Category Archives: homosexual priests

Retired vicar reconciles with his male Romanian model husband

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Reconciliation: Justin Welby would be proud.

Rev. Philip Clements aged 79 is married to a male Romanian model aged 24. You will be surprised to learn that the relationship has had its ups and downs; but now they are back together.

Since the vicar is sexually inert due, he says, to his age, the relationship with his husband is celibate and, consequently, there is nothing wrong with it according to the Church of England.

Nevertheless, as far as I can see, there is nothing right with it, notwithstanding  its intrinsically sad, comedic properties.

From here:

A retired vicar who was left homeless after selling his house to buy his Romanian husband a flat has insisted their three-year romance is real.

Philip Clements, 79, said their relationship is better than ever as he appeared on the Jeremy Kyle programme with his husband Florin Marin this morning.

The pair married in April last year after meeting on dating app Grindr in 2015.

Mr Clements even sold his £215,000 home in Sandwich, Kent, to buy a flat in Bucharest, Romania – where Mr Marin was from – and transferred ownership into his new husband’s name.

The couple split after just a few months later due to arguments about Mr Marin’s nightlife. Mr Clements ended up returning to Britain with nowhere to live.

But in a U-turn the couple say they are now giving their relationship another try and put on a united front on the Jeremy Kyle show this morning.

Opening up about their relationship, Mr Clements said: ‘I don’t have any money but our relationship is better than ever, though I’m not sure if Florin agrees.

He revealed his relationship with Philip couldn’t be physical due to age but said that wasn’t a problem. The former chef said: ‘It’s not a problem with him, if I want a physical relationship with someone I will just tell Philip beforehand.’

Why we believe what we do

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In his book Rage Against God, Peter Hitchens makes the point that both atheists and theists believe as they do simply because they choose to do so. In the case of atheism, it is generally a choice made from self-interest: if we admit that God exists we must also admit he might very well require something of us, something we may not wish to give.

Mainline churches have incorporated and refined this whole process, especially when dealing with the gay issue. The Anglican Church has produced endless papers, theological reflections and conversations on why, for 2000 years, the church had it wrong. All a learned smokescreen designed to conceal the real reason: compared to the general population, there is a disproportionately high number of gay clergy who wish not only to continue living with their same-sex partners, but to have their employer’s approval of the arrangement.

The same principle applies vicariously: people like Tony Campolo and Michael Coren who used to oppose gay marriage are now all for it. Not because the arguments have changed, but because condoning the lifestyle of their gay friends affords them feelings of fuzzy comfort – our contemporary substitute for love – whereas disagreement, however truly loving, can be so….. well, unpleasant, intolerant and hurtful.

None of this is new, of course: Peter Hitchens wrote about Aldous Huxley’s view of it here:

The  interesting bit , for this part of the argument, begins at the bottom of page 269, where Huxley is discussing the reality of the ‘meaning’ which we like to give to the world and our actions within it.

‘This is a question’, says Huxley, ‘which, a few years ago, I should not even have posed. For, like so many of my contemporaries, I took it for granted that there was no meaning’…

‘…I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption…

‘Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know *because we don’t want to know*(my emphasis). It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence. Those who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that the world should be meaningless…’

[…..]

‘No philosophy is completely disinterested. The pure love of truth is always mingled to some extent with the need, consciously or unconsciously felt by even the noblest and the most intelligent philosophers, to justify a given form of personal or social behaviour, to rationalize the traditional prejudices of a given class or community.’

Married gay priest to sue the Church of England

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Of all the absurd things that the Church of England says and does, it is interesting that Rev Jeremy Pemberton has chosen to mount a legal challenge to the Church’s following its own clearly stated rules. Surely he is not motivated by self-interest?

