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> Church abanndons lesbain minister Church abanndons lesbain minister A lesbian Methodist pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Germantown in Philadelphia was removed from the role yesterday after an ecclesiastical court found her guilty of violating a church law that bars its clergy from being practising homosexuals. A jury of thirteen clergy voted 12-1 that Irene Elizabeth Stroud had violated the Church's Book of Discipline. The jury then voted 7-6 to withdraw Ms Stroud's ministerial credentials. Ms Stroud claimed the close decision of the jury on the credentials question showed how divided the Church was on the issue. During a sermon in April last year Ms Stroud told a congregation that she lived with a woman. She declined to practise celibacy or transfer to another denomination but decided to be open about her sexuality. Church in crisis on gays Powerbrokers in Sydney's Anglican diocese want to change the church's constitution to enable a split from the Church of England in England if its attitude to the ordination of gay clergy and same-sex unions remains unresolved. Though Sydney's Archbishop Peter Jensen believes the Bible forbids same-sex unions, the 2003 election of a gay man, Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire, in the US, and the 2002 decision by the New Westminster diocese in Canada to bless same-sex unions, have caused the crisis to escalate. The church in Nigeria, which has the most adherents after the English church, recently amended its constitution to remove mention of ties to the Church of England over the issue. And at the end of last month, its archbishop, Peter Akinola, announced gays and lesbians would be excommunicated from the church. There was more controversy earlier this year when the English bishops ruled that gay and lesbian clergy could register their relationships under new UK civil laws, giving them many of the tax and inheritance advantages of married couples, without losing their licences to be priests. A prayer for unity The new leader of the Anglican Church in Australia, Archbishop of Brisbane Dr Phillip Aspinall, yesterday called for Australia's four million Anglicans to unite and help heal the deep divisions over issues including homosexuality and ordination of women bishops. A spokes person for the group Survivors Investigating Child Sexual Abuse (SICSA) said his election was a surprise after it was alleged in 2003 that Dr Aspinall had arranged for a young man to share a bed with a priest in Tasmania in the 1980s. However, Dr Aspinall said extensive investigations by the Brisbane Diocesan Council had cleared him in the matter. Gay priest trainees' 3 years to straighten A Vatican document, “Instruction Concerning Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders'' was recently leaked on the internet by the Italian Catholic news agency Adista. The document proclaims inter alia that trainee Catholic priests with “transitory'' homosexuality will have to prove they can lead a celibate life for three years before proceeding to ordination. It also reveals that the church could never admit to the priesthood men who “practise homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support so-called gay culture''. It goes on, “Those people find themselves, in fact, in a situation that presents a grave obstacle to a correct relationship with men and women. One cannot ignore the negative consequences that can stem from the ordination of people with deeply rooted homosexual tendencies”. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of the need to “purify'' the church after the sexual abuse scandals of recent years but the document makes no reference to current priests. Catholic historian and former priest Paul Collins, in commenting on the document, said that although there has been no Australian research on the number of gay priests, he estimated it was up to 50 per cent. |
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