‘Same-sex couple have marriage blessed in Albury Anglican church after two-year battle’

Posted on January 3, 2022 
Filed under Australian dioceses, Culture wars

“It’s just before nine o’clock on Sunday morning and the bells are ringing out loudly at St Matthew’s church in Albury.

It’s already 25 degrees Celsius and the sun is beating hot and bright onto a small knot of people milling around outside. Among them are two men with matching cream linen jackets and nervous smiles. …

The two men have driven 10 hours from their hometown in the north of New South Wales after their own parish would not recognise their relationship. …

Albury priest Peter MacLeod-Miller, a long-time advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community, tells Sunday’s congregation that ‘we are celebrating a better, kinder world, and also a real change’.

He reads a letter from Bishop Clarence Bester, head of the Wangaratta diocese of which St Matthew’s is a part and which adopted a resolution to offer blessings for same-sex marriages in August 2019.”

– Report from the ABC. Base map: Anglican Church of Australia.

Earlier:

Sydney Diocese Response to actions in the Diocese of Wangaratta – December 10 2020.

“It would be naïve to think that mutually contradictory views on same-sex marriage can co-exist within our national Church. Pronouncing God’s blessing on a same-sex marriage is contrary to the teaching of Christ. It is therefore untenable to have some members of the Church purporting to declare God’s blessing in such circumstances. To pursue this course will not bring healing but will only lead to a collapse in the fellowship that binds us together.”