The Bishop of London has written to her clergy telling them they can ignore guidelines banning them from conducting services in their own churches thus contradicting advice from the Archbishop of Canterbury.
By her actions the former Chief Nurse gives support to those people who think they know better than the government and the Church, ignoring Covid-19 guidelines designed to protect our NHS and save lives.
Shame on her.
Tell us more please.
ReplyDeleteDominic
The Bishop does not "know better than the Government" as in fact the Church of England's ruling is stricter than the Government's. Although everyone is required to stay at home as much as possible, and many religious leaders are indeed conducting services from there, the official ruling (which hasn't changed since March 23rd) is that "A minister of religion or worship leader may leave their home to travel to their place of worship. A place of worship may broadcast an act of worship, whether over the internet or otherwise".
ReplyDeleteWhether a mere Diocesan should disobey an Archbishop, and whether she is showing a good example, are different questions of course.
UPDATE: I have looked on the London Diocese website and there is an "ad clerum" there which says that the "Daily Telegraph" published a mislenading headline: https://tinyurl.com/uqlts8g.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it would help if we all read the "ad Clerum" from the London Bishops, and not rush to conclusions based on a report in a newspaper.
ReplyDeleteCymro
The carefully worded statement from the London College of Bishops backtracks on "...we will encourage those – and only those – clergy to pray in their churches privately and to consider whether they could live stream their services from within the church building....we are asking the limited numbers of you to whom the above applied, to stop all live streaming from your church buildings for the time being.”
ReplyDeleteIt is important that everyone follows the set guidelines. Failure to do so results in people, eg, 'out for exercise' sunbathing.
https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1241859943017349126
Sorry to say it AB, but this is your worst ever contribution. You have not provided direct evidence of your contention - even if it is correct.
ReplyDeleteDominic
Ancient Briton
ReplyDeleteyou are wrong. See today's Times: on March 26 the government expressly said that churches could be used for live streaming of worship (Regulation 5) of the Coronavirus Restrictions in England. Archbishop Welby decided unilaterally on 24th March that church buildings and public worship are non essential. I know many clergy who are deeply distressed about being locked out of their own churches and being forced to deny all the sacraments to the laity. My local vicar is not one of them. He is delighted to be at home with his wife and three month old son. Unfortunately his live streaming of worship from his living room is ruined by the wailing of the baby in the background every time! In one broadcast the baby was in full view throughout, crying incessantly like babies do.
Lyn
From over half a century ago the late Dr Mascall's 'Pi in the High' comes to mind in this context, with its gentle parody of a certain type of Anglican clergyman. I quote the most relevant part:
ReplyDelete'I teach the children in my school the Penny Catechism,
Explaining how the C of E’s in heresy and schism.
The truths of Trent and Vatican I bate not one iota.
I have not met the Rural Dean. I do not pay my quota.
The Bishop’s put me under his “profoundest disapproval”;
And, though he cannot bring about my actual removal,
He will not come and visit me or take my confirmations:
Colonial prelates I employ from far-off mission stations.'
Someone around that time pithily summed up the role of Church of England bishops as 'normatively dignified impotence'. If parish priests who took that approach were a sufficiently recognizable type to be satirized in poetry, there seems no consistent reason why a diocesan shouldn't treat the strictures of the metropolitan with a similar reserve. There must be ancient precedent, if anyone was sufficiently prompted to assiduously sek it out! Isn't that the Anglican way? Or, at least, the Church of England's?
Social distancing? How come Welby has the look of a best man in a shotgun wedding - the best you could get.
ReplyDeleteEndorser