In Sweden, priests have the authority to seal marriages as official registrars. Thus, the union they seal is valid in Church and civilly. The motion proposes that the Church of Sweden classifies conscientious objections against sealing same-sex marriage in the Church as discrimination.

As a consequence of that, priests who do not want to bless a same-sex marriage in Church should lose their priesthood, the motion reads, according to Kyrkans Tidning, the Church's bulletin.

The motion was put forward by the Social Democrat leader Jesper Enerot. He wants the Synod to fire any priest who "discriminates against someone because of their gender, age, ethnicity or sexual orientation."

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Where the prestigious school's alumnae magazine had never allowed same sex union announcements, the policy has been re-examined and changed recently.

Visitation Sister Mary Berchmans, the school's president emerita, wrote a letter announcing the change.

The letter has stirred a mixture of responses. Some school community members say it is "beautiful" and "overdue."

Others say it is a "great disappointment."

Some are unhappy it took so long for the school to reach this point, while a few are angry the school is veering from Catholic doctrine.

The change followed a push last month from hundreds of the school's graduates who formed a Facebook group to discuss the school's policy of denying marriage announcements to same-sex couples.

They decided to urge a change in policy.

In her letter, Berchmans wrote, "Recently, a Visitation friend invited me to reflect upon what it means to Live Jesus in relationship with our ­LGBTQ alumnae."

That conversation — as well as "much prayerful consideration and thoughtful dialogue" — led the school to its new policy.

"As a professed Sister of the Visitation for 67 years, I have devoted my life in service to the Catholic Church.

"The Church is clear in its teaching on same-sex marriages. But, it is equally clear in its teaching that we are all children of God, that we each have dignity and are worthy of respect and love.

"As I have prayed over this contradiction, I keep returning to this choice: we can focus on Church teaching on gay marriage or we can focus on Church teaching on the Gospel commandment of love.

"We know from history — including very recent history — that the Church, in its humanity, makes mistakes. Yet, through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, it learns and grows. And so, we choose the Gospel commandment of love."

A gay Visitation graduate who is married to her partner says she is profoundly moved by Visitation's decision.

"To see the school stand with gay and lesbian students and parents and families, I just felt really emotional and grateful."

The Archdiocese of Washington says it was not made aware of the school's decision before the letter from Berchmans was sent.

"The archdiocese has a clear responsibility to ensure independent Catholic schools maintain their authentic Catholic identity and provide advice and guidance on such matters as they arise.

"Catholic Church teaching on marriage is clear, and it also does not conflict with the Gospel message of love."

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of an advocacy group for LGBTQ Catholics, says he is not aware of any other Catholic high school alumni magazines that includes announcements of same-sex unions. He says Berch­mans' letter is "beautiful and very powerful".

"This is a really big step forward.

"This is something that all Catholic schools are eventually going to have to deal with, sooner rather than later. ...Catholic leaders try to bury their heads and pretend this is not a reality, but it is."

Source

• The Washington Post
• Global Sisters Report
• Image: www.visi.org

In 2010, when Time magazine and the Pew Research Center famously asked Americans whether they thought marriage was becoming obsolete, 39 percent said yes.

That was up from 28 percent when Time asked the question in 1978.

Also, since 2010, the US Census Bureau has reported that married couples have made up less than half of all households; in 1950 they made up 78 percent.

Data such as these have led to much collective handwringing about the fate of the embattled institution.

Same sex marriage

But there is one statistical tidbit that flies in the face of this conventional wisdom: A clear majority of same-sex couples who are living together are now married.

Same-sex marriage was illegal in every state until Massachusetts legalized it in 2004, and it did not become legal nationwide until the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

Two years after that decision, 61 percent of same-sex couples who were sharing a household were married, according to a set of surveys by Gallup.

That's a high take-up rate: Just because same-sex couples are able to marry doesn't mean that they have to; and yet large numbers have seized the opportunity. (That's compared with 89 percent of different-sex couples.)

The move toward marriage has not been driven by young gay and lesbian couples rushing to the altar.

In both the year before and the year after Obergefell, only one out of seven people whom the Census Bureau classified as in a same-sex marriage was age 30 or younger, according to calculations I've done based on the bureau's American Community Survey.

In fact, half of them were age 50 or older.

The only way that could have happened, given that same-sex marriage has been legal for less than 15 years, is if large numbers of older same-sex couples who had been together for many years took advantage of the new laws.

In other words, changes in state and federal laws seem to have spurred a backlog of committed, medium-to long-term couples to marry.

Why would they choose to do so after living, presumably happily, as cohabiting unmarried partners?

In part, they may have married to take advantage of the legal rights and benefits of married couples, such as the ability to submit a joint federal tax return.

But the legal issues, important as they are, appear secondary.

In a 2013 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 84 percent of LGBT individuals said that "love" was a very important reason to marry, and 71 percent said "companionship" was very important, compared to 46 percent who said that "legal rights and benefits" are very important.

Yet the emphasis on love and companionship is not enough to explain the same-sex marriage boom.

Without doubt, most of the middle-aged same-sex couples who have married of late already had love and companionship—otherwise they would not have still been together.

So why marry now?

Marriage became for them a public marker of their successful union, providing them the opportunity to display their love and companionship to family and friends.

One reason, of course, was the desire to claim a right so long denied, but that only further underlines the way in which marriage today signals to the wider community the success of a long-standing relationship.

In this sense, these gay couples were falling right in line with the broader American pattern right now: For many people, regardless of sexual orientation, a wedding is no longer the first step into adulthood that it once was, but, often, the last.

It is a celebration of all that two people have already done, unlike a traditional wedding, which was a celebration of what a couple would do in the future.

Consistent with this shift in meaning, different-sex couples, like the many of the same-sex couples who have married recently, are starting their marriages later in their lives. Continue reading

• Image: The Atlantic

The child will not be raised in the Catholic faith.

Both the child's birth parents are Catholics.

The child was removed from her mother's care when she was only a few days old.

He mother is a drug addict, has a manslaughter conviction and was deemed unable to care for the infant.

The New South Wales Supreme Court heard the birth mother was "a practising Catholic and she is not comfortable with [the child's] placement with the proposed adoptive parents because of her upbringing and religious values".

The adoptive parents are a lesbian couple.

The couple have had the girl in their care since she was six months old and began proceedings to legally adopt her.

They told the court they couldn't raise the child as a Catholic given the religion's longstanding opposition to homosexual relationships.

The judge ruled that while cultural and religious traditions should be "preserved as far as possible", they should not impact on the child's wellbeing.

He said religion was only one aspect of the many factors the court needed to consider.

Source

• The Sydney Morning Herald
• Pink News
• Image: Public Domain Pictures