Friday 7 June 2013

Option Two with teeth

Well, I promised to say which option of the four from GS 1886 I'd choose as the way forward on women in the episcopate, so here it is.

(Though I'd actually prefer to wait, and have much longer to think  and talk, and most importantly pray. If Parliament wants to intervene it would be a bad thing, but the dear old Church of England could simply ignore them - you can pass a law saying women can be bishops, but you can't compel the Church to appoint any (look at the Church of Ireland, or the Easter Act 1928) - however, waiting just isn't going to happen)

A reminder of the options, as I summarized them in my last post:
1) women can become bishops, and resolutions A, B, and C disappear; there is a declaration from the House of Bishops or an Act of Synod which set out national standards for the care of those opposed;

2) as option (1), but there would be an Act of Synod which would have to come into force simultaneously with the Measure to permit women bishops; this Act of Synod would be mentioned in the Measure, and could only be amended or repealed with two-thirds majorities in all three houses of General Synod;

3) an Act of Synod would cater for those unable to accept the ministry of women bishops, but at the parish level Resolutions A and B would be retained;

4) provision for opponents would be contained in the Measure itself.

I have strong sympathy for those opposed to the consecration of women who would like legally binding safeguards, such as would be provided by options three and four. They worry, not without reason, that it is hard to trust that whatever provision is made will be followed unless it is enforceable. They point out, quite correctly, that all sorts of areas of Church life (including the appointment of clergy) are governed by ecclesiastical laws.

But it is becoming clear that, after the "best we can offer" provision of the previous draft Measure was rejected in November, groups like WATCH would not allow anything nearly as "generous" to get past Synod. The Bishop of Willesden tweeted this: "Opponents lost their last chance of legislation with Nov debacle. Neither GS nor Parliament will now allow discrimination in law." Whether he's right about the second half of that or not, I think it represents a pretty common attitude.

So if options three and four are unrealistic, what about one and two? As I said in my previous post on this topic, it just doesn't look as if it can create the trust required, and it looks too much like victory for WATCH.

That leaves option two. The House of Bishops don't outright reject it, but they don't think it's simple enough. Well, I think we need to live with a bit more complexity, if we're going to do this properly - after all, it's not hugely more complex. And it does have the benefit of creating far more grounds for trust, because it makes clear that the Act of Synod it calls for can't just be done away with (it's required by the Measure itself) and it can't easily be whittled away by the majority (a fear of the opponents).

But there are two things I'd like to see included in the Act of Synod, in order to give it enough teeth, and make sure that the minority feel they're being taken seriously.

One is that failure to follow its terms, especially by a bishop (given they have the strongest hand in clergy appointments), should be explicitly stated to be capable of being misconduct under the Clergy Discipline Measure as "conduct unbecoming a clerk in Holy Orders". A complainant would still have to demonstrate failure to observe the Act of Synod, and the "capable of being" means that a defence of "no reasonable other option" would be possible. The benefit of this for building trust would be that opponents would have real recourse to a remedy. If a complaint is upheld, one of the options is go for mediation as a first step (and this is always to be preferred). If mediation fails, an injunction can be issued, requiring the respondent to follow the terms of the Act of Synod. This idea has teeth.

The second is rather less important, as it is unlikely to be used, but it would highly symbolic. One of the fears of opponents is that without the support of statutory provision, a parish which refused the appointment of a women priest could be taken to court for discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. Specifically, the persons responsible for the decision (the incumbent in cases of appointing a curate, the parish representatives in the case of an incumbent) would have to defend the suit at their own cost. They would most likely win (compare Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, which refuses to accept applications from men for Fellowships), but that's small comfort. So, my suggestion would be the Act of Synod should state that the Church of England should pay the costs of anyone taken to court in such circumstances. This could presumably be done by taking out some kind of insurance policy, and given the very low chances of any suit succeeding, this would cost the Church very little. The symbolic value for the minority would be immense however.

That's my view on what the way forward looks like. I think it should be acceptable to both sides as giving sufficient grounds for trust. I'd really welcome comments from anyone reading this.

Thursday 6 June 2013

Episcopal doublethink?

Well, further to my promise to myself to try harder at keeping this blog going, there's no time like the present.  And given that a great many of my earlier posts have been about the way the Church of England is dealing with getting women into the episcopate, I suppose it's only natural for me to take up with the same topic.

Incidentally, although there might be something trainspotter-ish about coming back to this again, I've dealt with it so much partly because it was the big issue around at the time I started blogging, and partly because it is fairly important to quite a lot of people in the Church.

So, where are we up to? Well. we had the "disastrous" General Synod vote last November, which led to all sorts of recriminations and the setting up of a new working group to find the way forward. This working group met a few times with representatives of the various campaigning groups plus others, and invited submissions from anybody who could be bothered. The working party reported to the House of Bishops, who have published the report along with their own comments and a proposal for the next step - together these are GS1886. Various responses have been forthcoming - from Reform, Forward in Faith, the Catholic Group on Synod and Affirming Catholicism. Doubtless other responses will come.

Here's the first part of mine.

