Canterbury Cathedral U-turn over livestreaming ‘particular’ consecrations

Feb 1, 2023 by Jill

by Francis Martin, Church Times:

THE consecrations of two new flying bishops in Canterbury Cathedral on Thursday are now to be livestreamed, reversing an earlier decision that “gracious restraint” be exercised because of their “particularities”.

The consecrations are of the new Suffragan Bishop of Oswestry, the Revd Paul Thomas, appointed to serve traditionalist Anglo-Catholic parishes across the West Midlands and south-west England () — his consecration is planned in Canterbury Cathedral on Thursday morning; and of the Suffragan Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Revd Dr Rob Munro, who will minister to conservative Evangelical parishes in England which have passes resolutions on the ministry of women (News, 9 December 2022) on the grounds of a complementarian theology. He will be consecrated in the afternoon, along with other Suffragan bishops.

On Monday, the Dean of Canterbury, the Very Revd David Montieth, had written in a letter that the consecrations planned for Thursday “have their particularities”, and would therefore not be livestreamed.

“The Archbishop [of Canterbury] is inviting ‘gracious restraint’ from participating bishops. That has a variety of consequences and it is a nuanced and quite a complicated message to communicate especially in our internet age,” Dean Montieth wrote.

The letter says that “colleagues at Lambeth and beyond have concluded that the afternoon service would potentially raise even more questions than the morning. The morning has precedent already set by previous traditional Catholic consecrations whilst the afternoon one doesn’t do that with respect to complementarian Evangelicalism combined with the other majority constituency and so livestreaming is on balance not advisable for that.

“In one sense as hosts we are neutral about this particular issue. However, we recognise that if livestreaming were to take place that it could be unhelpful overall to fostering an atmosphere of mutual flourishing and thus the need for gracious restraint over a range of issues. So my/our position is that both may be livestreamed but only one may not be livestreamed. Since the afternoon is not livestreamed, the morning cannot be livestreamed either.”

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