Synod Speech on Blessing of Civil Marriages
Motion 13, Melbourne Synod 20 October 2018
Form of Blessing for Civil Marriages
That Synod
a) acknowledges the widespread national and local support for the recent changes to Australian marriage laws, to include same-sex couples; and
b) commends the pastoral value of the Archbishop authorising a revised Form of Blessing of a Civil Marriage, which may include marriages between two persons of the same sex, for optional use within the Diocese of Melbourne alongside, or in addition to, a wedding conducted by a civil celebrant.
Mr President, members of synod, I rise in support of the motion standing in my name. Craig D’Alton, St Mary’s North Melbourne and Archdeacon of Melbourne.
I stand to move this motion very reluctantly, but for two reasons.
My first reason is that I believe that the church, and this synod, needs to acknowledge that society at large has made a clear decision in favour of marriage equality, and that that decision has now been legislatively enacted. Whether individual synod members support or oppose the opening of civil marriage to same-sex couples is, at one level, immaterial. The fact is that this change has happened, and that it impacts directly upon many members of our congregations and members of this synod, and indirectly upon very many more in the church. I think it is right that we not somehow pretend that it has not happened, and that nothing has changed.
Secondly, in the debate leading up to the equal marriage postal survey, and in the months since, there has not been one single official utterance from the church to which those of us who support our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters can point, to show that the church genuinely welcomes them in equal fellowship. I know people – you may know some too – who have endured the silence, and sometimes open hostility, for too long, and reached the point where they have given up on the church and walked away. This is a pastoral failure, and we as the church are at fault.
Some clergy members of this synod have already been approached, usually by members of their congregations or by personal friends, to conduct weddings or services of blessing for same-sex couples. These are pastoral requests. I have members of my own congregation who have married under the new provisions. I was not able to offer them a service of blessing in church. That causes pastoral and emotional hurt. And it hurts me as well as them. This motion, then, is about saying one very tiny positive word to gay and lesbian members of our churches to the effect of “we don’t totally reject you.”
Two Sundays ago at St Mary’s we blessed dogs and other pets during the Sunday Eucharist, commemorating St Francis of Assisi. It was a happy occasion, and all very “Vicar of Dibley.” I was reminded, however, of the story of the Cananite woman in Matthew 15 who tells Jesus off because he would not grant her daughter healing. I found myself reflecting on how I am not allowed to pray God’s blessing upon two people who have publicly declared their love for one another, but I am allowed to bless a labradoodle. Even the dogs are allowed the crumbs of a blessing, but as things stand, it seems that in our churches gay couples are of less value than dogs.
I need to be clear about what is being proposed in this very conservatively drawn motion. First, this motion actually doesprecisely nothing. It merely acknowledges a fact to be true, and commends a pastoral course of action to the archbishop. It does not require, or even actually request, Mr President, that you should doanything, it just says that synod thinks it might be a good idea. And even if you did decide to act in the matter, the motion is clear that no-one should be compelled to make use of any new form of service, which would be entirely optional.
The second thing is that this motion is not about allowing same-sex weddings in Anglican churches. This is about blessing a couple who choose to marry in a civil ceremony. We already have provision for this for heterosexual couples. The existing service for this purpose is explicitly not “Christian marriage”, it is a service of blessing. That is all that is being spoken of here as well. The question of what constitutes “Christian Marriage” is a question for another time.
Nonetheless, it is true: this is the thin end of the wedge. Part of the reason I am reluctant to move this motion is that, as a gay man, it upsets me that I am suggesting a course of action that would still treat me and those like me as second-class Christians. If there is one thing that the struggle to ordain women to the ministry has taught us, however, it is that you need to start somewhere. If this change in society is of the Spirit, and the Spirit wishes also to change the mind of the church, then that will come, even if it takes decades. If it is not, then it will not. This motion simply says “let’s begin the conversation”, and it does so in a way that speaks one small positive word to gay and lesbian members of our churches, rather than kicking them away from the table without even a crumb.