[ijcr]

Ah! British colleges in the 60's, how much I regret missing it. When partaking of an adult beverage with a Bishop the traditional toast of "Bottoms up" certainly has a different slant.

THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, DR DAVID HOPE was called Edna the Cruel.Here the human imagination can truly be unleashed.

[Temple Drake]

how repulsive. Always disliked Wilson(or should we call him Wilma?) and now have another reason.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Very interesting column. Hard to imagine a parallel one being written here.

Still, while he finds all this "marvelous", he does not even attempt to square the behavior of the gay priests with the unequivocal, severe prohibition of homosexuality in the Bible.

If religion is just a social service agency with spiritual overtones, that's no problem. And since he frankly admits he has lost his religion, it's no problem for him. But for people who take their religion and their Bible seriously, the prohibition of homosexuality is not something that can be politely ignored as an antiquated, fusty notion.

[Temple Drake]

and what's "brave" about telling people(as if it were something fine & noble) that you are a pervert?

[eastsider]

All one can remember, when seeing the portly, distinguished form of some Anglican cleric, is an evening that began with Solemn Benediction and clouds of incense, followed by a boozy dinner, followed, probably, by disco dancing in a gay club.

Sola Satyricon.

[Maximilian]

The other day on another thread, the point was made that the post-Vatican II Catholic Church is always just 1 step behind the liberal Anglicans, but always desperately trying to catch up. This article shows where the Anglicans are, and have been for a while, and therefore where the Catholic Church is headed if it maintains its current path. An institution of awe-inspiring irrelevance, staffed by flaming queers, yet kept alive by a steady stream of institutional money.

The openness of the debauchery described in this article is beyond even the worst seminaries described by Michael Rose, but not so far beyond that we can't easily imagine American seminarians giving each other "names in religion" at places like "the pink palace" and "theological closet." Hypocrisy eventually becomes tiresome, and if all the priests are homos, at some point they will want to "be themselves" in public.

[Snuffington]

What is extraordinary about this fellow's perspective is how divorced it is from spiritual reality. One can virtually chart the loss of faith in Europe and the rise in a homosexual priesthood on a single graph.

The fact that homosexual priests seem as impotent in transmitting their faith to others as they are creating new life in their preferred form of sexual intimacy takes on a sort of cosmic irony. A particularly sad irony when one considers that their chief defenders are apostates and agnostics, rather than the religiously faithful they allegedly dedicate their lives to serving.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[SuziQ]

Many of them, but not all, carry with them the strange burden of being homosexual.

Apparently, we are still not grown-up enough in England to believe that this is rather marvellous. I wept after meeting Plum Tart, because I thought, and think, that his life has been so much more useful, so much better in every way than my own. I am sure the same is true of the Bishop Elect of Reading, and of many of these characters who are so regularly held up for ridicule in this newspaper.

Grown up, indeed.
I, for one, believe that by turning their backs on God's teaching in that most important area of their lives, that much of the 'good' they are doing is probably a form of atonement. I'm not sure how impressed God is going to be if they continue, in their selfishness, to reject His teachings.

[AnAmericanMother]

There's a reason it used to be called the "English vice".

The seamy underbelly of the Anglicans, I fear. (I are one, and this is not our shining hour.)

I wonder how Edna feels about being "outed", if s/he wasn't already?

[TradicalRC]

Strange juxtapositions.

Sodomy and selflessness isn't marvelous. It's a bit Arsenic and Old Lace, don't you think?