There has been much ado about bishops of late. First, the Church of England's House of Laity rejected the consecration of women, to the consternation of a majority in their own communion and the incredulity of wider society. Then the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster soured the Nativity season - perhaps the tenderest of all our celebrations of the myths of faith - with negativity about same sex love and marriage.
Now, with its statement that civil-partnered gay clergy may become bishops as long as they promise sexual abstinence and renounce their previous sexual activity, the Established Church shows itself to be in a deeply damaging state of confusion about the relationship between civil partnerships and marriage, about faithful and committed relationships, about love and trust, the imposition of impossible conditions and about the nature of a vocation to celibacy.
Ekklesia colleagues who have a far greater knowledge of the ways of the Church of England than I do, have written eloquently of the implications of the House of Bishops' statement. I find myself in sympathy with the child in the probably apocryphal story who, on seeing a bishop in full fig, turned to her mother and said, “Mummy, what is that man for?
More here-
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17764
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