Asked about their views on same-sex marriage this week, nine sig­natories of a letter sent to the Lon­don representatives of the General Synod calling for the freedom to bless civil partnerships in church said that they would support the Government’s proposals to legalise same-sex marriage. Other clergy oppose such a change.
“A change in the definition of mar­riage to include two men or two women would seem to me to be an appropriate step in the redefinition of marriage for our particular contemporary society,” said the Lead Chaplain of the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, the Revd Robert Thompson.

The Vicar of St Lawrence’s, Eastcote, in Pinner, the Revd Stephen Dando, said that same-sex marriage should be “both allowed and celeb­rated”.

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Nothing that is of the keenest concern for the bishops’ conference has been “put on the table” by the administration, in any forum. The HHS mandate has been published in the Federal Register, without changes. The administration-controlled Senate rejected efforts to amend the law to accommodate the bishops’ criticisms. Bishops’-conference negotiators asked White House officials whether the bishops’ religious-freedom concerns ”” which extend both to Catholic institutions and to employers of conscience of any creed ”” were off the table; yes, replied the White House negotiators. Well, then, what about the administration’s ridiculously stringent four-part test for who qualifies as a “religious employer” able to claim exemption from the HHS mandate? The day Gibson’s story ran on the Religion News Service wire, the bishops’ conference was informed that any discussion of the four-part test was also off the table.

Which leaves one wondering precisely what is on the table, beyond a tacit agreement by the administration to stop acting as if leftist America magazine and the HHS-dependents at the Catholic Health Association are the Catholic Church in the United States, in exchange for the bishops’ conference rolling over and asking to have its belly scratched.

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The new Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral has spoken in support of gay marriage in a move that threatens to deepen divisions within the Church of England.

Dr David Ison, 57, said that the virtues of marriage should be available to gays, adding that it was better to talk of “Christian marriage” rather than homosexual or heterosexual unions. He admitted that he had conducted ceremonies for homosexuals after civil partnerships, even though formal blessing services for gays are banned by the Church and no liturgy has been authorised.

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Indicating support for same-sex couples, the former Bishop of Oxford, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, said that it was still not too late for the Church to move ahead with blessing civil partnerships.
“The Churches have only themselves to blame for their current predicament, in which they face a major rewriting of the law on marriage,” he said.
“Instead of at first opposing civil partnerships, and then only accepting them grudgingly with gritted teeth, they should have welcomed them warmly from the first and immediately proposed services of commitment and blessing in church. They should do this even now.”

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Pinched by the global recession and tough-love budget demands of the European Union, the Italian government is looking for extra revenue, and has its eyes set on commercial properties owned by the Roman Catholic Church.
On Feb. 15, the government of Prime Minister Mario Monti announced it wants to revise rules on the tax-exempt status of church-owned commercial property. Although the exemption also applies to other not-for-profit entities, such as trade unions, political parties and religious groups, the Catholic church is its largest beneficiary.

“Such a move would have been unimaginable six months ago,” said Francesco Perfetti, a history professor at LUISS University in Rome. “After all, no matter whether you are a believer or not, the church is an integral part of Italy’s culture.”

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The U.S. Senate voted by a narrow 51-48 margin to block the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (S. 1467), sponsored by Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) and 37 other senators.
The proposed measure would have given employers and insurers the possibility to opt out of paying for contraceptives and sterilizations

“The need to defend citizens’ rights of conscience is the most critical issue before our country right now,” said Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Bishop Lori chairs the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

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Who owns marriage? It’s an interesting question and a pressing one in the debate around equal civil marriage. It is owned by neither the state nor the church, as the former Archbishop Lord Carey rightly said. So it is owned by the people.

The fierce debate over the past few weeks has shown people feel very strongly about marriage. Some believe the Government has no right to change it at all; they want to leave tradition alone. I want to challenge that view ”“ it is the Government’s fundamental job to reflect society and to shape the future, not stay silent where it has the power to act and change things for the better.

I believe that if a couple love each other and want to commit to a life together, they should have the option of a civil marriage, irrespective of whether they are gay or straight.

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[Archbishop Timothy Broglio] wrote in a letter that “The federal government, which claims to be ‘of, by and for the people,’ has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful. It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle.”

