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News and Ideas from around the Anglican World |
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February 2006
In praise of common sense: A reflection on the St. Michael's Report.
It made perfect sense to hand the question of same-sex blessings over to theologians -- we all knew in our hearts that it was doctrine all along.
George Sumner
What distinguishes the English religious sensibility? Most any answer you can think of risks pride, since other traditions can doubtless claim the quality as well. Still, perhaps the most admirable is the most humble - English common sense. In the debate over same-sex unions, a controversy with no lack of hype and hyperbole, the St Michael Report represents, first of all, an achievement of common sense. Its background is of course the 2004 General Synod, where proponents of same-sex unions contended that such rites were “pastoral” rather than “doctrinal,” and so could be approved as a local option in the dioceses rather than on the basis of a nation-wide decision. The delegates, though liberal of opinion in the main, were reluctant to accept this argument. Those Church men and women understood the obvious, namely that the matter before them was a serious decision, altering centuries of teaching and threatening our international Church relations. Most of all, they sensed that, no matter what side one might be on, the matter at issue was marriage.
In the jargon of the same-sex debate, people on both sides speak of the “looks like a duck, smells like a duck, quacks like a duck” argument. However the arguments may swirl, the truth is that the same-sex revision is about redefining marriage. This has been grasped more clearly and forthrightly by today’s secular and political contestants, in whose realm the change in the definition of marriage is now a fact. The heart of the St Michael Report is the judgment that the rites for the blessing of same-sex unions are so closely “analogous” to marriage as to constitute a redefinition. Whatever side of this fractious debate you may be on, dear reader, you know in your heart that this conclusion is self-evidently and commonsensically true. Since the canons of the Anglican Church of Canada include a traditional definition of marriage, and the Prayer Book, with its marriage rite, assumes the same doctrine of marriage, the implication is clear Same-sex unions can only be introduced into the Anglican Church of Canada by a decision over two General Synods, by two-thirds of each house. This is of course precisely what the framers had in mind, namely that major changes to teaching, especially when they prove divisive, should be harder and slower to achieve.
In a moment of theological confusion and ecclesial distress, a theological question was referred by the Primate to a commission of theologians, Church leaders, and theological students, and a clear and decisive answer given. This may seem an obvious way forward, but it was anything but obvious, given that the same-sex struggle has often been waged with means other than the genuinely theological. By contrast, what could be more traditional than a bishop bringing a questio disputata to the doctores? This single act by Archbishop Andrew Hutchison shifted the ground on which this difficult question is to be contested in a more theological direction, at some possible cost to the chances for his own preferred outcome. For this act the Primate deserves praise.
There was a time, not so long ago, when two professors of theology
(from Trinity and Wycliffe Colleges, I might add!) sat close to the
Bishop in synods of the diocese of Toronto, in case a question of
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The Rev.
Canon Dr. George Sumner is|
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