A spokesman for the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England dismissed press reports that clergy were now being allowed to enter into gay marriage or that there had been any change in its doctrine or discipline now that homosexual clergy will be allowed to enter into civil partnerships.
“The Church of England’s position on same-sex relationships has not changed and is not about to change in the light of the Civil Partnership Act, that comes into effect in December,” said Peter Crumpler, the Archbishops’ Council director of communications, in a written statement sent to The Living Church. "It is set out in the General Synod motion of 1987 and the House of Bishops’ 1991 statement, Issues in Human Sexuality.”
Within the Church of England, the Archbishops’ Council is somewhat analogous to the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church. Mr. Crumpler noted that the Church of England’s approach to civil partnerships “will reflect the fact that they will not be marriages, nor based on the presumption of sexual relations between the two people making the legal agreement.”
The “Civil Partnership” working group, chaired by the Rt. Rev. Graham James, Bishop of Norwich, has recommended that clergy who wish to register under England’s Civil Partnership Act may do so if they pledge to their bishop to conform to the discipline of the Church as outlined in Issues in Human Sexuality, which forbids clergy to engage in sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage.
The issue had its first public airing on Feb. 15, when Bishop James responded to written questions submitted by three homosexual clergy members of General Synod asking what effect Britain’s Civil Partnership Act would have on partnered gay clergy who register with the state. The Civil Partnership working group would issue a preliminary report in May, he said, and a pastoral statement would be issued by the House of Bishops over the summer “for the guidance of clergy and others well before the first civil partnerships” take legal effect.
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