However, it was another passage that seems to have triggered alarms at the Army office of the Chief of Chaplains.

“We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law,” stressed Broglio. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens. … In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same.”

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Reverence for both Scripture and freedom led [Roger] Williams to his position. His mentor was Edward Coke, the great English jurist who ruled, “The house of every one is as his castle,” extending the liberties of great lords ”” and an inviolate refuge where one was free ”” to the lowest English commoners. Coke pioneered the use of habeas corpus to prevent arbitrary imprisonment. And when Chancellor of England Thomas Egerton said, “Rex est lex loquens; the king is the law speaking,” and agreed that the monarch could “suspend any particular law” for “reason of state,” Coke decreed instead that the law bound the king. Coke was imprisoned ”” without charge ”” for his view of liberty, but that same view ran in Williams’ veins.
Equally important to Williams was Scripture. Going beyond the “render unto Caesar” verse in the New Testament, he recognized the difficulty in reconciling contradictory scriptural passages as well as different Bible translations. He even had before him an example of a new translation that served a political purpose. King James had disliked the existing English Bible because in his view it insufficiently taught obedience to authority; the King James Bible would correct that.

Given these complexities, Williams judged it impossible for any human to interpret all Scripture without error. Therefore he considered it “monstrous” for one person to impose any religious belief on another.

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More Oregon public schools are opening up their buildings for church services to bring in extra income.

Eight of the state’s 10 biggest districts rent out buildings for services.

While some believe that school-based churches violate the Constitutional separation between church and state, courts generally have found the practice to be legal. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that as long as districts are renting out spaces to outside organizations, it would be discriminatory to ban religious groups.

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In another political aftershock from the summer’s rare East Coast earthquake, a bid by the mayor of Washington to secure federal aid for the damaged Washington National Cathedral is drawing criticism from those who say it runs counter to separation of church and state.

Mayor Vincent C. Gray is seeking $15 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for repairs to the cathedral, which was seriously damaged in the 5.8 temblor Aug. 23.

But Joseph L. Conn, director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, blogged on the organization’s website, “Asking the taxpayers to pick up the tab sets a very bad precedent and jeopardizes a critically important edifice that protects us all: the wall of separation between church and state.”

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The most perspicuous example of a ministerial exception is the Catholic church’s limitation of membership in the priesthood to males. If a university were to have a rule that only men could serve as professors, it would be vulnerable to a suit brought under the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The difference (or so it has been asserted) is that there is no relationship between professorial skills and gender ”” a woman can perform the duties of a teacher of history or chemistry as well as a man ”” while the tradition of an all-male priesthood is rooted in religious doctrine. So the university would be engaged in discrimination pure and simple, whereas the church’s discrimination is a function of its belief that the all-male priesthood was initiated by Christ in his choice of the apostles.
Were the state to intervene and declare the tradition of an all-male priesthood and the doctrine underlying it unconstitutional, it would be forcing the church to conform to secular norms in violation both of the free exercise clause (the right of a religion to be governed by its own tenets would be curtailed) and the establishment clause (the state would in effect have taken over the management of the church by dictating its hiring practices). (I am rehearsing, not endorsing, these arguments.)

This clear-cut example ”” to which both sides in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC refer frequently ”” may be the only one (and it is only clear-cut because it has behind it 2,000 years of history). For the question quickly becomes one of boundaries ”” how far does the ministerial exception extend? To whom does it apply?…

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Even as it remains preoccupied with its struggling economy, Ireland is in the midst of a profound transformation, as rapid as it is revolutionary: it is recalibrating its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, an institution that has permeated almost every aspect of life here for generations.

This is still a country where abortion is against the law, where divorce became legal only in 1995, where the church runs more than 90 percent of the primary schools and where 87 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new ”” rage, disgust and defiance ”” after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.

While similar disclosures have tarnished the Vatican’s image in other countries, perhaps nowhere have they shaken a whole society so thoroughly or so intensely as in Ireland….

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Following a stinging rebuke by the Anglican Church, the state-run Urban Development Corporation (UDC) appeared yesterday to be backing off what appeared to be a veiled threat to forcibly acquire the church-owned Nuttall Hospital lands near Cross Roads, Kingston.

