Bishop Ken Good in his address to the Derry & Raphoe Synod this week said these are challenging times for employment and morally and he commented upon the recent bishops’ pastoral on same sex relationships.
Bishop Good said :
Households in every community and in every parish in the diocese are being impacted by high unemployment figures, by poor job prospects and by the emigration of young people who have little or no choice but to seek work elsewhere in the world.
While watching Ireland’s rugby team’s recent exploits in the New Zealand World Cup, one of the striking features was the very large numbers of young people who have left these shores to find employment on the other side of the globe because prospects here have been so bleak.
This is the employment context in which we in the Church of Ireland in Derry and Raphoe are called to serve with understanding, with awareness, with compassion, with hope, with imagination, and also with faith in a God who is bigger than all of these employment challenges.
Challenging times morally
This Diocesan Synod is aware that there has been of late a widespread degree of uncertainty in the Church of Ireland around issues to do with relationships and the Christian understanding of the appropriate context for sexual expression.
In both jurisdictions on this island, the state now provides for civil partnerships between persons of the same gender. The implications of this legislation are being discussed in Christian Churches generally, but the issue has come into particularly sharp focus in the Church of Ireland in recent months.
It is not only in the media or in our church pews that these questions are being debated, but also in the House of Bishops. In our recently issued Pastoral Letter, the bishops began by reaffirming the current and historical Christian understanding of holy matrimony as follows:
‘The Book of Common Prayer describes marriage as “part of God’s creation and a holy mystery in which man and woman become one flesh.” It is to be monogamous, with a publicly declared intention that it be life–long. The church’s teaching has been faithfulness within marriage as the normative context for sexual expression.’
In this debate and controversy about same sex relationships, it is important that we are very clear about the church’s universal and long–standing interpretation of scripture, as it is spelled out in that paragraph in the Bishops’ Letter. The biblical and theological status quo still is what it has been and is not altered by changes in cultural norms or by the actions or opinions of individuals.
The winds of social change or the modification of accepted norms are not what decides or changes the will of God.
Consequently, we also need to be clear about the process by which the church may seek to change its historically accepted patterns, and clear about when and where it has decided to do so.
The Pastoral Letter outlined the process by which the Church will carefully examine how our received teaching and discipline can respond most appropriately to the changes in state legislation.
I commend to the Synod the proposed Conference in Spring 2012.
This conference is not a means of postponing, indefinitely, the opportunity for the Church to come to a decisive mind on the way forward. I am aware that there might be a concern that in appearing to allow the time to drift, the status quo might be assumed to have changed, incrementally, without any clear and conclusive decision being taken by the General Synod to authorise such a change. I firmly believe that this is not the bishops’ intention, nor do I believe it is what should, or will, happen.
It is my expectation that the proposed conference will provide a forum where there will be more time to consider the topic than is the case during the tight timetable of a normal business session General Synod. Nor will there be the pressure at the conference to put the matter to a vote. This approach allows a more measured and considered debate, providing some weeks of reflection after the conference until we then come to General Synod in May, to vote on a well prepared motion, or motions, if that is what the General Synod should decide to do.
Nor should the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter be interpreted as a means of attempting to stifle debate in the meantime. Those who feel they have an important verbal contribution to make to the discussion should make it. In urging, as we do in the Pastoral Letter, ‘…people of all shades of opinion within the Church of Ireland to refrain from any actions or the use of emotive or careless language which may further exacerbate the situation,’ the bishops’ desire, including my desire, is that any such contributions would be expressed in ways that are responsible, respectful, compassionate and God–honouring.
This is the challenging moral and ethical context in which we in the Church of Ireland in Derry and Raphoe are called to serve – with steadfastness and patience, with attentiveness to the word of God and alertness to the Spirit of God, with compassion and also with faith in a God who is bigger than all of these moral challenges.