Monthly Archives: July 2012

07/31/12

Rafael Venegas and Luis Jose Cuevas, Catholic Priests, Accused of Sex Crimes Against Females

At least this can be said of the pending charges against two Roman Catholic priests from Southern California parishes–including St. Athanasus Church of Long Beach: only one of the four accusers is a child and all are female. The latest case involves Father Rafael Venegas, who is accused of sexual battery against a 20-year-old woman on the grounds of his St. Anne Catholic Church in Santa Monica.

The woman, who is not a parishioner, claims the assault happened in September 2011, and the Santa Monica Police Department launched an investigation July 1.

Venegas turned himself in on Monday after the city attorney charged the priest with one count of sexual battery and one count of providing alcohol to a minor.

Venegas made his $20,000 bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Friday.

Father Luis Jose Cuevas, 67, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to groping a 14-year-old girl and two women in their 20s while working at St. Athanasus, which is also where the assaults allegedly happened.

The women reported first to the archdiocese and then to Long Beach Police that they were each groped by Cuevas this past February.

Cops say that during the ensuing investigation, the teen came forward to accuse the priest of inappropriately touching “an intimate part” of her body for his sexual arousal in July 2010.

The archdiocese, which removed Cuevas from all ministry, issued a statement that was read at weekend masses indicating the Holy See considered the allegations credible and that it “takes all such matters seriously . . .”

Well, at least now it does.

07/31/12

What if the Catholic Church Responded to Its Sex Scandal The Way the NCAA Did to Theirs?

By Mike Rivage-Seul

Many were pleasantly surprised by the severity of the sanctions the National Collegiate Athletic Association placed on Penn State following its investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. The NCAA’s measures evidenced an appropriately serious approach to unspeakable crimes. At the same time, however, the athletic association’s aggressive sanctions contrasted sharply with the lack of appropriate response to much greater crimes on the part of Roman Catholic clergy. It made some wonder what it might look like if the Catholic Church handled its infinitely larger scandal in a fashion similar to that of the NCAA.

Of course, the Penn State’s board of trustees had initially tried to defuse its shameful situation by having the institution’s president resign and by firing Joe Paterno, the football program’s legendary coach. Eventually, they even removed “Joepa’s” statue that (dis)graced the entrance way to the football stadium in Happy Valley.

But the NCAA went far beyond that — even further than most had expected. It appointed high profile Independent Counsel, Louis Freeh, to investigate responsibility for Sandusky’s crimes and the cover-up that followed. Then in the wake of Freeh’s damning final report, it fined the University $60 million dollars — the amount the football program takes in annually. It ordered the program to vacate its winnings since 1998 (thus depriving Paterno of his legacy as the winningest coach in NCAA football history). It forbade the program to extend any football scholarships for the next four years, and released all of its current players from their ties to Penn State, making them immediately eligible to play elsewhere. The football program will be devastated for years to come.

The NCAA’s bold sanctions couldn’t be further from the response of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to its child abuse scandal. There instead the “old boy” defense of the institution and the members of its all male club kicked in just as it did at first inside Penn State’s football program when the Sandusky crimes initially came to light. At Penn State, the wagons were circled, Sandusky was mildly chided while everyone in charge from the University president and Joe Paterno on down denied any knowledge or responsibility. The attitude that “boys will be boys” threatened to carry the day.

The equivalent of that attitude and (non)response still prevails within the Holy City despite the shameful involvement of priests in raping and otherwise sexually abusing children on a worldwide scale that absolutely dwarfs anything that happened in Happy Valley. In the face of thorough investigations by independent groups (e.g. the absolutely devastating indictment published last year in Ireland) the Cardinal of New York invoked the “bad apples” defense, and protested that “only” a small portion of the clergy was tainted.

But what would it have looked like if (impossibly!) the Catholic Church had responded like the NCAA?

