What is in Kelvin's Head?

D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

26/10/2015

The recent Synod on the Family which has taken place in Rome comprising many leaders within the Roman Catholic Church has once again highlighted attitudes of Christians to divorce.

It seems to me that there really are very different attitudes to divorce in different parts of the church – both geographically and denominationally.

You could hear a certain amount of exasperation this morning when the presenter on Radio 4’s today programme was asking Cardinal Vincent Nichols whether or not the Synod meant that in future divorced and remarried Roman Catholics could or could not be received back into communion in the church and simply couldn’t get a straight answer. The reason of course is that in that situation there doesn’t appear to be a straight answer right at the moment. One may emerge and the hearts and thoughts of many Christians will be with that church as it wrestles with these questions.

For us in the Scottish Episcopal Church on that particular question there is a very straight answer indeed – no-one is excluded from communion because of their marital status.

One of the peculiarities of church life is that very widely differing practices over divorce are apparent yet they don’t seem to have led to the schismatic fellowship-breaking sensibilities which just as differing attitudes to same-sex relationships have led us into. This bears considerable reflection. After all, I’ve heard a priest working in the Church of England preaching at a wedding about about the joys of “African Marriage” which turned out to be marriage in which a divorce is simply not a permissible option. (My hunch is that this will more often work to the detriment of women than of men). I find it puzzling as to how people with such views cope with working in churches in which divorce is sometimes seen as a better way forward than for a couple to stay in a relationship which is harming either or both of them.

I think access to divorce is something which is very important. Even though we don’t have any problem these days in welcoming those who have experienced divorce to receive communion, we must remember that we once did have a big problem with that and that attitudes linger which can be hugely harmful. I’ve several times heard clergy who have divorced say to me that at least we talk about issues relating to same-sex couples whereas we almost never talk about issues relating to divorce. We talk about whether someone in a gay relationship can become a bishop but we don’t talk about whether someone in a second marriage can become a bishop. That question gets tucked away and doesn’t see the light of mature reflection very often.

It seems to me that divorce is an issue when it comes to leadership in our church in a very different way to other parts of the church. It is much, much more common for clergy and particularly bishops to be divorced in the US church than it is in this country.

We do have a particular marriage discipline here in Scotland. A couple can get married in our churches where one or other of them have been married before. It is not uncommon for us to conduct such marriages. (Well, not for me at the moment as I’m not conducting any marriages until the bishops’ latest homophobic guidance is withdrawn. I’m happy to bless those couples who get married in registry offices. If it is good enough for the gay couples then I think it has to be good enough for the straight couples, but that’s another story.).

However, a couple where one or other party has been married before want to get married then they can only do so with the permission of the bishop. Usually their local priest will meet with them and hear the story and then contact the bishop who may well want to meet with them and have a pastoral conversation. It may well be that something like this is what will emerge in the Roman Catholic Church. Certainly it is what some in that church including those at a very high level, appear to want to happen. We’ve got it already and usually it works just fine.

I think it is clear to me that we shouldn’t marry couples where the marriage itself would bring the church and marriage itself into disrepute. It is also clear to me that we shouldn’t marry people where they may have a dependent from a previous relationship who is not being supported financially. However, I think that we should be asking that question of anyone coming to marriage these days rather than just those who have been divorced. Plenty of people who get married have children from other relationships whether it is the first time they are getting married or not, and making sure that they are supported properly has little to do with divorce.

I also think that if the church is prepared to marry a couple where one of them is a member of the clergy then it has to accept the divorce and the remarriage and ensure that there are no posts in the church that they are formally barred from simply because of that marriage. It seems to me that this is unclear and that lack of clarity can be quite harmful to people.

It seems to me that rule of church life – canon law, has to make space for the pastoral sensibilities of the church at its best. When we get this even slightly wrong we end up seeing the church at its pastoral worst.

We have a number of people who worship in St Mary’s because the marriage discipline of the church that they would rather be worshipping in has harmed them and those whom they love. No-one wants that to be the case and it is good for churches to return to think about the way they deal with those who are divorced from time to time. A blessing on the Roman Catholic Church as they try to work out which way to go next. And let it be a nudge to others to ponder whether we’ve got our own practice working as well as it can work and and whether it communicates effectively the love and compassion of God that is far bigger than any of us.

divorce, Roman Catholic Church, Scottish Episcopal Church

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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