Massachusetts Adopts Resolutions on Blessings of Same-sex unions, Ordination of Homosexuals
Episcopal News Service. November 23, 1993 [93209]
Jay Cormier, Director of Communication for the Diocese of Massachusetts.
The Diocese of Massachusetts will ask next summer's General Convention of the Episcopal Church to remove "the obstacles to ordination for qualified candidates who are living in committed same-sex relationships."
The resolution was overwhelmingly passed by the 500 ordained and lay delegates to the 208th annual convention of the diocese, meeting in Hyannis, November 5-6.
The delegates also voted to instruct the diocese's deputation to the triennial convention of the entire church to direct the Standing Liturgical Commission to prepare "supplementary rites and ceremonies... celebrating the commitment of gay and lesbian members of this church to life together." The original resolution, proposed by the members of the diocesan study commission on sexuality, was amended by the convention to specify that such liturgical forms shall not be "interpreted as imposing upon any ministers of this church the obligation to assent to its provisions nor obligations of functioning under them."
Opponents of the resolutions voiced their concern that the church was retreating from the scriptural and traditional proscriptions against homosexual behavior and that the unity of the church would be undermined by these actions.
Proponents of the resolutions spoke of the suffering and anguish experienced by gay and lesbian Episcopalians who have had to deny their sexuality or face the censure of the church. Several shared personal stories of their own painful process of "coming out" or the suffering endured by relatives and friends in confronting their homosexuality.
In presenting the resolutions, the Rev. Anne Carroll Fowler, co-chair of the study committee on sexuality and rector of St. John's Church in Jamaica Plain, said, "Out of our work and study have come two powerful conclusions. The first is that God measures human relationships by the presence and activity of love in them, and not by whether or not they unite persons of different sexes. The other is that the church cannot justly bless or celebrate any human relationship while it devalues and denies other relationships in which love is likewise made manifest."
"The church's failure to bless and affirm all loving, committed relationships, and its denial of holy orders to persons specifically because they enjoy such relationships, and its denial of holy orders to persons specifically because they enjoy such relationships, cripples the church's witness to the integrity of all of us, the sexual nature which we have created, and it expression in our relationships with each other," the committee report said.