Three years in the making, the Church of England has published a set of resources titled Living in Love and Faith, exploring LGBT+ issues including "identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage."

But the materials have been criticised for admitting the ongoing harm to the LGBT+ community by the Church of England without implementing any changes.

In the foreword for the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) book, the archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell apologised for "the huge damage and hurt" inflicted on the LGBT+ community by the church.

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Lawyers and activists say the women, aged 22 and 32, were seated on stools facing the judges and given six strokes from a light rattan cane on their backs by female prison officers.

More than 100 people witnessed the caning. Read more

Tony Spence had posted tweets in reaction to religious freedom legislation under debate in Georgia and Tennessee and a gender identity measure in North Carolina.

He also tweeted about an article in another publication about gay students at evangelical colleges.

For example, a tweet he posted on March 24 stated: "LGBT protections get flushed as NC governor signs bill over #bathroomwars."

Mr Spence, who had been director and editor-in-chief of CNS since 2004, was attacked by conservative Catholic bloggers over the tweets.

The bloggers alleged that he was promoting an LGBT agenda.

These views were posted to sites like The Lepanto Institute, The Church Militant and LifeSiteNews.com

"The far right blogsphere and their troops started coming after me again and it was too much for the USCCB [US Conference of Catholic Bishops]," Mr Spence told the National Catholic Reporter.

"The secretary general [of the US bishops' conference] asked for my resignation, because the conference had lost confidence in my ability to lead CNS," Mr Spence said.

Those who know him said Mr Spence feels "shattered".

Catholic News Service is an office of the USCCB and Mr Spence was a member of the conference senior staff.

On Wednesday last week, Mr Spence attended a regularly scheduled staff story meeting at 2 pm.

Sometime later, after meeting with Msgr J. Brian Bransfield, the general secretary of the bishops' conference, Mr Spence was escorted from the conference office building without being allowed to speak to his newsroom staff.

Staff in the Washington office were told of Spence's leaving shortly after 4 pm.

James L. Rogers, chief communications officer for the US bishops' conference, sent an email memo to all CNS staff "to share news of Tony stepping down as editor-in-chief, effective today".

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• NPR
• Image: National Catholic Reporter