The Diocese of New Westminster continues to pretend that it is fulfilling the primates’ request for a moratorium on same-sex blessings.
Moritorium [sic] continues on new places of same sex blessing
Only 8 parishes authorized; couples must be legally marriedThe blessing of a same sex couple may take place only in one of the eight parishes of the Diocese of New Westminster already performing blessings, Bishop Michael Ingham has decided.
A moratorium that forbids the extension of the blessing to any of the diocese’s other 71 parishes will continue for the time being, he told Diocesan Council’s regular December meeting.
. . .
Currently, the eight parishes (of 79) where blessings may be performed are Christ Church Cathedral, St. Paul’s, St. Mark’s, and St. Margaret Cedar Cottage, all in Vancouver; St. Barnabas in New Westminster; St. Agnes, North Vancouver; St. Laurence, Coquitlam; and St. Hilda’s, Sechelt.
Since SSBs were authorised in 2003, only 20 (“approximately”) such ceremonies have taken place, mostly at Christ Church Cathedral. In all probability, some of the eight parishes so eager to carry out SSBs haven’t performed even one.
The article’s final paragraph offers the same tendentious rationalisation we heard recently from the primate’s principal secretary Paul Feheley.
The moratorium, agreed to by Diocesan Synod in 2006, was in response to the Windsor Report, made to the Archbishop of Canterbury by an international Anglican panel. It has been the Canadian Church’s interpretation of the report that it asked that no additional parishes be authorized as places of blessing at this time.
As the primates made clear in the Dar es Salaam Communiqué, that interpretation is flat-out wrong.
Ah, but true for me doesn’t necessarily mean true for you….
Bleh.
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