General Synod – 10th to 13th July 2009 Pt2
(Taken from notes compiled by the Salisbury Diocese representatives)
Questions:
On Friday evening the House of laity met together for dinner. Back in plenary session, the day ended with ninety minutes of questions from the floor. Seventy-five were asked; fifty-seven were answered before Synod voted for bed-time.
Questions ranged from the timetable of Synod to Bishops’ expenses, the rain tax, the self-styled Anglican Church in North America, clerical preferment, royal marriages, the BNP, the Equality Bill, rural poverty, Swedish lesbians, clergy training and Wycliffe Hall.
Half the fun (if that is the right word) of questions is who will answer them. We were not disappointed. The Archbishop of York, the Bishops of Wakefield, Bristol, Chichester, Dover, Lincoln, Guildford and Norwich, the Third Church Estates Commissioner, the secretary General and the Clerk to the Synod – all danced their way through the unusually tedious repertoire. There were too many long questions and too many long answers. The final answer from the Bishop of Norwich to a 160-word brain-teaser caught the mood. “You can’t have it both ways, Synod”.
The Urban Church:
Although intended to be a full debate, this was only a "take note" presentation. Urban churches are not part of a comfortable church in comfortable Britain. As a result, it is difficult to recruit clergy for these areas, and some radical ideas are needed for the support of the ministry. One solution considered was to offer ordinands pay inversely proportional to the number of applicants for the post!
Saturday Legislation:
It was a treat to spend most of Saturday absorbed in the red meat of a strong legislative agenda. We promulged amending Canon 28 dealing with the provision of Holy Communion in ecumenical partnerships at major festivals then went back to the Suffragan Bishops Act 1534 to make a series of amendments recommended by the Pilling report in 2007. These provide for the submission of only 1 name to the Crown, the statutory delegation of patronage in vacant suffragan sees and the abolition of the Crown’s right of patronage when a suffragan bishop is translated to a diocesan see. And all of this without a murmur of discontent at the enactment of the statutory delegation of long held interests (think about it).
We then leapt forward several centuries to amend the Crown Benefices Measure so as to give PCC’s in crown benefices the right to appoint lay representatives for the purpose of approving appointments. Another change of gear took us to ecclesiastical fees and the deeply controversial question of whether fees should belong to incumbents and PCC’s or the DBF with a power of waiver to both. We weighed bureaucracy against tradition and perceived slights against the majority of honest clergy with cracking the whip on the dodgy minority and came down in favour of reform. The majority was small and we’ll return to the subject in February so make sure you brief us on your views by then.
