The Church of England has ruled out offering
blessings to same-sex couples, insisting that such public gestures
belong only to heterosexual marriage, The Guardian reports.The announcement was made in a report from the church's faith and order commission entitled Men and Women in Marriage.
The report stresses the church's immutable definition of marriage as "a faithful, committed, permanent and legally sanctioned relationship between a man and a woman, central to the stability and health of human society", but recognises the existence of same-sex relationships, which it terms "forms of human relationships which fall short of marriage in the form God has given us".
The bishop of Coventry, Dr Christopher Cocksworth, who chairs the commission, repeated the church's commitment to providing "care, prayer and compassion" to those who cannot be married in church, but drew the line at blessings for gay couples.
"Whilst it is right that priests and church communities continue to seek to provide and devise pastoral care accommodation for those in such situations, the document is clear that public forms of blessing belong to marriage alone," he said.
The bishop also warned that the government's plans to introduce same-sex marriages – a move opposed by the Church of England, which will in any case be legally barred from marrying same-sex couples – risked jeopardising the institution of marriage.
"The church has a long track record in conducting and supporting marriage, drawing from the deep wells of wisdom which inform centuries of shared religious and cultural understandings of marriage," he said.