Rev. Paul Landahl, bishop of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, said he was disappointed with the decision to maintain the policy of ordaining only those gays and lesbians who remain chaste, but grateful the assembly did not make the policy more restrictive.
“We welcome gays and lesbians, but only so far,” he said. “So if you feel the gift of the spirit and the call to ministry, well, you’re going to have to sit on that because our welcome doesn’t include that. And that to me is offensive.”
Damn. That’s disappointing. Very sorry to see how close the vote was, too.
so here we are al alone on this limb. I do hope we remain there.
Well, Fr. Ted had me clarify the wording on the Holy Moly website this week. Now it declares right on Page One: All are welcome, and that includes everybody, all colors, all ages, all lifestyles, all and sundry genders, full stop, all hands on deck, worldwithoutendamen. We had a discussion a while back about the quality of our welcome and he did concede that we probably wouldn’t go as far as putting up rainbow banners on every corner of our lot and from the top of the steeple.
Mostly because we can’t afford it, hee hee.
But a couple of weeks ago a man and his college son showed up, and they reported that it was kind of hard to tell if the son would be welcomed or not, because I’d been a little too discreet.
He’s funny – he thinks most of us are still not too sure about this gay priest thing, because of the actions of a very few people. The rest of us are all like “Duh, we’re fine with it, break out the showtunes and let’s watch Liza with a Z together.”