There’s a flurry of reports about the Scottish Episcopal Church. These relate to a statement by its College of Bishops that was published on 4 March. It was belatedly reported here on 16 March.
Yesterday, the first newspaper report was in the Herald and late last night the Scottish Press Association caught up.
Today we have all these:
BBC Scottish church backs gay priests and Can Anglican rift be resolved? (public comments invited) and Church risks censure over gay priests by Robert Pigott
The Times Scottish bishops back gay clergy and Timeline: gay clergy row and Ruth Gledhill on Analysis: Anglican disarray.
Telegraph Scottish church gives backing to gay priests
Press Association via the Independent Gays can be priests, say Scottish bishops (this is a fuller report than earlier versions by Jude Sheerin)
Reuters Scottish church backs gay priests
And here is the radio segment ( 7.5 minutes Real Audio required) from the BBC Today Programme in which
The Bishop of Aberdeen, Bruce Cameron, and the Rector of St Silas, Glasgow, Reverend David McCarthy, discuss homosexuals becoming priests.
Here also is an earlier radio report on the same programme by Robert Pigott (2 minutes)
Update
Here is a later Scottish Press Association report Scottish Stance on Gay Priests Divides Church
The Scots join another small province, Japan (see http://nottoomuch.com/pivot/entry.php?id=235) in showing that small groups of caring and careful leaders can find sensible answers. God bless Scotland.
Posted by: Brian on Thursday, 24 March 2005 at 1:18am GMTWell said Brian.
Y'know, I've been "shopping around" for a church having moved from evangelical-CoE in southern England up to Perth. So far, the Episcopalians have seemed to be at least on the same axis that I'm used to, and I'm increasingly fond of their stance as it may be applied to homosexuals - see http://www.scotland.anglican.org/aboutus_general_believe.html, for example! Think about how best to show Christian love for one's neighbour - including the fact that they may be of homosexual inclination - it isn't by making them an issue, or even into a "them" - it isn't by making the specific sin of homosexuality highlighted as a viable excuse to forbid someone from becoming a priest, either, when you consider, as that URL says and I've said earlier, that we are *all* imperfect. To have a policy that would disqualify someone for homosexuality but not for murder or theft would be utterly hypocritical.
Posted by: Tim on Thursday, 24 March 2005 at 12:59pm GMTTim, how many murderers do you know to have been ordained priests?
Posted by: Antony on Monday, 28 March 2005 at 10:24am BST