Sarah Coakley—Taming Desire: Celibacy, Sexuality and the Church
...anyone surveying the cultural and political scene with a dispassionate eye would surely have to come to other conclusions: the general erosion of the instance of life-long marriage in North America and Europe, the rise in divorce rates, and the concomitant upsurge in the number of single-parent families, are all well-known to us in secular discussions, but are by no means absent from church-attending, or indeed Protestant clerical, families.
Only a short time ago, for instance, the clergy of the Diocese of Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts received a mailing calmly announcing that one of their suffragan bishops was undergoing a divorce.
One could not but be struck by the air of enforced "normalcy" and psychological adjudication that hung over this letter - no regrets, no confessions, no distress even, and certainly no reference to either bible or Christian tradition: just an insistence that the couple had been "faithful in caring for ... each other" in the past, but were now "clear" about the fact that their marriage was "ending."
Read it all.
Only a short time ago, for instance, the clergy of the Diocese of Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts received a mailing calmly announcing that one of their suffragan bishops was undergoing a divorce.
One could not but be struck by the air of enforced "normalcy" and psychological adjudication that hung over this letter - no regrets, no confessions, no distress even, and certainly no reference to either bible or Christian tradition: just an insistence that the couple had been "faithful in caring for ... each other" in the past, but were now "clear" about the fact that their marriage was "ending."
Read it all.
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