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Holloway of Scotland says church should ordain gays, lesbians and celibate women
2002-278-2
12/10/2002
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[Episcopal News Service]
Bishop Richard Holloway, retired bishop of Edinburgh and primate of the Scottish Episcopal Church, has publicly said that celibate women should be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church -- and Anglicans should endorse the ordination of gays and lesbians.
Holloway argued that the biblical argument against ordaining women has been removed. 'If you go against the express word of Scripture in order to do justice to women, you have already broken down the walls that protect the unchanging authority of Church and Bible,' he wrote in a Scottish newspaper.
'You have tacitly admitted that many of the church's traditional attitudes are obsolete,' he added. 'Having swallowed the camel of female emancipation, it should not be too difficult for the church to take the next gulp and swallow the gnat of justice for homosexuals as well. This is why the evangelical tendency is so afraid of the advent' of Rowan Williams as the new archbishop of Canterbury.
Holloway called Williams 'probably the most gifted religious leader there has been in Britain for centuries' and said that he has liberal views on homosexuality but has agreed to maintain the church's traditional practices in his new office.
The Roman Catholics can circumvent the thorny issue of gay clergy, according to Holloway. 'By allowing its clergy to marry it would end up as bourgeois an institution as the Protestant churches,' he said. 'The Holy Father could solve both the sexual and manpower crisis of the Catholic Church by ordaining celibate women. One of the greatest strengths of the Catholic Church is the quality of its religious sisters. They make splendid pastors and seem to find sexual abstinence easier to cope with than their male counterparts.'
Holloway concluded that 'maintaining a celibate priesthood would outflank the gay and lesbian issue and solve the grave shortage of priests.'
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