During the course of his address to Cork Diocesan Synod on Saturday last, Bishop Paul Colton reflected on the vision he had presented at his enthronement in St Finbarre’s in 1999. He encouraged the church to engage with diversity and he addressed once more the issues surrounding civil partnerships – a debate which he said was heated in some parts of the church. Sketchbook today presents these two aspects from the Bishop’s address.
Bishop Colton said:
Engaging with Diversity
Those are all questions based on detailed analysis. More broadly, we need of first importance to ask ourselves frequently what is our understanding of ourselves as a Church; what is our vision?
When I was enthroned in Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral in 1999 I took my sermon text from the letter to the Ephesians ‘As God has called you; live up to your calling.” (Ephesians 4.1). What sort of Church do we believe God is calling us to be?
On that occasion, I set out three elements in my vision and invited you to join me on a journey of sharing that. They were and remain:
– Giving the priority place in the life of all our parish churches to worship.
– Allowing that worship to overflow into the whole of our life: putting the spirit of the incarnate Christ at the centre of the ordinary things of every day.
– Mobilising everyone – all the baptised – in ministry.
I spoke about Zanobi Strozzi’s painting of the Annunciation. It speaks to us of our response and obedience to God’s call to each one of us. In my sermon that day I pointed to the wall around the Annunciation moment in the painting as something I did not like; and also to the fact that the religious action is remote from the life of the city which is in the distance. I said that ‘a Christianity that hides from the realities of the city – of society, of real people in real places – is a denial of the incarnate Jesus who stood alongside people and offered them “life in all its fullness”.
I still believe this to be so. Far too many Christians want to retreat from the realities of the day into a closeted spiritual world; compartmentalised from the uncertainty and greyness of life and its difficult choices and concerns. I hope that Christians and parishes in this Diocese will never adopt a fortress or retreating mind-set. People, in times like this, naturally crave the certainty of extremes – the once-called black and white, rather than the grey fuzziness where so much of our living in relationship with each other and with God has to be worked out. People talk about ‘lines in the sand’ in relation to contentious issues – a terrible metaphor in my view; the tide comes in and out twice a day and immediately, like life itself, creates a new reality for us to engage with.
Are we not instead called to live uncomfortably and prophetically in a place where the edges of belonging are fuzzy rather than defined; attracting people in rather than pushing them out; breaking down barriers; taking down walls of division; including rather than excluding. On my visit back to Vancouver last summer I saw this sign of welcome over the doors into the Cathedral: ‘Open doors; Open Hearts; Open Minds.’
The Current Debate on Civil Partnerships
It is that invitation and conviction that shapes my personal approach and conviction to the current, hotly debated issue within the Church of Ireland and, indeed, wider Anglicanism. Last year when we met I referred to the commencement, in law, of the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights of Cohabitants Act 2010. I spoke of the active involvement throughout history and today of lesbian and gay people, lay and ordained, in the life of our Church, and of the value we have placed and dependence we have had on them.
Since our last Diocesan Synod the issue of church members in civil partnerships has become heatedly debated in parts of our Church. This led, while I was on sabbatical, to what participants tell me (including many from this Diocese) was a very positive conference in March in Cavan about sexuality. Many will think it an understatement to say that in turn, however, the issue became heated in its focus at the meeting of General Synod last month.
In spite of all that, I believe my questions of last year endure. Given that, as I say, lesbian and gay people are fellow members with us of our Church, and given that many of them are taking the opportunity to enter into civil partnerships, what is our pastoral and liturgical response to be?
Internationally, the commended mechanism for charting a course through these disputed waters, subscribed at last year’s General Synod by the Church of Ireland – the Anglican Covenant – seems to be unravelling. Even yesterday the Scottish Episcopal Church was the latest province not to adopt the Covenant. By March it was clear that a majority of Church of England dioceses had voted against it.
I am conscious that in this Diocese, and I emphasise this, that in this Diocese, as in every Diocese of the Church of Ireland, individual Christians have a variety of responses to this matter and to the debate itself. That said, I believe and hope that in this part of the Church of Ireland, the response to lesbian and gay fellow Christians will be marked by continued welcome and inclusion and, indeed, there is, to my mind, a sound Christian charter and path in those words I saw over the door of Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver: ‘Open doors; Open Hearts; Open Minds.’