The conservative-led Episcopal Diocese of Albany staked out a firm defense of traditional marriage on Saturday, a move that comes as gay unions have gained new ground in California and New York.
The hundreds of clergy and lay delegates who converged for their annual convention in this lakeside Adirondack community resoundingly approved a resolution that lays down this rule: Only heterosexual marriages can be celebrated in the diocese.
It was a very well run convention and Bishop Love’s leadership was superb.
I was present when the speeches were made and the votes cast for Resolutions #5 and #6.
My sense of the situation is that the Diocese of Albany has solid traditional/orthodox clerical leadership and the majority of its laity support the traditional/orthodox Anglican faith.
That is, they still hold to “the Faith once given to the saints.”
staked out a firm defense of traditional marriage
How exactly did they do this? NY doesn’t have nonm-traditional marriage. The ionly thing NY wants to do is recognizes marriages and civil unions from other States. I wouldn’t call this either firm or a defense.
The handwriting is on the wall: The majority of this diocese will eventually leave The Episcopal Church……and there’s nothing that Schori and Company can do to stop them. Whether or not they’ll be able to take their properties with them, of course, is too soon to tell, but I think they’ll try.
Either way, they’ll be gone, and the situation for TEC will continue to get worse, because they won’t be the last to leave. There’ll be more…….THOUSANDS more!
#2 – I’m not in Dio Albany, but I believe that it is in part a pre-emptive move. If the NY legislature, in the future, re-defines civil marriage (something it has the power to do (if not the right)) the diocese will already be on the record as instructing its clergy and laity that Christian marriage is something else.
Given what we have seen from reappraising congregations in California, one could expect reappraisers in NY to argue that the redefinition of civil marriage should determine the Church’s defintion of Christian marriage. We probably will see this argument in NY even if NY only recognizes SSM’s from other states, without authorizing SSM’s on its own. Albany’s actions make it clear that its convention knows (as some re-appraisers fail to acknowledge) that the Church answers to an authority other than the State House, the Governor’s office, or the judiciary.
Quite frankly we should be focusing on Christian marriage. As Paul notes what the outside world does is their affair. Now we have an obligation to witness to the truth of Christian marriage to the pagans, but if they authorize non-christian marriage or shacking up or hooking up or whatever they want to do, we should not and must not go along.
In the final analysis, the issue is fornication plain and simple. We need to move on for the sake of our kids and young adults. The same-sex beachhead is keeping the orthodox from getting on with a comprehensive teaching that hits the mainstream of the parish. In fact, I think we would be better off to start there and move to the other only in that context.
C. S. Lewis over 50 years ago stated that there should be two marriages: one legal with the government, one in the Church. The marriage in Church is a sacrement, in the eyes of God and the community of believers. We are in this world, but not of ths world.
yawn. so who cares what albany or any other tec bishop ‘proclaims’. the bishop the next town over will ‘disagree’, and although that bishop breaks every canon in the books (EXCEPT THE ALMIGHTY PROPERTY-BELONGS-TO-TEC CANON), no discipline will be meted out, nothing will change, and
FEWER AND FEWER PEOPLE WILL EVEN CARE.
Little Cabbage, I do not want what you say to be true. I fear that it is.