The Diocese of Albany convention in June will consider two resolutions on marriage and the priesthood. Featured speakers at the convention include the Coordinating Bishop for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. This week the Diocese of Virginia is in court with CANA for a hearing on the freedom of a denomination to organize itself hierarchically, commensurate with its theology.
Albany Times Union
The Episcopal Diocese of Albany is weighing changes to local church law that will likely touch off fresh controversy around homosexuality and marriage issues when they come up for a vote next month.
One resolution mandates that only a person who is in a heterosexual marriage or “celibate and abstinent” can be eligible for ordination as a priest or consecration as a bishop. Another holds that only heterosexual marriages can be celebrated or blessed in the diocese — and marriage between a man and a woman is the only kind of union permitted on diocesan or parish property.
Clergy and lay delegates will vote on the proposals during the 19-county Albany Episcopal Diocese’s annual convention June 6-8 in Speculator.
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Neva Rae Fox, spokeswoman for the 110-diocese Episcopal Church, said the policy is “we do not discriminate in the ordination process.” But the Episcopal Church does not have a rite for same-sex blessings, she added.
“There is talk that the idea of having a rite for same-sex blessings will come up again at the next General Convention,” Fox said. “But there has been no legislation proposed at this point.”
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National church canons express an ideal, but the reality on the ground varies from diocese to diocese and bishops have a lot of local autonomy. Three dioceses still do not ordain women even though female ordination was officially adopted more than 30 years ago and national resolutions have mandated that bishops allow women into the process.
The board of Albany Via Media, a group of liberal-to-moderate local Episcopalians, described the proposal that would allow only heterosexual unions in the diocese as a “defensive” move likely based on “the rumor that New York state will soon pass laws making same-sex unions, and perhaps marriages, legal.”
Read it here.
Bishop Love writes that “This year’s guest speakers include several very dear friends of mine. The Most Reverend Ben Kwashi, Archbishop of Jos, Nigeria, and his wife Gloria, will address the Convention on Saturday….”
As previously reported on The Lead, quoting the Dallas New Religion Blog, “Bishop Kwashi is the Coordinating Bishop for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. He’s on the board of Trinity School for Ministry and is chairman of Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA) International. It’s unclear what the difference in roles is (or will be) betweeen Bishop Kwashi who serves as coordinating bishop of CANA and Bishop Minns, who is to be installed as “Bishop Missionary Leader” of the same organization.”