Posted just now on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website:

Prizes for:

a) what it might mean, and

b) the most imaginative way that the Daily Mail will turn this into “an excoriating attack on David Cameron’s government by an out-of-touch hairy lefty”.

Once again, I discover a change in the legal status of the things I am supposed to do, as a clergyman in the Church of England, by listening to the Today programme on Radio 4.

Now, apparently, the House of Bishops have issued new guidelines on the legal preparations for marriage in churches, especially where the immigration status of one of the parties marrying is in doubt. Apparently.

All I know about it is what is on the BBC news website, and what a singularly unrevealing and blustery interview with John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds disclosed. Which is, basically, nothing.

No email from the diocesan registrar. No flashing, blinking link from the front page of the C of E website. No package in the post. Nowt.

Then again, why should there be? After all, I am only a surrogate, the person responsible for administering the process.

Actually, the question is not so much about the Ordinariate as about the legal advice prepared for the next meeting of General Synod, and placed on the intertubes here.

Commendably clear (and uncompromising), the basic tenor of the piece is “No… you can’t” when it comes to questions of property, office, decision-making processes, legal title and so on. However there is one interesting contradiction within its paras, which is only a contradiction because I don’t know enough canon law:

In the section Will church buildings transfer to the Ordinariate? there is this explanation

it is a general principle of law that -even if the trusts do not expressly require it – where a charity is established for Church of England purposes, only members of the Church of England should act as its trustees. Thus those who leave the Church of England to join the Roman Catholic Church are no longer eligible to remain as trustees of any such charity. The vacancies which their departure creates stand to be filled, in the usual way by new trustees who are members of the Church of England.

Fair enough. If the charity / trust is for the Church of England you have to be part of the Church of England to run it. Then again, in the section Who will care for the parishioners if clergy leave the Church of England? there seems to be another definition of “member”:

As one aspect of its established status, the Church of England relates to its ‘parishioners’, rather than simply to its ‘members’. Its ministry is open to all comers, whether they are on its church electoral rolls or otherwise.

Note the “scare quotes” around ‘members’ in that sentence. The Church of England does not have ‘members’ as such: everyone in the country is able to access the pastoral care and the governance of the Church, unless…

Well, unless what? What is the difference between membership in the first para and ‘membership’ in the second? Is it communicate status? Is it canonical obedience? Is it being listed on an electoral roll? Is it being on the coffee rota?

This has, historically, been one of the strengths of the established church, a blurred and movable boundary. The Church of England is the liminal church par excellence. Does GS Misc 979 indicate the beginnings of the hardening of those boundaries?

Today an email from Amazon, noting my purchasing pattern, and based upon the purchasing patterns of other discerning consumers, suggesting a book I might like to buy.

Rowan Williams and careers advice? There’s a neat combination!

Charles Gore, (1853–1932), bishop of Worcester, first bishop of Birmingham, bishop of Oxford, on the episcopate:

The whole atmosphere of the episcopate is manipulation of details and avoidance of big principles.¹

1. G L. Prestige, The life of Charles Gore; a great Englishman (Heinemann, 1935), 241 [↩]

The BBC reports the Lambeth Conference march of witness, and finishes the report with an appeal for photographs:

But that’s impossible! Imagine taking photos of a procession of bishops without endangering yourself or others!

Simply can’t be done. Leave it to the professionals.

I never really wanted 3MT to be a repository of sermons, but I have weakened. This is based on a sermon preached yesterday in St Stephen’s Church, Canterbury, in the light of the meeting of the Lambeth Conference, which is taking place within our parish. So, for this one occasion only (!), we present Eight Minute Theology…!

3MT : Weeds, Wheat and Unity [ 8:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (227)

The fringe entertainment has yet really begun at the conference (despite the World’s Greatest Living Ecclesiastical Conference Cartoonist’s attempts at liturgical dancing and pigeon killing). The fringe will begin with the conference moving out of retreat next week.

In the meantime, here is a person and a trick that the conference organizers have missed. What a lost opportunity!

Brother Cesare and the Brother Metal Band

With the bishops retreating to the cathedral, today the campus of UKC was curiously deserted, inhabited only by the bishop’s wives¹ (I would say “spouse”, being a good Guardian-reading liberal, but I didn’t see anyone who wasn’t a wife!):

There were wives from the sub continent:

There were wives from Africa:

Wives from Melanesia (who were in England for the first time, and having a ball learning about all sorts of new things):

… and wives from Canada:

(who thought, when I went up to ask if I could take their photograph, that they were about to be told off for being noisy! Canadians, eh? Noisy and conscientious!)

(That’s not sunshine outside the tent, but snow, brought in especially to make them feel at home).

There was a wonderfully calm feeling to the conference today, and as I wandered around I fantasied about today being the real Lambeth conference.

What would it be like if the Spouses Conference was the real business of the Anglican Communion?

What if all the bishops were like these women: looking out to make friends, learn new things, have a ball?

1. oops! typo! I suppose that should be “bishops’ wives”– I don’t think they all belonged to one man! [↩]

Well they’ve only gone and done it.

The pile of bishops arrived today, finding themselves, bewildered, in the University of Kent’s equivalent to Heathrow Terminal 5:

Once meeted, they were greeted (with “difficult” bishops being identified by specially trained volunteers)

The volunteers had to deal with refugee quantities of luggage:

(Not every bishop can afford those lightweight, collapsible mitres).

To find their way around the campus a system of Aramaic insignia has been devised (based upon textual variations in the Dead Sea Scrolls) — very clear as I’m sure you’d agree:

The “World’s Greatest Living Ecclesiastical Conference Cartoonist” will soon be plying his wares from this des res:

Some bishops have already found themselves, curiously, at home:

Others were being “inculturated” into the fine English tradition of queuing:

Some bishops’ wives (or perhaps she is a bishop herself?) remembered that there is a garden party at Buckingham Palace coming up:

Tomorrow…

into retreat!