UK to allow same-sex marriage in church – reports
Britain plans to allow same-sex unions to be celebrated in places of worship, removing a key legal distinction between homosexual civil partnerships and heterosexual marriage, newspapers reported on Sunday. The move would lift the ban on religious ceremonies for the registration of gay unions imposed when Britain legalised civil partnerships six years ago.
The government may also propose scrapping the legal definition of marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman, allowing gay men and women to call their partners husbands or wives, the Sunday Times said. Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone will launch a consultation on the issue next week, the Sunday Telegraph said.
Critics say restricting homosexuals to civil partnerships rather than marriage is a form of discrimination, even when, as in Britain, there little or no difference in the legal rights conferred.
If passed into law the plan would bring Britain closer to countries such as the Netherlands and Canada where gays can legally marry.
Pope Benedict not fully welcome at German parliament next year
A rousing welcome in Berlin it may not be.
Pope Benedict’s invitation to address German parliament during his visit to his homeland next September 22-25 has not sat well with some members of the opposition. Volker Beck, the Green party floor leader, has protested that inviting a religious leader to address parliament, the Bundestag, is unprecedented and the wrong place to speak about religion.
“The German Bundestag is justifiably cautious when inviting a foreign head of state,” Beck told the German daily Die Welt. “Firstly the pope is the head of a religion and secondly the head of a state.”
Only foreign heads of state are invited to address the Bundestag. Earlier this year Israeli President Shimon Peres spoke to German parliament. Benedict is a head of state, so he fits the qualification, but Beck argued that he was first and foremost a religious leader and a head of state after that. He added that he didn’t know which other religious leaders would then need to be invited to address parliament in the interest of religious diversity if Benedict speaks.
Germany’s Christian Social Union — the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats — said that Beck’s opposition was simply opposition grandstanding. Bavaria, a Catholic stronghold, is also where the pope was raised and served as an archbishop in Munich.
More pressure, however, could come from outside groups, especially those opposed to the Vatican’s policies toward homosexuality. “The invitation for the pope to speak in the German parliament is completely incomprehensible,” Manfred Burns, the spokesman of the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, said in a statement. “The Bundestag genuflects before a religious leader … who refuses to acknowledge our constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination.”
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and abortion at U.S. military bases…
One little-reported aspect of the political wrangling around attempts to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bans gays from serving openly in the U.S. military was how the religious right tied it to another hot-button cultural issue: abortion.
This would certainly have caught the attention of socially conservative Republicans who were instrumental in defeating a measure aimed at its repeal in the U.S. Senate on Thursday night.
Many if not most conservative U.S. evangelicals were already strongly opposed to allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military — a point underscored by a Pentagon study unveiled at the end of November that found that military chaplains were strongly opposed to ending “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
That study noted that a large number of the military’s 3,000 chaplains — many of whom are evangelical – believe that “homosexuality is a sin and an abomination.” Evangelicals are also the staunchest supporters of the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and much of the military’s fighting ranks are almost certainly drawn from families that are conservative, patriotic and often religious.
In interviews I’ve had with people such as Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC) — an influential conservative lobby that is strongly evangelical — a related theme has been evangelical concerns about how repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” could impact the morale of stressed soldiers in the war zones.
This has been a constant theme on conservative Christian radio talk shows and blogs that reach a key base for the Republican Party.
“It’s not entirely clear, at least to me, that the legislation would have channeled tax-payer dollars to fund abortions at military bases or not.”
You are supposed to be a journalist. Read the text of the bill. Clearly this bill would NOT channel tax-payer dollars to fund abortions. The claim to the contrary is a cynical ploy taking advantage of the fact that no average person will read the bill.
You are a journalist. “Oh well, maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t” is not journalism, it’s a sad cop-out. Tell the truth and report the facts.
Selected quotes from new book by Pope Benedict
Here are some quotes from the English translation of Pope Benedict’s new book, “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times”. The book, in question and answer format with the German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald, is due to be published on Tuesday in several languages.
On condoms to fight the spread of AIDS:
“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanisation of sexuality.”
“She (the Church) does not regard it (the use of condoms) as a real or moral solution, but, in this case, there can nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality”.
