Section One: Theological Foundations

A Fundamental Question

11. The range of theological topics that are bound up with such a rite as the one presented here can be approached in more ways than one. The discussion that follows takes its bearings from this broad and basic question:

What is being, and/or should be, sacramentally recognized, celebrated, and blessed in and by the Church?

12. Given the current liturgical practice of the Church, and the cultural setting in which the Church exercises its ministry, such a question is inevitable and urgent. There is plainly a discontinuity between, on the one hand, the position on the blessing of relationships that is formally, officially, and most often tacitly assumed and, on the other, what as a matter of fact is taking place--notable, though by no means only, in the blessing of gay or lesbian couples. Most fundamentally, the question arising from this discontinuity is a question about love: what is the nature of the love that we, the Church, bless?

A Framework for Pursuing the Question

13. A discussion of eros in Christian terms needs to take into account four aspects or dimensions, their relationships, and their wholesome integration. These four can be thought of schematically as in the diagram that follows.

Human sexuality is never merely sexual. It involves the psychic, personal presence of partners to each other in a solidarity and intimacy to which traditional moral theology gives the name "unitive." It has an intrinsic tendency to pass beyond the "we-ness" of two partners, into a wider interpersonal context, here labeled "fruitfulness." It affects and is affected by each partner's and by the couple's orientation to holiness--by faith and hope in God. None of these realities is ever completely absent. Each depends intrinsically on all the others. Their combination is a powerful sign of divine Love in and for creation.

14. The diagram proposes nothing utterly new. The church has traditionally paid attention to at least two distinctive ways of coordinating all four dimensions of eros--two institutions that are deliberately chosen by Christian persons: marriage and the monastic life. (The inclusion, here and elsewhere in this Report, of monastic vows alongside matrimony is intentional and, we think, important. Celibacy, in the context of religious vocation, is not a denial of sexuality but one way of being a sexual man or woman. It is a fact worth emphasizing that within the tradition of catholic Christianity there are more institutions than one that coordinate the four-dimensional reality of erotic love, and more ways that one of coordinating them.)

15. By recognizing and honoring marriage and the monastic life in its liturgy, the Church has effected and constituted these two institutions. That is, it has made them to be what they are, namely holy and wholesome estates of Christian living. The situation in which the Church finds itself today makes it appropriate, indeed imperative, to ask what ought now to be recognized, honored, and commended, in and by the Church, as holy. The "Fundamental Question," as stated above, is the question of which relationships of erotic love it is good for the Church to bring into being through the sacramental action of Christian community. Why should certain relationships be celebrated and blessed?

A Structure of Inquiry

16. To ask why the Church should bless some relationships is to ask an enormous and complex question. In order to make asking it more particular, and to bring the inquiry closer to the specific issues surrounding the "Rite for the Celebration of Commitment to a Life Together," the following sequence of questions might be applied with respect to the four aspects of erotic love set out in the diagram above.

Question A: What have we as Christians believed, thought, or supposed or held, that we recognize, celebrate, and bless in the estate of marriage or that of monastic celibacy?

Question B: What is it, in their love for each other, that gay men or lesbians find to be of such value as to call for recognition, celebration, and blessing?

Question C: Where rites for solemnizing the unions of lesbians or gay men exist and have been performed, what is it that these rites recognize, celebrate, and bless?

Question D: What is it, in the light of the three preceding questions, that the Church should recognize, celebrate, and bless?

17. Question A belongs, roughly, to sacramental theology and the study of liturgy. Different answers are possible and different answers have, in fact, been given at different times and within different communities of the Church. It is a question with a great many facets, and most of the rest of this Section will be devoted to spelling out some of these in greater detail.

18. Question B takes seriously the fact that the matter under discussion is intensely personal. Consequently, it is important for the Church to take seriously the first-person accounts of same-sex love offered by those whose experience qualifies them to offer such accounts.

19. Question C recognizes that a large and growing number of "forms of service" have been composed and used by Episcopalians and other Christians, including the rite presented in this Report, and that these texts are relevant theological data.

