The Governing Body of the Church in Wales has adopted a Bill to allow women clergy to be ordained to the episcopate.

Meeting on 12 Sept 2013 at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in Lampeter the Governing Body amended the original Bill put forward by the House of Bishops to adopt a staged introduction of women bishops so that an adequate provision for opponents of women bishops might be codified.

However, the Archdeacon of Llandaff, the Ven. Peggy Jackson and the Rev. Canon Jenny Wigley put forward an amendment that would allow the ordination of women to the episcopate without waiting for a code of practice to be adopted.

Canon Wigley told the Governing Body the Church in Wales should have a provision for dissenters in a code of practice crafted by the House of Bishops and not have such a provision written into legislation.

However lay delegate Clare Williams from the Diocese of Llandaff argued “We can’t have a bill that doesn’t say loud and clear what provisions are going to be in place” for dissenters. The amendment was put to a vote and passed 82 to 46 with 6 abstentions.

Debate then turned to the final bill, with supporters arguing that allowing women bishops was a matter of justice, and if they were not allowed at this meeting, the issue would be raised again in five years.

The Bishop of St Asaph, the Rt. Rev. Gregory Cameron, the sponsor of the original bill, rose and urged the Governing Body to vote in favor. “What we need is a Church that commits to an equal status in our standing before God. When do we need it? Now,” he said.

Read it all and note the latest 2012 attendance figures may be found here [pdf] on page 3 [and note the ski slope graph on page 4]

Two historic churches in Wales will be able to carry out urgent repair work following Lottery funding announced [on Aug 12]….

St David’s Church in Neath and St Barrwg’s Church in Bedwas are among the first of 35 churches across the UK to be awarded a grant through Heritage Lottery Fund’s new Grants for Places of Worship programme.

St David’s Church will receive £199,300, which will go towards its half-a-million pound appeal to renovate its tower and other work. St Barrwg’s will receive £180,300 which will enable its roof to be repaired and facilities updated so that it can be reopened and used more widely.

Read it all.

The first female Dean of Llandaff has resigned two months after being installed, which the Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan accepted with ”˜enormous sadness’.
The Very Rev Janet Henderson, 55, became the second female to assume such a role in Wales when she became dean in March, but has now stood down.
No official explanations have been cited for the resignation, but it was initially thought an argument over the choir’s performance on Songs of Praise was to blame.

Read it all.

Three Welsh bishops are taking up a tough Lent challenge which will see them give 40 talks over five weeks at eight different venues.

The Archbishop of Wales, the Assistant Bishop of Llandaff and the Bishop of Monmouth will be out and about in churches across South Wales almost every weekday night in the weeks leading up to Easter giving talks about the Bible. And they’re inviting people to make it their Lent resolution to join them for discussion.

The Bishops hope to build on the success of similar talks last year which attracted more than 1,000 people a week.

Read it all.

Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales, was unhappy with the decision, calling it a “step too far”. He said that, though the Church in Wales was not currently contemplating offering same-sex marriages, the law had “curtailed” the church’s freedom; “It should be left for us to opt in or opt out.”

To be fair to the government, it appears to have acted on this church’s official consultation response in June 2012, stating that “The Church in Wales is in an almost identical position to the Church of England with regard to the solemnisation of marriages” and “would seek assurances that the Government would specifically include the Church in Wales in any provisions for the Church of England under the proposed legislation.”

Given the Church of England’s influence and power, including seats in the House of Lords, the government was willing to go to considerable lengths to reduce the risk that the legislation as a whole would be blocked. Church of England official responses to proposals for marriage equality have tended to be highly negative, and to avoid recognising the diversity of views and reviews taking place of its position on civil partnerships and sexuality in general.

Read it all.

A scientist who gave up his job in alternative technology to train as a vicar stars in a new TV series starting next week.

Marcus Zipperlen from Penparcau, Aberystwyth, is one of a number of trainee priests who were followed around for a year by the cameras at St Michael’s College, Cardiff. His journey will be featured in Vicar Academy on BBC1 Wales starting on Monday 15 October.

Made by an independent company, Presentable, Vicar Academy shadowed several full-time students, (“ordinands”) from St Michael’s College ”“ Wales’ only theological college ”“ who came from all corners of the country.

Read it all.

A radical new vision for the future of the Church in Wales is set out in a report launched today.

Supersize parishes run by teams of vicars and lay people, creative ideas for ensuring churches stay at the heart of their communities and investing further in ministry to young people are among the report’s recommendations following an independent root and branch review.

