Roman Catholics add insult to injury...

Following the Christmas tirade against same-sex marriage by the Pope and senior Roman Catholics, the only Roman Catholic congregation in England to offer special masses to LGBT church goers has now found itself homeless and closed down.

The ‘Soho Masses’ at Our Lady of the Assumption church had provided a ray of hope for gay Roman Catholics in London for the past 6 years, and operated with the permission of senior clergy.

But now the most senior Roman Catholic in England and Wales has put and end to the masses, reaffirming that “same-sex activity is not consistent with the teaching of the church” and saying that it is not appropriate that Mass be offered as part of pastoral care for LGBT Catholics as the Mass has to “retain its essential character as the highest prayer of the whole Church.”

Dismissing sexual orientation as a dangerous deception, the statement says that “of great importance, is the teaching of the Church that a person must not be identified by their sexual orientation.”

Many people will interpret Vincent Nichols words and actions as further pressure on LGBT people to deny their sexuality, backed up by the threat of exclusion from this ‘highest prayer of the Church’ until they do.

But to add insult to injury, the Church in Soho is going to be made available to the Roman Catholic Ordinariate instead – a group made up of disaffected Anglicans who have been offered a special place in the Roman Catholic Church because of their opposition to women’s ordination.

So the church which has acted as a beacon of inclusive Christian faith is to be turned into a centre for those who deny the equality of women before God, and the validity of women’s ministry as Priests and Bishops.

Once again I find myself reminded of one of the most powerful stories of injustice in the Bible - the time when God sent the prophet Nathan to confront King David after he had committed adultery and murder. (1 Samuel 12)

Rather than face David head-on with what he had done, Nathan told David a story of a rich man with many flocks of sheep and a poor man with just one lamb who he loved dearly.  When a guest came to visit the rich man, he did not want to slaughter one of his own sheep to provide a feast, so he took the poor man’s lamb and killed it instead.

As King David’s anger raged against a man who would do such a thing, Nathan faced David  with the words, “You are the man.”

Today the Archbishop of Westminster has taken the one much loved lamb from the LGBT Catholic Community – the Soho Masses – and slaughtered it to feed to his new guest – the disaffected Anglican Ordinariate.

Today I believe that the Son of David’s anger is equally burning against any Church (Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, or Pentecostal) which builds its faith on the exclusion of others, and teaches others to do the same.

Jesus had a name for such religious institutions – he called the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees of his day hypocrites and blind guides for doing the same kind of things.  In Matthew 23 he let his anger fly against those who place heavy burdens on people’s shoulders in the name of God, and who shut the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven in their faces.

 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13)

And he was very clear about the way we should regard such religious institutions,

“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; ³ therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach. ⁴ They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:1-4)

Jesus last command was to go into all the world and draw all people into his Kingdom – not to go and find ways to keep people out.

When Church leaders exclude people from the fullness of the Kingdom of God because of their gender, sexuality or who they love, they would do well to pray that they don’t find the prophet Nathan waiting for them at the Pearly Gates… saying “You are the man!”

 

We pray for their return ...

So yesterday the Church Of England lost 5 Bishops as they make the journey to Rome over the issue of women Bishops...

Some may find it tempting to say "Good riddance" but that would graceless. Instead I would like to tell the story of an young Anglican Priest who left the Church of England back in 1963 to become a Roman Catholic .

He did it for theological reasons.

He was an Anglo-catholic, trained at St Stephen's House in Oxford, under Fr Arthur Couratin. And he, along with others, felt that the Church of England was in danger of betraying its Catholic heritage by moving towards unity with the Methodist Church. In doing so, any claim to Apostolic Succession would be broken and we would have priests & ministers who had not been properly ordained. In short, the Church of England would cease to be part of the' one holy catholic and apostolic church' of the creeds.

And so he left, with his wife and young baby, following the courage of their convictions.

They left their home for a room in a Roman Catholic house for defecting Anglican clergy. They received a warm and practical welcome in the Roman church, with the Converts Aid Society helping him to get a job and home to live in, and Roman Catholic priests helped them through this momentous time of change in their lives.

At that time, their Anglican baptism was not accepted in Rome, so they had to be conditionally baptised and confirmed again - and of course, as a married man, there was no possibility of being able to move to ordained ministry as a Roman Catholic priest.

So he became a teacher, initially in Roman Catholic schools, but then in a state school in Rochdale. When he got there however, he discovered something - that the Head and Deputy Head at this school were both dedicated Methodists and the Deputy was a Methodist lay preacher.

During his time there, he began to question his attitude towards Methodists and his reasons for leaving the Church of England. These Methodists were among the finest Christian he had ever met, and as a result he realised that he had been wrong. In that realisation, he felt God calling him back and he went to the Bishop who had sponsored him for ordination him to ask to be allowed back into Anglican ministry. Graciously, the Bishop welcomed him back, and there followed another 28 years of ordained ministry before retirement.

This story is not unique by any means, but it is special to me because that Anglican priest is my father, and I was the young baby in their arms as they left their Vicarage to 'go to Rome'.

Its point is to show that sometimes we can be wrong. Sometimes there are issues which seem so fundamental to our faith, that lead us to difficult decisions and drastic action. Yet in the fullness of time we realise they are mere distractions to the call to love God and our neighbour in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

Paul knew this of course, after his momentous change of life and faith on the road to Damascus. In Philippians 3, he lists all the things that he thought were so important before his encounter with Christ - and then he says that now he counts them all as loss compared with the all surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. Not many of us will have a Damascus experience to redirect our lives, but we do meet Christ in other people every day and if we are open to see Christ in them, we too can find Christ calling us to new understanding of His work in the world.

Of course things are very different now. The issue of the day is Women Bishops, not Methodists. Anglican priests can go to Rome and be welcomed into ministry, even if they are married with a family. And now there is the promise of an Anglican Ordinariate within the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, with the resignation of five Bishops to join the new Ordinariate, there will be other clergy who are tempted to join them. My hope is that they will think twice before leaving the Church of England on such an issue - but my prayer is that even if they go, they will remain open to seeing Christ at work in the ministry of others, and through seeing Christ at work, they will one day feel the call to return.