UDC general manager, Joy Douglas was quoted in television reports as suggesting that the agency was eyeing the sprawling Nuttall lands as part of redevelopment plans for the capital city.

Douglas was further reported as saying “there are plans by the prime minister to amend the UDC Act, that will do away with a clause that forces the Corporation to acquire land before engaging in redevelopment activities”.

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There seems little reason in logic for the current legal position. There might be something to be said for insisting on monogamous heterosexual marriage as a way of privileging the country’s traditional Christian culture (if that is what you want to do). But once the state recognises homosexual couples it has abandoned any pretence that it is upholding Christian marriage. Whether churches and other religious bodies choose to recognise gay marriage, to the extent of holding ceremonies to honour it, is a matter for them. Unlike heterosexual marriage, they are not able to conduct legally binding partnership in any case. So why stop there? Why not recognise polygamous marriages, and indeed any other form of intimate union that people wish to enter into?

In a liberal society, it is no business of the state’s how people conduct their private lives. Some object to polygamy out of the belief that it disadvantages women. But that is not necessarily the case. Some women may actively prefer to be part of a polygamous household, which can have distinct advantages (for example, sharing the burden of childcare) over the standard monogamous unit. As long as there is no coercion involved, the most serious downside may well be in the state’s refusal to recognise polygamy and thus give all partners equal rights.

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In language never before used by an Irish government leader, Enda Kenny yesterday accused the Vatican of downplaying or “managing” the rape and torture of children in order to uphold its own power and reputation.

Speaking in the Dáil in a debate on the Cloyne report, he said it excavated the “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism” dominating the culture of the Vatican to this day.

The Taoiseach’s speech was reported around the world with many media organisations praising Mr Kenny for his criticism of the Catholic Church.

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There’s no tally of how many churches, synagogues and mosques convert public school spaces into prayer places for the nominal cost of permits and promises to make no permanent changes in the school setting. What’s clear is that there has been a steady rise in numbers as congregations find schools are available, affordable and accessible to families they want to reach.

Critics, including some courts, are concerned that these arrangements are an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state. They say these bargain permits effectively subsidize religious congregations who would have to pay steeply higher prices on the open market. They also note that the practice appears to favor Christian groups, which worship on Sundays ”” when school spaces are most often available.

Caught in the middle: churches such as Forest Hills, which spent $3,000 for a permit to use P.S. 144 from February through June and just renewed for July and August. For September and beyond, however, nothing is certain.

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Commenting on the Government’s proposals, Rt Rev Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester and Convenor of the Lords Spiritual said:

“Some reform of the Lords is overdue, not least to resolve the problem of its ever-increasing membership. But getting the balance of reform right, so that we retain what is good in our current arrangements, whilst freeing up the House to operate more effectively and efficiently, is crucial.

If the test of any reform is that it helps serve parliament and the nation better, in proposing to replace the House of Lords with a wholly or largely elected second chamber, the case has not been made. That case would require a clear redefinition of the primary purpose and function of the Upper House.

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Leaders of non-Christian faith groups should be invited to sit alongside bishops in the House of Lords, a historian who contributed to a commission on reform of the Second Chamber has suggested.

Writing in the Church Times today, John F. H. Smith, an architec­tural historian who made a sub­mission to the Royal Commis­sion on the Reform of the House of Lords, argues that, although bishops should re­main “in the majority”, “an interdenominational and inter­faith college” would “broaden faith repres­en­tation”.

“Religious leaders would, there­fore, continue to widen debate by bringing moral and philosophical perspectives to stand alongside the political, economic, and financial judgements of other groups,” he writes.

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I celebrate the birthday of the King James Version, and look forward to its continued use in public discourse, to inspire and to persuade. But I do not support legislation based on the Bible, or any effort to label America a Christian nation. And I say that as a proud and practicing Christian.

Our nation is well served by the Constitution’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion, which gives us unrestrained liberty to gather for worship and read the King James Version, or any other sacred text we want.

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Sir, I have just watched the royal wedding on television, and I can only hope that those politicians, of whichever party, who were either at the ceremony or watched the televised coverage, appreciate the contribution of music to the entire occasion. Military bandsmen, fanfare trumpeters, choristers, orchestral musicians and organists, all worked to make the occasion such a splendid event. Imagine it without a single note of music.