Rev Jeremy Pemberton and wifeFrom here:

The first priest to marry his same-sex partner is to issue a legal challenge to the Church of England after his offer of a job as an NHS chaplain was withdrawn when his bishop refused the necessary permission. The Rev Jeremy Pemberton, who married Laurence Cunnington in April, was informed on Friday that Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS trust had withdrawn its offer of a job after Bishop Richard Inwood had refused him the official licence in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. “It this is not challenged,” Pemberton said on Sunday, “it will send a message to all chaplains of whom a considerable number are gay and lesbian. This is an area of law that has not been tested and needs to be.” Anglican clergy are allowed to enter civil partnerships, but the House of Bishops has forbidden them to marry their same-sex partners, at least until a two-year discussion process within the church has been completed.

Church of England vicar wants to marry his male partner

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From here:

Cain-ForeshewA gay vicar from Kilburn has vowed to marry his partner of 14 years despite the risk that he could be thrown out of the Church of England.

Fr Andrew Cain from St Mary’s with All Souls, revealed his engagement to fiancé Stephen Foreshew, an atheist, on Valentine’s Day.

He stated firmly that he planned to ignore edicts sent down from his own church leaders that described marriage as only a “lifelong union between one man and one woman”.

I have a suggestion for Messrs. Cain and Foreshew: move to Canada. Since the Anglican Church of Canada worships the triune god of Inclusion, Diversity and Homo-erotic sex, along with assorted demigods  – eco-justice, utopianism and smudging among others – you will be welcomed with open arms. The additional benefit of your wife-husband being an atheist would make you a shoe-in. I’d start with an application to the Diocese of Montreal, if I were you.

Former Anglican priest charged with molesting boys

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From here:

The Ontario Provincial Police in northwestern Ontario have laid more charges against a former Anglican priest and boy scout leader for alleged sexual offences.

Ralph Rowe, 72, will appear in court in Kenora, Ont., later this month. He’s charged with five counts of sexual assault and two counts of indecent assault.

The charges relate to incidents that occurred between 1973 and 1986 in the First Nations communities of Fort Severn, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Wunnumin Lake and Kingfisher Lake.

The fact that this character was an Anglican priest is appalling – but not surprising.

John Bothwell, when he was bishop of Niagara, as part of the ACPO initiation – more of a hazing, really – used to show gay pornographic movies to the postulants to introduce them to the real world as he saw it. I reckon they were from his own private collection; my wife tells me I shouldn’t say that. Too late.

Those who were not shocked into throwing in the towel and finding employment in a sane institution were subsequently consecrated as priests.

So it is not surprising that an organisation that uses a process designed to screen out those averse to homosexual practice attracts many who enjoy indulging in homosexual practice.  Including with little boys.

Rev. James Ferry and Archbishop Terence Finlay kiss and make up

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20 years ago Terence Finlay fired James Ferry because he had a homosexual lover. Now, they have reconciled – more because of a change of heart on the part of the archbishop than the priest, it seems.

All this goes to show how much has changed in the Anglican Church of Canada: today homosexual  priests are not only welcome, but they often seem to be preferred candidates for vacant positions. I am sure the ACoC views this as a necessary corrective: in actual fact it is more an act of obeisance to the Zeitgeist.

From here:

The two Toronto clergymen are by now so inextricably linked that they’re bound to appear prominently in each other’s obituaries. They know that.

But Terence Finlay and James Ferry do not want a confrontation 20 years ago — one that scandalized the traditional and appalled the progressive in the Anglican Church — to define them.

As of next Sunday, when they participate in a rare public service of personal reconciliation at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Finlay and Ferry hope the relationship will be known for more redeeming reasons.

 

Homosexual priests in long-term committed relationships

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Here are two who were “close friends” in the Roman Catholic Church. Their relationship was long term, but the commitment was sufficiently loose to allow them to haunt “places frequented by gays” where one of them acquired AIDS and syphilis.

The pair decided to jump off a cliff together but, lacking the nerve, decided, after planning a list of hymns for their funerals, to hire hit men to finish them off instead.

This amalgam of comic pantomime and maudlin tragedy is brought to you courtesy of a church – the Roman Catholic Church this time – which turns a blind – or winking – eye to what used to be called sin.

