Posted on 06/18/2002 5:35:32 AM PDT by vance
Canada: Anglicans to bless gay unions
Rich Peters
Anglican churches in the Vancouver area will be allowed to hold same-sex union ceremonies.
The Diocese of New Westminster voted on the weekend to create a special ritual to bless gay and lesbian relationships. It is the first time an Anglican diocese in Canada has endorsed same-sex relationships.
The New Westminster diocese, which encompasses Vancouver and most of the southern British Columbia mainland, is one of the biggest in the country.
The proposal, put forward by Bishop Michael Ingham, was not without dissent. Nine congregations walked out of the general synod on the weekend, saying they would appeal to the Anglican Church of Canada and would seek to remove themselves from the diocese.
However, Ingham's plan reportedly has the approval of the 700,000-member church's top Anglican, Primate Michael Peers.
No priest in the diocese would be required to act against his or her conscience in blessing the unions.
The diocese has voted twice before in favor of same-sex marriages, but Bishop Ingham overruled the decisions, feeling that the votes were won by margins that were too narrow. The proposal presented this weekend won more than 60 percent support.
The blessing of same-sex unions occurs in a handful of U.S. and European Anglican dioceses. But opposition remains strong throughout the 60-million-member worldwide church.
In 1998, the Lambeth conference, a gathering of the world's Anglican bishops that takes place every 10 years, rejected the ceremonies. Opposition was led by conservative bishops from Africa and Asia.
This weekend's dramatic step, after 25 years of discussion on greater inclusion of gays and lesbians in the Anglican Church of Canada, brought some synod members to tears.
The head of the Vancouver chapter of the gay and lesbian Anglican group Integrity, said he was saddened at the departure of so many synod members, including the clergy from his own parish.
Steve Schuh said he was joyful that the church was now saying "welcome," yet the walkout "says to me that they have a great deal of contempt for gay and lesbian people. It says to me they can't be in a church which accepts me."
One-third of Canada's Anglican bishops yesterday publicly opposed Vancouver Anglicans' decision to allow their priests to bless homosexual unions, calling on Vancouver's bishop and his diocese not to implement the practice.
That bishop, Right Rev. Michael Ingham, widened the growing rift in Canada's third-largest Christian denomination, saying he saw no purpose in withholding implementation after four years of debate and study of the issue.
The bishops who object, he said, are mostly from rural dioceses operating in a different social context than urban dioceses. He asked them to have the courtesy to allow his diocese to administer to its own pastoral needs, the same courtesy he said he hoped urban bishops would show to rural and small-town dioceses.
Vancouver, like most big cities, has a large homosexual population.
The 13 opponents said the motion is in conflict with the church's moral teachings and tradition and beyond the authority of a local diocese and bishop. It was approved on the weekend by the governing synod of the Diocese of New Westminster, which includes most of B.C.'s Lower Mainland.
The opponents said the New Westminster decision "will likely send shock waves around the 70-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion" and "cause confusion for a local expression of the church to purport to bless that which Anglicans globally and nationally have decided they cannot bless."
In the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion, some dioceses and local bishops have informally permitted their priests to bless same-sex unions for years. But the New Westminster diocese's action, which has the consent of Bishop Ingham, is thought to be the first formal authorization.
Right Rev. Ronald Ferris, Bishop of Algoma in Northwestern Ontario, said bluntly: "It's not possible for them to take the position they've taken. It's not right. The work of the church is to teach and lead people within the universal teaching of the church and not to develop an independent position of their own."
Right Rev. Donald Harvey, Bishop of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, said the church's national House of Bishops decided in 1997 not to approve same-sex blessings and voted against allowing them to be a local option. At the time, Bishop Ingham abstained from supporting the policy.
Bishop Harvey asked Canada's Anglican Primate, Most Rev. Michael Peers, to convene an emergency session of the House of Bishops, which is not scheduled to meet until October. A spokesman for Archbishop Peers said it would not be appropriate for him to respond through the press.
The opposing bishops represent nine dioceses in the four western provinces, the North, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Algoma in Ontario.
At the heart of the issue are three questions, the answers to which are either unclear or in dispute:
What is the autonomous authority of a local diocesan synod and its bishop within the Canadian and worldwide Anglican churches?
Does the blessing of same-sex unions touch on doctrine -- the official teaching of the church -- or is it merely a liturgical rite a local bishop can implement (as a legal opinion to the New Westminster diocese says it is)?
How should the words of the Bible be interpreted: as immutable for all time or as having meaning that evolves with the evolution of human culture? Some scriptural passages appear to proscribe homosexuality, just as there is a scriptural passage forbidding tattoos and another that says women should be silent in church.
That happened about 30 years ago in Canada and the US. This is just another step down the path.
There is hope.....Our church is one of a growing movement of Episcopal Churches LEAVING the ECUSA and joining the Anglican Mission in America...a group that is calling US Episcopals back to their true values of scriptural authority and traditional values.
Yeah, lets let an anti-Christian reporter tell us what's in Scripture. He very cleverly twists three different Biblical passages here. The forbidding of tattoos is found in the section of the Bible detailing laws that apply to Jews. Christians are not bound by Jewish ceremonial law anymore. The silence of women in the church is a misinterpretation of Paul's stand on women pastors. But the Bible clearly proscribes homosexuality as a sin, not "appears to proscribe", as the author insinuates above. Sexual sins, like homosexuality or adultery, are a breaking of the sixth commandment, "You shall not commit adultery." Christians ARE bound by the Ten Commandments. Therefore, homosexuality is most certainly a sin. God bless the Anglican Bishops who oppose this abomination in His church.
All the more reason to strengthen the border between the US and our Gay loving neighbors
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