I could never live in
Paradise, she said. I don't
look that good naked.
From StoryPeople.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Gay "Reparative Therapy" Doesn't Work
From the NY Times:
The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments.
In a resolution adopted by the association’s governing council, and in an accompanying report, the association issued its most comprehensive repudiation of so-called reparative therapy, a concept espoused by a small but persistent group of therapists, often allied with religious conservatives, who maintain that gay men and lesbians can change.
....
The report breaks ground in its detailed and nuanced assessment of how therapists should deal with gay clients struggling to remain loyal to a religious faith that disapproves of homosexuality.
....
“Both sides have to educate themselves better," Ms. Glassgold said. “The religious psychotherapists have to open up their eyes to the potential positive aspects of being gay or lesbian. Secular therapists have to recognize that some people will choose their faith over their sexuality.”
Good, but not surprising news, indeed.
Promoted from the comments:
Obie Holmen has left a new comment on your post "Gay "Reparative Therapy" Doesn't Work":
The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments.
In a resolution adopted by the association’s governing council, and in an accompanying report, the association issued its most comprehensive repudiation of so-called reparative therapy, a concept espoused by a small but persistent group of therapists, often allied with religious conservatives, who maintain that gay men and lesbians can change.
....
The report breaks ground in its detailed and nuanced assessment of how therapists should deal with gay clients struggling to remain loyal to a religious faith that disapproves of homosexuality.
....
“Both sides have to educate themselves better," Ms. Glassgold said. “The religious psychotherapists have to open up their eyes to the potential positive aspects of being gay or lesbian. Secular therapists have to recognize that some people will choose their faith over their sexuality.”
Good, but not surprising news, indeed.
Promoted from the comments:
Obie Holmen has left a new comment on your post "Gay "Reparative Therapy" Doesn't Work":
Al was an old-timer in my Lutheran congregation in Lake Woebegone country of central Minnesota who had been raised Catholic but became Lutheran when he married Lois. He had received his elementary education in a Stearns County parochial school taught by nuns in full habit way back in the dust bowl days of the thirties.
“Whack”, he said as he jerked the ruler in his left hand. “Whack”, he said again, demonstrating how the nuns would slap him on his left hand when they would catch him scribing his abc’s with the wrong hand. “I would do my best with my right hand,” he said, “but I couldn’t help it, I always went back to my natural left hand.” With a laugh, Al wrote his name in chunky block letters with his right hand before signing in flowing strokes with his left hand.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Father Pemberton's Sermon
From Changing Attitude:
Jeremy Pemberton preached about the Archbishop of Canterbury's Reflection on General Convention in Southwell Minster last Sunday morning. He says that he has never had such a deluge of positive comment after a sermon in all his years as a priest. The comments came from members of the mostly fairly elderly Minster congregation - comments like: at last, thank you for saying what we needed to hear. The sermon is reproduced below.
I won't post the entire sermon, just selections. You can see the whole grand sermon at CA.
The sermon is excellent, and I found it difficult to select only parts of it, and you see that I included a great deal. Fr. Pemberton's sermon gets to the heart of the matter which causes so much turmoil in the Anglican Communion, the Church of England, and the Episcopal Church in the US and points us in the direction of the way out. Please read it all at CA. It's very fine.
Thanks to Lapin for the link.
Jeremy Pemberton preached about the Archbishop of Canterbury's Reflection on General Convention in Southwell Minster last Sunday morning. He says that he has never had such a deluge of positive comment after a sermon in all his years as a priest. The comments came from members of the mostly fairly elderly Minster congregation - comments like: at last, thank you for saying what we needed to hear. The sermon is reproduced below.
I won't post the entire sermon, just selections. You can see the whole grand sermon at CA.
I want to try and do, as Paul put it in our epistle, a little bit of speaking the truth in love this morning. I want to talk about sex and unity.
