The Prime Minister still appoints bishops and other liturgical worthies, doesn’t he (or recommends appointments to the Crown)? Prince Charles will take a coronation vow to defend the church, won’t he? One that will compel him to deny assent to a bill that, say, dissolved the church? Sure, you can call those largely ceremonial functions, but they’re also very meaningful functions in a way.
Should my local gas station be sanctioned for refusing to stock The Advocate? Why not? Aren’t they discriminating based on sexuality?
My hesitancy is that this page is basically an ad for having a church wedding, as opposed to a more official declaration of CoE canon law (or UK secular law). So a web page saying vaguely that it’s the “duty” of a vicar to marry you is not as persuasive as the specific boundaries of that “duty.” Elsewhere on the same site, for example, the issue of marrying persons previously divorced from others is delicately addressed:
So obviously there’s at least one case in which your Vicar doesn’t have a “duty” to marry you.
And just when I was wondering why I was still skimming this thread…
If you’ll pardon the tangent, and the possibly rude question (which isn’t intended that way)… why? Heck, I’m not even sure I realized this was a thing–had you asked me fifteen minutes ago, “who does the canon-lawyering in the RCC?”, I would’ve guessed “the clergy”, and specifically rather non-pastoral members thereof who spend their days perched over high desks, poring over dusty scrolls in tiny rooms of ancient, rough-hewn stone by candlelight. Are canon-lawsuits common? I’m honestly curious–never gave this any thought before. Feel free to open up another thread, if you think others would be interested (or if you don’t want to clutter up this thread).
There definitely is some kind of duty to marry that applies to the CoE and its priests. I suspect that the actual legal duty may be a matter of common law that is not explicitly written in some piece of legislation.
Well, in this case, the conditions of “their job” might be satisfied with filing a marriage license and other paperwork. Getting all dressed up in vestments and reading from scripture and singing gospel music (or whatever the couple have in mind for “a big lavish ceremony, the whole works”, as Barrie Drewitt-Barlow puts it), that’s kind of extra. I don’t see the value in making a vicar or bishop or whatever recite phrases he doesn’t want to (especially if it’s of no legal relevance). I invite the couple to hire an actor to dress up as a vicar or bishop and make the performance as lavish as they like.
I support marriage equality, but this sort of behavior seems remarkably hypocritical and counter-productive to me.
It’s hypocritical because a large number of those who are against same-sex marriage do so because of religious beliefs, and the primary argument against that is the idea of separation of church and state; religious beliefs should not be the determining factor in creating law. Yet, here, suing a church to force them to perform a marriage for a gay couple is using the law to try to set religious doctrine. Separation of church and state should go both ways.
Moreso, why would a gay couple want to seek out the religious sanctioning from a congregation who would only do so begrudgingly when forced? I appreciate that there are plenty of gay Christians out there, but surely they seek out churches that share their views, including that homosexuality isn’t a sin and should be religiously sanctioned.
And it’s counter-productive because it feeds exactly into the fear of “the gays are forcing their lifestyle on us”. The way to assuage that sort of fear isn’t to legally force people to recognize them, it’s to let sensible people see that they’re just normal people. Just in the last 10 years or so, I’ve seen a remarkable change in gay acceptance, and it will continue to improve, but I think this sort of act is just going to add fuel to the fire for those who will fight against it. You just cannot legislate social change, it will take time.
They should drop their case, get legally married, or maybe find a denomination that will sanction their marriage and just be patient.
Yes, it’s clear there’s a general duty. That’s also true for Roman Catholics; a priest may not withhold any sacrament from someone properly disposed to receive it.
What I’m seeking, though, is a more complete and authoritative list of the exceptions to this general duty. Even the text you quote says:
So what are some of the other, less important exceptions? I get that there’s a general duty: what are the SPECIFICS of that duty?
