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Don't scapegoat gay clergy, Charleston tells O'Reilly
2002-283-5
12/19/2002
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[Episcopal News Service]
Bishop Steven Charleston, president and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a guest on the Fox News program 'The O'Reilly Factor' on December 17.
The segment related to a recent Boston Globe editorial written by Bishops M. Thomas Shaw and Bud Cederholm of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts challenging a recent Vatican statement implying a link between pedophilia and homosexuality.
'The real problem we're facing in the church is abuse, and the second big problem we're facing in the church is how the church hierarchy deals with the cases of abuse,' Charleston told host Bill O'Reilly.
'It is a very, very big problem for gay people to combat that kind of stereotyping and prejudice, and it's a big problem for heterosexual people as well,' Charleston said. 'What we want are for gay people and heterosexual leadership to come together united to make sure that we simply don't tolerate this kind of abuse in the life of any church, and this is not just an issue for the Roman Catholic Church.'
In a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, Charleston wrote, 'The church cannot make homosexuals the scapegoats for its own failures, especially failures at the highest levels of its own administration. Rather, it should acknowledge that gay and lesbian persons always have, and always will, provide outstanding clergy and lay leadership for the Christian faith.'
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