If it had done so:

  • Pope Ratzinger would have resigned immediately.
  • All cardinals and bishops who had covered up the scandal would have been removed from office.
  • The canonization process for John Paul II would have been terminated, because of the way he down-played the sex scandal. This would be the equivalent of removing Joepa’s statue.
  • An investigation independent of the Vatican would have been launched headed by an unimpeachable figure — say the Dali Lama, perhaps joined by Sr. Pat Farrell, President of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) which is currently being investigated by the Vatican.
  • Upon completion of its investigation (assuming it would have reached conclusions similar to the one in Ireland), the commission would have:
  • Fined the Catholic Church $500 billion — the equivalent of one year of the R.C. church income. The money would be used world-wide to aid victims of sex abuse and to institute programs to educate clergy about human sexuality using the best insights of current sociology and psychology.
  • Removed from the list of genuine popes all those whose public crimes made them unworthy of the title “Vicars of Christ.” Here the Borgia popes come to mind, as well as Pope Pius XII for his silence about the Jewish Holocaust. (Obviously, the process of his canonization would be abruptly ended.) This would be the rough equivalent of Penn State’s vacating its football wins since 1998.
  • The exclusion of women from the priesthood would be reversed, and seminary scholarships would be extended world-wide to women desiring to receive Holy Orders.
  • Mandatory celibacy would of course be set aside as a requirement of the priesthood — and a major contributor to the issue at hand.
  • A reforming Church Council (Vatican III?) would be ordered to deal with the sex abuse and related problems — to be attended only by bishops not involved in the abuse scandal and subsequent cover-up. Their places would be taken by women elected by national bodies equivalent to the LCWR in the United States.

Of course, nothing like the results just described is remotely possible. Roman Catholic insulation from the external processes necessary to achieve such outcomes prevents that eventuality. The only external source capable of moving the church in the desired direction belongs to the Catholic faithful itself. It alone has the authority to withhold church attendance and contributions till the desired decisions of reform are taken.

But not to worry: such pressure from the faithful will eventually be applied willy-nilly. That is, the faithful will either wage a purposeful campaign of withholding attendance and financial support in the light of failed church leadership.

Or alternatively (and more likely) the once-faithful will be driven away from the church as the realization dawns that a college sports organization possesses sounder moral character than what pretends to be the “Mystical Body of Christ.”

Complete Article HERE!

07/29/12

New York university boss resigns after allegations

One of Fordham University‘s top administrators resigned his post on Friday. His resignation closely followed allegations that he had sexually abused a young boy over 42 years ago.

James Liguori, the former president of Iona College and most recently, the executive director of Fordham’s Westchester campus, stepped down just one day after his alleged victim’s lawsuit was made public, according to NY Daily. Fordham University released a statement regarding Brother Liguori’s resignation, partially touching upon the allegations that he had molested a boy in 1969:

“On Thursday, July 19, 2012, Fordham University learned that an advocacy group has claimed a lawsuit alleging child abuse was filed in 2008 against Brother James A. Liguori, associate vice president and executive director for Fordham Westchester,” the statement read. “Brother Liguori passed a criminal background check in fall 2011, when he was hired by Fordham. University officials began investigating immediately, and on Friday, July 20, Brother Liguori submitted his resignation, effective immediately.”

The alleged victim first reported the abuse (which occurred in 1969) in 2008, according to his attorney. He lives in Orange County, California, and claims that Liguori abused him at the Cardinal Farley Military Academy in Rhinecliff, according to a release from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Liguori is 69-years-old and is a member of the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers.

The religious order’s bankruptcy case, filed last year as their assets began to disappear over various sex-abuse cases, opened the door for the case against Liguori to find its way into the public eye, reports the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Complete Article HERE!

07/29/12

Archbishop Philip Tartaglia’s gay MP remark ‘adds to family’s grief’

The partner of the late Labour MP David Cairns has said anti-gay remarks by the new Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow have added to his “grief and pain”.

