And besides

And besides the Queen would not give her royal assent to anything that vexes the spiritual powers, since since the days of Magna Carta the monarch has always had to keep these spiritual powers happy in their copes and croziers - powerful men and women who will not be forced and cajoled into secular attitudes that are not yet scripture based. A debate must first begin at general synod. The early christian church was a great attraction to the rent boys and call girls of the pagan Orphic and Isis temples of the empire, because of the boyish saviour Jesus posing as Apollo and Orpheus in the official images and statuary, but attraction and pastoral love is one thing, official rite and hebrew doctrine quite another, since Levicitus still has to be negotiated with compassion. Neither Aaron nor Moses really wished the hebrew slaves to recidivise back to the gay catamite status they had as sex slaves in Egypt to the slave drivers of the Pharoahs. The song of the hebrew slaves should be revisited. Much debate forecast before some accommodation will be reached. And new rites must appear. It is not that the Church of England wishes to deny these lovely couples their due happiness - merely that the Old Testament must be duly explained away on this sore point before progress can be made. Meantime the state can marry now that it has JPs up to the job and registry offices and hotels all over the kingdom open to it. With solemn formulas.

So

So until the new rites for weddings appear, authorised by general synod and approved by the usual vote in parliament, nothing can be done for gays that present themselves to churches for weddings. It is not as if the words can be changed ad hoc on the day anyway, since the entire introduction and preamble has to be adapted at length too, to reflect any official change in terminology, with a long introduction as to why the prescriptions of the Old Hebrew Bible in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about the old practices of Egypt and its many slaveries must be overturned in this time period and in this epoch. So much work to be done - if synod approves. Long debates. In any case the clergy till then enjoy a discretion at law, so that they can turn people away, and have always had that discretion if they so choose. It is not a state church or state faith as people commonly understand it in the gentlemen's clubs of Pall Mall. It is an endowed faith that expresses the spiritual power in the realm, and, most importantly, York and Canterbury remain the fathers in God of the monarch - as per Henry VIII, 2. Spiritual struggles.

Lots

Lots of vicars do forget that an endowed church does not have any real civil obligations to the temporal side of the state, so that if there were any suggestions that gay weddings become mandatory or expected, the rites would have to be devised and this to go before synod. A discretion in any case is always granted to vicars - they do not have to marry drunks at the church or the impenitent or even royals if they are scruffy, so the same goes for other categories of person. Anyway from the point of view of the general theory of church and state, it is an endowed church not an established one.

Yes

Yes technically the Church of England is more an endowed church than an established one, and this is how the matter stands in comparative law - much like the old situation of the catholics in the Irish constitution at the old article 44 - they are simply recognised as the majority faith but only because they are a standard majority - and that can change too as numbers of catholics increase so rapidly, and thuswise the CoE retains some independence from the sphere of the temporal in civil law. It was always said that CoE canon law became UK domestic law by dint of the Commons and parliament assent and the Queen's own assent, but this is illusion and grandiose pretension, more civil effects than a real blessing of the civil temporal force. Besides the two sees of York and Canterbury remain the spiritual directors of the prime minister. And these alone.

Brethren

A stressing time, what with many vicars assuming that they will be asked and must accede to express wishes from gay boy couples and girl couples to be married in the churches of the established faith, even though there is no formal rite or ceremony for the idea. Also many vicars assumed that the establishment of the faith by law is also a simple meal ticket to all and sundry, as defined and impressed upon by the powers temporal of some parliamentary organ. But tis not the case, since even at the height of the reformation, there are statutes of Henry VIII which recall that the spiritual is distinct from the temporal and that the idea of establishment is not what it seems. Though the king or queen is the governor, there is scope for freedom for the spiritual power. Indeed the solemn statutes of Henry still view the spiritual vs the temporal as a division of opposition, and a healthy one too.

Hola

Pride of place must be given to Justin - a good job well done. Well look, the Arch of Deans at Canterbury is moving right along on his agenda - and he has asked christians to repent for ever having contributed to that strange Jew-baiting type atmosphere where gays were seconded to bedlams and hospitals for re-education and for chemical and electric treatment, just because we had not accepted diversity in our pathetic little luddite world after the reformation when a foreign spirit of spite crept in the back door of reformation anglican christianity - not that anglican christianity was ever meant to be so low church or reformed as the official Via media in northern europe and the defender of the [apostolic] faith. Reformation christians have been weak on pluralism in places like rump Geneva. Shades of the village.

Funnily enough the opposite attitude of openness and of patronage despite orientation is to be found among our masters in compassion, the renaissance popes like the soldier Julius II or the astronomer Urban VIII - these popes looked kindly on those artists who were known for a little playing off the official natural law pitches such as Caravaggio and Michelangelo, and it was not just because they were producing useful art either. They felt that humanitas required compassion and the secrecy of the confessional - maybe they were too good as confessors to descend into judgmentalism; whereas we had foolishly jettisoned confessionals and so also disposed of an important service to lots of people on the margins, the science of conscience jurisprudence which went out with the 1548 BCP alas as a "papistical ceremony". The renaissance popes and the Borgias maybe could teach us how an imperial power should behave toward our brothers and sisters on the gay side of debate. Well done Justin. Civil rights are civil rights. Enough of the bedlam please here in Britain.