Wednesday, 6 February 2013
A serious question
When the same-sex marriage legislation reaches the statute book, how will it be possible for clergy to act in good conscience as agents of the State (as deputy registrars in England and Wales), when that State has changed the legal definition of marriage for all who enter into it?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Do (English and Welsh Anglican) clergy act as agents of the State, however, in respect of marriage and its registration?
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that they act as agents of the Church (as it were) and the State accepts their certification of what they have done as sufficient for its purposes. They are not actually "registrars" tho' performing an equivalent role.
A question for you in turn, Father.
ReplyDeleteIf a couple were to come to you desiring to be joined in Holy Matrimony and to have the Church's blessing on their union, but not wishing to avail themselves of the legal "privileges" of marriage as understood by the State (indeed perhaps wishing to distance themselves from that state and understanding), would you be willing to do that which is liturgically necessary, but not register it?
I hope you forgive me for not answering that directly; there are all kinds of reasons why it would be prudent not to give a response, even to a hypothetical question.
DeleteMy apologies. It is an interesting question, but it was naughty of me to ask.
DeleteYes, indeed, you are right; that would be the preferred theological interpretation of what happens.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there exists a legal right (regardless of religious affiliation or lack of it) to be married in one's local Anglican parish church. Attempts to insist on the requirement of baptism for those being married are clearly of dubious legality. That's why I'm not sure that the law affirms our definition of the clergy's role in this regard.
'Tis a murky business, and I understand your unease.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the Catholic Church, as hinted at by Monsignor Egan, will decide to stop its involvement in the civil registration aspects of marriage, and that Catholics in the UK will then have to adopt a continental pattern of a trip to the Register Office for a love declaration ceremony and then heading off to church to get married.
ReplyDeleteAs you rightly say, that rather neat solution is not as easy for the Church of England or the Church in Wales. When some of your Anglican colleagues who are "with the programme" start going ahead and solemnising these new same sex marriages (some interesting reworking of the BCP et al lies ahead), then those who don't will find themselves on a very sticky wicket.
Separately, it seems that the EU have a plan to set all this heated local debate aside. If the European rules on mutual marriage recognition come in later this year, then all a same-sex couple would need to do would be to hop over to the Netherlands, get married according to Dutch law, and then the UK would have to recognise them as married.
Cameron really need not have bothered with cutting his party in two.
I thought (I may be wrong - I'm not Anglican) that the peculiarity of the Incumbent of a parish of the Church of England is that he or she *is* in fact an agent both of Church and State in certain circumstances, including the civil recognition of marriage. This is why anyone living within the bounds of a parish has a legal right (assuming they meet the legal requirements) to be married in "their" parish church.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite interesting from a legal perspective, I think. Ministers of other denominations - even other religions - do not generally have this authority. They are licensed to register marriages, but they are NOT usually Registrars in the way that the Vicar of Cubboldthorpe-in-the-Glebe is by virtue of his induction. At the moment (and I think for the forseeable future), the ECHR will not be inclined to hear the case of, say, two Roman Catholics who are refused a marriage in a RC church: the priest is not an agent of the state, but only a person who has the legal authority to register a marriage. As such there isn't (yet) an obligation for him to marry anyone who asks. The aforementioned vicar, on the other hand, is a Registrar and does not have the luxury of personal scruple.
Whether this applies in Wales, where the Anglican Church is not by law established, I do not know. It may be that incumbents in Wales are not Registrars.
No, for the purposes of marriage, clergy of the Church in Wales have exactly the same status as those of the Church of England. When is disestablishment not quite disestablishment?
DeleteWell to answer your question, 1920 (or 1914).
DeletePrecisely
Delete