The Equality Network has just published a great resource as part of the final push towards the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Scotland.
It is called Six Reasons to Support Same-Sex Marriage. It can be found for free online but there are also nice printed versions available from the Equality Network too.
Here’s a pic of the cover.
What’s that? What’s that you ask?
Oh, you’re asking who that is on the front cover between the Proclaimers and Alan Cumming?
No idea.
What was the character of the debate? If one believes that the admission of women to the threefold ministry of the Church was an extension of an existing doctrine, not a doctrinal change, and that the dropping of the ‘filioque’ clause from the Creed wasn’t a doctrinal change either (nobody is compelled to deny that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son), the change to the doctrine of initiation was the most important doctrinal change made by the Scottish Episcopal Church not just in my lifetime but perhaps even in the SEC’s history. It amazes me that it seems to have been so uncontroversial.
(I don’t say I necessarily disapprove of the change. I’m quite happy not only for the unconfirmed but also for the unbaptised to be admitted to Holy Communion and would turn away no-one – except perhaps ++Judas Williams, and even then probably not – from the altar. But I can’t understand how a Church can teach two contradictory things at once.)
To a certain extent, saying two contradictory things at once is part of the consequence of having old liturgical formularies alongside modern ones, I think.
(If you are not going to say something new, what’s the point in producing something new after all).
The modern descriptions of marriage in the 2007 marriage rite don’t seem to me to be entirely consistent with the marriage rite of 1929, for example.
It is the way we live now.
Well, as I said, there were several of us who spoke against the change, for one reason or another but it was passed by a fairly high majority, I think.
It seems to me that there is just about every view about initiation into the Christian church that has ever been held is currently also held and practised in the Scottish Episcopal Church. Indeed, there are varieties of practice and procedure within congregations and even within families.
You know Elton John? Yes What’s the point? What?!? Well, what is the attraction? It can’t be his music can it? Part of your soul is missing. [The question is, who was speaking to whom?]
Here or there, that is the liturgical question. High altar or altar amongst us? Do you dress the altar you are using, or the altar you used to use? Do you light candles up there or down here? These are not trivial questions and decisions have to be made. Nothing more precisely states the problem…
The sound of the photocopier was heard in the land. It is a little known fact that the week before Holy Week is now referred to in the Calendar as Photocopier Week.
Seen this? http://www.aco.org/listening/reports/scotland.cfm It is the response of the Scottish Episcopal Church to the “Listening Process” in the Anglican Communion. We will leave aside the fact that although it is supposed to be a process of listening to lesbian and gay people there is nothing in the response about what any lesbian or gay person…
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