Episcopal Church rules Albany bishop violated rules in stopping same-sex marriages [Albany, NY]

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https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Episcopal-Church-rules-Albany-bishop-violated-15622248.php

Episcopal Church rules Albany bishop violated rules in stopping same-sex marriages

Albany Episcopal Diocese Rev. William H. Love said his punishment to be discussed

Robert Gavin
Updated: Oct. 5, 2020 4:59 p.m.

ALBANY – An Episcopal Church disciplinary panel ruled that Albany Episcopal Diocese Rev. William H. Love violated the church’s rules in defiantly directing his clergy not to perform same-sex marriages.

The panel unanimously found Love violated church doctrine, discipline and worship rules in flouting a 2018 resolution – B012 – that ordered individual bishops not to prohibit same-sex marriages, which the church first allowed in 2015.

"Depriving same sex couples of access to matrimony materially and substantially impacts their spiritual, emotional and physical well-being as people of God," stated the Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely, a Rhode Island-based bishop, in authoring the decision. "The expression of love changes dramatically when it is recognized, welcomed and witnessed. The loss of a public ceremony impacts the couple, the family and friends and the community."

Knisely said a "marked shift in who can participate and who cannot participate in the fullness of communal life leads to an identifiable shift in power, belonging and value held by the members who can participate and those who cannot. All of which leads to persistent stress and the impact of this: numbness, resentment, low self-esteem, grief, loss of agency, shame and isolation."

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[TomSlick]

1. Good for the Episcopal Church.

If there was an Episcopal Church in town.....