Bishop Michael Ingham told the BC Supreme Court on Monday, June 1, that he knew of several Anglican dioceses where same sex unions were being blessed, long before the Diocesan Synod of New Westminster asked him to issue a rite of blessing in 2002.
It was happening informally, he said, in several Dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the US (a member of the Anglican Communion). He named Rochester, NY, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Delaware, and Boston, as places where same sex blessings took place, as well as in England.
But the bishop was opposed to these blessings, he told Mr. Justice Stephen Kelleher, “I wasn’t in favour of unofficial blessings taking place.” He told his priests not to conduct them, although some conservative priests would not oppose blessings done informally””and one even suggested to him this was a way to resolve the blessing issue.
“I felt the blessing should be public if it is right. If it is not the right thing to do, it should not be done at all.”
Follows some information from Fr. Robert Cromey’s biography. It seems a little late in the day to pretend that all of this was hidden away. After all, in 1996 one of the weddings was broadcast on ABC.
In December of 1964, several gay groups sponsored a New Year’s Eve costume ball with proceeds to go to the Council. As the guests arrived at the event, police photographers took pictures of the 500 people who were going into the party. Some party-goers, including lawyers representing the sponsors, were arrested. Cromey and the other clergy were outraged. Seven of them called a press conference denouncing the police and their discrimination against gays. Later a judge admonished the police for their actions and all charges were dropped against party-goers and lawyers. All this in San Francisco before Stonewall in New York.
In the fall of 1968, Cromey performed a wedding ceremony for a lesbian couple in St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church (San Francisco) where he was vicar. In 1982, when he was rector of Trinity Episcopal Church (San Francisco), Cromey allowed a gay couple to be married in the church.
In the 1970’s, Cromey had a private practice as a therapist and counseled many gay men and same-sex couples and often wrote letters and articles to secular and church newspapers and magazines about the need for gays and lesbians to have full rights in church and state. He appeared on local and national radio and TV, including Geraldo and Larry King Live. He published two articles in Penthouse on sex and religion.
In the mid-1980’s, Cromey’s church held funerals for 72 men who died of AIDS.
On Saturday, October 12, 1996, Ed and David were married in Trinity Church San Francisco where Cromey was rector. The wedding was filmed by ABC television and aired nationally on ABC’s Turning Points show on November 7, 1996, and aired again on Valentine’s Day, 1997. Many more marriages of same-gender couples were celebrated at Trinity until Cromey retired in 2001. The parish continues to do so under his successor.
Well, it’s happened in San Joaquin too. If it’s happened there, it’s probably happened everywhere.
Sidney: That is quite a statement to make without backing it up with information such as deaconmark did in his comment #1. If indeed it “has happened in San Joaquin, too,” we (who live in this diocese) are left wondering where and when. If it was during the past six months in the Episcopal diocese of S/J, then I can understand that. But, still, we would have heard something about it. A priest serving under Bp. John-David, or his predecessor, Bp. Rivera, would have taken a risk to preside over such a service in the orthodox diocese of San Joaquin, and it would have been a matter of public discussion.
oops, we’ve really been doing it longer than the Americans so we should get all the honour and glory and power that have become theirs since the ordination of VGR et alia … statistically, they seem to have it! Decline, decline, decline … all burnished as growth (in a negative direction).
ALERT about Reappraiser Apologetics:
Today alone we’ve seen TWO instances where there is a shift in their apologetic strategy. Instead of arguing that whatever clutch of ideas and practices they want to foist on the church are consonant with Anglican thought and practice historically, they are arguing that the tradition itself is “dynamic.” In making such an argument they effectively quarantine any appeal to historic thought and practice – basically all those things that have in fact shaped the tradition dynamically. Do you see the possibility here? By arguing that the tradition is dynamic I can affirm any development as consistent because it is in fact a development. What is clearly lacking in this strategy (and we should all recognize and call them on is) is the question whether the development is a legitimate development of an aberration.
No one should argue that we’re just trying to live in the 1660s, but rather that we wish to be consistent with the living tradition of the 1660s. That is most certainly not what TEC and ACoC is doing! BUT watch them argue that simply because the tradition is alive, therefore all developments are legitimate.
Watch and see if we don’t see the word “dynamic” a lot in future weeks — and, as in the article about New Westminster, a reflexive strategy which includes painting reasserters as pushers of a “static” understanding of Anglicanism.