Rabbi Levi Alter (left) and the Rev. Joshua Holiday, a female-to-male pastor, took a break from the summit View related photos
Posted on 01/25/2007 2:53:07 PM PST by NYer
In 1973, Eric Karl Swenson was ordained in the Presbyterian Church and went to work doing what he’d always dreamed of: ministering to a congregation of the Southern Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. More than 20 years later, one dream almost ended when another began. When the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta discovered in 1996 that Swenson had finally fulfilled another lifelong desire—having sex-change surgery to become a woman—it started proceedings to revoke Swenson’s ordination.
At the time of her “transition,” Swenson did not resist the church’s questions nor blame its reluctance. “I had been in the closet for 30 years, learning to accept myself,” she says. “It is difficult for me to be angry at others for not accepting.” Married with two daughters before her transition, Swenson described her struggle, years later, in a sermon: “I had spent the better part of four decades wrestling secretly with the unreasonable and incorrigible desire to be female.” After almost three years of grueling questions and debate, the Presbytery finally agreed, 181-161, to sustain her ordination, making Swenson the first known Protestant minister to transition from male to female while remaining in office. Now 59, Swenson is tall and blond, with shoulder-length hair and an assertive manner. Erin, as she’s called, continues to work as a pastoral counselor and, she hopes, as an inspiration for others who find themselves living out, what may be, the last taboo in society, let alone organized religion.
This past weekend, Swenson and her peers gathered in the hills of Berkeley, Calif., for the first National Transgender Religious Summit at the Pacific School of Religion, an ecumenical seminary that prepares students for ordination in the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church and the Disciples of Christ.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Yet one more salient aspect of an all male Catholic priesthood There was one old priest in Albany who went through a gender switch. The bishop booted him ... er, her.
Every temptation comes with a choice. He (she) had a way out and chose perversion instead. Sicko.
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Eric Svenson.
He/she/it was seriously disturbed. The fact of being transgendered dominated its entire life and colored everything it did and thought about. All its friends were transgendered as well, and they were just as messed up, and they all reinforced and fed on each others' dysfunction. Sick, sick, sick!
I can't imagine somebody with this level of psychological/spiritual dysfunction ministering to anyone. It takes all their energy just to deal with the horrors they have perpetrated on themselves.
Plus, of course, they weren't fooling anybody. When people think "transgendered" they think of very charming female impersonators like, say, Ru Paul. The reality is not like that at all. They are confused, inside and out.
.........and God created..........but they had better ideas?
What arrogance ...these morons should not be leading the faithful into faithlessness.
The man's sex was not changed by the surgery. He is still a man dressing up to look like a woman. In his case, it is surgically enhanced cross-dressing, but cross-dressing nonetheless.
I consider it unethical for surgeons to feet the fantasies of psychologically unbalanced persons by removing or mutilating perfectly healthy organs. Alas, I appear to be in the minority.
(BTW, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a.k.a the "Mormon" Church, of which I am a member, a person who undergoes a transsexual operation may not be ordained to any priesthood office or receive a temple recommend.)
Freakazoid alert!
I'm wondering if transgender priests are Sola Scriptura?
I'm having tough sledding working through that one.
LOL! Don't care what your theology is, that's funny!
Transgendered is sad, though. I pity those people. V's wife.
LOL! Don't care what your theology is, that's funny!
Transgendered is sad, though. I pity those people. V's wife.
I have known them, too, and they are seriously disturbed. I once read that a significant number of them eventually seek surgery to undo the "transformation," although I'm not sure how successful it is. But their problems go way beyond that.
The one I knew didn't commit suicide, but was morbidly obese and had a two pack a day habit, which, along with the massive doses of female hormones necessary to maintain an even arguable female appearance, probably contributed to a very early and sudden death from a heart attack.
Is that Gary Coleman?
First off, they're not priests. But, perhaps this story will shed some light.
In the mid-1970s, the Catholic Church recognized the difference between being homosexual and engaging in homogenital (same-sex) acts. The Catholic Church holds that, as a state beyond a person's choice, being homosexual is not wrong or sinful in itself. But just as it is objectively wrong for unmarried heterosexuals to engage in sex, so too are homosexual acts considered to be wrong.
The Church also teaches understanding and compassion toward gay and lesbian people. In their 1976 statement, To Live in Christ Jesus, the American bishops wrote, "Some persons find themselves through no fault of their own to have a homosexual orientation. Homosexuals, like everyone else, should not suffer from prejudice against their basic human rights. They have a right to respect, friendship, and justice. They should have an active role in the Christian community.… The Christian community should provide them a special degree of pastoral understanding and care." In 1990, the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops repeated this teaching in their instruction, Human Sexuality.
In 1997, the U.S. Catholic Bishops released a Pastoral Letter entitled Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children and Suggestions for Pastoral Ministers, directed to the parents of gay and lesbian Catholics. In this document, the bishops briefly addressed lesbians and gay men, saying, "In you God's love is revealed." The letter also encouraged families to remain connected when a member revealed his or her homosexuality, and called for the establishment of ministries sensitive to the needs of gay and lesbian Catholics and their families.
FAQs: Catholicism, Homosexuality, and Dignity
Please note We are Community who are female and male, old and young, Catholic and non-Catholic, homosexual and heterosexual, family and friends, inter-racial, lay people and clergy. from Gay Catholics
I wouldn't be so smug. They're around.
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Agreed. These poor souls are mentally ill. Anyone making a buck off of them by mutilating their bodies should have their license to practice medicine revoked.
8. What options are open to a person who is homosexual and Catholic?
Official Catholic teaching requires that homosexual people abstain from sex. But the Catholic Church also teaches solemnly that people are obliged to form their conscience carefully and responsibly and to follow it as the bottom line in every moral decision.
Neither Scripture nor Tradition nor natural law theory nor human science nor personal experience convincingly supports official Catholic teaching about the immorality of homogenital acts. Accordingly, and after much soul-searching, many gay and lesbian Catholics have formed consciences that differ from official Church teaching and have entered into homosexual relationships. In this respect they are exactly like the many married Catholic couples who cannot accept the official teaching on contraception.
You should read that as "We think the Church is wrong, so we're just going to go do what we want to anyways, because OUR consciences don't say it's wrong. Besides, look at all of those married Catholics who use condoms and are on the pill, so since they're ok, we must be too" By the way, IIRC Catholic teaching always speaks of having a "well-formed conscience" before using it as the "bottom line"; these people do not. I suspect the "Gay Catholic" page is a dissenting group as well.
If you want to see a Catholic apostolate that ministers to Catholics with same sex attraction in a manner consistent with what the Church teaches, you should look at Courage (http://www.couragerc.net)
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