There – I thought that might get your attention! The reason I want to is that this epistle is a great call to the Church to live out her vocation in unity – and we live in a Church that is dangerously riven by disagreements. Paul is calling the Ephesians to living a worthy Christian life together – and the means to enable that are the unity of the Christian community and its generous sharing of the gifts it has been given by God. It is a wonderful picture of mutuality and generosity and of many being built up – an image of a rich diversity creating something true and beautiful for God. The church’s unity is to be preserved by humility, forbearance, gentleness, patience and love. Her strength will be shown by her ability to face and speak the truth as together her members grow up into Christ, the source and goal of her life.
....
I don’t know how well you have been following the controversies of the past six or so years. They have all ostensibly been about the rights and wrongs of homosexual relationships, and particularly those of clergy. Two events triggered the present disagreements, which threaten the unity of not only the Anglican Communion, but to a certain extent the Church of England itself. In 2003 Dr Jeffrey John, then Canon Chancellor of Southwark Cathedral was nominated to the see of Reading – one of the suffragan bishops of Oxford Diocese. He was a gay man with a partner, with whom he now said he was in a celibate relationship. Storms of protest from prominent conservative clerics and laypeople focused on the facts that he was still in that relationship, did not repent of having had a sexually active one, and had written in support of permanent, faithful and stable gay partnerships. He withdrew his acceptance of the nomination – and is now Dean of St Alban’s Abbey.
In the USA, the voters of New Hampshire Diocese of the Episcopal Church elected as their bishop Canon Gene Robinson, a divorced father of two, who was now in a long-standing partnership with another man. The election of bishops in the Episcopal Church has to be confirmed by the other bishops giving their consent. In this case these consents were forthcoming – not least because the other bishops could not see any way in which the electoral process has not been followed scrupulously, and Canon Robinson was, as you know, consecrated.
....
We live in a world where widespread virginity before marriage is a fairly distant memory – even for most Christian young people. Contraception, not least the pill, changed social attitudes for ever. Fear, a great motivator to chastity, has been removed. Lots of young people get married these days in their late twenties and early thirties, and most have had one or more quite long-term sexually active relationships before they met the person they now intend to marry. I can’t honestly remember the last time I saw a marriage application with two genuinely different addresses on the form.
....
And what has the Church of England to say? Nothing but: get married! No one bothers much talking about living in sin any more – indeed, only last week a new liturgy was published (with some conservative grumblings) for a Wedding with the simultaneous Baptism of the couple’s children.
....
Paul, writing to the Ephesians, places great emphasis on the ethical actions he wants the Ephesians to demonstrate: being loving, forbearing, and exercising humility and gentleness. Isn’t it time that we rethought our sexual ethics so that we placed a greater emphasis on the quality of the actions that people engage in and take some of the focus off the formal state they inhabit? In that way we encourage people towards responsibility, permanence, fidelity, even if they are not ready to marry yet, and away from exploitative and careless sexual behaviour.
....
Again, what are we to say about the attitude of the Church towards homosexuality? There is no doubt that society has undergone a huge revolution in attitude towards this relatively small minority of the population.
....
The church, meanwhile, is tearing itself apart over this very issue. The last substantial piece of teaching was eighteen years ago in 1991. The House of Bishops statement Issues in Human Sexuality said –
"that what it called 'homophile' orientation and activity could not be endorsed by the Church. “…Heterosexuality and homosexuality are not equally congruous with the observed order of creation or with the insights of revelation as the Church engages with these in the light of her pastoral ministry.”
Nearly a generation on from that guidance the observed order of creation has revealed hundreds of species where a number of the creatures can and do regularly form homosexual partnerships. There is so little in Scripture about this whole area that enormous tomes have to written to uphold an interpretation of no more than six odd verses scattered about the Bible that would ban homosexual relationships entirely.
....
Moreover, the Church of England has managed to think and talk its way through to a new perspective over a question of sexual ethics, while maintaining its unity. That is precisely what we have done over the question of divorce.
....
Very slowly and painfully, and with great attention to the pastoral difficulties that this policy was creating in a society with significant numbers of divorced people not only on the streets but also in the pews, the Church has revised its understanding of marriage, divorce and remarriage.
....
