was a very, very difficult time for both of us.”  ...

When Ferry informed Finlay of his circumstances, Finlay ordered him to end the relationship. Ferry refused. (The church accepted homosexual clergy, but only if they abstained from giving expression to that fact. In effect, if they lived a lie.) 

Finlay then issued a letter to be read at all Anglican parishes, outing Ferry and “inhibiting” him from performing pastoral duties. Effectively, the priest was fired, becoming, he said, “an outcast . . . and a ‘labelled’ outcast."

Under church procedures, Finlay brought charges against Ferry and, in early 1992, convened a rarely used “bishop’s court” to hear the case.

The court — which had origins in pre-Reformation England — concluded that Ferry’s only wrong was his disobedience to a superior.

As a penalty, Finlay withdrew the priest’s licence. ...

For both Finlay and Ferry, the past two decades have brought pain, anguish and humiliation. Ferry paid immediately and publicly. For 20 years, he felt cast out for the crime of “loving another human being deeply and intimately.”

all here.

Jim Ferry, right, and former archbishop Terence Finlay, left.
STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR

Alan's Covenant Questions

The Anglican Church of Canada

Alan Perry, at Insert Catchy Blog Title Here, has been writing solid, sustained pieces on the Covenant and its detrimental consequences for the Communion and individual Provinces.

In May he summarised the attitude of too many senior people in the Anglican Church of Canada that the Covenant is mostly harmless. He's being told, in summary,

I don't actually believe that the Covenant will accomplish what it is supposed to do. It won't really address the tensions in the Anglican Communion. But I don't believe that it is the Abomination of Desolation, either. I don't think it's going to have any ill effect. Recommendations of Relational Consequences are nothing to worry about.

This is precisely the attitude that ACO business managers have tried to encourage to make the medicine slip down the throats of the Provinces' various legislatures:

Of course it's not harmless. An awful lot of energy, political capital and a publicly undisclosed amount of money has gone into pushing the Covenant through because those who still believe in it believe it will be effective.

It will, its promoters hope, enable the rest of the Communion to expel TEC and ACoC for their wilful and reckless ways in including homosexual people as full members of the Church. Or, more broadly, for not taking the anti-modern stance which the conservative evangelicals have adopted and which they have focused and symbolised in attitudes to homosexuality. Rowan Williams put Archbishop Drexel Gomez in charge of the programme after he had, with Maurice Sinclair, edited a booklet setting out the necessary steps to punish the north American church. That was why Gomez was chosen.

The Covenant will centralise the Communion and give unprecedented powers to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the Anglican Communion office. It will re-write the Anglican Communion with barely any discussion about whether this is the Communion we want or need. Alan writes more recently about the value of provincial autonomy. Let us hope this will not be of merely antiquarian interest.

The Covenant is not 'mostly harmless'. It's pernicious in its intent and dishonest in its route to adoption. No good can come of it.

Alan goes on to explore Canada's legal analysis of the Covenant and the serious concerns that this document raises. It poses questions which are important for all Anglican Churches, not simply for Canada. His answers to the questions are here.

The first two questions are general ones and should be addressed by all Provinces:

1. Should the imprecision in the definitions of a number of terms used in the Covenant concern General Synod when it considers whether or not to adopt the Covenant?
2. Should the lack of natural justice and procedural fairness in section 4 concern General Synod when it considers whether or not to adopt the Covenant?

There was greater precision and clarity of process in earlier drafts. These were attacked and removed from the text. But if the Covenant mechanism are ever invoked these processes (or something very like them) will have to be created. Only now, because they are not in the text or its appendices, they will be under the control of the bureaucrats and almost certainly not open to scrutiny or challenge. (My 2-page pdf of the suggested process is here.)

The next 4 questions address consultation and the impact on the constitution of the Anglican Church of Canada. In England we are assured that there will be no canonical or constitutional impact. But, even if that is true, does that mean it is proper to seek to force other provinces to fit themselves to our norms? I think that a steady process of homogenisation is built into the Covenant.

I believe the Covenant was deliberately phrased to avoid any clash with the Established nature and legal constraints of the Church of England. That courtesy has not been extended to other provinces. There will, I strongly suspect, be legal and constitutional questions in at least USA, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, and the United Churches of North and South India.