Dermot Kehoe spoke after it emerged Archbishop Philip Tartaglia appeared to link Mr Cairns’ death to his sexuality.

The Roman Catholic clergyman made his remarks at a conference earlier this year on religious freedom and equality at Oxford University.

Archbishop-designate Tartaglia said he had not meant to cause offence.

Mr Cairns, who was Labour MP for Inverclyde and a former Catholic priest, died at the age of 44 in May last year.

He had been admitted to hospital in London a number of weeks before his death suffering from acute pancreatitis.

The controversial remarks by the then Bishop of Paisley were made in April in answer to a question from the university audience.

Without prompting, Archbishop Tartaglia raised the issue of the death of Mr Cairns, saying: “If what I have heard is true about the relationship between physical and mental health of gay men, if it is true, then society has been very quiet about it.

He [Archbishop elect Philip Tartaglia] is sorry for any hurt which has resulted, there was certainly no offence or judgement intended in his words”

Catholic Church spokesman for Archbishop Philip Tartaglia
“Recently in Scotland there was a gay Catholic MP who died at the age of 44 or so and nobody said anything and why his body should just shut down at that age, obviously he could have had a disease which would have killed anyone, but you seem to hear so many stories about this kind of thing.

“But society won’t address it.”

Mr Kehoe said the clergyman’s remarks had been made in complete ignorance.

He told BBC radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “The Archbishop elect brought up David Cairns himself. He wasn’t asked about him, he chose to bring him up and essentially he implied that David’s death was due in some way homosexuality and his being gay.

“This is not only in complete ignorance of the facts in this case.”

Mr Kehoe added that to take a personal tragedy and to make it political “was more than upsetting, it is deeply painful”.

He went on to say: “This has not only upset me and David’s family, but it added to our grief and pain and he [Archbishop elect Tartaglia] hasn’t shown any contrition for doing this.”

A spokesman for Archbishop Tartaglia said: “The Archbishop-elect’s words have been taken out of context.

“They were made in answer to an audience question at a lecture he gave on religious freedom in Oxford 14 weeks ago.

“He had no previous knowledge of the question, which was not related to his speech. In his reply he mentioned a situation he had been closely involved in, namely the funeral arrangements for the late David Cairns.

“The archbishop knew David Cairns, met him regularly at events in Inverclyde, and got on well with him, and was personally involved in his funeral arrangements. He is sorry for any hurt which has resulted, there was certainly no offence or judgement intended in his words.”

But Mr Kehoe rejected the clergyman’s apology.

Speaking to BBC Scotland he said the remarks had not been taken out of context.

Mr Kehoe said that in his view Archbishop Tartaglia was using the situation to “influence the government” to stop its plans for same-sex marriage.

He explained: “He [the archbishop] volunteered this information. It wasn’t something he was asked about specifically.

Dermot Kehoe says Philip Tartaglia should ‘show contrition’ for using David Cairns’ death to make a point about public policy
“It was something he had been cogitating about, and not only that, but he had also used it in an attempt to influence public policy.

“He’s taking a personal tragedy, he’s applying a layer of ignorance of the situation and prejudice on the top, and then trying to influence the government of Scotland with it.”

Gay marriage move
The controversy over the Catholic clergyman’s remarks come on the day the Scottish government announced plans to introduce same-sex marriage north of the border.

A Requiem Mass was held for Mr Cairns at his boyhood parish of St Patrick’s Church in Greenock.

The service was celebrated by Father John Morrison, who said that, as a politician, Mr Cairns “was a man of hope”.

The day before the funeral, former prime minister and high-profile Catholic Tony Blair delivered a reading at a special Mass at Mr Cairns’ former church in Clapham.

Complete Article HERE!

07/23/12

Female bishop speaks up for views, talks about ‘Womenpriest Movement’

Bishop Patricia Fresen says she dreams of establishing a church in which people of all genders, races and sexual orientations are treated equally and allowed to assume positions of leadership.