Paul wanted an extraordinary quality of relationship – a unity that transcended their differences – to characterise the way the Christians of Ephesus grew together. No one is imagining, certainly not him, that this was easy. Forbearance is one of the qualities he singles out to achieve this, and humility and gentleness. We face a world of sexual living that is very very different to the world of fifty years ago. I wonder if it would be possible for the church to find a way to speak differently into this world and encourage the qualities of living that will lead people, heterosexual and homosexual alike, towards the fullness of life that God wants for them. But that is, perhaps, only possible if we exercise a forbearance, a gentleness and a humility that so far the official pronouncements of our church have been unable to get anywhere near.
Jesus said, in everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Matt 7:12
May God give us grace to exercise gentleness and forbearance, and to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. Amen.
The sermon is excellent, and I found it difficult to select only parts of it, and you see that I included a great deal. Fr. Pemberton's sermon gets to the heart of the matter which causes so much turmoil in the Anglican Communion, the Church of England, and the Episcopal Church in the US and points us in the direction of the way out. Please read it all at CA. It's very fine.
Thanks to Lapin for the link.
Welcome Back, Father Jake!
Jake Worldstopper is back blogging again. And just in time. We need his voice around and about in Anglican Land.
Email Warning
If you receive an email
from the
Department of Health
telling you not to eat
tinned pork
because of
swine flu....
Ignore it.
It's just Spam.
Doug strikes again. The man is relentless. He sent pictures, too, but I can't manage to load the pictures. Sorry about that.
from the
Department of Health
telling you not to eat
tinned pork
because of
swine flu....
Ignore it.
It's just Spam.
Doug strikes again. The man is relentless. He sent pictures, too, but I can't manage to load the pictures. Sorry about that.
The Italian Wife
An Italian woman married a Australian gentleman and they lived happily ever after in Perth. The poor lady was not very proficient in English, but did manage to communicate with her husband. The real problem arose whenever she had to shop for groceries.
One day, she went to the butcher and wanted to buy chicken legs. She didn't know how to put forward her request, so, in desperation, clucked like a chicken and lifted up her skirt to show her thighs. Her butcher got the message and gave her the chicken legs.
Next day she needed to get chicken breasts, again she didn't know how to say it, so she clucked like a chicken and unbuttoned her blouse to show the butcher her breasts. The butcher understood again and gave her some chicken breasts.
On the 3rd day, the poor lady needed to buy sausages. Unable to find a way to communicate this, she brought her husband to the store...
(Please scroll down.)
What were you thinking?
Her husband speaks English!
Now get back to your emails.
I worry about you sometimes!
That Doug! I worry about him sometimes.
One day, she went to the butcher and wanted to buy chicken legs. She didn't know how to put forward her request, so, in desperation, clucked like a chicken and lifted up her skirt to show her thighs. Her butcher got the message and gave her the chicken legs.
Next day she needed to get chicken breasts, again she didn't know how to say it, so she clucked like a chicken and unbuttoned her blouse to show the butcher her breasts. The butcher understood again and gave her some chicken breasts.
On the 3rd day, the poor lady needed to buy sausages. Unable to find a way to communicate this, she brought her husband to the store...
(Please scroll down.)
What were you thinking?
Her husband speaks English!
Now get back to your emails.
I worry about you sometimes!
That Doug! I worry about him sometimes.
Go For It, Roseann!
Our friend Roseann talks about her dialysis treatments with her usual splendid sense of humor:
Probably the hardest thing about dialysis is occasionally there will be a patient who is a little out of their mind. They tend to talk to Jesus in a very loud voice. I wish that Jesus would tell them to talk a little softer but so far he's keeping out of it. Finally one day I just couldn't take it anymore and I told the woman, who was in the bed next to me, that I had just talked to Jesus and he wanted her to go to sleep now. It worked. She calmed right down and went off to sleep. I hope Jesus doesn't mind that I spoke for him.
Tell Roseann whether she should continue to be Jesus' spokesperson to her fellow patients. My advice: Go for it, Roseann!
