(ZENIT News / London, 10.23.2025).- The Church of England has once again found itself caught between the demands of doctrine and the pressures of a changing world. In mid-October, its bishops voted to suspend a long-anticipated plan that would have tested separate blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples — a move hailed by traditionalists and lamented by reformers. The decision, they said, was driven by a need for greater consensus from the Church’s governing body before such ceremonies could proceed.
Under the current rules, priests may still offer prayers of blessing to same-sex couples within regular church services, a compromise that was once seen as a bridge between two irreconcilable sides. Yet for many, it now stands as a symbol of the Church’s inability to move forward decisively on one of the defining moral questions of its time.
The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, the second-highest-ranking cleric in the Church of England, acknowledged the pain the decision would cause. “We believe we have done the right thing,” he said, citing legal and theological guidance, “but we know it will be difficult and disappointing for some.”
Cottrell’s measured words could not disguise the deeper truth: the Church remains profoundly fractured, its global communion fraying under the strain of competing visions of faith, culture, and human identity.
The timing could hardly be more delicate. Less than two weeks earlier, the Church of England made history — and controversy — by naming Bishop Sarah Mullally as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. She will be the first woman to hold the role, which makes her both the spiritual leader of the Church of England and the symbolic head of the global Anglican Communion, a fellowship of some 85 million believers.
But that global fellowship is in disarray. More than 80 percent of Anglicans worldwide — largely in Africa and Asia — have distanced themselves from the English mother church in recent years, citing theological liberalism on questions of sexuality and gender as the breaking point. Mullally’s appointment, historic as it is, has deepened the rift.
For many in the Global South, the Church of England’s tentative acceptance of same-sex blessings represents a betrayal of biblical teaching. For liberal Anglicans in Britain and beyond, the decision to stall the implementation of such blessings represents a betrayal of another kind — a refusal to extend pastoral care and recognition to faithful Christians in loving same-sex relationships.
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