The Church of England has ruled out offering blessings to same-sex couples, insisting that such public gestures belong only to heterosexual marriage.
The announcement – made in a report from the church's faith and order commission entitled Men and Women in Marriage – comes weeks after the outgoing bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones, suggested the church consider blessing gay couples as it should "bless true love wherever such love is found".
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.
"There is a danger in the current debate of picking apart the institution of marriage which is part of the social fabric of human society," he added.
While the bishop made it plain that the report does not herald a change in the church's public recognition of gay couples, he said that a commission on same-sex relationships, set up in July 2011 under Sir Joseph Pilling, would report at some point later this year.
"There is thought going on at the moment to the sort of prayer, if you like, that might be offered in that private, personal, pastoral care," he said.
Despite the church's traditional and unchanging view of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, the new archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has expressed his admiration from some same-sex relationships.
"You see gay relationships that are just stunning in the quality of the relationship," he told the BBC on the morning of his enthronement last month, adding that he had "particular friends where I recognise that and am deeply challenged by it."
The archbishop has also offered to meet the veteran human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell to discuss the church's position on same-sex marriage.