I think it's a pretty good report, and it's probably worth reading if you want to get a flavour of where the Church of England has got to in all this. It sets out five elements of the vision needed to sort this out. They are given on pages 2-3 and 9 of GS1886, but in summary they say that:

1) once legislation is passed the C of E will be fully committed to ordination being open to all without reference to gender;
2) C of E ministers must then acknowledge the Church has made a clear decision on this;
3) this needs to be set within the context that Roman Catholics, Orthodox and some Anglican provinces don't ordain women as priests or bishops [figures are hard to get, but that's probably half of practicing Anglicans];
4) those opposed to women's ordination remain within the spectrum of Anglican teaching, and the C of E remains committed to enabling them to flourish;
5) provision for the minority will be without time limit, and in a way that allows maximum communion and mutual flourishing.

The report also places emphasis on the needs for simplicity, reciprocity, and mutuality (see pages 10 onwards), and wants to get on with things as quickly as possible. It says, and the Bishops agree, that "the way forward is likely to be one which makes it difficult for anyone to claim outright victory." Both say that trust needs to be built.

So there are four options offered by the report:

1) women can become bishops, and resolutions A, B, and C disappear; there is a declaration from the House of Bishops or an Act of Synod which set out national standards for the care of those opposed;

2) as option (1), but there would be an Act of Synod which would have to come into force simultaneously with the Measure to permit women bishops; this Act of Synod would be mentioned in the Measure, and could only be amended or repealed with two-thirds majorities in all three houses of General Synod;

3) an Act of Synod would cater for those unable to accept the ministry of women bishops, but at the parish level Resolutions A and B would be retained;

4) provision for opponents would be contained in the Measure itself.

Now the important point to note is that there is huge difference between an Act of Synod and a Measure. The former is no more than advisory and discretionary, the latter is legally enforceable. Thus options one and two give no enforceable rights to opponents, options three and four do. By the way, a declaration from the House of Bishops would have the same force as an Act of Synod, the difference lies in who is setting out their expectations of how people will behave - and surely it ought to be the whole Church in an Act of Synod.

So far, so good.

But then we need to consider the House of Bishops' recommendation, which is to go for option one. The only thing they add to it is an idea that there should be a mediation process included in the declaration/Act which sets out the expected pastoral arrangements. Now in one sense it's fair enough. This would be the simplest possible arrangement, and it would place more emphasis on trust and grace than law, which is very commendably Christian.

The trouble is that it seems to me to fall short of what's needed on several counts.

Most importantly, it looks like an almost complete victory for those who want to see women bishops without any substantive provision for opponents (like WATCH, for example). The only two differences from what they really wanted in November are that the arrangements would be at a national rather than diocesan level (which makes for relative uniformity across the C of E, not unreasonable), and there would be some process for parishes to seek redress if they felt hard done by: mediation. I'm not the only one who thinks this looks like victory for one side: Andrew Brown writing in Guardian thinks so too. I don't think the Bishops can have been ignorant of this impression, which makes it hard for opponents to feel they can trust the bishops, who appear, doublethink-style to say one thing ("no victories") and propose the opposite.

Quite how that mediation process might work will need a lot of clarification.

Opponents, naturally enough, want the maximum legal provision - clearly they'd favour option four, out of those suggested. They point out, reasonably, that options one and two fall some way short of what was rejected in November and so there is little chance of this present Synod passing them. To move forward quickly with something which looks so deeply flawed to opponents of women in the episcopate hardly seems to accord with respecting them. Again, there is not much room for the creation of trust in this.

To be fair, the bishops are saying that they propose option one as "the natural starting point for the debate," suggesting they'd be happy enough to see a shift - but then they also think it is "what most [Synod] members currently favour," which again might read like a snub to the minority.

Trust will be hard to come by. The Editor if the Church Times also thinks so.

Much prayer is required.

Next time ... which option I'd choose.




Wednesday 5 June 2013

Must try harder

When I started this blog, part of my reason for doing so was to see if I could keep it up. Turns out it's not as easy as one might think - so there haven't been any posts recently. It's not that there haven't been topics worth writing about, but I've not found the time to sit down and tackle them. And then the moment passes, and you think, "well that's old news, no point doing that now."

I'm not sure that's the right instinct though. After all, I'm hardly informing the world of things by writing about them, and hardly anyone is going to read what I put, apart from me. So maybe it should be much more about getting my ideas and musings down for my own benefit. And maybe, just maybe that will be of use to me at some point in the future - even if only to see how foolish I used to be.

For although writing something for public consumption can look as if it lacks humility, the possibility of using it in the future to demonstrate one's own lack of wisdom/insight/knowledge/spelling means that it can't be merely an exercise in pride. And there's something to be said for the discipline of having to put what one is thinking in terms temperate enough to share with others. It tests me - can I give reasons for what I think which are sensible enough to be capable of being explained?

And maybe, just maybe, someone else will read what I write, and it will give a little bit of pause for thought to someone else. Who knows what might be useful to another?

So I'll try to write more often, and I'll not restrict myself to the most current events in Church life, but sometimes go back and reconsider events which have passed, or just the random thoughts which come to me about theological stuff.