Official: Irish Presbyterian Clergy Can Bless Gay Partners
The clergy of the are permitted to officiate at religious blessing ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples, according to a church spokesperson. Stephen Lynas, the church's press officer, told today's 91Èȱ¬ Radio Ulster Talk Back programme that Irish Presbyterian ministers have the freedom in church law to follow their own conscience when deciding whether to bless same-sex civil partnerships. This will come as a surpise to some of the denomination's more conservative clergy.
He was responding to Tuesday's by the Church of Scotland's General Assembly, meeting in Edinburgh, which declared that no offence is committed by any Church of Scotland minister who offers a blessing for gay couples.
It is likely that the blessing of civil partnerships will now become a major issue of contention at the Irish Presbyterian General Assembly in June. That Assembly will receive a report on the introduction of civil partnership legislation from its Church and Government Committee which, as it currently stands, stops short of addressing the question of clerical blessings for those unions.
Instead, the report restates the denomination's commitment to the institution of heterosexual marriage, condemns homosexuality as and afront to 'God's design for humankind', offers a reminder that homophobia is 'not proper in the Christian Church', gets annoyed that civil partnerships have been 'unhelpfully portrayed' by the media as 'gay marriage', and (in an appended Resolution to the Assembly) expresses concern 'regarding the increasing acceptance of homosexual unions'.
Since there is no explicit prohibition here for civil partnership blessing ceremonies, there appears to be some legal wriggle-room for such blessings as the church's law currently stands.
One way to test this would be for a minister to actually carry out a blessing and face a legal challenge (ultimately before the denomination's Judicial Commission) from one of his or her collegues. A much more likely scenario, I'd suggest, is that an amendment to this Report will be introduced at the Assembly in June which explicitly prohibits blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples.
Comments
Is it just me or is this weird? Its like this church didnt know it could marry gay people until it was asked about it on Talk Back! Or were they trying to keep it quiet?? For gods sake, just be clear.
It's all hypothetical. Doesn't really matter if they can perforn ceremonies THEORETICALLY. The question is, will they actually perform them for real gay people. No prizes for answering that question. The words PIGS and FLY come to mind. There's homophobia, then there's Irish homophobia - and the Irish kind is quieter but just as deadly.
While the discussion continues, it should be said that this sort of thing will be seen by Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East as another imperialist ideology. The West has started the process of self destruction.
Nice one Jay - its always good to see grown-up sensible debate. When people have a worldview, informed by their faith, that considers that sex should be reserved for inside marriage between an man and a woman, its good to see that you can just rubbish them by shouting homophobia. Clearly their view is not worth considering and there's no point wasting your time beginning a dialogue as they don't agree with you at the start.
Ceejay - so, if someones worldview, as u put it, is based on their reading of the bible, it cant be homophobic? What about the racists in america or uk who defend their views by their interprtation of the bible? Are they not racists then. just because they can reference a chapter in an ancient book? Lets get real.
Jay - from your first posting you seem to imply that clergy against gay blessings are by definition homophobic. Do you not think that it is possible to disagree with gay blessings and not be homophobic or does your definition of homophobic simply mean 'someone who doesn't promote gay rights'? To me it appears that grown-up dialogue is impossible when someone shouts homophobia as soon as someone else disagrees with their position.
With respect to your second posting, no-one said that someone who says they read the Bible can't be homophobic (or anything else for that matter). The point is that you appeared to tar everyone in the church with the one brush and don't appear to afford people the right to disagree with gay blessings without labelling them as homophobic.