Probably the hardest thing about dialysis is occasionally there will be a patient who is a little out of their mind. They tend to talk to Jesus in a very loud voice. I wish that Jesus would tell them to talk a little softer but so far he's keeping out of it. Finally one day I just couldn't take it anymore and I told the woman, who was in the bed next to me, that I had just talked to Jesus and he wanted her to go to sleep now. It worked. She calmed right down and went off to sleep. I hope Jesus doesn't mind that I spoke for him.
Tell Roseann whether she should continue to be Jesus' spokesperson to her fellow patients. My advice: Go for it, Roseann!
Not Only Little England
From Giles Fraser in the Church Times on the Archbishop of Canterbury's reflections on GC09. Giles speaks of the two-tier system as it now exists in the Church of England:
Actually, we have been something like a two-tier Church for a while, but the nature of this division is different from the one Dr Williams describes. One tier is called the Church of England; the other is called Anglicanism. Ordinary people in the pews are members of the former; those with “representative functions” — bishops and the like — are often of the latter.
The Church of England has always had a slight little-Englander mentality. Mrs Jones, who has always worshipped at St Agatha’s, knows that there is a wider international side to the Church — she reads about it in the diocesan newsletter. But it means about as much to her as the fact that her town is twinned with somewhere in France which she has never been to.
She is happy to give to needy causes abroad, but, for her, church means St Agatha’s: Sunday eucharist, the choir, the people. Her views may be more conservative or more liberal than the person praying next to her, but that doesn’t matter much. She still cycles to communion through the morning mist.
This may be a dated caricature, but the genius of the Church of England has been to allow different theological temperaments to worship alongside one other, united by common prayer and community spirit. This was how we recognised each other as members of the same Church. This was our particular charism, and we were widely valued for it.
I don't think that Giles' description is dated, nor is the mentality confined to little England. All church is local. I've spoken before about my several years in the Episcopal Church when I hardly even paid attention to the activities of my diocese, much less the national church, or the Anglican Communion, except as they affected my parish church. I've also acknowledged a feeling of nostalgia for my period of innocence and ignorance.
The majority of my congregation probably functions principally within the local church mentality. Only when it becomes obvious that decisions made higher up will affect our parish, do they begin to pay attention.
In Anglicanism, however, the joys of common prayer and community spirit are replaced by ideology. This Anglican Church is a new invention, a global piece of post-colonial hubris, driven by those who feel that a Church that is genuinely Catholic must have outposts throughout the world.
Bishops get on planes and fly to other parts of the world to sit in committees with other bishops, hammering out policy — although no one in the secular world cares two hoots about what they decide. Over time, these meetings have created a new Church with a single-issue magisterium based on an unhealthy fascination with what gay people do in their bedrooms. This, apparently, is how we are to recognise each other as Anglicans.
That is not how Mrs Jones recognises members of her church. She says hello to them in the street. They sit near her in the pews. To replace all this by ideology is the single greatest mistake my Church has ever made.
Wow! Giles couldn't have stated it more plainly. Would that his Church of England brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, would speak in such plain language and with such wisdom.
I am sooo tired of the "single-issue magisterium" of sex, sex, sex. I may work those words into a sidebar quote.
Anglicanism is and should be about much more than that. When I travel, I enjoy visiting Episcopal churches in other areas of the US and Anglican churches abroad and being able to worship in similar, but not quite the same, services as at home, in knowing that we shared the basics of beliefs, whatever different meanings we attributed to the basics, and without being too much troubled about the differences. Our conversations on the faith after the services began from common ground. The common ground is now crumbling beneath our feet because of the undue emphasis on ideology and sex, sex, sex. More's the pity.
H/T to JB Chilton at The Lead for the link.
Actually, we have been something like a two-tier Church for a while, but the nature of this division is different from the one Dr Williams describes. One tier is called the Church of England; the other is called Anglicanism. Ordinary people in the pews are members of the former; those with “representative functions” — bishops and the like — are often of the latter.
The Church of England has always had a slight little-Englander mentality. Mrs Jones, who has always worshipped at St Agatha’s, knows that there is a wider international side to the Church — she reads about it in the diocesan newsletter. But it means about as much to her as the fact that her town is twinned with somewhere in France which she has never been to.