20. Question D reiterates the "Fundamental Question." It has been put last on purpose. A responsible answer will depend on taking into account all the information that is pertinent, but bringing that information to bear on the matter depends on fairly and thoroughly answering Questions A, B, and C.

Further Relevant Questions

21. It is not the purpose of this Report to propose comprehensive answers. Much of the discussion at the 1996 consultation was given to clarifying particular issues that enter into or grow out of the four general questions in the structure of inquiry proposed above, especially the issues connected with question A. These issues have been formulated and grouped in the remainder of this Section in such a way as to suggest possible relevant directions for the Church's further reflection.

22. What are the created goods of sexuality?

One stand of Christian tradition would regard sex as mechanism for reproduction to which, because of the Fall, marriage has been added as a remedial constraint. As the four-quadrant diagram above was meant to suggest, this view seems untrue to the facts. What, then, would a more adequate account include? What is the good of sexuality for single persons, who are neither married nor monastic?

23. Are celibacy and monogamy the only sexual vocations that are spiritual?

Sexuality and spirituality, quadrants 1 and 2 of the diagram, are very often thought to be distinct, separate, and (except under sharply defined circumstances) opposed. Both marriage and the monastic life have been regarded primarily as "a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication" (BCP 1662). If, however, celibacy and monogamy are positive, spiritual vocations, what is it about the practices they entail--exclusivity, abstinence--that conduces to holiness? Is either sexual exclusivity or sexual abstinence always a holy way of being human? Can any other way of coordinating the components of erotic love be recognized as oriented to sanctity?

24. What does the "fruitfulness" of love consist in?

The designation of the third quadrant in the diagram is deliberately unspecific. It suggest the turning of a household toward the world beyond itself. With respect to matrimony in particular, something of what this "public" aspect of love entails finds expression in the petitions following the Lord's Prayer in the current marriage rite. What fosters such fruitfulness, and why?

25. Is parenthood an intrinsically spiritual vocation?

This is one of several questions that can be asked about the relation of the third quadrant ("fruitfulness") to the second ("the spiritual"). Plainly, procreation and the adoption of children are not the only manifestations of "fruitful" love, which also overflows in gifts of hospitality and spiritual nurture, energizes members of a household to "work for justice, freedom, and peace," and empowers them in creative and artistic endeavor.

26. What makes fidelity important?

Faithfulness, as a value, would seem to bridge several quadrants of the diagram. It has traditionally been associated with the "sacramental" character of Christian marriage, and thus pertains to quadrant 2. Exactly what, then does faithfulness consist in? Is it a matter of physical exclusivity (quadrant 1, "the sexual"), or of personal loyalty (quadrant 4, "unitive presence, intimacy"), or of both? How are these linked with the rearing of children, or with other ways in which a household can be "fruitful" (quadrant 3)?

27. What makes permanence important?

The phrase "till death do us part" or its equivalent endures, despite drastic changes in social practice. Is the relevant sense of "death" physical death? If so, what are the implications for intimacy (quadrant 4) and fruitfulness (quadrant 3)? Is the only true commitment a lifelong commitment?

28. What importance has the political dimension of sexual households?

Marriage is a political as well as an ecclesial institution; the same is true, in certain respects, of monasticism. To what extent does the state's interest in quadrant 3, "fruitfulness"--especially, but not only, the well-being of children--bear on the church's giving or withholding its blessing?

29. How does the body, as sexual, know or reveal God?

Christian ascetical theology has concentrated almost exclusively on the soul's knowledge of God. Yet it is in and through the body that a sexual partner is "known" (quadrant 4, "unitive presence, intimacy"). Are these knowings utterly separate? Both Christian sacramental theology and the doctrine of the Incarnation recognize physical, sensual reality as a vehicle of divine grace. How does this emphasis bear on the physical, sensual reality of erotic love?