Two gay Roman Catholic priests hired hitmen to kill themselves after one of them discovered he had Aids.

Rafael Reatiga, 35, and Richard Piffano, 37, who had been close friends since training, were discovered shot dead in a car in Southern Bogota, Colombia, in January last year.

Authorities initially suspected robbery but this week prosecutor Ana Patricia Larrota said investigators had determined that it was a case of suicide by hitmen.

Some think many Church of England parishes would collapse without gay clergy

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Since many Church of England parishes are collapsing anyway, perhaps it’s the presence of gay clergy that is hastening their demise.

If the seemingly extravagant “1,500 gay, bi or trans clergy” number mentioned in this article is accurate, it means that Anglicanism in the UK is following in the footsteps of its North American cousin – wilfully flushing itself down the toilet of gender bending irrelevance into oblivion’s cesspool.

With what sensitive, discerning yet piperitious aphorism should one greet this news? “Good riddance” comes to mind.

A coalition supporting the gay and transgender members of the Anglican church is pressing for it to recognise the contribution made by those clergy without whom, it says, some parishes “would face utter collapse”.

The group advocates lifting the ban on bishops in civil partnerships and allowing priests free choice on whether to conduct such ceremonies in their churches, an issue currently being considered by a review group in the church’s House of Bishops.

Reverend Benny Hazlehurst, Chair of the LGBT Anglican Coalition, told PinkNews.co.uk the group would be handing out flyers outside the General Synod at a Silent Act of Witness tomorrow ahead of its meeting with the review group this month.

He said: “If all the LGB&T Clergy were to leave the Church of England, parochial and sector ministry in the Church of England would suffer major trauma, and the parish system in some parts of the country would face utter collapse.”

Rev Hazlehurst said the group estimated there are over 1,500 gay, bi or trans clergy in the country and the LGBT Anglican Coalition was advocating more recognition of these members.

 

Homosexual priest reinstated in Diocese of Toronto

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To coincide with Toronto’s Pride Week, James Ferry has been reinstated as a priest in the Diocese of Toronto: 20 years ago he was dismissed because of his sexual activity with another man.  Nowadays, of course, the only priests in danger of being suspended are evangelicals who are not prepared to compromise their principles – like J. I. Packer. Such is the march of progress in the Anglican Church of Canada.

From here:

‘You Belong’ ― Gay priest Jim Ferry reinstated after 20 years as outcast

On Sunday, June 26th, 2011 the Rev. Jim Ferry’s license as priest was reinstated by Archbishop Colin Johnson of the Diocese of Toronto, and he was appointed Honorary Assistant of Holy Trinity, Trinity Square. It is 20 years since he was made an outcast by the previous Bishop of Toronto, Terence Finlay, for being in a same sex relationship. His outing and subsequent public trial in a Bishop’s Court garnered worldwide media attention.

Jim’s sermon “Pride and Prejudice” marked the opening of Toronto’s Pride Week celebrations at Holy Trinity, and highlighted the Pride 2011 theme: You Belong.

Vicar dons miniskirt and gold tights

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From here:

A vicar who outraged his parishioners when he dressed as a ‘tart’ for a fundraising costume party has retired from the Church.

The Reverend Martin Wray left his position at St Lawrence the Martyr Church in Horsley Hill, South Shields, after being on sick leave for several months following his part in the charity bash.

The 59-year-old was photographed at the  ‘vicars and tarts’ party wearing a mini-skirt, gold leggings and high heels at the town’s Steamboat pub on the Mill Dam in August last year.

What was meant to be a fun event though caused a stir at the church, with some of the congregation believing the published photograph of the vicar as a ‘tart’ brought his  parish into disrepute.

But friends of Mr Wray, who entered into a gay partnership last May and who continues to live in the town, said the whole episode had ‘a whiff of homophobia’ about it.

 

 

It brings home just how muddled the Church of England has become when a vicar has to don a miniskirt and gold tights in addition to having a homosexual lover before his parishioners suspect something untoward is going on.