A RESPECT for provincial autonomy trumped personal convictions about sexuality last weekend, the Bishop of Lancaster, Dr Jill Duff, explained this week, after she participated within the laying on of hands on the consecration of the brand new Assistant Bishop of Bangor, the Rt Revd David Morris.
Bishop Morris, who’s 38, takes the title of Bishop of Bardsey and becomes the youngest ever bishop within the Church in Wales (News, 26 January). The service on Saturday morning, he said on Tuesday, was “incredibly joyful” with a “feel of celebration”.
“I felt particularly emotional after I emerged from the laying on of hands. It was powerful: you felt the burden of the episcopacy really resting on you,” he said.
“Then those hands lifted, and also you stood up, and it was tremendously powerful, and the sense of prayer and movement of the Spirit was profound.”
Alongside her position within the diocese of Blackburn, Dr Duff is an honorary assistant bishop within the diocese of St Asaph, and lives in north Wales. She has been an outspoken opponent of the introduction of blessings for same-sex couples within the Church of England. She also opposes changes that will enable clerics within the C of E to enter same-sex marriages.
There have never been any such restrictions on clergy within the Church in Wales. Bishop Morris is engaged to be married to his fiancé, Marc Penny.
On Tuesday, Dr Duff said that she had attended the service as a representative of the Church of England, after being asked to achieve this by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.
Her views on same-sex partnerships were unchanged, she said, but she “went in service and humility to honour the bishops” in Wales.
She said that there was a protracted history of English bishops “domineering” in Wales. This stretched back to the primary Archbishop of Canterbury, St Augustine, and his treatment of Welsh Christians, including cursing Welsh bishops over a disagreement concerning the dating of Easter.
Dr Duff said that attending the service and participating within the prayers of consecration was something that she could do in “trying to seek out reconciliation and finding a positive way forward” in the connection between the Provinces.
Asked whether she would participate similarly within the consecration of a bishop within the C of E who was in a same-sex marriage, she said that this could be “quite a special query” in her mind.
“Who am I, as an English bishop, to guage a Welsh bishop? But if I’m an English bishop, in an English jurisdiction, that feels quite a special thing to me,” she said.
Bishop Morris told the Church Times that he was “delighted” that Dr Duff had attended, and said that there had never been a suggestion that she wouldn’t participate within the laying on of hands.
“I sensed that she’d come to take part in the making of a recent bishop in the way in which that any Church of England representative would, and didn’t think anything more of it, really,” he said.
On the query of the dynamics between the English and Welsh Churches, Bishop Morris was similarly unconcerned: “I assume those dynamics which will have existed on the time of Augustine, and potentially since, have perhaps not been as prevalent since 1920, after we disestablished. I’m not conscious of this stuff, but others could be.”
He said that he hadn’t been following the Living in Love and Faith process in England very closely, and that he was “probably not politically minded in this stuff.
“I just wish to be me, and get on with the job and consider being the most effective bishop I might be, to function best I can the people entrusted to my care. I don’t really ever factor the problems of human sexuality into that, as some might who’re perhaps a bit more political than I’m.”
Bishop Morris was also the youngest priest to be ordained within the Church in Wales. Before his present appointment, he was Director of Ordinands in Bangor and a canon of the cathedral.
