WE PRACTICE AN OPEN COMMUNION. BOY, DO WE EVER!

Gay bishop attacks Catholic stand (BBC, November 6th, 2005)

The first openly gay Anglican bishop, Gene Robinson, has called for the Roman Catholic church's attitude to homosexuals to be confronted.

The Bishop of New Hampshire said the Vatican's ban on ordaining gay men was "vile", in a speech in London.

He received a standing ovation after his speech, in which he spoke of how he had faced prejudice in his role.

Some Anglican conservatives had called for the St-Martin-in-the-Fields church venue to be changed to a secular one.

Bishop Robinson said: "We are seeing so many Roman Catholics joining the church.

"Pope Ratzinger may be the best thing that ever happened to the Episcopal Church."

He continued: "I find it so vile that they think they are going to end the child abuse scandal by throwing out homosexuals from seminaries.

"It is an act of violence that needs to be confronted."

His speech at St-Martin-in-the-Fields, in Trafalgar Square, was part of the 10th anniversary of the gay rights group Changing Attitude.

He had been asked not wear his full vestments or take part in the religious service before addressing the audience from a lectern rather than the pulpit.

Mmm, let’s see now. The good bishop broke several solemn vows and defiantly left his family to pursue his untrammeled sexual freedom. He has caused a near-schism that is so raw his church is tortured, not only about what he says, but where he says it and what he wears when he does. Yet still he insists all is well and that oppressed converts are flocking to Anglicanism. Perhaps they are, but one wonders just what kind of Christian it is attracting. Oh, that kind:

While We’re at It (Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, October, 2005, scroll down)

The Anglican Consultative Council met in June. The United States and Canadian provinces were invited, but only to present their defense of their departure from two millennia of Christian teaching on sexual morality. It appears they were not very persuasive. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, made an atypically fervent presentation, declaring the state of the Anglican communion to be “catastrophic.” He deplored the preoccupation with internal quarrels when so much of the world was awaiting the ministrations of the Anglican communion. He cited world hunger, AIDS, war, and other global miseries. Proclaiming the saving gospel of Jesus Christ was not high on the agenda. In fact, it apparently did not make the “to do” list at all. Despite a house divided on questions specifically pertinent to Christian faith, the bishops in solemn assembly were as one in offering advice on world affairs. They called for the United States to get out of Iraq and for the reunification of North and South Korea. The latter resolution made no reference to terrible human rights violations in the North, including an estimated 200,000 people in concentration camps and millions killed by government-induced starvation. And, following the lead of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and other oldline bodies, they voted unanimously to consider disinvestment from Israel. The resolution says, “It is the Israeli occupation in its many facets that foments the violence and fuels the conflict.” That simplistic assertion displays ignorance or mendacity of a very low order. There is no reference to Arab and Palestinian wars with the declared purpose of eradicating Israel, nor to the campaigns of terrorism and suicide bombings, nor to the Palestinian rejection of the near-total withdrawals offered by Israel at Camp David in 2000. The oldline churches declare themselves in “solidarity” with Palestinian Christians, ignoring the fact that Christians under the pressure of Palestinian and radical Islamist forces are fleeing the Middle East as fast as they can. Martin Peretz writes in the New Republic: “So I come to an unavoidable conclusion. The obsession here is not positive, for one side, but rather negative, against the other side. The clerics and the lay leaders on this indefensible crusade are so fixated on Palestine because their obsession, which can be buttressed by various Christian sources and traditions, is really with the Jews. A close look at the morbid passion makes one realize that its roots include an ancient hostility to the House of Israel, an ugly survival of hoary intolerance into some of the allegedly enlightened precincts of modern Christendom.” Without mentioning anti-Semitism, he means anti-Semitism. Leave aside the swipe at “Christian sources and traditions.” There is surely more than a little to Peretz’s claim that the motive of the Anglicans and others seems to be negative rather than positive. There are so many other suffering and victimized people in the world for whom the Consultative Council might have expressed its concern. Why the Palestinians? The answer does seem to have something to do with Jews. And, it is necessary to add, with the United States. The Iraqi and Korean resolutions are aimed at U.S. policy. That Israel is supported by the United States doubles the intensity of selective moral outrage. Let history record that, as the Anglican communion was dissolving in disordered array, it did its prophetic duty in trying to set to rights a disordered world.