Who dares to call it by name?
by A S Haley, Anglican Ink:
There appears to be some reluctance on both sides of the aisle to express the full rationale behind the Primates’ vote to impose consequences upon ECUSA for its adoption at GC2015 of canons allowing the performance of same-sex marriage ceremonies in the church, in parallel with the traditional ceremonies between a man and a woman.
The activists within ECUSA see the consequences as unjust “punishment” for their having taken a visionary stance — out in front of the entire Communion — to support full sacramental equality in the Church for LGBT Episcopalians. They express hurt for what they call “sanctions”, but at the same time express their determination to wait out the three-year period without changing a thing, and certainly without trying to undo the marital canonical changes at GC 2018.
The orthodox and traditionalists who support the vote of suspension, on the other hand, do so on the ground that “changing the Anglican doctrine of marriage as between a man and a woman” was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and say that the move simply could not be ignored. Unfortunately, this rationale appears to give a wink and a nod to provinces that adopt merely rituals of blessing for SSUs (like Canada), and (thus far, at any rate) stop short of celebrating same-sex marriages within their churches.
This debate engages nothing, and can go nowhere. It is like two ships passing in the night. There will be full engagement within the Communion only when the whole ground underlying the vote has been articulated plainly for all to see and discuss.
At the root of what ECUSA has seen fit to do with its marriage liturgies is, to speak simply and directly, the sin of blasphemy — against both Jesus Christ our Savior, and against the Holy Trinity. Nothing has changed since I laid it out in this earlier post:
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