THE Church’s belief that sex should be confined to marriage is one of the issues at the heart of the gay bishops debate, the bishop of Sodor and Man has said.
Bishop Robert Paterson said because a civil partnership is not a marriage sex was precluded, in the eyes of the Church, within such a relationship, but he agreed that sometimes such debates could be in danger of obscuring more important issues.
‘The Christian standard is sex belongs within marriage and marriage is a heterosexual relationship by nature and if you are having sex outside marriage - gay or straight - you should not be an ordained person. Hence if you are in a civil partnership it should be sex-free.’
Because the legislators decided civil partnerships should be purely the preserve of same-sex couples and not available to couples of opposite sex, he said this had caused more complication because the inference was of a homosexual relationship.
‘It left us with a problem because there were vicars entering civil partnerships - many tell us they are not sexual but they are life-long friends. Some have no other family, for example, and they want the other to inherit when they die. In the Church of England we are not going to go too deeply into this,’ he said.
‘Certainly any of this talk of bishops spying in people’s bedrooms is just nonsense.’
But he said the position of bishops had required a slightly different approach.
‘It was thought the standards of a bishop should be more rigorous so it was thought we should raise the bar a little and say you cannot be considered for a bishop’s role because of the risk of a scandal to the Church.’
But by 2011 he said pressure was mounting on the Church so a commission was set up, which he chaired, to consider the matter.
‘Should we drop this extra bar to being a bishop and make it the same as for a vicar?
‘Our report was discussed last May by the bishops but there was no agreement and it was brought back to the December meeting of the House of Bishops - the senior Church of England Bishops. This time we decided on a very simple response.
‘The rules for ordinary priests should apply for bishop nominations too. Of course you choose a bishop for thousands of different reasons, but the fact of being in a civil partnership, as long as it follows the standard doctrinal reasoning of the Church of England will not stand in your way.’
On the matter of women bishops he said he felt many people’s response had been ‘‘for goodness’ sake come into the real world’’ but he said the gay bishop matter was perhaps different.
‘Christianity, Islam and Judaism - the Abrahamic faiths - share the same fundamental view of marriage, as a relationship between two people of the opposite sex and the gift of sex is something that belongs, at best, within marriage, so adultery or sleeping around or abuse of sex falls below that standard.
‘What I think they are all trying to say is it would be a mistake to drop that standard. We understand a lot more about same-sex sexuality now and we would be fools to ignore that, but at the same time we don’t want to ignore a good ethical ideal. Judaism has been established for 4,000 years so it would be re-writing that in fewer than 10 years.
‘It looks as if we are holding up the progress of history, but we shouldn’t be too quick to re-write the book.’
He warned of the inherent dangers of traditional family breakdown pointing out that unexpected problems sometimes manifested themselves several years down the line, but he added: ‘We are not very good sometimes at reading the signs of the times.’
