I think the Pit is the right place to put this, because of some of the content which is critical of certain religious leaders. But the bishops of the Diocese of Massachusetts in the Episcopal Church spoke out on the question of gay clergy, and IMHO made just the right call.
The text of their pastoral letter can be found here.
Two apposite quotes:
Your reactions are solicited.
I would be unbelieveably proud if I were a member of that church.
applause
Thank you for bringing this to our attention - it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside - and the return of some of my faith in humanity - and maybe even the church.
The only objection I could possibly have to that article, Poly, is the one I bet you could anticipate, so I’m not going to bring it up;)
Instead I’d like to point out the beautiful phrasing of this statement: “The latest published statement came from Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez, in a letter written while he was a Vatican official.”
I hope a treatise on its beauty will be unnecessary;)
Hmmm. Maybe I should move to Massachusetts after all.
CJ
With all due respect to the bishops of the Diocese of Massachusetts, I think they’re jumping a ways ahead of the conversation.
I agree that the proper goal is a church where gay and straight are treated in as equivalently a manner as possible, including gay unions and holy orders.
But I think it’s important to think about a couple of things first, before we start ordaining openly gay Christians.
One is that we need a conversation on what the equivalences are. In Christendom, we’ve had standards for appropriate and inappropriate heterosexual conduct since Biblical times. But we’ve dealt with gay sexuality by declaring it completely beyond the pale, so the analogous standards for gays don’t exist.
Now that various denominations are coming to their senses and realizing the wrongfulness of that response to gay sexuality, I get the sense that that’s being treated as the end of the discussion. I hope I’m wrong on that, but if not, I think it’s a big mistake. I don’t know what the result of the conversation should be, but I’m convinced it needs to take place.
The other thing that concerns me is a sense of, well, pushiness about this whole business. I haven’t followed this one closely enough to know whether or when the Episcopal Church has recognized that practicing gays are just as legitimately Christians as straights and non-practicing gays. (I hope they have, but assuming is always dangerous.) But whenever that event took or takes place, it’s still going to take time for the implications to be worked through (one obvious implication is the rewriting of the BCP to allow for gay as well as straight marriages), and also time for the community of the Church to adjust its thinking.
I don’t think it’s healthy for a denomination to go, in the space of a few years, from a state where homosexual acts were still officially sinful, to a state where practicing gays are priests and ministers: you’ve got to give people some breathing space to get used to the idea that gays belong in the first place, before you make them deal with the notion of gays officiating the Eucharist. If we who are in Christ are a family, I think we have to recognize the reality that people need a certain amount of time to absorb changes, even legitimate ones.
That’s my two cents. Carry on.
This issue is one among several that has me contemplating a switch from RC to the Episcopal church. I’m having a hard time with a church that changes so slowly - and that so often appears to be making backward changes.
But a denominational change is a huge deal to me, especially after my “re-version” to Catholicism of several years ago.
Well, if homosexuality were tantamount to pedophilia, why would that lead the Vatican to bar homosexuals from becoming priests, insofar as that hasn’t quite been their response to pedophiles?
Huh? Aren’t all Christian priests and ministers sinners to begin with, just like everybody else? Even if homosexuality were a sin, why would it be some kind of special awful ultrasin that would permanently exclude someone in a way all the other sins don’t?
The letter in the OP, unless I missed something, says nothing about what sexual activities (which, IIRC, is how you, RT, define practicing vs. “lapsed” sexuality;)) gay or straight priests/ministers are engaging in.
And it’s not like the heterosexuality of priests (pedophile scandal and the necessity, in some cases, of saying "pedophilia is in no way linked to homosexuality, aside) is ever brought into the public eye: “A heterosexual priest was arrested today for heterosexual acts…” never makes the news.
Where exactly is the difference? It’s not like the gay priest is going to color-coordinate the church or put tasteful wreaths in the sacristy;) Last I checked, sexuality had no bearing on the trans/consubstantiation (depending on which one believes in:))
And maybe this was just in my church (back when it was such), but the announcement that we were getting a new priest was never accompanied by a “he’s gay, too”. We never knew what we were getting other than he was a man and he’d been ordained and was still a priest.
I guess I just don’t see what the big deal is concerning the sexuality of a priest. If it doesn’t invalidate the sacraments he performs, why bother?*
*The casual observer will want to remember that sexuality is defined as desire for a human adult. Pedophilia, OTOH, is desire for a prepubescent human.
RT, I’ve given careful thought to what you had to say, and I must respectfully disagree about my own church, which was after all what the OP dealt with.
We’ve been exploring what the proper stance ought to be since 1974, and over the last decade or so have come to a widespread (though not total) acceptance of gay people as integral parts of our membership and ministry. Details, from a somewhat slanted perspective but clear nonetheless, can be found in Spong’s autobiography Here I Stand (which is an excellent read, and apparently is now being remaindered – pick up a copy!).
I grant that what you say is true for some parts of my own church (CJ is in a diocese that is “dragging its feet”) and probably more so for groups like the Methodists and Presbyterians that have been “behind us” in the movement towards gay acceptance. But I think that the stance that the Bishops of Massachusetts took reflects the general attitude of their diocese (as I know it does of my own) and of the national church – which is moving a bit more slowly than most of its constituent parts out of a sense of trying to preserve unity among those who are having a harder time with that acceptance.
