In Communion with Canterbury or the Church Commisioners

The Church of England now has its first female Bishop.  This is a source of great joy for most of its members and of much grief for a significant minority.  The major kerfuffle has oddly not been over the consecration of Libby Lane but over the forthcoming consecration of Philip North as Bishop of Burnley.  The proposed service has the unusual innovation of the consecration not being performed by the relevant Metropolitan (in this case the Archbishop of York) but by Bishops to whom he has delegated the task. While this is absolutely York's prerogative, it is being seen as enshrining a "theology of taint" in as much as only bishops opposed to the ordination of women will actually lay hands on Philip North.

As someone who was Fulham Jurisdiction/FiF at one point, I have to say this is a description of conservative Anglo-Catholic theology I don't recognise. The objection was never phrased in terms of taint but of broken communion. Stuff about "taint" so prevalent on "liberal" websites is as far as I can see fairly hysterical and mainly American.  I think the proposed arrangements are deeply peculiar and un-catholic.  Flying bishops (Provincial Episcopal Visitors) have been ordained in the C of E before but the Archbishop in whose Province they will serve always led the laying on of hands.  This new "hands off" approach seems to solidify the reality of there being a Church within a Church that has been hinted about for years but never before explicitly acknowledged.  References within Anglo-Catholic to things like "the See of Ebbsfleet" or "Apostolic Districts" have built his up, ignoring the legal position of the PEV's as Suffragans of the Archbishop.  That I find un-catholic and a bad idea.  If a portion of the Church is allowed to function with a totally parallel structure of bishops deeply disconnected from their metropolitan, then it is not so much being in communion with Canterbury as being in Communion with the Church Commissioners who pay stipend and pensions.  It's not so much ecclesial communion as administrative communion. And that is a sad state of affairs.

It also begs the question of who are we as Scottish Episcopalians in Communion with in England? The whole C of E or just most of it?

++ Rowan at his best.

The ABC's opening address to the English Synod is (for once) something I can largely agree with. See it at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2752 Gone is his usual obfuscation: it is a clear, subtle and nuanced analysis of the state of play we find ourselves in as a communion. Credibly, he describes LGBT rights as marks of a civilised society and describes the Ugandan legislation as "repugnant". He also points to the inherent tension between the American advances on orders and same sex relationships and the needs of the Church in the developing world to be free to witness without the accusation of being part of a moral threat to society (for that's how an LGBT friendly Church looks in some countries). There is a tension here between two conflicting good aims. But realistically, I very much doubt if the TEC will go back to the "gracious restraint" they practiced for 3 years, given that the conservative faction kept on getting African Bishops to interfere across diocesan and Provincial boundaries. The temper of the Church is (I suspect ) equally agin too much provision for the opponents of women priests. Last time around, Parliament insisted on compensation. I suspect neither a New Labour or a Cameroon Govt will make any such demands given the significant numbers who left, taking the money only to return when they found the ecclesiastical culture over the Tiber not to their taste. They actually mean what they say about obedience and that is not something FiF clergy are used to, either temperamentally or experientially.

I don't agree with his stance on the Equalities Bill - but he is right to urge caution about letting the Executive and legislature become too much the moral police of society. It was a bad mistake under Thatcher and likely to be worse, were British politics to take a radical swing to the Right. He also makes the nice Tractarian point about the Church being the right body to police its moral policies, give that it is a body which no one is compelled to join - but when you do you implicitly accept it's authority within boundaries to make pronouncements and decide policies which reflect it's understanding of the implications of the Gospel. Your Grace, I broadly agree with you - but you should have said this in November!