The Church in Wales commissioned the review a year ago to address some of its challenges and to ensure it was fit for purpose as it faced its centenary in 2020. Three experienced people in ministry and church management examined its structures and ministry and heard evidence from public meetings across Wales attended by more than 1,000 people.

Read it all.

We regret that the consultation focuses only on the practice of registering and recognising same-sex marriage, and does not invite comment on the principle. The question of why, and whether or not it is desirable to introduce the concept of marriage for same-sex couples should also be open to public consultation and debate.

In a consultation on legislation which potentially affects everyone, it is anomalous that the questions set in the consultation document are very restrictive. Eleven of the 16 questions are presented with a multiple-choice answer consisting of ”˜Yes’, ”˜No,’ or ”˜Don’t know’/”˜Doesn’t apply to me’. Only one of them allows a more detailed explanation (number 1), and where questions invite free comment (in only 4 of the 16) this is restricted to around 200 words. Six questions are exclusively aimed at people who either are or could be in a same-sex relationship (including transsexuals and their spouses). This suggests a strangely isolated approach to the institution of marriage, which is above all an institution in society, rather than a private arrangement between individuals.

The consultation document refers throughout to an alleged ”˜ban’ on same-sex couples contracting marriages. In normal parlance, for something to be banned, it must be possible but disallowed ”“such as the ban on smoking in public buildings, or the ban on carrying liquids on to an aeroplane, or the ban on alcohol or gambling on many religious premises. (It could be argued that there is a ”˜ban’ on the inclusion of religious content in civil marriage or partnership ceremonies.) This legislation does not lift a ban; it proposes the creation of a new state, ie marriage between persons of the same sex. A more accurate description would be, as in para 1.9(iii), that a same-sex relationship constitutes a ”˜bar’ to marriage: it is a situation in which marriage cannot at present take place. It would be correct to acknowledge that the proposed legislation aims to bring into being a state which did not exist before.

Read it all (my emphasis).

The Most Revd Dr Barry Morgan, Primate of The Church in Wales, has been elected to serve on the Crown Nominations Commission for Canterbury, the body that will nominate the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

Read it all.

Herewith the BBC description of this section:

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, meeting in London, say they’ll offer alternative spiritual leadership to dissaffected members of the Church of England. They also want an alternative to the Archbishop of Canterbury as chairman of the Anglican primates meeting. Is this a way of keeping the Anglican communion together or splitting it asunder?

It consists of a report by Gavin Drake in which the following people are quoted: John Ellison, retired bishop of Paraguay, Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham, the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, and Gregory Cameron, bishop of St. Asaph. Listen to it all (starts about 4:25 in and last about 6 minutes).

The Archbishop of Wales has lent his support to gay marriage today, saying: “All life-long committed relationships deserved the welcome, pastoral care and support of the Church.”

In his presidential address to members of the Church in Wales’ Governing Body in Llandudno, Dr Barry Morgan said Christians “need to show how the Gospel of Jesus is good news for gay people”.

He said the church had to ask itself whether it would “protect and support pastorally, faithful, stable, lifelong relationships of whatever kind in order to encourage human values such as love and fidelity and recognise the need in Christian people for some public religious support for these”.

Read it all.

Lambeth 1998, as I said, accepted homosexual orientation ”“ what some have regarded as “a natural attribute for some people,” that is, a natural predisposition toward people of the same sex ”“which has only been fully understood fairly recently. Even so, the Lambeth answer was to separate orientation from practice and commend celibacy.

But can celibacy be imposed? Shouldn’t it be freely undertaken as a personal vocation by heterosexuals and homosexuals alike? As Rowan Williams once put it, “anyone who knows the complexities of the true celibate vocation, would be the last to have any sympathy with the extraordinary idea that sexual orientation is an automatic pointer to a celibate life: almost as if celibacy before God is less costly, even less risky to the homosexual than the heterosexual.” And is not separating mind and body or feelings or orientation from practice a kind of dualism which the church has condemned in the past since human beings are a unified whole and cannot be compartmentalised in such a way. If that is true of humanity in general, why should we expect people of a homosexual disposition to be singled out in this way?

Read it all.

Witches have been breaking into churches and graveyards to perform black magic rituals, a leading Church in Wales cleric has revealed.

Bishop of Monmouth Dominic Walker said the incidents coincided with a resurgence in witchcraft in recent years, with the number of occult groups performing both wicca ”“ or white magic ”“ and black magic on the rise.

And while not a frequent occurrence, Bishop Walker said he had been called on several occasions during his nine-year ministry to help people escape these “satanic groups”.

Read it all.

