• Sermon preached for St Mungo – 13 January 2013

    I have to confess that for most of my life I did not give St Mungo much of passing thought. I certainly encountered him when I was in primary school up the road in that I remember a wonderful Primary 5 teacher in Bearsden making us do a project on the great urban conurbation that we were living so close by. The topic was Glasgow and thus we all had to draw our own version of the city crest – the bird, the tree, the bell and the fish – each representative of miracles in the lives of our patron saint.

    After that I didn’t think of him again until a couple of years ago. During the time after Bishop Idris had retired and before Bishop Gregor started, there was a period of time when there was no bishop around to go to civic events. These ended up being divvied up between the Dean and the Provost and perhaps the Synod Clerk, to ensure that the Episcopal Church was represented at events which needed a bigwig.

    I don’t know what I expected when I entered the ordained ministry of the church. I certainly didn’t expect to be a stand-in part-time bigwig going to events like that.

    However, it can be fun – so long as you learn to smile and nod a lot you go far (more…)

27 responses to “Can you backdate a marriage?”

  1. Colin Backhouse Avatar
    Colin Backhouse

    If a man and woman from England were married in a Church in the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus with a proper ordained anglican minister can that marriage be registered and recognised retrospectively back in england?

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      I doubt it, but I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know.

  2. Stephen Clark Avatar

    Am interested to note that the Register in your post seems to be of the Commonwealth of Australia…we are now happily within the marriage equality fold (after a tortuous process).
    At lunch recently with a fellow priest we both agreed that while the laws of Australia may have changed, neither of us (he 70+ and I, 65) will live to see The Anglican Church of Australia allowing marriage equality; being as we are totally bullied by the GAFCON politics of the 4 or 5 Evangelical Dioceses led by the Diocese of Sydney (I would suggest that they are happy to call everyone to scriptural fidelity…whilst the first to breach the call to NOT call sisters and brothers to the secular courts…and then to bring the blessed Owen Dowling to the secular courts…because he chose to ordain women!.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Adding spice to the liturgy

    Much puzzlement this morning over the wine at the 8 am communion. I knew something was wrong with it the last time I celebrated (on a Wednesday). There was a taste of something familliar, yet I could not quite put my finger on what it was. What it was, was cinnamon. And the wine was…

  • Clergy Conference

    Somehow the heather managed to avoid being set alight at the diocesan clergy conference this week. No buzz groups. No buzz. Then back last night to the Book Club. This month’s book was The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This was a good discussion. I’m still mulling over whether the central character…

  • Snow

    Came back from the West today as fast as possible to avoid being on the wrong side of a blizzard. The snow has finally caught up with me. Drove over the hills as though running with Elijah for Beer-Sheeba. Tomorrow is supposed to be Clergy Conference Day, in a place which does not have the…

  • Maniple Spotting again

    I’m not preaching this week, so there is no sermon on for the blog today. Instead, I’m maniple spotting in Argyll. Score so far: 1 maniple