Fresen, a leader of the Roman Catholic Womenpriest Movement, spoke Sunday to members of the Mary Magdalene First Apostle Church about the need for an all-inclusive church after Mass at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

“There needs to be an emphasis on what unites us, rather than what divides us,” she said.

Fresen’s story
Born and raised in South Africa, Fresen was a nun in the Dominican Sisterhood for 45 years. She taught at St. John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria, South Africa, and at St. Augustine’s University in Johannesburg.

In 2003, Fresen was ordained a priest, which is a role the Roman Catholic Church reserves solely for men. As a result, she was excommunicated from the church and forced to leave her teaching positions.

Two years later, she was appointed a bishop and has been instrumental in bringing what supporters call the Womenpriest Movement to the United States. It is not recognized by the Catholic Church.

The Womenpriest Movement has support but there is still resistance, Fresen said.

“The resistance comes from a great fear of women and sexuality, and the long patriarchal tradition of the Roman Catholic Church,” she said.

Structure
Fresen said members of the Womenpriest Movement still consider themselves Catholic, but there are fundamental differences in how the churches are structured.

The Womenpriest Movement’s church is non-hierarchical and has a circular model in which leaders work in teams. Fresen said there are six regions of the Womenpriest Movement in the U.S.: North, West, South, East, the Great Waters region and the Midwest region.

Each region is led by a bishop, administrator and program director who are all elected by the people, Fresen said. The administrator is the main position in charge while the bishop has pastoral responsibilities and guides priests and deacons.

The second main difference between the churches is that women are allowed to hold leadership positions and nearly all the women involved in the Womenpriest Movement are married. Fresen said celibacy is not a requirement of ordination and neither is a vow of obedience to the bishop.

Fresen said the Womenpriest Movement advocates showing mutual respect for all religions, and expressing different cultures through liturgy and music.

Regina Nicolosi, bishop of the Midwest region of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, said it is important to her to spread the message of the movement because she believes in total equality for men and women.

Nicolosi said the law that does not allow women to be ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church is unjust, and she feels a strong call to advocate against the law.

“Being part of the Womenpriest Movement has helped me answer that call,” she said. “I want to belong to a church that is accepting of all races, all genders, all sexual orientations and takes that very seriously.”

Fresen said she uses humor to cope with the unjust structures of the Roman Catholic Church, and if the Womenpriest Movement is strong in its beliefs, “the church will back down, like a bully usually does.”

Fresen told audience members they must lose all fear of excommunication if the Womenpriest Movement is to be successful. She cited Nelson Mandela as an example of someone who spent 27 years in prison because he refused to obey what he considered an unjust law.

“In good conscience, one must not obey an unjust law … but you must be prepared to pay the price,” Fresen said.

Complete Article HERE!

07/23/12

A church celebrates with women as priests

Several months ago, Kathy Schuck’s 15-year-old daughter posed a question that seemed innocuous but that became a call to action.

The gist of Ann Schuck’s question: Why did girls and women seem to be less important than men in their church, St. Rose of Lima in North Wales?

Kathy Schuck, 56, of Blue Bell, said she had long felt women were confined to secondary roles in the Roman Catholic Church, where she did not hear a message of inclusion. The hierarchy and exclusion of the voices of the lay members troubled her, she said. So, after 15 years, she left her parish.

“It disturbed me that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church uses a term like ‘radical feminism’ to . . . categorize any woman who wants to have a voice in the church when that voice is not in total compliance with doctrine and orthodoxy,” Schuck said. “It was clear to me that my lack of action reinforced that that behavior was acceptable – and it isn’t.”

On Sunday, she joined more than 50 others belonging to the St. Mary Magdalene Community in celebration of its fifth anniversary. The group is led by two Roman Catholic female priests not recognized by the Vatican. Sunday’s celebratory service was held in rented space at the Drexel Hill United Methodist Church.

