Clergy

The nation's largest Lutheran denomination opened debate Monday over a proposal to allow noncelibate gays and lesbians to serve in the clergy. Leaders of the 4.7-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are expected to decide during their weeklong Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis whether to alter existing policy, which requires gays and lesbians in ministry to remain celibate. The new policy would permit local congregations, if they wanted, to choose ministers or lay leaders who were in "lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships."

le Mayor Richard B. Edgar tries to distance himself from the growing controversy over restrictions on prayers before public meetings, the leader of an angry group of clergy on Thursday called for Edgar's resignation. This week, Edgar sent another letter to local clergy in which he backed off from the city attorney's statement that ministers could no longer mention any religion or deity during invocations. Edgar said his original letter, written on the advice of City Atty.

Efforts to allow gays and lesbians to serve as clergy in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have been defeated again, sealed by votes tallied Saturday. But the margin of defeat -- the final tally has yet to be determined -- is guaranteed to be closer than in previous years. That is encouraging for supporters of gay clergy and cause for concern for opponents, with both sides expecting the issue to be revisited. Last summer, the General Assembly of the 2.

More than a dozen religious leaders from Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Buddhists churches in Orange and Los Angeles counties gathered in prayer Friday in a small ceremony on the sidewalk in front of the St. Vincent de Paul Center to protest the state's scheduled execution of Robert Alton Harris. In response to Gov.

Mexico's main opposition party will introduce legislation to allow members of the clergy to vote and engage in political activities, officials said Friday. Abel Vicencio Tovar, secretary general of the conservative National Action Party, said the legislation, to be introduced next week, will seek to change Mexico's constitution, which bars clergy of any faith from voting and wearing religious garb in public and churches from owning property.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that conversations with a priest or other clergy may be admitted as evidence in a criminal trial. While a blanket privilege protects confessions made to lawyers, the court ruled recently that confessions to clergy are not automatically protected. The Canadian action will have no direct effect on U.S. policy.

The highest court of the United Methodist Church affirmed that the denomination's Book of Discipline forbids the appointment of "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" as pastors. But, in a small victory for gay clergy, the Judicial Council ruled in Nashville that a bishop cannot strip away such an appointment without due process. The decision unifies the judicial and legislative branches of the nation's third-largest denomination.

The Roman Catholic Church opened a special telephone "help line" for victims of child abuse by the clergy. The line went into operation the same day a 71-year-old priest, Brendan Smyth, started a 12-year jail term for a series of child molestation offenses committed over 36 years. Judge Cyril Kelly said the case, involving 74 counts of indecent and sexual assaults, was one of the most serious dealt with by his Dublin court.

Euphemisms abound in religious circles. Some are aimed at diminishing pain. Whether we like them or not, their goal is kindness. What follows is a list of euphemisms often aimed by members of congregations at their leaders. They are phrases that should give pause because their intent is the opposite of kindness. By bitter experience, I've learned that when they appear in the give and take of congregational life, a hidden agenda is at work.

The outgoing presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church suggested at the start of the church's triennial General Convention in Anaheim that divorced and remarried clergy should leave the priesthood--a proposal that was surprising in view of that fact that 10% of Episcopal clergy are divorced and two remarried bishops currently head dioceses.