Statement from House of Bishops on Human Sexuality

Click to access gsmisc997.pdf

The money quotes are in the accompanying letter from the Bishop of Norwich.

To avoid pre-empting the outcome of the review the House has concluded that clergy in civil partnerships should not, at present, be nominated for episcopal appointment.  The review will be completed in 2012.

Secondly, the House has committed itself to a wider look at the Church of England’s approach to same-sex relationships more generally in the light of the listening process launched by the Lambeth Conference in 1998. The Bishops will produce a consultation document in 2013. The House’s decision is motivated by a desire to help shape the continuing debate constructively and not by any view about what the outcome should be.

Update – Riazat Butt’s piece in the Guardian is a catalogue of error on the subject, consistently confusing the issue between a moratorium on all gay bishops (which this is not) and simply those in civil partnerships. For example,

the House of Bishops – a body of which all the church’s diocesan bishops are members – was unable to agree whether a gay priest would ever be eligible for nomination to the episcopate

The liberal group Accepting Evangelicals condemned the temporary bar on gay clergy being nominated as bishops.

There is no bar on a single,  celibate gay priest being a bishop and there never has been. Some of our best bishops are single, gay and celibate.

3 Comments on “Statement from House of Bishops on Human Sexuality

  1. So basically,

    "look, we know we need to do something about this so will everyone please stop fighting for about a year and give us some breathing room".

  2. Actually, some of your best bishops are single, gay and claim to be celibate. Do you believe them? Or doesn’t it matter as long as they pay lip service to your morality?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.