St. Mary Magdalene is one of several worship communities being led by women in 28 states, said Suzanne Thiel, president of Roman Catholic Womenpriests USA, a nonprofit group that prepares women for ordination and carries out the ceremonies.

“We provide spiritual comfort and solace for people who no longer find it in the Roman Catholic Church,” said Eileen McCafferty DiFranco, who was ordained in 2006 and who, along with her St. Mary’s co-pastor, is one of 113 female Roman Catholic priests, bishops, and deacons worldwide, according to Thiel.

At least eight more ordinations, which the organization maintains are valid, are planned worldwide by Christmas, Thiel said.

“We know the Vatican and the hierarchy are not happy with us,” Thiel acknowledged. “What’s important is the Catholic people have accepted us.”

Since 1976, the Vatican has been strongly reiterating that women are not full members of the Roman Catholic clergy after the Episcopal Church validated the illicit ordination in 1974 of 11 women in Philadelphia.

Then Pope Paul VI reminded Catholics that an all-male clergy was a “constant and universal tradition” of the Roman church because Jesus freely chose only men to be his apostles. By their “natural resemblance” to Christ, male priests also serve as the “sacramental sign” of him, the pontiff said.

Advocates of female clergy had long accused the church hierarchy of misogyny.

St. Mary Magdalene has drawn male and female members, some from as far as Delaware. In general, members said they did not feel fulfilled by their home Catholic parishes and sought a more intimate community with less hierarchy where their voices would be more valued.

“It’s all about intimacy. You can’t be intimate with a parish that has 2,000 to 3,000 members and no mechanism to get to know people on a deeper level,” said Judy Miller, 73, of Hockessin, Del., a member of St. Mary for three years with her husband, Chuck.

Schuck said she was welcomed, greeted by name, and introduced. “I was as comfortable as I was in someone’s home,” she said.

The St. Mary Magdalene Community has grown from 10 members to about 90, with a satellite community in Northeast Philadelphia, said DiFranco, who, along with being a priest, is a school nurse in the city. Services usually draw 30 to 40 members.

St. Mary members said that they enjoyed the congregation’s interactive homilies and that everyone was welcome to take communion. DiFranco said she doesn’t use prayers routinely heard in traditional Catholic Masses, opting instead for “non-sexist” prayers.

Members collectively decide which charities to support.

Maryrose Petrizzo, a member of St. Mary of Magdalene, said leadership opportunities were limited in her church in Wilmington. Among the positions she held was youth minister and eucharistic minister. “I could only do so much,” she said.

But at St. Mary Magdalene, she has led the liturgy and given the homily.

“That’s been so life-giving to be able to give a homily,” said Petrizzo, who has applied to be ordained.

After DiFranco’s ordination in 2006 in Pittsburgh, staff from St. Vincent de Paul in Germantown visited her and asked her not to show up for communion.

She preached on Sunday about following one’s dreams, much like women who have heeded the call to be priests.

“We succeeded in being priests in spite of the church,” she said after the homily. “Where human beings shut the door, God opens the window.”

Complete Article HERE!

07/21/12

3 men settle abuse suits against church

Three men who filed the first sexual abuse lawsuits in the Navajo Nation court system against the Catholic Church have recently settled their cases.

The Gallup Independent reports that the men will receive money as part of the settlement from the priest who is accused of sexually abusing them, the Diocese of Gallup, the Franciscan Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Albuquerque and another church entity.

Patrick Noaker, an attorney who represented the men, said his clients have asked that the settlement amounts not be publicly disclosed.

The lawsuits allege that Charles Cichanowicz, a former Franciscan priest who once worked on the Navajo Nation, sexually abused them when they were teenagers in the late 1970s and 1980s. Cichanowicz was assigned to parishes in Shiprock, N.M., and St. Michaels, Ariz.

Attorneys for the Diocese of Gallup and Cichanowicz didn’t respond to requests for comment, nor did Albuquerque’s Franciscan Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

At least one of the lawsuits alleged that the diocese and the Franciscan orders transferred Cichanowicz when he was caught and continued to assign him to parishes, giving him unsupervised access to children.

