The governing body of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to adopt language that allows for the ordination of gay men and women to ministry. The Los Angeles Times reports:
A debate that has raged within the Presbyterian Church for more than three decades culminated Tuesday with ratification of a measure allowing the ordination of gay and lesbian ministers and lay leaders, while giving regional church bodies the ability to decide for themselves.
With the vote of its regional organization in Minnesota, the Presbyterian Church USA became the fourth mainline Protestant church to allow gay ordination, following the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran churches and the United Church of Christ. The Minnesota vote was closely followed by one in Los Angeles.
"This is an important moment in the Christian communion," said Michael Adee, a Presbyterian elder who heads an organization that fought for gay ordination. "I rejoice that Presbyterians are focusing on what matters most: faith and character, not a person's marital status or sexual orientation."
Read the full article here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/us/22pastor.html
O ye of so little knowledge, or, as this man put it: “Never has there been so much knowledge and so little truth.” Fulton J. Sheen
http://www.lgbtran.org/ProfilesGallery.aspx
The operative term in this article is that the Presbyterians are now validating what they have been doing for who knows how long. The Catholics still haven't developed this sense of integrity about what everyone knows has, is and will continue to happen.
As I mentioned in one of my previous comments (that the editors chose to delete), I'm aware that those who identify as homosexuals have been ordained in all churches. That's part of what struck me as funny: an article giving the impression that this is something new and different.
Thanks to PJ J's post, I understand how this change might affect Presby churches and their ministers. But as priests are (cough-cough) chaste and celibate, what difference would a similar proclamation make in the Catholic Church? I think the public's reaction would be somewhere between a yawn and surprise that it wasn't already part of the mandatory admission criteria.