The first priest to marry his same-sex partner is to issue a legal challenge to the Church of England after his offer of a job as an NHS chaplain was withdrawn when his bishop refused the necessary permission.
The Rev Jeremy Pemberton, who married Laurence Cunnington in April, was informed on Friday that Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS trust had withdrawn its offer of a job after Bishop Richard Inwood had refused him the official licence in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham.
“It this is not challenged,” Pemberton said on Sunday, “it will send a message to all chaplains of whom a considerable number are gay and lesbian. This is an area of law that has not been tested and needs to be.”
Read it all from the Guardian.
The real issue is not whether or not Mr. Pemberton sues the CoE, the real issue is here:
“The matter is complicated because Pemberton, who lives in Southwell and sings in the minster there, already has a job as a hospital chaplain in the neighbouring diocese of Lincoln. He had been hoping to move his work closer to home.
The bishop of Lincoln, the Rt Rev Christopher Lowson, has made no moves against Pemberton.
Lincoln is in the ecclesiastical province of Canterbury, and the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has let it be known that he will leave individual cases to the bishops involved. ”
That is to say, the issue is that the ABoC has chosen to NOT defend or enforce the bishops’ accord or the canons of the Church of England. So, just as in TEC, there effectively are no canons or rubrics regarding marriage, since their enforcement is now left up to the whim of the local bishop. Given that the vast majority of bishops put into office in the last 10 years are liberal revisionists, one can assume that little if any action will actually be taken.
The remedy, of course, is to take the canonically required action against those bishops who refuse to uphold church law, but it will likely be a cold day in hades before the current ABoC, who is committed to the full integration of revisionism and heresy into the CoE in the name of false reconciliation, upholds church law or Biblical Christianity.
TJ, I don’t know enough to guess whether the outcome of this may be legal discipline of Bishop Inwood for refusal to license him. So bishops will not face discipline for not enforcing official church standards, but may be in legal trouble for doing so.
And so it begins…