Word: ordain
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...control, homosexual activity and remarriage after divorce. His planned consecration as a bishop this week is to be performed by a like-minded prelate from an obscure white denomination, Archbishop Richard Bridges of the Independent Old Catholic Church in Highland, Calif. As a bishop, Stallings will be able to ordain his own schismatic priests...
...work a miracle or two in preventing world Anglicanism from flying apart over women priests and bishops. Yet the compromises he engineered merely paper over the fact that the Anglican Communion is barely a Communion any longer. Some of its 27 autonomous national branches -- including the U.S. Episcopal Church -- ordain women priests, who are not recognized by Runcie's mother church and other branches. Nonrecognition of priests (male and female) ordained by women bishops will further muddy the waters...
...substitute services. William McManus, a retired Indiana bishop, warned that the strong tradition of Sunday Mass could be undermined "if we bless this monster." Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm, Minn., urged a study of the priest shortage that would face such issues as "Why can't we ordain people other than celibate males?" For the Vatican, however, that is a question not open to discussion...
Some Protestant denominations have landed on the liberationist side. The Unitarian Universalists openly welcome gay clergy. The United Church of Christ, which in 1972 became the first major denomination to ordain an avowedly homosexual clergyman, subsequently stated that homosexual orientation is no barrier to ordination, leaving open the matter of ministers' active sexual behavior. The United Church of Canada is in an uproar over a similar policy issued last year...
Catholic teaching holds that all homosexual acts are sinful, though a homosexual orientation is not. There are U.S. Catholic bishops willing to ordain priests with homosexual proclivities as long as they promise to remain celibate and support church teaching on the topic. But in practice, the barrier between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity is difficult to maintain. No doubt aware of that, the Vatican issued a sharp decree in October 1986 that is known among enraged gay Catholics as the "Halloween letter." The text warned that homosexual inclination tends "toward an intrinsic moral evil" and "must be seen...