Archbishop Launches City of York’s Response to End Rough Sleeping; Service celebrates ministry of women; Media review – Gay bishops debate; relics arrive in Liverpool
Archbishop Launches City of York’s Response to End Rough Sleeping
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu yesterday morning launched the city’s response to the government initiative to ‘End Rough Sleeping: No Second Night Out’ at the Salvation Army, Gillygate, York.
Rough sleeping represents the most extreme form of housing need and can have a devastating long-term impact on a person’s health and well-being. The services dedicated to No Second Night Out, will help agencies in York tackle this issue.
Speaking at the Launch, the Archbishop said: “Homelessness is a problem which forces us to reconsider the values on which we are building our society. The challenge of ‘No Second Night Out’ is to provide better choices for people, and appropriate to their individual needs, so that people choose to take up the offers of support that are made.
“The idea behind it is not just to take people off the streets, to ‘sweep them out of sight’; rather it is to move quickly to find a place of safety for those without a home and, where possible to reconnect them to their own community. In this way those helpful links which have been broken may be rebuilt and restored, before the dislocation becomes too great. Our role is to be the connectors with the homeless, the communities they come from, and the agencies who can offer help.”
Service celebrates ministry of women
Dorchester Abbey was full on Sunday for an Epiphany service to celebrate the contribution of women to the Church of England.
More than 500 people turned up for the service led by the Archdeacon of Buckinghamshire, the Venerable Karen Gorham, reports the Diocese of Oxford Reporter.
Archdeacon Gorham told stories of women like Florence Nightingale and Catherine Booth of The Salvation Army as she spoke of the unique role of women.
“With each woman here today there is a unique story, some of us have worked in the church for many years as lay workers, deacons, deaconesses,” she said.
“Some entered the ordained ministry at the end of the long campaign by the Movement for the Ordination of Women, while others have found their vocation more recently and are experiencing a church where men and women are now largely selected and trained as equals.”
Media review
Gay bishops and women bishops are not the same issue
Melanie McDonagh, Spectator – This being the Ephiphany, churchgoing Anglicans will be on the receiving end of any variety of sermons on the visit by the three kings to the infant Christ. There won’t, by and large, then, be much attention given to the whole issue of gay bishops. No attention at all, probably.
You’d never think it, though, judging from the broadcast and press reaction to the news. On the Radio 4 Today programme yesterday, the presenter said sternly to one conservative Anglican, Norman Russell, the Archdeacon of Oxford, that the fuss over the issue of gay bishops just goes to show why people are turned off by the church: it can only ever think about sex. The archdeacon replied mildly that this wasn’t quite the case: the church did talk about other things.
Russell could have made a stronger case. He could have said, nope, it’s not the church that’s obsessed by sex; it’s journalists. The only reason why it feels like the church spends its time arguing about sex and gender is that these are the sole issues that are taken up in broadcast discussions about religion. Week after week, clergy treat congregations to reflections on justice, mercy, charity; much of the time in synod is taken up with the question of how best Anglicanism can serve the wider community; most of the time, Anglican clergy try to put these principles into effect on the ground. And what are the chances that any of this will be reflected in BBC coverage of religion? Quite. But give most papers, most pundits, a sniff of a row about gay clergy or women bishops and they’re off. More at –
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/01/gay-bishops-and-women-bishops-are-not-the-same-issue/
Memo to CoE Bishops on their recent ‘celibacy’ requirement/reassurance: ‘Bishops have a moral responsibility to lie’ – Giles Fraser
The only way the bedroom police could ever really know is if they ask and play a moral guilt trip about honesty on those being interrogated. So do sexually active gay priests or bishops have a moral responsibility to tell the truth? Actually, I think not. I’d go further: in this situation, they have a moral responsibility to lie.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/06/why-gay-bishops-have-to-lie
Gay bishops: Bible ‘prohibits’ homosexual relationships, says Anglican Mainstream
BBC News – A decision by the Church of England to allow gay men in civil partnerships to become bishops has prompted criticism from both liberals and traditionalists.
The announcement allows gay clergy to become bishops if they promise to be celibate, something certain liberals view as unnecessary.
Nevertheless, some groups representing gay Anglicans have welcomed the move, while other evangelical groups have called it “divisive”.
Reverend Linda Rose of the evangelical, traditionalist group Anglican Mainstream, said gay relationships were not the way people were meant to live. Video here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20919479
Relics of saint arrive in Liverpool
BBC – The relics of St John Bosco, a 19th Century Italian saint, stop off in Liverpool as part of a world tour.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-20916217