—From a letter to the editor in today’s (London) Times [subscription required] (emphasis mine).

Wedding couples, even royal couples, at times compose their own wedding prayers. In the British tradition of royal weddings, however, it seems that Prince William and Catherine Middleton are the first to do so:

God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage.

In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy.

Strengthened by our union, help us to serve and comfort those who suffer. We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The prayer helps sum up the prince and his bride, a Facebook-generation couple described by Archbishop Rowan Williams as “deeply unpretentious people” who steered away from an “all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza.”

They “wanted something simple and clear and also wanted something with tradition, roots and associations,” he added.

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When Prince William and Kate Middleton walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey on Friday (April 29), Britain’s unique and historic ties between church and state will be on full display.

Some here think””even hope””it could also be the last powerful stroll for church and state in this increasingly secular country.

As the Dean of Westminster, the Very Rev. John Hall, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams prepare to conduct and solemnize the wedding of the century, both Christians and prominent and powerful nonbelievers are raising their voices and demanding the disestablishment the Church of England that has dominated religious life here for 400 years.

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By the book and ”explicitly Christian”. That was the assessment by one of Australia’s Anglican leaders of the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey.

The Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, said the wedding ceremony – conducted to a revised 1928 Church of England rite – was ”in a way more Christian than it needed to be”.

”It was not sentimental about marriage,” said Bishop Forsyth. ”The [biblical] reading was not gushy and, rather than apologise for being Christian, the service was generous.”

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The coalition government’s plans to reform the 1701 Act of Settlement, ending the ban on a Roman Catholic monarch in Britain, does not have the support of the Canadian government.

On April 20, Prime Minister David Cameron said Roman Catholics should be able to become King or Queen, or marry the heir to the throne. However, he noted that this reform was not in the government’s power, but required the agreement of those Commonwealth nations where the monarch is the head of state.

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With fanfare and flags under cool, gray skies, Prince William and his longtime girlfriend, Kate Middleton, were married on Friday in one of the largest and most-watched events here in decades ”” an interlude of romance in a time of austerity and a moment that will shape the future of the British monarchy.

Some 40 minutes after her husband-to-be, Miss Middleton rode to Westminster Abbey to offer a first glimpse of her wedding dress ”” a creation by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen in white and ivory, with a two-meter train, that had been the object of furious speculation. She wore a delicate veil with intricate lace on the neckline and a diamond tiara lent for the occasion by Queen Elizabeth II, and traveled in a Rolls Royce limousine with her father, Michael Middleton.

The service began with a hymn, “Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer.” The couple stood side by side before the altar. As she arrived to join him, William whispered to her, and onlookers said he seemed to be saying, “You look beautiful.”

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Up to two billion people around the world will watch today as a 29-year-old woman from Reading marries into the British Royal Family.

Much of Britain is expected to grind to a halt as the nation enjoys another bank holiday, with many taking up position in front of their TV sets from 10am to savour a display of pageantry, pomp and circumstance not seen here since the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer 30 years ago.

Kate Middleton will marry Prince William in a spectacular and extravagantly patriotic ceremony at Westminster Abbey.

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Speaking in a short film produced by Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury talks about the sense of hopefulness and generosity which lie at the heart of marriage, and what this also tells us about the ”˜mystery’ and ”˜delight’ which can be found in this life-time commitment. Dr Williams, who will be conducting the marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey on Friday 29th, also describes the sense of privilege he feels about his own role in the royal wedding:

“Any priest or minister conducting a wedding is bound to feel a huge sense of privilege. You’re invited into some intimate places in people’s lives. You’re invited to take part in a very significant moment, a moment of hope; a moment of affirmation about people’s present and future. And I’ve felt very privileged to be part of this event for those reasons. Here are young people sending a message of hopefulness, sending a message of generosity across the world. And it’s my privilege to be able to bless that in the name of God, to witness it in the name of God”.

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When Prince William and Kate Middleton walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey on Friday, Britain’s unique and historic ties between church and state will be on full display.

Some here think ”” even hope ”” the royal wedding could also be the last powerful stroll for church and state in this increasingly secular country.

Read it all.