It alleged they did not report him to authorities, tell parishes about him or take safeguards to prevent him from unlawful sexual conduct. Cichanowicz later left the priesthood.

Noaker said lawyers for those who were sued in the case offered no apologies to his clients, and Cichanowicz made no admission of guilt.

By filing their lawsuits in the Navajo Nation’s courts, Noaker said his clients feel like they have protected other children by raising public awareness of the sexual abuse of children on the Navajo Nation. Noaker said none of the men ever considered pursuing out-of-court confidential settlements with the Catholic Church.

He said the men started the legal process ashamed and embarrassed by what had happened to them and grew into men willing to take on the man they say abused them.

Complete Article HERE!

07/21/12

Psychologist: Bishops’ lashing out at sisters is a distraction

COMMENTARY — Kathy Galleher

Since the Vatican’s public release April 18 of the results of the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, many American Catholics have been confused and angry. These women, who work tirelessly with the poor and marginalized, whom many of us see as embodying Christ’s love, are being accused of doing grave harm to the church. In conversation after conversation, I have heard, “Why so much anger directed at women religious?”, “What is this about?” and “It just seems … abusive.” As I pondered this last observation, I recognized a familiar dynamic.

For nearly eight years I worked as a psychologist at a treatment center for priests and religious. During that time I worked with a number of men who had committed sexual abuse. An essential part of the therapeutic work was for these men to understand the deep pain they had caused, to accept responsibility for it, and to move forward with a commitment not to let it happen again, which included accepting restrictions and consequences. Often the largest obstacle to healing was the first task: accepting and understanding the amount of pain they had caused.

When we harm someone, healing requires that we recognize the extent of the injury we caused. Only when we are able to see this clearly and take responsibility for it can we respond with appropriate guilt. Appropriate guilt focuses us on how to repair the injury (if that is possible) and what actions we must take to prevent it from occurring again. If we cannot recognize the pain and take responsibility for it, we get stuck and assume an aggressively defensive stance, lashing out and blaming others as a way to deflect attention from our actions, actions we find too painful to look at honestly.

In treatment, when a client was stuck in this way, we would see this blaming/lashing-out dynamic, and he would start a fight. The greater the unacknowledged pain, the more furious the fight. Often the fury was directed toward a bishop or superior who was removing him from ministry. “You’re ruining my life,” he would say. “I feel betrayed. You have no idea how much pain you are causing me and you don’t even care.” Although he was the abuser, in his mind in that moment, he was the victim of the bishop or superior. The real victim had vanished from his awareness.

Fights like these were so provocative that the instinctive reaction of those on the receiving end was to respond with their own aggression. So the fight would escalate, take on more heat, and distract from the work at hand. As therapists, we tried to contain these fights and give them as little energy as possible (like depriving a fire of oxygen). Our job was to say, “This is a distraction. Let’s get back to work.” Then we would support the client in leaving the fight behind and returning to his unfinished work: looking deeply at his own pain, taking responsibility for the pain he had caused, and taking action to prevent it from occurring again.

I see strong parallels between this and the church’s dealings with LCWR. The level of anger and blame in the doctrinal assessment document feels like someone is picking a fight, and the intensity of it hints at the enormous amount of still unworked pain at the heart of the church’s sexual abuse crisis. To me, this fight looks like a distraction.

In the past 10 years, the church has taken steps toward responding to the tragedy of sexual abuse in the church at the individual level, including responding to allegations more quickly, involving law enforcement, and developing child protection policies. However, the church has not yet been willing or able to examine its own role as an institution in concealing and enabling decades of abuse. The bishops have not taken collective responsibility for their actions (and inactions) and for the enormous pain they have caused. As much as the abuse itself, it is this failure by the hierarchy to acknowledge and accept their responsibility that has angered and disillusioned so many current and now-former Catholics. Too much pain is still unacknowledged and unworked.

