By Foluso Adelaja
Couples can now willingly and peacefully divorce in style by severing their conjugal bond but still live together happily ever after as friends, the church has declared.
In a recent decision on the relationship of separated heterosexual couples, the Church of England had quietly agreed that couples could still live together in a special arrangement devoid of sex.
The House of Bishops of the church led by Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury has conceded that it is “natural Justice” for heterosexual couples to be allowed to convert a marriage to a civil partnership.
The church however issued a pastoral guidance on such relationships insisting that sex however should be the exclusive preserve of married couples.
Divorced couples in civil partnerships, according to the church, should be no more than “sexually abstinent friendships”.
Expatiating on the matter, The Rev. Malcolm Brown, the Director of Mission for the Church of England pointed out that “natural justice” approbated conversion and so it behoves the church not to “stop people converting from marriage to a civil partnership” stressing that the church would never “try to do so”.
He however explained that couples who switched their status to civil partnerships have inevitably reject the vows binding them as one.
However this effort of the church to clarify issues surrounding civil partnership has come under the scrutiny of the British Government as a result of government’s consultation on the right to convert from a marriage to a partnership or vice versa.
Government opined that since the privilege to convert from one status to another in a relationship exists, there may not be any need therefore to divorce.
