Priest's License Revoked After he Blesses Same-sex Couple
Episcopal News Service. July 27, 1995 [95-1182]
(ENS) The bishop of the Diocese of Easton told an elderly priest he may no longer preach or perform sacraments in his diocese because he officiated at a service blessing a same-sex couple.
In a letter to the Rev. John K. Mount, 85, of Easton, Bishop Martin Townsend maintains that Mount described the May 28 ceremony to him as a marriage. In addition to revoking his license to function as a priest in the diocese, Townsend gave Mount a "Godly admonition" to inform the two men that "in the church's understanding of marriage, they are not married." Townsend added that "while such a relationship might be loving and faithful, it cannot be considered a marriage and you have no authority to bless it as such."
Mount, however, who is himself gay, denies that the service constituted a marriage. "My own understanding is that I blessed two individuals after they made a public commitment to each other," Mount said in a letter to Townsend. "As far as I am concerned, there was no marriage as defined by state law and/or as defined by the church."
In any case, Townsend said in a letter to the diocese's Trinity Cathedral congregation where Mount had served as a canon, "No matter how the service is named, Fr. Mount acted unilaterally in an area of significant controversy for the church. My action was intended to make clear that such unilateral initiative is not how policy will be established in this diocese."
Mount's honorific title of "canon educator" at the cathedral also has been revoked, Townsend said. Mount is canonically resident in the Diocese of Maryland and may still officiate as a priest there, though Bishop Charles Longest, bishop-in-charge in Maryland, has reminded him that he is bound by a 1992 diocesan "moratorium" on the blessing of same-sex unions.
Mount said that he was moved to officiate at the service out of compassion for the two men, both of whom are HIV-positive. He met them, he said, through one of the support groups for homosexuals that he attends.
"They asked me to bless their union," he said, and while he made it clear that "I was not performing a marriage," they "called it a wedding and they put it on in a grand style." Approximately 70 people attended the waterfront ceremony for the two men, neither of whom is an Episcopalian. The service was not held in a church and did not include use of the Episcopal prayer book, Mount said.
Mount said his role, after the couple had made their vows, was to "ask the Lord to give them the strength to live up to what they have undertaken."
In his letter to the cathedral congregation, Townsend noted that he does not question "the sincerity of Fr. Mount's beliefs nor the importance of his pastoral concern for the two men whom he blessed." Still, he said, "I very much dispute the appropriateness of Fr. Mount's actions. The issue is not homosexuality but the matter of how the community of the church goes about making decisions."
Townsend stressed that "local option will not be decided by individual priests acting outside the communion of the diocesan community."
In both the House of Bishops and the General Convention, "the matters of ordaining non-celibate gays and of blessing homosexual unions is under serious study," Townsend told Mount. "If at any time in the future the church determines that such ordinations and blessings are appropriate, then the Diocese of Easton will develop a policy as our response.... That policy will be developed by people and groups who have leadership responsibility and teaching authority in the diocese."
Mount, however, likened his action to the unofficial ordinations of women before the 1976 General Convention approval. For those ordinations, he said, "it was mostly retired bishops who decided it was time to do something no matter what General Convention said. What I hope is that some of the other retired clergy will do the kind of thing that I've done. I hope that there may develop a cutting edge."