How reassuring is the PLF ‘pastoral reassurance’?
From: Anglican Futures.
With a prescience that says much about the depth of his insight, it was over a month ago that Dr Martin Davie was able to provide the most succinct of summaries of where he believed the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) process had arrived at,
“It is now fairly clear what the next stage of the Prayers of Love and Faith process will be. In July the House of Bishops will propose that stand alone services for the blessing of same-sex couples (including those who have entered into a civil same-sex marriage) will be permitted under the terms of Canon B5 and will also propose that the current discipline forbidding clergy to be in same-sex marriages will no longer be applied in at least some dioceses.
“It is also clear that, at the moment, the bishops are absolutely intransigent in refusing to even consider the possibility of either a provincial settlement to meet the needs of traditionalists as requested by CEEC, or even some kind of non-provincial transferred episcopal arrangements for traditionalists. The maximum they seem prepared to offer is some kind of regionally arranged delegated episcopal oversight, which would still leave traditionalists under the ordinary jurisdiction of their diocesan bishops regardless of where that bishop stands on the sexuality issue.”
Martin Davie is to be commended for so accurately predicting the destiny of the entire 7-year LLF/PLF pathway in just 166 words. His forecast has been all but confirmed in what has emerged from the most recent discussions of the House of Bishops, although it has taken them 31 pages. Even the “Executive Summary” of General Synod paper 2358 (GS258) is twice as long as Davie’s own, but can be reduced to this extract,
“The core elements of those emerging proposals are:
• To remove the restrictions in the current pastoral guidance on using the Prayers of Love and Faith for a three-year period of discernment.
• To introduce alongside this a model of specific and defined delegation of episcopal ministry, so that those on all sides of the debate, who feel they require it, can request care from a bishop whose ministry they are in conscience able to receive, supported by an Independent Review Panel to assess where practice departs from agreed principles.
• For more work under the aegis of the Faith and Order Commission on the nature of doctrine to enable further conversations on whether to remove current restrictions on clergy being in same-sex civil marriages, for decision by the House of Bishops in early January 2025 and to be presented at the February 2025 General Synod.”
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