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On the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis:
“Yes, it is a great crisis, we have to say that. It was upsetting for all of us. Suddenly so much filth. It was really almost like the crater of a volcano, out of which suddenly a tremendous cloud of filth came, darkening and soiling everything, so that above all the priesthood suddenly seemed to be a place of shame and every priest was under the suspicion of being one like that too.”
Don’t preach to us, Hamas tells secular West
The West is floundering in immorality and has no right to criticise the Islamist movement Hamas over the way it governs the Palestinian territory of Gaza, a veteran leader of the militant group said. Hamas strategist Mahmoud Al-Zahar told Reuters in an interview that Islamic traditions deserved respect and he accused Europe of promoting promiscuity and political hypocrisy.
“We have the right to control our life according to our religion, not according to your religion. You have no religion, You are secular,” said Zahar, who is one of the group’s most influential and respected voices.
“You do not live like human beings. You do not (even) live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticise us?” he said, speaking from his apartment building in the densely populated Mediterranean city.
Hamas, which is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement and means “zeal” in Arabic, won a fair, 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election and then seized control of Gaza in 2007 after routing rival forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.
Sitting in a cavernous reception room, with an old Mercedes saloon car parked in one corner, Zahar denounced European states, such as France, for recently barring Muslim women from wearing full face veils in public.
“We are the ones who respect women and honour women … not you,” he said. “You use women as an animal. She has one husband and hundreds of thousands of boyfriends. You don’t know who is the father of your sons, because of the way you respect women.”
Germans atone for Holocaust with “stumble stones”
The metal plaques, called Stolpersteine, or “stumble stones,” are set into the ground at my father’s ancestral home in this picturesque village south of Frankfurt.
The squares, 10 cm by 10 cm (4 inches by 4 inches), are barely conspicuous, but the words etched in brass seem to cry out for memory of the home’s last five Jewish inhabitants.
As autumn sunlight bounces off the plaques, I recall a time nearly 75 years ago when the five, all relatives including my father, were driven from here by Nazi anti-Semitism. Four fled Germany; the fifth died in a concentration camp.
The creation of Cologne artist Gunter Demnig, the Stolpersteine are set at homes of victims of Nazi prejudice. They aim to trip the memories of passers-by of long-gone targets of discrimination, mainly Jews but also homosexuals, the disabled, dissidents and Gypsies.
By tying a victim’s fate to a capsule biography, told in a kind of Haiku, the “stumble stones” seek to reduce the epic scale of the Holocaust to a more comprehensible human story.
London marchers confront Pope Benedict in biggest protest of any of his trips
Pope Benedict faced the biggest protest of his 17 trips abroad on Saturday when more than 10,000 people marched in London attacking his treatment of the abuse scandal in the Church, women priests and homosexuality. Some of the demonstrators were dressed in costumes, including black leather nuns’ habits and red cardinals’ robes. Posters bore the message: “Pope Go Home.”
The pope has faced protests throughout his four-day visit to England and Scotland, often competing for attention with the faithful who are solidly supportive of the trip, only the second by a pope in history.
The loudest and most colourful was on Saturday when secularists, atheists, pro-gay groups and human rights campaigners joined forces in a Protest the Pope march from Hyde Park Corner to Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence.
It was the biggest demonstration the pope has faced during the 17 overseas trips in his five-year papacy. Organisers had expected 2,000 people. Many opposed the Vatican’s stance on abortion, gay rights and resistance to the use of condoms in the fight against HIV-AIDS. “Keep your rosaries off our ovaries” one group chanted, with some wearing condoms on their heads. Placards read: “Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers” and “Protect the Children, not the Priests”.
Benedict’s apology during a Mass on Saturday in which he said paedophile priests had brought “shame and humiliation” failed to appease the protesters. “Apologies will not solve the problem,” said Alice Holding, a 40-year-old protester. “He is subject to the law just like everybody else. If I did this (cover up a scandal) I would have to go to jail.”
Latest Anglican bid to mediate gay dispute meets with skepticism
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s latest proposal to mediate a gay rights dispute splitting the worldwide Anglican Communion seems to be falling on deaf ears in the opposing camps he is trying to discipline. Archbishop Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the world’s 80 million Anglicans, suggested last week that member churches approving gay bishops and same-sex unions and those actively opposing them be sidelined from official doctrinal committees.
