From the Daily Mail
by SIMON CALDWELL –
The BBC is to relay a 'gay Mass' from San Francisco this Sunday, the first time such a service has been broadcast.
The 50-minute Mass at the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the predominantly gay Castro district of the city will feature prayers and readings tailored for the gay community.
The church has been described as an "inspiration" to gay and lesbian Christians around the world because of its ministry to homosexuals.
Its parish priest, Father Stephen Meriweather, blesses participants in the San Francisco's annual gay pride march.
But it has also infuriated many Catholics in the U.S. who have complained about such activities as transvestite bingo nights during which sex toys and pornographic DVDs were handed out as prizes.
Last night a media watchdog said Sunday's radio broadcast was "bound to cause offence" to mainstream Christians.
John Beyer of Mediawatch UK, an organisation which campaigns for standards in the media, said he thought it was a mistake to broadcast the service.
"Religious broadcasting, apart from Songs of Praise, tends to focus on the out-of-the-ordinary and having this particular service I think will cause offence to people who feel that such practices are wrong and are taught as such in holy scripture," Mr Beyer said.
"The BBC really ought to be focusing on mainstream services which are more in keeping with the public service requirement that it has."
However, Father Donal Godfrey, the U.S. Jesuit priest celebrating the Mass, said he was delighted the BBC was "exploring how gay people fit into the perspective of the Christian narrative".
"Being gay is not special," he said. "It's simply another gift from God who created us as rainbow people."
The recording will go out at 8.10am to two million listeners on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship programme.
The preacher will be James Alison - a homosexual British Catholic theologian and author of 'Is it ethical to be Catholic? - Queer perspectives'.
Weeks after the BBC finished recording the service last October, it emerged that a transvestite group calling themselves the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence regularly staged lewd and irreverent bingo nights on the church premises.
The San Francisco archdiocese-stopped the events when it was discovered that prizes of a sexual nature were being handed out by the group, who dress as nuns.
In the past members of the group have paraded naked through the city advertising a 'hunky Jesus' contest. Their motto is: 'Go and sin some more.'
A spokesman for BBC Radio 4 said: "The strength of Sunday Worship is its diversity. It aims to reflect a variety of Christian spiritualities, and for that reason, when editorially appropriate - on average about once a quarter - comes from outside the UK.
"Taking the theme "Finding a place in the Christian narrative" this programme comes from the largest and oldest predominantly gay area in the world, from a Catholic community which has an experienced and developed understanding of the issues of being gay and Christian.
"As far as we know this is the first time the subject of being gay and Christian has been explored by the programme."
The Roman Catholic Church holds that sex belongs in the context of heterosexual marriage and that gay sex is "objectively disordered".
However, it also teaches that homosexual orientation is not in itself sinful and that gays and lesbians must be treated with respect and be free from unjust discrimination.
7 comments:
How will we be able to tell that it is a "gay" mass? Will it be different in any way?
Surely treating people with respect is rather different from a gay Mass?
For the last few years that I lived in London, I simply stopped paying the TV tax...and shipped the TV right out as well. Believe it or not, I survived without it. The BBC is nothing but state sponsored terrorism...against the state itself. I wouldn't and won't pay for it.
There are one or two questions.Isit something to do with an election? and are "straights" allowed to participate?
Having just read the complete transcript of the BBC tirade against the old mass, I rest my case. According to the good old BEEB, because we pray for the conversion of the Jews, we are against them (i.e., anti-semetic). Apparantly, we in our own faith, considering ourselves as we do a semitic religion, have no right to pray for others to join us, including our older brothers in faith, in believing that the promised Messiah and Redeemer has come. No, in praying for the conversion of people we obviously care deeply about on one of the most important days of the year, we obviously hate them, and want to see them dead.
Uh-huh. Right.
Is not this deliberate and uninformed slander against the intentions of our prayers enough example of religious bigotry, and in fact a state-sponsored hate crime? This week needs to be filled with some pro-active measures on the part of traditionalists to find ways to call the media on their bias. Distribute some pamphlets, state a Te-Deum sing in at the National Gallery, call talk-shows, do something. But don't sit idly by. The most important crossroads of the faith, perhaps in its history is approaching, and remember, "faith without works is dead."
Do it with "charity and cheerfulness as our mottot" to quote St. Philip Neri, but ramp it up, folks.
Auntie Beeb is acting in a really sinister manner here. An inaccurate and unbalanced article which implies that the speculated motu proprio is going to be a nuisance appears, and then they decide to broadcast a 'Mass' which is not at all approved by the Bishop. A source of grace, prayer, silence and holiness is condemned, whilst a 'Mass' with at least two grave liturgical abuses in a parish where the Church's teaching is openly rejected. If the BBC wants to cause havoc in the Church of Christ, they've planned it pretty neatly. We must all pray for them so that they recognise the consequences for their souls.
I happened to hear most of the broadcast. How could you tell it was a "gay" Mass? Well,because at every opportunity they were at pains to tell you how inclusive it all was. How could you tell it was a Mass? Well not very easily. I had to switch off before the Liturgy of the Eucharist started as I had a train to catch, but I wouldn't have believed it unless I'd heard it.
And on Vocations Sunday.
The BBC have lost the plot big time. Pity they do it with my Licence Fee.
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