She is happy to give to needy causes abroad, but, for her, church means St Agatha’s: Sunday eucharist, the choir, the people. Her views may be more conservative or more liberal than the person praying next to her, but that doesn’t matter much. She still cycles to communion through the morning mist.
This may be a dated caricature, but the genius of the Church of England has been to allow different theological temperaments to worship alongside one other, united by common prayer and community spirit. This was how we recognised each other as members of the same Church. This was our particular charism, and we were widely valued for it.
I don't think that Giles' description is dated, nor is the mentality confined to little England. All church is local. I've spoken before about my several years in the Episcopal Church when I hardly even paid attention to the activities of my diocese, much less the national church, or the Anglican Communion, except as they affected my parish church. I've also acknowledged a feeling of nostalgia for my period of innocence and ignorance.
The majority of my congregation probably functions principally within the local church mentality. Only when it becomes obvious that decisions made higher up will affect our parish, do they begin to pay attention.
In Anglicanism, however, the joys of common prayer and community spirit are replaced by ideology. This Anglican Church is a new invention, a global piece of post-colonial hubris, driven by those who feel that a Church that is genuinely Catholic must have outposts throughout the world.
Bishops get on planes and fly to other parts of the world to sit in committees with other bishops, hammering out policy — although no one in the secular world cares two hoots about what they decide. Over time, these meetings have created a new Church with a single-issue magisterium based on an unhealthy fascination with what gay people do in their bedrooms. This, apparently, is how we are to recognise each other as Anglicans.
That is not how Mrs Jones recognises members of her church. She says hello to them in the street. They sit near her in the pews. To replace all this by ideology is the single greatest mistake my Church has ever made.
Wow! Giles couldn't have stated it more plainly. Would that his Church of England brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, would speak in such plain language and with such wisdom.
I am sooo tired of the "single-issue magisterium" of sex, sex, sex. I may work those words into a sidebar quote.
Anglicanism is and should be about much more than that. When I travel, I enjoy visiting Episcopal churches in other areas of the US and Anglican churches abroad and being able to worship in similar, but not quite the same, services as at home, in knowing that we shared the basics of beliefs, whatever different meanings we attributed to the basics, and without being too much troubled about the differences. Our conversations on the faith after the services began from common ground. The common ground is now crumbling beneath our feet because of the undue emphasis on ideology and sex, sex, sex. More's the pity.
H/T to JB Chilton at The Lead for the link.
"The Episcopal Church Has A Life"
COMMENTARY: Memo to Canterbury: Episcopalians have a life
By TOM EHRICH
Religion News Service
I removed the article which I had posted here, because it is available in its entirety only through subscription and for reprint only through purchase.
By TOM EHRICH
Religion News Service
I removed the article which I had posted here, because it is available in its entirety only through subscription and for reprint only through purchase.
Pluralist Parses
Thinking Anglicans posted "On the Archbishop’s Reflections", a joint statement by 13 groups in the Church of England. This appears to be the completed text of the draft which Ruth Gledhill speaks of in her blog post yesterday.
TA's version includes an additional paragraph on the covenant, which is rather startling to me.
We will work to ensure that if the Church of England is to sign up to the Covenant, it has potential for rapid progress on this and other issues. We find the notion of a “two track communion” flawed in the way that the Act of Synod is flawed, and we commit ourselves to continuing the effort to find ways forward through which those who disagree profoundly on this and on other issues can continue to celebrate their common membership of the Church of England and unity in Christ.
What are they thinking?
Pluralist parses the reflection on the reflection. His commentary is quite good, especially on the reference in the statement to the covenant.
TA's version includes an additional paragraph on the covenant, which is rather startling to me.
We will work to ensure that if the Church of England is to sign up to the Covenant, it has potential for rapid progress on this and other issues. We find the notion of a “two track communion” flawed in the way that the Act of Synod is flawed, and we commit ourselves to continuing the effort to find ways forward through which those who disagree profoundly on this and on other issues can continue to celebrate their common membership of the Church of England and unity in Christ.
What are they thinking?
Pluralist parses the reflection on the reflection. His commentary is quite good, especially on the reference in the statement to the covenant.
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