It’s somewhat more common for clergy to have this degree, yes – in fact, it’s a prerequisite for a bishop (that, or a more advanced degree). But it’s not by any means unheard of for lay persons to obtain a licentiate in canon law, and they can serve as advocates in ecclesiastical trials. At one time, of course, such trials were much more common for a much wider range of subject matter; today they survive primarily in the context of requests for annulment. It’s not uncommon to retain a lay lawyer to handle cases requesting a decree of nullity for a putative marriage, and for lawyers who can do so to donate their time to assist people needing the counsel but unable to afford it.
That’s not all of it. Canon law, for another example, gives strong rights to a parish priest, and if a priest resists being fired from his post as pastor by his bishop, he has a number of canon law remedies available to him, and given the obvious conflicts, he may not have much assistance available from within his diocese. Enter the lay canon lawyer.
Well, reading LB’s link, it sounds like a vicar is legally required to read the vows, but you can include priests, rabbis, etc also. If the vicar is merely fulling a legal requirement, I don’t have much sympathy for his poor widdle feewings. No one is going to make him wear assless chaps and a boa or turn him gay or anything.
While I am miles from Steophan on the subject, I don’t think this is an apt analogy for the point he is trying to make. I think his position is that your local gas station is free to sell any magazine it wants to, but once it offers it for sale, it cannot discriminate against who might want to buy it.
Now, I’m not sure if he takes that further in holding the belief that, say, if your local gas station carries Playboy, that they must also carry Playgirl, or some gay skin magazine.
But for the most part, it doesn’t seem that the as a whole British agree with the couple in the article, per some of the discussion upthread. The idea that the law is opt-in seems to me to be a pretty clear nod to separation of church and state. It’s not clear to me what the specifics are in why the CoE hasn’t opted in. Perhaps this couple has always been in favor of pushing religion to accept gay marriage, so maybe it isn’t hypocritical on those grounds, though it does make them jerks.
It still seems hypocritical to me that, generally, the message about gay marriage hasn’t been about making a church recognize two people as married, but in ensuring that a gay couple and a straight couple are able to get the same legal recognition and rights. Just as with civil rights here in the US, we can force people to have equal rights through legislation, but we can’t force people to just accept eachother over night. The article explicitly says that they can convert their civil partnership into a marrige, yet they want “a big lavish ceremony, the whole works” but “don’t want to force anyone into marrying” them. If it’s just about the marriage, the church isn’t involved at all. So why do they need to sue at all, if not just because they want that whole lavish ceremony? And what does it mean to sue someone if it isn’t attempting to legally force someone into doing something?
Well, it turns out I’m not overflowing with sympathy for the poor widdle feewings of the gay couple, either. They can get legally married with the attendant legal rights and privileges. That they can’t get the big fancy church wedding they want is disappointing, I’m sure, but I can’t quite seem to bring myself to the point where litigation sounds justified.
Being baptized as RCC is not a requirement to celebrate a wedding in an RCC church, following the RCC rite, or to have it be considered theologically valid.
Having a concept of marriage that matches the RCC’s concept of theological marriage does, though. Couples can and have been refused a wedding because they don’t, despite both being baptized.
That is my position, and it is also my position that religions should be held to the same high standards of basic human decency as gas stations.
No, I’m not saying that. If they carried Playgirl (which is ostensibly aimed at women, though mostly bought by gay men, at least last time I checked), they would not be allowed to only sell it to women, though.
The CATHOLIC spouse-to-be has to agree to do “everything in their power” to raise the kids as Catholics. The non-Catholic spouse has to agree to nothing in this regard.
Cite: my own mixed marriage - cradle Catholic wife, unbaptised husband.
I think a lot of people are missing the point that the C of E church has not chosen not to opt in to offering same sex marriages, it is legally barred from opting in, weird though that seems.
The Church of England and the Church in Wales are the only religions banned from opting in, due to being the state religion. This does change the whole discrimination argument for me- as it’s the state not the church making that decision.
If the church does not itself want to opt in- well, that’s its choice, but why should the government be stepping in to specifically ban the state religion from choosing freely?