Some version of Question 7 should, I think, be put in each Province:

7. Is the strong synodical place of the laity in the Canadian Church sufficiently upheld in the decision-making processes in the Covenant?

In England, it seems to me, the place of the laity is increasingly marginal and subordinate in constitutional terms - but not in reality. They pay, and they pay an ever increasing proportion of the church's current bills and future liabilities. Perhaps the question here should be:

7. To what extent does the decision making processes in the Covenant enhance or diminish the place of the laity in the synods of the Church of England?

Question 8 asks what would be the difference if the ACoC used some verb other than 'adopt' to accept the Covenant. And the answer is none. You're in or you're out.

Question 9 asks what the consequences would be of not signing. This deserves more exploration.  I believe the legal answer is 'not a lot'. The ACoC (and any other church which didn't sign) would still be a member of the Anglican Consultative Council which remains the only legally constituted body of the Communion. 

Politically, however, the answer is unclear. The General Secretary and the Archbishop of Canterbury have already taken it upon themselves to deselect members of particular committees on the grounds that that are members of a province which is not complying with one or other of the moratoria that are supposed to be in place - and appoint people too, if they see fit. They have no legal or constitutional grounds for these actions and they are certainly prejudging the outcomes of debates that are not yet concluded. (And, you might ask, why bother with a Covenant if General Secretary and the Archbishop already act as though there is one. It's clearly superfluous.)

The Covenant won't do what it says on the tin. It will reshape the Communion in ways I believe will be wholly deleterious to the Communion. What is the point of passing global powers to a tiny group and then giving them only one power - the power to get rid of people and churches? Isn't the consequence obvious?

The perils of legalism

Bishop Johnson meets the people at Runnymede

It seems that the Diocese of Toronto has

agreed to allow pastoral services of prayer and blessing for same-sex couples, but will not authorize sacramental rites for the blessing of same-sex unions or gay marriages.

George Conger has the story here (see my earlier post). Ephraim Radner, who lives in Toronto, is not pleased.

“It is hard to escape the fact that the process you have now set in motion — one that involves public proposals, discussions, synodical actions, and all dealing with a way of ordering a particular ‘pastoral response’ that involves episcopal oversight and particular permissions, following directives that involve the nature of prayers – cannot avoid being seen as one of ecclesial ‘authorization’ of liturgical matters surrounding same-sex unions,” he said.

Dr Radner, one of the leaders of the Anglican Communion Institute, and a member of Anglican Covenant Design Group, said the new policy ran contrary to the wider mind of the Communion. While the bishops may have believed they were only giving a structure to a an arrangement for “private prayers”, the “very process you are following” calls for “formal, episcopal, diocesan, public, liturgical prayers of blessing.”

It would not be “very difficult indeed to make the case and persuade others” that what Toronto had now done violated the Lambeth Conference moratorium and [had] was in opposition to the “concerns of many Anglicans around the world.”

(The last paragraph is gobbledegook in the original, of course. Presumed corrections in red.)


If you - or the Covenant, or the common canon law project - take a legalistic approach to matters of conflict and division then hair splitting is precisely what you will get. There are no rules that cannot be sliced up or that need no further interpretation.



If the rule says you may not authorize Rites of Blessing for Same Sex unions you can expect someone to challenge the defintion of each term: this is a political game, not a juridical one. It will eventually work its way out according to majority opinion and not through legal judgements. Thus Bishop Johnson's 'year-long consultation' is not merely cover for his actions but an alternative process to that of the father-knows-best conservatives.

And that immediately hits another core area of dispute: can the church move with the general opinion of its people? Or must the church conform to the specific opinions of its leaders? It is, of course, a false choice. Both leadership and the assent of the led are necessary in the faithful management of change and continuity.








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Toronto tiptoes towards blessing gay couples

Bishop of Toronto Colin Johnson, Anglican Journal

The Canadian Anglican Journal reports that the Diocese of Toronto is proposing to take formal steps which will permit a 'limited number' of parishes to bless gay couples.

The bishops of the diocese of Toronto are proposing that “a limited number of parishes” be given episcopal permission to offer prayers and blessing “but not the nuptial blessing” to same-sex couples “in stable, long-term, committed relationships.”

