Love must prevail

Proposed covenant unworkable if it abandons justice for all
By Charles V. Willie, October 16, 2007

[Episcopal Life] The contentious relationship between the Episcopal Church based in the United States and the worldwide Anglican Communion is appropriately called a "civil war over homosexuality" by The New York Times. I, also, think it is an event of civil stress about love and justice. In 1966, Joseph Fletcher, an Episcopal priest on the faculty of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote a book titled Situation Ethics in which he declared that "love is the boss principle of life" and "justice is love distributed."

"God is love" is a fact of life some of us learned in Sunday school. We also learned that covenants, creeds, doctrines and traditions may pass away, but love endures. How, then, can a church with a responsibility of promoting love and justice adopt a policy of discrimination that prohibits homosexual people from being elected and consecrated as bishops? There is no evidence that such people cannot "love and be loved in return." If love is the boss principle of life, arbitrary and capricious acts of discrimination against all sorts and conditions of people, including male and female people, heterosexual and homosexual people, is unjust and should cease and desist.

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