The issuance of the memorandum from a bishop not without controversy himself once again entwines religion with politics inside and outside the Church that is seeking to evangelize and grow while remaining true to its roots.
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Although results from the recent elections to the General Synod are only beginning to come in, Fr Foreshew-Cain’s name has emerged as one of the successful candidates to represent clergy in the Diocese of London. He continues: “Catholics must be in a marriage recognised as valid by the Church to receive Holy Communion or the other Sacraments”.
“The antagonism of the world to the word of God is perhaps seen nowhere more acutely than in the virulent challenge to the definition of marriage which pervades conversations in the media, the workplace and even in our places of leisure….”
News of the appointment was greeted with consternation among religious conservatives who have resisted calls to alter the theology of the church on marriage and human sexuality. For revisionists, Foreshew-Cain’s presence at Synod will be a prophetic challenge to the boring, oppressive establishment, whose traditional doctrines about sex and marriage are excluding large numbers of people who don’t live in monogamous heterosexual marriage and are not celibate.
As well as campaigning on gay rights within the church, Foreshew-Cain said he also wanted to press for the re-establishment of the synod’s authority.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern and a member of the Church of England’s General Synod 2010 – 2015, has issued the following statement in response to the election of Rev’d Andrew Cain to the General Synod.
“Andrew Cain’s ongoing activism should no longer be tolerated”.
Andrew Foreshew-Cain, the vicar of St Mary with All Souls, Kilburn and St James, West Hampstead, said he was “pleased but shocked” at his election in the London section of the nationwide ballot to the church’s governing body.
It is central to Church teaching as the indissolubility of marriage and marriage being a union between a man and a woman are core Catholic beliefs.
The fact that divorced Catholics who remarry without their first marriage being annulled by the Church are prohibited from receiving the Eucharist is an issued being debated by the Synod of Bishops now gathered for a three-week general assembly on family life and marriage in Rome.
His election reflected a hope “for a more inclusive and tolerant church”, he added. We know only too well the horrific impact of sins and crimes of abuse in the church family: “the betrayal of trust, the violation of dignity, the shame – both public and private, the anger and alienation, the wound that never seems to heal”, he said.
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African churches within the Anglican Communion have also refused to change their churches’ stance on same-sex marriage.