The bishops, who outlined their proposal at a Jan. 29 meeting of the diocesan council, said they plan to conduct an extensive consultation process and would present the guidelines for implementing the proposal at the diocese’s synods in May and in November. A bishop’s commission will be formed to formulate the guidelines.

This seems to be as close as the Diocese can get without breaching national recommendations. In a different approach the diocesan synods in Ottawa, Montreal, Niagara and Huron have asked their bishops to allow civilly-married gay couples, where either or both are baptised, to receive a church blessing with an appropriate rite.

Like the US the Canadian church is following public opinion and, also like the US, many of the most conservative have left the Church, thus easing the brakes on change.

In 2007 the General Synod agreed that same-sex blessings were “not in conflict” with core church doctrine but denied the authority of dioceses to offer them. Remember the 1970s (1977?) vote of the English General Synod that there were no theological objections to ordaining women, though they didn't want to do anything about it. The time will come.

It may (I say tentatively) be that the schism in the US (with or without GAFCON) has also released the international contraints on action.

I begin to think, perhaps, maybe, that the Communion could have passed the high point of its recent fever and, though still weak and in need of nursing, the patient will not die, nor even lose too many limbs.


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The long shadow of a court case

Rev. Jim Ferry, Holy Trinity Church Toronto. MALCOLM TAYLOR/CNS, July 2007

I have just finished reading James Ferry's In the Courts of the Lord (New York, Crossroad, 1994).

It is a book in three parts. First the author describes his journey to accept his homosexuality as a normal part of himself and to lose the self-hatred he had previously developed. Second, he describes life as a parish priest and the hypocritical and destructive culture of 'don't ask, don't tell' which stemmed ultimately from the bishops' collective inability to be clear where they stood on their acceptance of homosexuality within the church.



The third section, on his trial before a church court, was my main interest, though both previous sections are essential to understanding the context of the trial.



The fact of Jim Ferry's homosexuality had become known in the parish not only to those who were supportive but also to a couple of people (and then further afield) who were decidely homophobic.



To pre-empt the coming storm Ferry went to his bishop and explained the situation including the fact that he was in a sexual relationship with a man he loved. In accordance with the bishops' guidelines at the time his bishop, Terence Finlay, asked him to resign. Ferry, asked to choose between his partner and his job, did neither. Finlay brought Ferry before the church court in February 1992.



The charge against Ferry was disobedience and the diocesan prosecutor struggled to stick to it. Ferry's defence was to raise the issue of homosexuality in the church. They made a number of arguments about obedience, not least the facts that Ferry had not actually been asked to give up his relationship, that the 'guidelines' were for assessing ordinands not clergy in post, and that they were applied inconsistently even within the diocese. But their central thrust was that homosexuals should not be treated any differently to heterosexuals in the polity of the church.



The case had international press coverage, though I confess I missed it at the time.



The judgement was self-contradictory. Ferry was found not guilty of disobedience (the pivotal charge against him) but was guilty anyway of refusing to refrain from a homosexual relationship 'contrary to the Bishop's instructions, the Respondent's vows on Ordination, and the discipline of the Church.' The court did not find his conduct to be disobedient or disorderly but did find him contumacious (which generally entails disobedience). A final charge of unbecoming conduct was simply ignored. Thus the court avoided any judgement on the precipitating issue of homosexuality.



The court had no power of sentence but made recommendations to the Bishop. Bishop Finlay removed Ferry from office and withdrew his licence.



On the face of it either an appeal or the civil suit that had originally been contemplated would have been successful. But neither were pursued.



However, time changes things. In 2006 Terence Finlay, then retired as Archbishop of Ontario, celebrated the marriage of a lesbian couple saying that he “came to the conclusion that their love for one another was part of God’s divine love and it was appropriate that that be deeply blessed.” He was himself admonished by the diocesan, Colin Johnson, and had his licence to celebrate weddings withdrawn. Ferry demanded an apology, he remains without a licence.

Don't ask, don't tell

There's always hope - Gay Anglicans parade in Toronto 2006

Gay divinity school graduate must stay in the closet to be ordained

Local man says Anglican Church 'hypocritical'





The Belleview Intelligencer


Posted By By Barry Ellsworth 26.10.08

George is also graduating from the University of Toronto divinity school in May,
qualifying him to be ordained as an Anglican Priest.

