Bishop Michael Ingham told Anglicans in the Diocese of New Westminster that the diocese will continue to provide “a safe and respected place for Anglicans who are gay or lesbian.”

In a statement issued as the General Synod of the national Anglican Church of Canada ended a week of meeting in St. Catharine’s, Ontario, the bishop said the diocese will “continue to allow priests in parishes that wish to do so to bless permanent, faithful, same sex relationships, and we will continue to respect the conscience of those clergy and parishes who feel they cannot.”

The General Synod decided to postpone till it meets next time, in 2007, the decision on a motion that would have formally “affirmed the authority and jurisdiction of a diocesan synod with its bishop to authorize the blessing of committed same sex unions.”

During debate at the General Synod, Bishop Don Phillips of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land, asked the chair, Acting Primate David Crawley, and Chancellor (chief legal officer) Ron Stevenson, whether postponing the decision would result in an embargo on same sex blessings.

Crawley replied that an embargo was not part of the motion to postpone. The status quo would not change whether or not the motion to postpone passed, he said. The archbishop’s statement was not challenged.

The Diocese of New Westminster in June 2002 asked Bishop Ingham to authorize a same sex blessing. The bishop issued the blessing about one year later and authorized priests to use it, if in conscience they believed they should.

The bishop requires a favourable vote of the parish membership (its vestry) before he will allow blessing to take place within it. To date, six of the 80 parishes in the diocese have voted to ask to be a parish in which blessing take place, and so far, seven same-gendered couples have received blessings.

The 310-member national synod in St. Catharine’s did vote to affirm “the integrity and sanctity of committed adult same sex-relationships,” which Bishop Ingham said he found encouraging. He noted that the word “sanctity” was used in a pastoral and not a doctrinal way.

Bishop Ingham emphasized that it is important to provide pastoral care to every member of our Church “regardless of their view on these matters,” and asked all to pray for “those who are grieved and distressed by these decisions, asking the Holy Spirit to draw us all closer together in Jesus Christ.”