G'day Niall, Jonathan and the Group
At 09:59 AM 19/12/03 +1000, Niall McKay wrote:
Jonathan wrote
I think we are about to push on to another level, yes? If we do agree, then where is all the debate coming from? We currently ordain heterosexual people who are in a committed, faithful relationship.----------- hate to be a stickler: We currently ordain heterosexual people who are MARRIED (or celibate). I don't think the church in general would approve ordaining a heterosexual who was in a committed, faithful, sexual relationship - but wasn't married... This is actually the other aspect of the debate which has been glossed over because everyone wants to talk about 'those queers'
Well put.
Marriage in NSW hasn't a lot to recommend it frankly, yet we implicitly support it.
You can't do it more than once a year, it can be expensive if any of your various partners get nasty but it doesn't need to be, and there are some restrictions on age, competence and of course gender.
There are no other restrictions, most of the benefits it once offered are now illegal, and the rest probably will be soon.
Food for thought?
If I were Pope of the UCA, we would as a matter of urgency write a document similar to an antenuptual contract (and usable as one) expressing our view of marriage. This is not a case for careful consideration, because the damage being done in its absence is so great. We'd just do the best we could.
We would then get one of our MPs to introduce legislation to make it work, assuming that it isn't legally possible at present as I suspect.
But even before we could use it legally, we'd require every one of our clergy to discuss it with couples contemplating marriage. We wouldn't force its adoption on any couple or minister, just that they use it to make our view of marriage quite clear. (We would allow any minister who had doubts about a particular marriage for any reason to decline to perform it, of course.)
And once it became legal, we would offer it as an *alternative* to a registered marriage. Yow!
But there's worse. If we decided (and I leave this open) to offer it to same-sex couples, there would then be no barrier to members of these relationships becoming ordained. Yoweeee....!
It's just a thought-experiment. I'd solve the problem another way too, by abolishing the whole concept of ordination as we currently understand it.
YiCaa
email: andrewa @ alder . ws
http://www.zeta.org.au/~andrewa
Phone 9441 4476
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