The church hierarchy seems to be stuck and they are blaming and lashing out. They have started a fight with LCWR and the women religious. In the doctrinal assessment, they have accused the women of the church of betraying the core values of the church, of causing scandal and leading the faithful astray, and of not being sufficiently trustworthy to reform themselves. They have ordered the women to be closely supervised. These accusations seem more rightly to belong to the sexual abuse scandal rather than to the actions of LCWR. It was the bishops who, by protecting sexual abusers, betrayed core values of the church and caused scandal to the faithful. It is the institutional church that appears not to be able to reform itself and to be in need of outside supervision.

This fight with LCWR is a distraction from the work the bishops still need to do in order to bring about genuine healing in the church.

In response to the misdirected accusations and the severe punishment directed at LCWR, many Catholics feel outraged and want to fight back. But as we saw above, to do so stokes the fire and continues the distraction. We can all be grateful to the women of LCWR for their powerful model of non-reactivity and reflection in their response to this situation. They have spoken their truth, but have not thrown wood on the fire. Similarly, public statements of support from men religious — notably the Franciscans — are courageous and direct but nonviolent. I hope that all of us will follow their lead — speaking our truth with courage and nonviolence, and, like the sisters, keeping our eyes on the real work we are called to do as a church.

It seems the moment to say clearly to the Vatican and to the bishops, “This fight with LCWR is a distraction. The women are not to blame. The church is not the victim. There is still a great deal of pain to address. Let’s get back to work.” Let us hope that with our prayers and support they will be able to look more deeply. Let us hope they can return to and complete the work that is still theirs to do, and in that way bring about healing and transformation for themselves and for our entire church.

Complete Article HERE!

07/18/12

U.S. Episcopalians set to be first to bless gay marriage

On Monday bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States – the 14th largest denomination in the country, with almost 2 million members – “overwhelmingly” approved a rite for blessing gay marriages, making it the first big U.S. church to say “yes” to gay marriage.

Speaking to Reuters, Ruth Meyers, a chair of the Episcopalians’ Subcommittee on Prayer Book, Liturgy and Church Music, said the Episcopal Church’s Chamber of Bishops agreed to the proposed blessing at a meeting in Indianapolis and its House of Deputies should formally approve it later this week.

“The decision would go into effect in December and make the Episcopal Church, an independent U.S.-based institution affiliated with global Anglicanism, the biggest U.S. church to allow a liturgy for same-sex marriages,” Reuters said.

Up until now, it had been the United Church of Christ, a mainstream Protestant denomination counting approximately 1 million members, which had done more than any other U.S. church to support same sex marriage voting in favour of it in 2005.

The new Episcopal same-sex liturgy is called “the Witnessing and Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant,” and would become the standard rite for same-sex marriage, Reuters reported.

In the past, it was bishops who showed the strongest opposition to such measures but the result of Monday’s vote showed a different attitude altogether, with 111 voting in favour and 41 against. Abstentions totalled 3.

The convention also approved inclusion of transgender people among those who should not be discriminated against, either for ordination or as lay leaders.

“Today the Episcopal Church affirmed the human dignity of a deeply stigmatized population that is far too often victim to discrimination, bullying and abuse,” the Reverend Lowell Grisham, a leader of the Chicago Consultation, a group that supports equality, said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

The Episcopal Church allowed gay priests 16 years ago and approved its first openly gay bishop 9 years ago.

Today, gay marriage is legal in six states and the District of Columbia and as Reuters reported, the legislatures of three states – New Jersey, Maryland and Washington State – approved gay marriage this year, although New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed it. Governors in the other two states signed the legislation but there are attempts being made to block it through a referendum. Monday’s decision has nevertheless marked yet another victory for gay-rights advocates in the U.S., after President Barack Obama endorsed gay marriage in May.

Complete Article HERE!