By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Same-sex marriage has already forced the Church out of the adoption business in many U.S. states where the unions are sanctioned, but it is now threatening to force the Church out of the marriage business too, says Archbishop Barry Hickey of the Archdiocese of Perth, Australia, who says he’ll stop performing marriages altogether if forced to conduct the unions.
According to The Record, Hickey made the comments while addressing parishioners on Sunday.
“We might be back to the ghetto. We can’t do those marriages at all. And if the law forces us to, we cancel our registration as marriage celebrants. We just don’t do it,” he told parishioners of the Traditional Anglican Church parish of St Ninian and St Chad in Maylands on Sunday.
The Archbishop went on to say that he had “very, very serious concerns” about the Federal Government’s push to amend marriage laws to include same-sex unions.
“The ban on sodomy is still there,” he said. “We can’t bless a relationship with an inbuilt defect in it . . . We’ve got nothing against people loving one another; it’s the sexual content that makes it difficult for us.”
The comments were in regard to a motion passed last month by the Tasmanian Parliament which supported same-sex marriage and urged the federal government to amend the law. However, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has expressed her support for marriage as it is currently defined in the Marriage Act. Passed in 1961, the law describes marriage as meaning”the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.”
The Archbishop also said he had not yet worked out whether the Church could bury people who had entered into same-sex unions. Saying he was only “thinking out loud” when making the statement, his office later issued a missive clarifying his position.
“A number of priests have urged me to take the compassionate view and place no barrier on burying people, because we cannot judge a person’s inner conscience nor do we know that person’s relationship with God,” he said. “I think this is good advice and I will take it.”
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