Anglican Communion Weekly Review; Gay Danish couples win right to marry in church; Rocking Russian grannies to build church with prize winnings; Society must rediscover family – Pope; Vatican newspaper gives a voice to women for first time in 150 years
Anglican Communion Weekly Review 2 – 8 June , 2012
ACNS – A roundup of the week’s Anglican Communion news plus opinion, reviews, photos, profiles and other things of interest from across the Anglican/Episcopal world.
This edition includes…
• This week’s Anglican Communion news
• Anglican Life – Archbishop of Harare tells Anglicans: “Shun violence”
• Anglican Life – Japanese faith groups oppose re-starting nuclear reactors
• Anglican Life – Bishops urge Obama to intervene in UN funding cut for Gaza hospital
• Anglican Life – Forced Conversion in Pakistan
• Anglican Life – Three Stories from Dogura Diocese
• Anglican Life – The latest news from the Anglican Church of Kenya
• Anglican Life – The Diocese of St Asaph announces a year of pilgrimage
• Comment – Video games in church?
• Digital Communion – Could you be a church reporter?
• Bookshelf – Fear and Friendship – Anglicans engage Islam
• The coming week’s Anglican Cycle of Prayer.
http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2012/6/8/ACNS5116
Gay Danish couples win right to marry in church
Telegraph – Homosexual couples in Denmark have won the right to get married in any church they choose, even though nearly one third of the country’s priests have said they will refuse to carry out the ceremonies.
The country’s parliament voted through the new law on same-sex marriage by a large majority, making it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriages.
Denmark’s church minister, Manu Sareen, called the vote “historic”.
“I think it’s very important to give all members of the church the possibility to get married. Today, it’s only heterosexual couples.”
Under the law, individual priests can refuse to carry out the ceremony, but the local bishop must arrange a replacement for their church.
The far-Right Danish People’s Party mounted a strong campaign against the new law, which nonetheless passed with the support of 85 of the country’s 111 MPs.
“Marriage is as old as man himself, and you can’t change something as fundamental,” the party’s church spokesperson Christian Langballe said during the debate. “Marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman.”
Rocking Russian grannies to build church with prize winnings
ENI – A group of six Russian grandmothers who won second place in Europe’s Eurovision Song Contest have pledged to use their prize money to build an Orthodox church in their tiny home village.
http://www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5712
Society must rediscover family – Pope
Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of the importance of the family during a visit to Milan.
The Pope said the family was one of the elements of an “authentic and stable culture”.
“We must rediscover the family as human beings’ most important heritage,” he said.
The Pope made the comments during a visit to the city for the seventh World Meeting of Families.
He picked up the theme of families again in an address at the La Scala opera house following a concert in his honour.
The orchestra and choir performed Beethoven’s ninth symphony and was conducted by Daniel Barenboim.
“It is in families that we first experience how human beings are not created to live closed in themselves, but in relation with others,” he said.
“It is in the family that we understand that self-realisation does not mean being guided by selfishness and putting oneself at the centre, but giving oneself.
“It is in the family that the light of peace begins to burn in people’s hearts, so as to illuminate our world.”
Vatican newspaper gives a voice to women for first time in 150 years
Guardian – New supplement in L’Osservatore Romano will be edited by women and will highlight ‘value they bring to the church’. The Vatican’s official newspaper is for the first time in its 150-year history publishing an all-colour women’s supplement “to give voice to the value that women bring to the church”. Women, Church, World will be edited by women and published with L’Osservatore Romano, the newspaper founded in 1861 and published by the Holy See on the last Thursday of every month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/02/vatican-newspaper-gives-voice-women