Bishops to Continue Ordaining Gays

Underscoring continuing tensions over homosexuality, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church said Tuesday that bishops who have been ordaining homosexuals as priests will continue to do so, despite protests from conservatives and the possibility of a schism in the church.

Last week, the leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part, met in Portugal and warned that ordinations of gay priests “threatened the unity of the communion in a profound way.”

Dioceses that ordain gays as clergy should weigh the effects of their actions and listen to “the expressions of pain, anger and perplexity from other parts of the Communion,” the Anglican leaders said.

But the Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold III, speaking after a five-day retreat of 100 members of the Episcopal church’s House of Bishops, said he saw no likelihood that Episcopal dioceses would abandon their willingness to ordain gay men and lesbians who are living in committed, monogamous relationships.

“I cannot imagine any diocese altering its present direction in the light of anything that has happened, either here or in Portugal,” said Griswold, the presiding bishop and primate of the U.S. church. “That would be unrealistic.”

The 2.4-million member Episcopal Church is a self-governing province of the 70-million member worldwide Anglican Communion.

How to deal with homosexuality has been a long and daunting struggle for several U.S. denominations. Last week, the Central Conference of American Rabbis--the rabbinical arm of the Reform Movement--declared that same-sex relationships are “worthy of affirmation” by Jewish ritual. That drew criticism from Orthodox and some Conservative Jewish leaders.

Later this year, national meetings of United Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians are expected to deal with either ordinations of homosexuals or the blessings of same-sex unions.

For Episcopalians and Anglicans worldwide, the issue reached a crisis point in January when conservative archbishops from the Anglican provinces of Rwanda and South East Asia, who oppose the U.S. church’s liberal views on homosexuality, defied custom and ordained two U.S. conservative priests as bishops to serve in the United States.

The ordinations, which took place in Singapore, were widely criticized. Even some U.S. conservatives who sympathized with the rationale for naming the bishops saw the ordinations as a violation of Anglican tradition.

For now, the two men have been allowed to continue to serve as priests, but not as bishops, in their old dioceses.

But the newly ordained conservative bishops eventually “could very well be the beginning of another breakaway church,” Griswold told reporters here.

Despite the controversies, Griswold and other bishops said they came away from their meeting with a deeper sense of trust and respect for each other, in large part because of small-group discussions in which bishops were encouraged to share personal histories that had bearings on their public stands about sexuality.

“The level of trust has deepened,” said the Rt. Rev. Chester L. Talton, suffragan (assistant) bishop of Los Angeles. Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Frederick H. Borsch called the discussions “awfully frank.”

“It has been a very rich time,” Griswold said.

On another topic, the bishops took an uncompromising stand on an issue that is straining efforts to bring about full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The unity pact calls for the two denominations to be free to use each other’s clergy interchangeably. To make that possible, Lutheran leaders had agreed to accept the Episcopal practice in which only a bishop can ordain a new minister.

But since the Lutherans officially approved the pact last year, some rank-and-file Lutherans, especially in the upper Midwest, have objected. They would like their existing pastors--and not just their bishops--to continue having the authority to ordain new pastors.