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20/08/2012
Church Of Ireland Veteran Backs Gay Marriage
A senior Church of Ireland cleric, now retired, has backed calls for gay marriage to be made legal.
Canon Charles Kenny, who retired from St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast in 2000, told the Belfast Telegraph that bias and literalism were distorting the Christian message in the same way as they had done for sectarianism.
He said: "The same failings of the Christian Church, and the presentation of the Gospel, which led to sectarianism in the past are playing again now in relation to homophobia."
He also said that many Church of Ireland privately supported the "pro gay lobby".
In a statement to the Church of Ireland Gazette, Canon Kenny, 73, wrote: "Once again the church is behaving as it did when the issue was slavery, or racialism, the cruel treatment of children born out of wedlock or what amounted to denial of full humanity to the female half of homo sapiens, lack of sympathy for the lower orders, a suspicion of the new ideas of science, and so forth.
"People are puzzled that all this was done in the name of Christ; but many suspect it was more to do with earthly power and control."
In May, the Church of Ireland synod adopted a motion opposing gay marriage and stating that same sex partnerships were not "normative".
(NE)
Canon Charles Kenny, who retired from St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast in 2000, told the Belfast Telegraph that bias and literalism were distorting the Christian message in the same way as they had done for sectarianism.
He said: "The same failings of the Christian Church, and the presentation of the Gospel, which led to sectarianism in the past are playing again now in relation to homophobia."
He also said that many Church of Ireland privately supported the "pro gay lobby".
In a statement to the Church of Ireland Gazette, Canon Kenny, 73, wrote: "Once again the church is behaving as it did when the issue was slavery, or racialism, the cruel treatment of children born out of wedlock or what amounted to denial of full humanity to the female half of homo sapiens, lack of sympathy for the lower orders, a suspicion of the new ideas of science, and so forth.
"People are puzzled that all this was done in the name of Christ; but many suspect it was more to do with earthly power and control."
In May, the Church of Ireland synod adopted a motion opposing gay marriage and stating that same sex partnerships were not "normative".
(NE)
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