Is that responsive to your point?
Well, jeez, how much more time do you need? It’s been more than thirty years since Stonewall. Considering how many Christian denominations still haven’t figured out that gays are no more or less Christian than straights, I think it’s time to push harder, not back off. And as much as I have genuine sympathy for churchgoers who might feel alienated by “sudden” changes in their church, I’m saving the better part of my concern for homosexual churchgoers who are, in fact, being actively alienated by the discriminatory policies of these churches.
Poly, I embrace much of the statement coming from the MA diocese, especially
Equating homosexuality with pedophilia is abhorrent.
However, on the other side of the scale, I’m not completely comfortable with the direction the Episcopal Church is taking regarding gay/lesbian clergy, either. I’m not the only concerned, compassionate Christian who believes that accepting the homosexual lifestyle is contrary to both scripture and historical church teachings.
Being the Pit, I’ll probably get flamed for that view. But I see a distinction between dispostion and behavior, and I still have trouble reconciling homosexual behavior to biblical and ecclesiastical teaching. So while I agree that would-be clergy should not be excluded on the basis of their sexual orientation, I do believe that they should be held to the traditional standard of faithfulness in (traditional) marriage, or celibacy in singlness.
Fortunately for me, I’m also in a diocese that’s “dragging it’s feet.” (Bishop Spong is not exactly revered for his orthodoxy here.)
I know this paints a big target on me, but that’s my reaction.
My comment? “Hear, hear.” Was that loud enough?
RT, there are already many gay priests in the Episcopal Church, and an increasing number of them are very open not only about their sexual orientation, but also about their expression of it. I have met a few of them and received communion from at least a couple.
A story: About a year ago my sister, living in another community and another diocese, ran into major personal problems. She is not affiliated with any church; my wife and I, who are church members in our area, got in touch through the Episcopal Grapevine ™ with a priest in her city to see if he might be of some service and support. He has gone far outside the call of any sort of duty to be of help, and I am forever grateful to him. He’s also quite openly gay, living with his male lover of I don’t know how many years but it’s a bunch.
True, neither my sister nor I lives in the Diocese of Fort Worth, or the Diocese of Quincy (is it as Neanderthal as it used to be?) or the Diocese of Albany, which are a few of the regions that are dragging their feet on this and other issues. But there’s something very peculiar about the value systems of someone who sees this guy as somehow less than acceptable as a priest simply because of his sexual preference. Forests and trees, anybody? In that context, at least, the Massachusetts statement is simply an attempt to tell it the way that it actually is.
Thanks, Polycarp, for bringing this to our attention.
And on seeing Miller post, I want to emphasize that I do not see homosexual Christians and “less Christian” than anyone else and I welcome their presence and involvement with the body of the Church. I disagree, though, that the church should embrace homosexuality.
The church used to. In fact, there were ceremonies for gay marriages.
They did it before, no reason why they can’t do it again.
Wrong. In fact, the church used to be very accepting of homosexuals.
Then around 300 AD, there was a popular philosophy movement called the “Stoics” (they based their writing on earlier greeks, such as Plato, although they conveniently ignored all the gayness)
The stoics believed that love was stupid, and anything pleasurable or that involved emotion was worthless, feminine (stupid and weak) and detrimental to men. they also believed that females were highly inferior to men, and were even denied to have any useful role in childbirth other than being “incubators”. all babies were thought to be originally male, and then “impurities” turned babies female.
Anything sexual other than sex for procreation was called “sinful” and laws were made against it.
Things that were included under “sodomy” or sexual sins:
-sex between males
-masturbation
-oral sex
-anal sex between heteros
-withdrawing the penis before orgasm
-any form of birth control
-any sexual position other than male-superior
-sex with jews
-sex with muslims
-sex with any other woman than your wife.
Despite this, the church was pretty tolerate about homosexuality. They used to have gay marriages and openly taxed male-male prostitution.
As time went on, homosexuality was attacked - not because it was a sin, but rather because it was a convient way to get rid of people who stood in your way.
In fact, the church was attacked by anti-homosexuals in many points throughout history, up to Hitler. (i think i just invoked Godwin’s law)
John J. McNeill, a former priest, wrote an excellent book called the “Church and the Homosexual” that explains why the church should accept and love homosexuals.
What is a “dean” in an episcopalian church?
(yes, this is on topic)
Dean == (a) chief pastor of a cathedral, under the bishop (who is titular pastor of the cathedral – this is the usual meaning when somebody is referred to as “dean” without clarification in a news article, or (b) priest with seniority in a defined rural area (“district” or “deanery,” depending on the diocese) with a couple of special responsibilities regarding the area vis-à-vis the bishop and the diocesan operation.
Thank you.
The dean at the cathedral (of the cathedral?) in Seattle is openly gay. It made local news a few years back. Which is why I thought the episcopalians had settled this issue a while ago, and of course allowed gay clergy - but then, after reading the thread and the letter, I thought “hmm, maybe it is still being discussed and ‘dean’ is some sort of lay position, and not clergy.” But it is clergy … so I’m confused about the official stance of the clergy of the church, if there is one (I know I don’t understand Episcopalian heirarchy, so do they all have to agree, or do bishops make this kind of decision for their own area?)