30. What makes the relationships of human, sexual persons "godly"?

"Participation in God" is an important, though neglected, strand of Anglican theological tradition. But god, for Christians, is God the Holy Trinity - indivisibly Three and socially One. In what way, then, do the relationships of human persons, and specifically their relationships of physical love, participate in the relationships of the divine Persons?

31. An adequate theology of erotic union grounded in the doctrine of the Trinity is plainly beyond the scope of this Report, not least because Trinitarian theology itself is a matter of much current discussion and debate. Nevertheless, a few suggestive points may be noted:

• The Persons of the Trinity are, as such, without gender.
• Each Person is radically distinct from the others; the Word is not the Spirit and so on.
• The second Person, the Word, is the "image" of the first; the third Person, the spirit, is not an image of either of the others but the union of the word with the first Person, who eternally "speaks" the Word.
• While the union of the first and second Persons is complete, their distinctness is in no way dissolved. There is no merger, no "Blurring" of identities. The unity is dynamic, constituted by that breathing-out ("spiration") of Love which is the Spirit.

32. If these basic tenets of Western Trinitarian theology were to be taken as the divine norm and exemplar of such a human relationship as marriage, it would follow that:

• The two human persons who are to be joined are unique, distinct from each other, with equal dignity and identity.
• The resulting relationship is not, in principle, a matter of domination, "enveloping," or any other "hierarchy."
• The unity of the two persons is total. It entails fidelity and exclusivity. Each person "coinheres" with the other in making her or him more fully the person she or he is becoming.
• The love that unites the two persons is a dynamic activity, mutually exerted in self-giving and other-accepting.
• Such a union of two persons would not be the only case of participation in the Triune God, but would "sacramentalize" and promote other interpersonal relationships that embody similar characteristics.

33. What is a blessing?

In former Prayer Books matrimony was "solemnized" with the church's rite. Since 1979 matrimony has been "celebrated and blessed." In Western theological tradition, a (prayer of) blessing has been deemed the essential element of marriage as sacramental. What exactly does all this mean? There is a question here of exactly what or who gets blessed. Is it the bride or, more precisely, her fecundity, as in medieval theology? Is it the couple? Is it the couple's relationship?

34. What "counts" as blessable?

In other words, what, if anything, distinguishes the blessing of a relationship between two persons from the blessing of fonts or fleets or frontals, churches, chasubles, individuals or congregations?

35. What constitutes a "covenanted" relationship?

At present, the matrimonial rite marks the beginning both of a sacred covenant and of a secular contract. The existence in the current Prayer Book of a rite for blessing a civil marriage implies that covenant and contract are distinct. In a relationship that the church blesses, what are the qualities or characteristics that make it covenantal, as distinct from contractual?

It is possible, of course, for a relationship to be (civilly) contractual without being (religiously) covenantal; such is the relationship of two persons who marry before a magistrate. The crucial theological question would seem to regard the converse case: Can a relationship between two persons be (religiously) covenantal without being (civilly) contractual? If it can, what constitutes its being a covenant? Is it the content of promises made? Is it the kind of community--the Church as contrasted with civil society--to which the two persons hold themselves responsible for fulfilling their promises?

36. Who is the minister, or who are the ministers, of the "joining together"?

Where matrimony is concerned, perhaps the strongest of several traditions that answer this question maintains that two persons marry each other; they are the "ministers" of the sacrament (or the sacramental rite). The current Prayer Book supports this interpretation by providing for marriages in which the officiant is a deacon, and which accordingly do not include a blessing.

According to the Prayer Book, however, the norm is that a priest (or bishop) will preside, because only a priest (or bishop) can bless. What, then, does the officiant's blessing contribute to the rite? Is that contribution essential? Is it independent of his or her role as "witness"?

What is the theological significance of the requirement that a congregation--at least two "witnesses" besides the officiant--take part in the service? Do the people, by their thanksgiving, participate in the blessing? For what does the congregation give thanks? For the relationship that is constituted and effected by the rite? For a relationship that already exists?