According to [Don] Waring, the Episcopal bishop of New York permits rectors to exercise their own discretion in conferring religious blessings on same-sex couples who have been civilly married. Waring said he hasn’t performed such a ceremony because the situation hasn’t yet presented itself to him.
“We are still sort of in no-man’s land, trying to figure out what sort of blessings to provide, what language to use,” he said.
“We celebrate the passage of the marriage equality act and the equal rights for gay couples under the law in the civil sphere,” Waring added. “In the church sphere, we’re moving in step with the diocese of New York, which is: We’re all still trying to figure this out.”
If Don Waring is in no-man’s land, it is because that’s where he chose to be, not because the teaching of the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church isn’t clear.
“We’re all still trying to figure this out.” Talk about a bishop being lost in a sea of double-talk and fuzzy moral thinking. Maybe the good bishop should spend more time studying the Bible, the Christian moral tradition, and the writings of the saints and Church Fathers instead of being a religious mouthpiece for Gay activists and amoral politicians.
“…still trying to figure this out…”
What a strange, mercurial religion this person practices. Now that he has rejected the Christian answer and accepted the worldly answer, I fail to see his difficulty – just do what feels good. Why not? What standard or authority do you possibly have to observe in this arena (aside from popular sentiment… perhaps)?
Here is the real ROTFL line:
“The Episcopal Church is a conservative institution compared to some of its radical religious counterparts…”
🙄
The Episcopal church has become, literally, a “no-man’s land.”
Gotta cringe at the use of “progress” and “progressive.” Orwell’s “1984” would be so… 1984 to these people.
I kind of enjoyed the article. There’s a certain charm to this type of thoroughly post-modern Milquetoast taking a squinty-eyed peek through the haze that separates his little universe from that strange alternate reality where people profess religious beliefs. It’s sort of like Captain Cook not being able to tell the difference between Polynesians and Aborigenese: believers of whatever flavor all seem so similar to each other and he couldn’t possibly tell the thoughtful ones from the ditzes. TEC is sort of perched between the Catholics and the radicals – after all, they wear the same funky outfits and stuff, but don’t seem to go in for all that, uh, religious thinking, or whatever. We get a standard dig about the pedaphile scandal – because that’s all he knows about the RCs, one suspects – but there seems no real fire there. He sounds just too confused by the whole oddball thing. I kind of wish he’d said something about the radicals, though – they must be a real trip. But then again, how would he know? Dammit, they all look alike.
It’s true many folks do retain a liking for fine vestments and big clerical collars. It’s a kind of conservatism…
Well, there are many more things to enlist that are still to be figured out.
Speaking about trying to figure things out. Take a look at the TEC Chart for Grace Church. Mems and ASA the same for 2003 through 2009. Anytime you see NO randomness in data you know something is fishy. AND Plate & Pledge was constant at $525K for 2003 through 2008 and then plunged to ZERO in 2009. Does the Rector and Vestry ever read their own data? And by the way, Grace Church raised $5,000,000 for church restoration. And the band played on. Statmann