Christ with His bride the church, William with his bride Catherine, brought together in a service of simple splendour. Pomp with taste treating the nation to beautiful imagery, music and prayer restoring Christ's church to how it should be, God centred and inspiring. Every blessing be upon them.
If God had intended this, why did He make male and female? He could have done without men and perhaps tucked something under Eve's arm to go with her hand bag.
Apparently the Church of England has pledged not to allow any of its buildings to be used for civil partnership ceremonies. Now call me cynical but haven't we had promises and pledges before? Civil partnerships were not weddings but that didn't last long. As the Google headline puts it:
Gay and lesbian couples will get right to marry in church .
I have no duduk perkara with civil partnerships or with gay and lesbian couples. The treatment that many have experienced and still experience around the world is shameful but why is it that liberals can't let things be? Grab an inch and take a mile is their motto with the consequence that religion is becoming irrelevant to many leaving a vacuum to be filled by the one that appears untouchable.
There is a delicious irony in today'sannouncement of government plans to allow churches in England and Wales to host civil partnership ceremonies. The church is complaining of "a breach of undertakings made by government ministers during debates on the Civil Partnership Bill". That has a familiar ring about it here and here and here and here. Need I go on?
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| Church wedding Source: Church of England |
In 2017 Premier reported that Anglican church weddings had reach a record low: "Figures from the Office for National Statistics show they hosted 49,717 ceremonies in 2014, a reduction compared to 50,226 in 2013."
In April this year the Church Times reported that "for the first time ever, fewer than one quarter of all marriages in England and Wales were religious ceremonies. They accounted for 24 per cent of marriages in 2016, falling by nearly a half (48 per cent) from two decades ago. In the same period of time, the number of all marriages fell by 28 per cent. In 1966, a third of marriages were civil ceremonies. Since 1992, civil marriages have increasingly outnumbered religious marriages every year."
The Government plans to introduce a new system of registration for marriages, including church weddings, in England and Wales.
Premier reports that the new system could lead to criminal offences and £1,000 fines. Under changes which may be law before 2020, couples will no longer be given a marriage certificate at the end of a church wedding. Instead of being asked to sign a register and certificate, they will instead sign a "marriage schedule", the Faculty Office said. The couple then have to take this document to their local register office to record their marriage into a database and only then will they get a certificate, it added.
A London-based Anglican priest commented said it was "an astonishing change to the way marriages are recorded. Now, instead of marriages being registered then and there by the priest, the couple will get a temporary certificate which they then have to present to the register office within a week of the wedding. When they might want to be on honeymoon."
In additionthe Government wants to give every married couple in England and Wales the chance to downgrade their marriage. As the Coalition for Marriage (CM4) points out, by allowing people to downgrade their marriage, the Government is creating new instability, a halfway house to family breakdown. Just because a tiny minority of people want the rights of marriage without the commitment.
The slide continues with another nail in the coffin for Christian marriage!
More marriages in Register Offices followed by Church blessings are likely to lead to more pressure to allow same sex blessings in church.
Civil partnerships were welcomed by many but it did not stop there as illustrated by CM4:
"It?S part of plans to introduce heterosexual civil partnerships, after the Supreme Court ruling last year. C4M predicted this ruling all along. It stems directly from introducing same-sex marriage for homosexual couples in 2014 when they already had access to civil partnerships. The court said this was discriminatory against heterosexuals, who only had access to marriage."
Once people start fiddling with an institution change by stealth takes over as illustrated by the decision to ordain women.
After women were made deacons they complained that they were discriminated against if they were not allowed to be priests. Once they were priests they complained of a stained glass ceiling. Before long virtually anything goes.
The Church of England has lost its way withAll the fun of the fair in Cathedrals which are used to play kecil golf and provide helter skelter rides at ?Dua a slide.
There are secularised archbishops charged with being 'not fit for office' by a vicar who says his disclosures about being sexually abused as a teenager were ignored by senior clerics while Justin Welby keeps digging a pit for himself over gay marriage.
One would have thought that the Church would provide some stability based on scripture but that is no longer what the Anglican Church is about. It is about satisfying personal desires regardless of biblical teaching.
In Wales Archbishop John Davies said after a Governing Body vote in September 2018: "The bishops are united in the belief that it is pastorally unsustainable and unjust for the church to continue to make no formal provision for those in committed same-sex relationships."
The Governing Body had agreed by 76 votes to 21 that the lack of formal provision was "pastorally unsustainabledanquot;. Abdicating all responsibility the archbishop responded: "the vote was an important steer to the bishops in exercising pastoral care." So much for leadership.
Pastoral care used to be in line with scripture and tradition. Under the current regime it has become liberal social work in vestments.
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| Church wedding Source: Church of England |
While Anglican clergy, and Church in Wales bishops in particular, pursue their goal of same sex marriage in church, the latest figures indicate that fewer people are opting to make their relationship official with a traditional church wedding.
Figures published in Christian Today show that just 54,000 people chose a church wedding in 2017 - the lowest number on record - marking a steep drop from 184,000 in 1987. Religious ceremonies overall accounted for less than a quarter (23%) of marriages between opposite-sex couples in 2017.
"The statistics reflect a general drop in the number of people tying the knot, with a total of 242,842 marriages in England and Wales, down dua.8 per cent on the previous year and the lowest since records began in 1862. Of these marriages, some 6,932 were between same-sex couples.
"The figures continue to show a long-term decline in heterosexual couples choosing to wed, with numbers falling by 45% since 1972."
Ironically the bishops' desire to extend marriage in church to same sex couples occurs while traditional marriage ceremonies are in steep decline, as is church attendance in general.
Instead of following official teaching onWeddings, Anglican bishops in Wales along with the House of Bishops in the Church of England pander to secular trends in a mistaken attempt to appear more relevant to society.
From the Church in Wales Order for Holy Matrimony:
"Marriage is a gift of God through which husband and wife may grow together in the knowledge, love and service of God. It is given that, united with one another in heart, in mind and in body, they may increase in love and trust. God joins husband and wife in life-long union as the foundation of family life (in which children are born and nurtured and) in which each member of the family, in good times and in bad, may find strength, companionship and comfort, and grow to maturity in love. Marriage enriches society and strengthens community."
Mistaken ideas of equality, misrepresenting biblical meanings of love and substituting constructions of gender in place of traditional sexual identification have not enriched society or strengthened the community. More often they have led to confusion, bitterness and resentment.
The so called 'inclusive' churches have excluded far more Anglicans than thay have recruited as illustrated by the overalldecline in attendance.
Those now complaining about being locked out of their churches under Covid-19 distancing rules are experiencing what they have previously forced on others who, along with the majority of Christians, including Anglicans, did no more than try to adhere to the traditional catholic and apostolic faith handed down through generations.
A salutary lesson indeed.