…the religious leaders of Jesus’ day regarded God….[chiefly in terms of His holiness] ”“ [they viewed him as]…a God set apart from His world and separate from everything that might be unclean and messy and unworthy.

So the emphasis is on the importance of dignified worship, carried out in church buildings with due reverence, awe and majesty which nothing must interrupt or disturb ”“ the world kept at a respectable distance so that it doesn’t sully what is going on inside the sacred space. The holy must not be contaminated with the unholy, or the spiritual with the material or political.

But it is precisely this view of God’s holiness that Jesus shattered. He spent most of His ministry out of doors, not in synagogues or temple but preaching to ordinary people, attempting to relate ordinary everyday events to God. He saw everything within that world as having a connection to God such as treasure in a field, a lost coin, a lost sheep, a lost son. And He was born in a cowshed amidst the mess and smell of animals. God, in the midst of the warp and woof of real human existence; the link between holy and unholy, inextricably joined.

Read it all.

“I want to thank the Muslim Council of Wales and Saleem Kidwai, its Secretary General, in particular, for all he has done to foster good interfaith relationships in Wales over the last decade. Because of his commitment to our common Faith journey and because the fostering of good interfaith relationships has been high on the agenda of our own Welsh Government, I also want to thank the First Minister for continuing the sterling work of his predecessor Rhodri Morgan for this. Wales has not seen some of the problems encountered in other parts of the United Kingdom.

“The purpose of an evening such as this is for both Christians and Muslims to set out as cogently as they can, the kernel of what they believe so that we can understand one another better. What I have deeply valued over the last ten years in our relationship is the willingness to be totally open and honest with one another. We have not attempted to gloss over our differences and pretended that there aren’t any. Although our two faiths have much in common there are crucial differences as well and it honours no-one to pretend that that is not the case.”

Read it all.

The Welsh Government intends to bring forward legislation soon, where instead of opting in to be an organ donor and therefore signing a card, it will be assumed that everyone is willing to donate their organs after death unless they have opted out. The trouble at the moment is that whereas 90% of the population say that they would be willing to be organ donors, only a third have signed the national register or carry a donor card. So the Government in Wales (but in no other part of the UK) proposes to bring in a law where it will be presumed that you are willing to donate your organs after death unless you have specifically opted not to do so.

One can understand the thinking behind all this. Most European States have more donors per head of population than Britain. In the UK as a whole, there are around 10,000 people waiting at any one time for a new heart, kidney or liver and three people a day die because there is no suitable organ ready for them. The waiting list for a kidney patient is three years whilst heart and liver patients wait on average six months. Organ transplants have a phenomenal degree of success these days and 90% of transplanted organs function really well a year after surgery and patients who have received them can often live for a decade or two.
The Welsh Government, sensitive to the fact that this is quite a radical departure, also proposes what it calls the “soft opt-out option” ”“ relatives will be able to have the right of veto on organ donation. Yet, although all this is admirable in its intention, I feel a bit uneasy, not about organ donations or transplants because there are strict guidelines governing these and gifting organs is a laudable practice, but about presumed consent.

Read it all.

The Church in Wales will next week consider taking a further step towards equality for gay clerics by providing improved pension rights for their civil partners.

But progressive elements in the Church remain uneasy that while there is an acceptance that priests can have a monogamous sexual relationship, the same tolerance does not extend to Bishops.

During a two-day meeting starting on Wednesday of the Church’s Governing Body, it will be recommended that surviving civil partners of retired clerics should receive a pension based on the priest’s entire working life. Until now, the rate of pension has only been calculated from 2005, when civil partnerships were first allowed.

Read it all.

The Church in Wales is struggling to recruit new priests, with nearly one in three of clergy expected to go in the next five years.

A total of 166 clergy are due to retire within the half-decade, leaving the Anglican church with the challenge of finding a new generation of leaders at a time of shrinking congregations.

Next week the church will stage a “ministry and calling Sunday” to urge people to consider ordination. It will also encourage people to recommend a life in the church to others they feel have the skills to serve Welsh congregations.

Read it all.

You may also recall, that at September’s Governing Body, the bishops and the Standing Committee were asked by you to respond to the situation described in the Membership and Finance Report of 2008/09 which drew our attention in particular to the fact that:

Average attendance had continued to fall by 2% in line with the longer term trend.
Average attendance among young people had fallen particularly sharply.
The level of total direct giving fell for the first time since the statistics began to be collected in this format in 1990.
For the first time since 1993, total parish income was less than expenditure.
The proportion of parish expenditure spent on buildings had increased from 28% to 31%.
These figures present challenges to us as a Church but also an opportunity to tackle them.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Wales is urging officials to be open to “significant change” ahead of a large-scale review.

