The Bishop I think was right. It is important to not reduce important discussions to the facile simplicity of pro v con. There needs to be much more nuance than this
The trouble with this is that in the mean time we have actually done much more.
Already one of our excellent priest has said "enough is enough"!
Ali Wurm an honestly confessing person who has never denied she is a lesbian has resigned (see my previous blog)
Did we want to lose such a fine a priest?
Ali had a reputation of being pastoral, innovative, compassionate and creative.
She is caught technically buy the overkill of Faithfulness in Service.
Clearly no threat to young people, or the wider community, the church has created a casualty of a person who on most objective criteria is exactly the sort of leader we should be striving to cultivate and retain.
While the puritanesque document Faithfulness in Service has snuck into practice in the Australian Church let us not pretend it is without casualties.
I, for one, don't want to belong to an organisation that says that we don't accept you
And let us not play games with people who are same-sex attracted by saying that we love the sinner but not the sin
When we fail to recognise and accept that many, many people are just same-sex attracted...that this is not a choice they have perversely or twistedly made but a way they are...and in many cases have been since they were born
It is easy for some to say that this is just wilfulness. The testimony of thousands of gay people would suggest otherwise.
Do we, can we love and accept these people ?
No comments:
Post a Comment