SEXLESS GAY ANGLICAN CLERGY PARTNERSHIPS: Various reactions

Terry Mattingly, drily: "This compromise is really going to calm things down before that tense June 21 conclave that is supposed to sort out all of the loose ends about sacraments and sexuality (and major donations from the rich Episcopal Church in the United States)."

Peter T. Chattaway:

FWIW, this seems to me like a merger of two trains of thought that I have long associated with Tony Campolo and C.S. Lewis.

First--and this is from memory, so correct me if I am wrong on any point--in 20 Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid to Touch, Tony Campolo basically argued nearly 20 years ago that the Bible is against same-sex sexual activity, but not against friendships and emotional attachments etc. He figured it was wrong to expect gay people to be lonely, so he wanted there to be some way to recognize same-sex partnerships, provided that they were non-sexual. (And of course, virtually everyone I know would say this is really naive, and Campolo himself recognized this, but there you go...)

Second, in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis advocated a strict separation between civil and religious understandings of marriage--a point he confirmed some years later when he married Joy Davidman twice, first in a civil ceremony that he considered spiritually meaningless, and then in religious ceremony before a priest. (Those who have seen any of the stage or film versions of Shadowlands will be familiar with this story.)

It would seem the Anglican Archbishop is trying to find a way to recognize the civil technicalities while separating them from the religious responsibilities, just as Lewis arguably did. And in doing so, it would seem he is trying to meet the emotional and social needs of gay clergy while holding them to biblical standards of sexual conduct, just as Campolo would prefer.

That's how it looks on paper, at any rate.

Stephen A. (excerpt):

The article in the Times says: "The bishops are trying to uphold the church doctrine of forbidding clergy from sex except in a full marriage. They accept, however, that the new law LEAVES THEM LITTLE CHOICE but to accept the right of gay clergy to have civil partners." (My bolding.)

+ Why do they have "little choice" to accept the right of male priests to marry other men? Surely a government cannot force them to permit this. Surely a Church can set its own policy on marriage for its clergy--right?

+ If the State CAN force a church to accept gay partners for priests, what CAN'T it force it to accept, or reject?

Victor Morton (excerpt):

As I say...it's perverse--a marriage that is categorically and by design sexless is almost a contradiction in terms. If sex isn't in the picture, what distinguishes marriage from friendship?

And to answer some of Steven A.'s questions...if marriage is understood as a civil institution at least in part (which is uncontroversial; and for "civil" unions, the civitas' lead role is practically true by definition), then it's not clear how a church can prevent persons from engaging in legal civil contracts. They can set marriage rules, true, as long as marriage is understood as partially the church's, but civil unions are closer to driver's licenses in that the church doesn't perform them or have anything to do with them. This is not saying the state can force the CofE to actually perform homosexual "marriages" (for now anyway; we’'l wait and see how greedy the gay activists get)...it's closer to the state allowing priests to have driver's licenses. And the CofE trying to find a way to live with it. And it HAS to find a way to live with it simply because as a state church with the monarch at its head, the CofE is not really structured to play a prophetic role against the British state. Its logic** is to express the nation, not to judge it.

all this and more, here
posted by Eve at 1:47 AM VOTE

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home