Saturday, August 25, 2007

Tutu pleads with Primates

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has issued an emotional call for the Anglican Primates to agree to disagree on the subject of homosexuality and accept one another in love.

“Our Lord is weeping to see our Communion tearing itself apart on the issue of human sexuality, when the world for which he died is ravaged by poverty, disease, war and corruption. We are one of God’s agents to deal with these scourges. God has no one but us. Please, I beg you all in our Lord’s name, agree to disagree, argue, debate; disagree, but do all this as members of one family. Accept one another as God accepts us, however we are, in Christ. “Wipe the tears from our Lord’s eyes; put the smile back on God’s face. I beg you all on bended knee.”

In a reader poll on the Church Times website currently 88% agree the Primates should heed Tutu's call.

Anglican churchgoers in England in any case are sensible charitably minded people who do not allow doctrinaire and anachronistic interpretations of Scripture to obscure the obvious demands of charity and good-will towards fellow-creatures. Just as the majority accept the ordination of women to the pristhood as the right and good thing to do in our day, so more and more accept that it is foolish and uncharitable to stigmatize people in faithful homosexual partnerships; and even more foolish to allow difference of opinion on this question to break the bonds of affection between Anglicans worldwide.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Prayers to commemorate Princess Diana

The Archbishop of Canterbury has produced two prayers for use in churches on the tenth anniversary of the death of Princess Diana.