The initiative was sparked by the consecration of an openly lesbian bishop in California last month. Williams also said conservative churches — mostly in Africa — that appoint bishops to serve in other countries would also be sidelined.
The proposal, if accepted in the Communion, would be the first time such sanctions would be imposed on dissident national churches. Unlike Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism is a federation of churches whose head has no direct power over all members.
A group campaigning for homosexual rights in the Communion said the threatened discipline caused it little worry because the committees the dissenters could not work on were “trivial.”
“These are delaying tactics, sops to the conservatives, which in reality gives them nothing,” Colin Coward, director of Changing Attitude, UK, told Reuters.
UPDATE: Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has issued a pastoral letter that refers to Williams’s proposal with a call for continued dialogue with those who disagree “for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding.” See Episcopal Life Online.
Homosexuality, not celibacy, linked to pedophilia, says Vatican #2
It is homosexuality, not celibacy, that is linked to pedophilia, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said on Monday, seeking to defuse the sex scandal that has battered the Roman Catholic Church.
On a visit to Chile, Bertone, dubbed the Deputy Pope, also said Pope Benedict would soon take more surprising initiatives regarding the sex abuse scandal but did not elaborate.
“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia,” he told a news conference in Santiago.
“This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms,” he said. “The behavior of the priests in this case, the negative behavior, is very serious, is scandalous.”
Bertone’s visit to Chile comes as the Catholic Church has been buffeted by scandals concerning sexual abuse of children — most of them boys — by priests. There also have been allegations of cover-ups and even that the Pope mishandled cases when he was a bishop in Germany and a Vatican official before his election in 2005.
What do you think of this? Is homosexuality to blame for pedophilia? Or did the Catholic Church ordain too many men who were sexually immature and fatally attracted to children at their emotional level?
The Church seems to have lost its bearings as it lashes out at the world for its own evil behavior. They beat and abused children, just like many other organizations did years ago but they never advanced in the world and this is what happens, they are trying to instill more hatred for Homosexuals to divert the light from the inherent evil at the Vatican.
Why don’t they mention some facts they are true, one is that even though the Priests have abused children it happens at three times the rate outside the Church.
Instead of spewing hate the Pope could be helping to solve a terrible problem, the victimization of children, what a missed chance to become relevant.
New WCC head aims at global issues, skirting some hot buttons
Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, the new general secretary of the World Council of Churches, aims to give the organisation a higher profile as a focus for action by Christian bodies on global issues like humanitarian relief in crises, climate change and the Middle East impasse. But at his first news conference this week since taking over on January 1, the Norwegian Lutheran cleric also made it clear that the constraints imposed by a widely diverse organisation that makes its decisions by consensus limit his options. It’s unlikely we’ll hear him taking a public stand on two of the main issues making religion headlines these days, the sexual abuse charges against the Roman Catholic Church and the disputes over homosexuality straining relations in several Protestant churches.
Tveit left no doubt that the 349-member WCC, which groups many of the world’s Christian churches but not the Roman Catholics, will not join in widespread criticism of the Roman Catholic Church for its continuing problem with clerical sexual abuse of children. These have surfaced most recently in Ireland and Germany.
“That is a burden all of us have to bear. It is a burden that is carried by the Roman Catholic Church, and they have to deal with it. It is not our role to make it worse,” the 48-year-old Tveit told journalists on Monday at the Geneva Ecumenical Centre, where he has his office and which serves as the effective headquarters of the WCC.
The strength of the WCC, which has member churches in 110 countries representing some 560 million Christian believers, lay in in its power to combine resources from around the globe to move quickly to help people stricken by disasters — as it did in the wake of the Haiti earthquake on January 12, he said.
“I think it is important that the WCC has a strategic role, one of leadership, especially at the present time when we in the churches have a lot of unsolved issues between us,” he declared.
Tveit, who had been in office only a few days when a devastating quake struck Haiti, was vocal in calling for rich countries to write off that country’s debts – a plea that was heard by the world’s eight most industrialised nations, the G8. He is now insisting that the International Monetary Fund folllow suit (audio here).
On climate change, he said the WCC would be working, after the abortive effort by governments to shape a new and binding treaty in Copenhagen last December, to make the voice of people of faith around the world much louder. Christians had to become engaged and push their governments to agree on strong action without arguing about who was responsible for global warming in the first place (audio here).
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