But the ordination is not going to happen, if he continues to openly acknowledge his sexual orientation.

“There is a fair amount of hypocrisy in the issue,” George said in an interview during a workshop at Belleville’s St. Thomas Anglican Church. If you keep the fact you are gay to yourself, even though others may know about it, the Anglican bishops can pretend you are straight and ordain you, he said. “As soon as you are open about it, you are treated differently,’ he said.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell. Nobody acknowledges the hypocrisy.”

...

There is another door to hypocrisy, too.

If you are gay, the bishop will ask if you will remain celibate, and if the answer is yes, you are in the door.

“Nobody asks the straight single clergy, ‘Are you willing to be celibate until you are married?’” George said.

All here.



================



The damage such structural hypocrisy does is real and difficult to quantify. Those who struggle with their sexuality can get torn apart. Those who are confident in their sexuality can, and quite reasonably should, get bitter and resentful and often lose both faith and membership.



This is a power game. The inherent duplicity enables those who wish to, to abuse their position and the people for whom they are responsible. And they do.



More deeply wounding is the fact that structural dishonesty is built into the church and its activities - particularly, but not exclusively, in relation to sexuality. In the Church of England dishonesty has been seen for generations in the church's desire to see itself as more important than it really is. On top of this ground it was easy to sow dishonesty relating to sexuality.



I long to see an inclusive Church. But before we get there we will need first to begin to move towards an honest church.

Disaggregation

Dave Walker's explanation of the Southern Cone

Thinking Anglicans has a round up of stories about the Southern Cone and Greg Venables' avoidance of Archbishop Fred Hiltz.

Viewed from where I stand (which is a long way away geographically and theologically) it is hard to see sufficient detail to be able to grasp the overall picture. I wonder what the relationship is between Archbishop Venables, a Brit, and the African Archbishops who, under the umbrella of GAFCON, are consolidating their raids into North America in the form of a North American province.

So, are there enough conservative congregations to go round with leading to conflict between GAFCON and the Africans? Are they in co-operative communion with one another in the same way in which both the Episcopal Church and the Church of England work in Europe? Or in competition with one another for the same fish in the episcopal sea? Is Venables trawling in Canada because the Africans have been too busy south of the border or because the Canadians were uncomfortable with the idea of African Archbishops? Are the two groups collecting different species of conservative?

In the meantime the Diocese of Pittsburgh continues to prepared for divorce by agreeing to 'a court-appointed neutral party inventory all of its property and assets as it prepares for a final vote on seceding from the Episcopal Church.' here.

No going back

Bishop Michael Ingham of New Westminister and Bishop John Chapman of Montreal. acns/sweeny

The Canadian Anglican Journal has collected episcopal views on the proposed moratorium on same-sex blessings from around the country.

In summary: it is impossible to go back.

There is some discussion of the confusion caused by the suggestion that the moratoria should be 'retrospective' - that is, in those places where permission for same-sex blessing had been given that permission should now be withdrawn. It won't happen.

In places where same-sex blessings are allowed by the state they will be conducted by some clergy who share the liberal attitudes of the population. In Canada, US, UK and elsewhere the church will, willingly or by default, go with the majority.

Inevitably this will continue to tear the church apart. Elsewhere in the Journal there is an account of 11 clergy in Vancouver who have transferred to the jurisdiction of the Southern Cone but propose to continue their parochial ministry.

Conservatives and liberal congregations in Niagra must continue to have "joint possession and administration of the three church properties.”

In addition, she [Judge Jane Milanetti of the Ontario Superior Court] said, any dispute will be referred to an arbitrator; the diocese will have access to each church on Sundays between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. and on other feast days; it will also have access for weddings and funerals. The two parties will apportion expenses “based on the use of each parish property by each party,”

At least as a temporary measure until a final decision. She also said:

“it is my preliminary view that a group who chooses to leave the association
they voluntarily joined and then take the property with them (without even the
possibility of sharing the property) is unreasonable.”

And the property belonged to the Diocese.

Overall, and to no-one's surprise, this means that the Lambeth Conference has made no difference.