Advocate's Person of the Year now in heterosexual relationship

You make those 3 words sound like corporate slogans. Which in your mind they probably are, the church being one big secular organization, which it isn't. It is a heavenly body, a spiritual and supernatural entity. It doesn't need to strive to be flourishing at the expense of being faithful. It doesn't need to balance faithfulness with friendliness. It needs to be faithful period. Full stop. That faithfulness can sometimes be presented in a friendly way. And from that faithfulness springs flourishing.

I know what I am talking about here with my own church deep in the worst kinds of heresy, springing out of a desire for compromise. You guys are heading in that direction if you do not change course.

At this point we are leaking over into the Inclusive thread so here it's probably better to stick to the topic of homosexuality.

 

Your church might be one big secular organisation. Ours is not. It does not need to strive to be flourishing at the expense of being faithful. But as I think I've said, homosexuality is very low on the list of our concerns. We don't share your prurient obsession.

 

Worlds must be colliding.. we agree!

First, I should not that being authorized to speak for the bishops, I'll take what you said as a personal and private opinion. Second, what, you mean like, the diocese doesnt have enough resources to prosecute this particular sin? It doesn't take any resources for your local priest to make a sermon where this is included among the list of common sins available to a Christian (any human being, really).

It is pointless, if not cruel, to persecute the sin without first having made its nature as a sin clear. The teaching authority of the Church must be exercised first, and only later, once Her stance is made unambiguous, that the exercise of penance and discipline ought to be introduced.

 

No need to take it as a private and personal opinion. It is one shared by my fellow parishioners. And the Diocese is not in the business of prosecuting gays.

The CofE is committed to the pastoral support of gay people.

 

The church is not committed to the pastoral support of the gay lifestyle, which is what we're talking about.

 

No it's not. That's not what I'm talking about.

 

Can you be a little clearer in what you're trying to say.

 

Yes.

I think you've got a bee in your bonnet about gays. As a relatively well educated lay person I put my trust in the opinions of the Royal College of Psychiatists rather than the "scientific" evidence you refer to. I do not believe that Anglicans should "prosecute gays". As our Vicar said in her sermon this morning: "God loves all of us, and we should love others too".

My comments on Inclusivity run parallel to this.

 

The only thing I spoke about was sin rather than personalities; and not just homosexuality but all sins, of which it is part of. Even that could not be disciplined without first having spent several years of preaching about it.

To do that does not take resources from the church, the behavior is labeled as a sin in the Canons, and you have volunteered to get your rector to start preaching against this and other sins in general. I think the matter has been settled.