Posted on 02/16/2014 4:20:15 PM PST by marshmallow
London — Bishops in the Church of England issued new guidance on Saturday warning clergy they should not bless couples in same-sex marriages, after the idea was recommended in an internal report last year.
The House of Bishops was clarifying the Church's response to new legislation allowing gay marriage in England and Wales, which will see the first ceremonies take place in March.
"Services of blessing should not be provided. Clergy should respond pastorally and sensitively in other ways," said the guidance, drawn up at a meeting on Thursday.
The same-sex marriage law bans the established Churches of England and Wales -- which believe marriage can only take place between a man and a woman -- from conducting ceremonies.
But a report last year on the Church's policy on sexuality, commissioned by the House of Bishops, said that in some circumstances a priest "should be free to mark the formation of a permanent same-sex relationship in a public service", without any obligation to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Gay and Lesbian CofE Bishops and priest not blessing gay marriages. Yeah, that directive will last long.
Is there any doubt that the end times are near?
bm
Send in all the banshees out of hell!
This is actually a shocker
Well, I am shocked.
You’re right that this actually is a shocker! Archbishop Welby impliedly came out against it, so I am surprised...
Of course what the sodomites really want is the blessing....
What they want is enforced approval to assuage their consciences. However, their consciences will never have complete relief no matter how much tyrannical legislation they get passed.
Sanity prevails, if but for a moment.
Not here.
> The same-sex marriage law bans the established Churches of England and Wales — which believe marriage can only take place between a man and a woman — from conducting ceremonies.
Virtue on line states” Speaking of which, we were particularly delighted to learn this past week that Atlanta Episcopal Bishop Rob Wright urged a rededication to “common good” at an interfaith inaugural worship service at Cascade United Methodist Church with these words,
“Greetings to you in the name of Yahweh the Almighty, in the name of Allah the beneficent and merciful. Greetings to you in the name of the Eternal One who gave the Buddha his great enlightenment, and in the name of the Hindus’ Supreme Being that orders the cosmos.”
And so, prepare for vicious hatred and venom from the Grand Gay Gestapo, our generation’s bastion of bigotry, hate and evil ... and the Bully Capital of the earth.
Churches should just tell congregants that they should get legally married in a civil ceremony and then any couple who qualifies can enter into the marriage covenant in a ceremony at church. The church must maintain exclusive control over ecclesiastical matters. The State must never be allowed to have any say over the doctrinal decisions of a religion.
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