Anglicans
Detroit and homosexuals
The Bishop of the diocese of Michigan in the Episcopal Church of the U.S. made an emotional plea at an annual convention, asking his clergy to stop blessing “same-sex” relationships. For this he was attacked from the floor.
Prior to the convention, eleven clergymen has asked the Bishop to uphold the 1979 national ruling that it is inappropriate to ordain practicing homosexuals. In response, 32 clergy called on the Bishop to oppose this view (Anglican Journal, June 1990)
First women priests in the U.K.
In June two women were called to the ministry in the Church of Ireland – the first Anglican female ministers in the United Kingdom and in Europe. Four more are to follow shortly. The women will not be permitted to celebrate the Anglican Eucharist in England where female ministers are still banned.
The Church of Scotland monthly Life and Work, speculated that Irish Catholics would be influenced by the events. “Perhaps in 50 years time the Irish Roman Catholics may have become the most progressive section of their Church, and the question of the first Irish Pope and the first women Pope may arise at the same time.” (Tablet, July 7, 1990). It is on illusion such as these that some people contrive to promote women’s ordination in the Roman Catholic Church.
New leader in England
The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie who retires this year at age 65, will be replaced by Bishop George Carey, 54. Taken over from the Catholics in the 16th century, Canterbury is the most prestigious See in the Anglican Communion.
The selection was made by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, on the advice of a church committee. IN England the Anglicans form a “state” church, the reason why they are called “Church of England.”
Dr. Carey is said to belong to the Evangelical wing of his Church. What this means is difficult to say other than that he accepts the Protestant interpretation rather than the more Catholic-leaning theology supported by “Anglo Catholic.” He strongly favors women’s “ordination,” even to the point of asking ministers in his diocese to resign if they won’t go along.
The director of the (Anglican) conservative Church Society, David Samuel, thinks that “the new archbishop will not rescue the Church of England from the crisis it is in.”
Jewry
Jewish homosexuals in Toronto
From June 29 to July 2, Toronto was host to some 250 Jewish homosexuals for the Midwest Regional Conference of the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations.
According to Harvey Brownstone, president of Chutzpah, the Toronto group for Jewish homosexuals, the main purpose of the gathering was to find ways of adopting Jewish ritual and ceremonies to the homosexual “lifestyle.”
Speakers included MP Svend Robinson, University of Toronto professor Michael Lynch, Rabbi Judy Rosenberg from Rochester, New York, and Anne Naylor, Director of Women’s Affairs, United Church of Canada.
Homosexual activists accepted
Also at the end of June, delegates to the 101st annual convention of Reform Judaism’s Central Conference in Seattle approved the recommendation to accepting homosexuals as rabbis. The adopted report, released after four years of ‘study,’ did not back homosexual weddings, as yet. It declared that heterosexual (i.e., normal monogamous marriage is “still the norm” in Jewish life. Rabbi Gunther Plaut of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, described the resolution as “balanced and compassionate.” (The Toronto Star, June 26)
Comment
Reform Jews are so secularized that Conservative Jews, not to mention the Orthodox, do not accept Reform’s Jewish faith credentials – only their cultural and racial Jewishness. Rabbi Plaut, who is frequently in the news, supports Henry Morgentaler and the so-called right of women to kill their unborn babies through abortion. He, like many others whether Jewish or not, continues to demonstrate the close connection between being pro-abortion and pro-homosexual.
Excommunication
U.S. Congressman Barney Frank (Dem. Mass.) was formally excommunicated according to Jewish law (Halacha) by the High Rabbinic Court in New York. The charge was “desecrating the name of God and the Jewish people, for bringing dishonor and disgrace upon the high office of congressman, and for promoting and encouraging the moral corruption of society. A prominent Jewish public official, to our deep embarrassment Frank has been a blatant promoter of moral depravity.”
Frank is a homosexual activist who used his office to satisfy his sexual appetites. The excommunication (cherem) can be lifted if Mr. Frank repents.
Rabbis attack Sunday law
Under the Ontario Retail Business Holidays Act and its revised Sunday exception, any retail business – regardless of size or number of employees – may open on Sunday if it is closed on another day for religious reasons and if the owner registers a religion with the government. This last provision was the pretext for the Jewish Congress to demand wide- open Sundays for everyone.
Ontario’s prohibition of shopping on Sundays reduces Jews to second-class citizens, three Toronto rabbis told Supreme Court Justice Southey.
Rabbi Moses Burak objected to “the practice of having members of the Jewish community state their religion.” It is “an echo of other times,” he said.
Rabbi Irwin Witty called the identification of merchants by religion “an unnecessary and unacceptable intrusion by the state into the private lives of members of the Jewish community.”
Rabbi Joseph Kalman charged that “the observant Jewish family is denied the opportunity to shop on weekends. We are not telling Christians that they must shop on Sunday,” he said, but “my parents did not come to Canada to become second class citizens” and we want the right to shop on Sunday.
Comment
The Jewish community alleges religious discrimination. Ontario’s big retailers used presumed economic suffering in attacking Sunday rest. The Jewish reasoning seems to be that if a handful of Orthodox Jews cannot have a public religious day of rest, nobody else should either. Ontario has 9.6 million inhabitants of whom some 200,000 are Jewish of these an even smaller percentage are observing Orthodox. Justice Southey agreed with the Jewish submission and in July ruled in favour of a wide-open Sunday and thereby abolished a common pause day.