Dr Barry Morgan said the Church in Wales must adapt to cope with the decline in clergy, waning investments and falling congregations.

Three independent experts are to assess its use of buildings and financial resources.

The church’s organisational structure could also change, he warned.

Read it all.

Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan has given his support to a growing move to give royal daughters equal rights to succeed to the throne as their brothers.

Dr Morgan is the latest senior UK figure to call for the rule, which stops the eldest daughter of a monarch from inheriting the British throne if she has a younger brother, to be scrapped.

The Anglican leader considers it absurd the present Queen would never have been crowned if she had a brother.

Read it all.

Wales is running out of space to bury its dead and needs a co-ordinated policy to tackle the issue seriously.

That’s one of the stark facts the Church in Wales is highlighting in a series of briefing notes about its work to candidates standing for the Welsh Assembly election.

It estimates that two-thirds of the Church’s 1,000 burial grounds will be full in 10 years’ time and calls for a Government Commission to look into provision across Wales.

Read it all.

Almighty God, who didst call thy servant David to be a faithful and wise steward of thy mysteries for the people of Wales: Mercifully grant that, following his purity of life and zeal for the gospel of Christ, we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.

People who are unable to work need to be cared for properly and not be accused of being work-shy, the Archbishop of Wales said last night.

Dr Barry Morgan said the mark of a civilised society was the way it cared for its worst off members.

He was speaking at a service to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tonypandy Riots.

Read it all.

Women should be represented at all levels of the church, the most powerful Anglican in the US has said during a visit to Wales.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has been a personal guest of Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan, whose conviction that church leadership should not be a male-only preserve she shares.

The US church’s support for bishops in homosexual relationships has sparked conflict with traditionalists and the communion, which has adherents in more than 160 countries, is threatened with schism.

Read it all.

Vicars in parts of rural Wales face being forced to cover more than a dozen parishes because of a recruitment crisis.

The Diocese of St Davids, which covers much of West Wales, currently has just three vicars to cover 27 parish churches.

But when the Reverend John Powell of St Mary’s in Cardigan retires in August, it will mean just two vicars to cover all the parishes.

The diocese is not alone in facing a recruitment crisis ”“ according to Church in Wales figures a quarter of current serving clergy are due to retire within the next decade and less than 10% of Wales’ vicars are under 40.

Read the whole thing.

The Church in Wales is urgently looking for new clergy as figures reveal a continuing drop in their numbers.

The number of full-time clergy has been falling in recent years with a net loss of more than 100 between 2004 and 2009.

The Church in Wales governing body will discuss the issue when it meets in Lampeter, Ceredigion, on Wednesday.

A motion seeks backing for the “urgent need” to “seek out and nurture” new clergy, while welcoming a five-year vocations strategy.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Mgr Andrew Faley [director of ecumenism for the Bishops Conference of England and Wales]: ‘Well, I think there is an answer to it and I can understand why Bishop Gregory should say what he has said. However, I can’t really believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury, over the past several years, has not been aware of the disaffection and the unease of several groups of Anglicans within the Anglican Communion concerning particular issues within that Church which have caused them to be increasingly nervous about what it means to be in unity with that church.

‘Now, the Pope is not an ill-mannered man, as far as I’m aware, it’s not so much about ecumenical bad manners as the Pope’s concern for the unity of the church.

‘As Bishop Christopher Hill said in the joint press conference announcing this particular initiative between ”“ or sorry, not initiative, response ”“ between himself and the Archbishop of Canterbury and also Archbishop Nichols of Westminster, and Archbishop McDonald of Southwark, were present, the four of them – he said, look the last thing we want is more churches.

‘This move of the Pope is directly concerned with the unity of the church. That it’s not so much about wanting just to stand back, therefore, and see the Anglican Communion disintegrate into more and more churches. That’s exactly what Gregory doesn’t want. That’s exactly what I don’t want.’

Read it all or better yet listen to the whole podcast from which it is quoting.

The Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, yesterday made a strong defence of religion in the public space against attacks from “nervous public officials” and “aggressive secularists”.

Speaking before the Governing Body of the Church in Wales in Lampeter, he urged Christians to “keep their nerve”, stating: “Some of the letters I receive assume that religion is dead, irrational and full of superstition and has no place in public life at all, nor that Christians have any right to voice their concerns about any issue.”

He continued: “We live in a country that is clamouring for values. People do turn to the church to look for meaning in life…

Read it all.