You bless it, you bought it
The Church of England’s bishops descend into utter nonsense After years of study, bishops of the Church of England have announced that they will not allow same-sex marriages within their churches, nor allow their clergy to perform them, but they will allow their priests to “bless” same-sex unions after a civil marriage. In other words, they lack the courage to go ahead with same-sex marriage as a rite of the church, but their backup plan, for now, is to allow clergy to bless the unions they cannot approve. The Church of England was famously born in compromise, but at least it once produced bishops like J. C. Ryle, definite statements of doctrine like the Thirty-Nine Articles, and theological achievements like the Book of Common Prayer. I am an unrepentant Anglophile, though certainly not an Anglican. Nevertheless, a portrait of 16th-century Archbishop Thomas Cranmer hangs in my library. I can only imagine what bishops like Ryle and Cranmer would say to their contemporaries today....