Have I engaged this topic in a way that leads to the flourishing that you very beautifully call forth from male leaders? One day God will make this clear. But isn’t the point of dialogue to enter into the fray and to refine each other through enhanced mutual understanding?
By keeping the love of our neighbor and working toward shalom in our communities at the forefront of everything we do, we can engage in these conversations with a love and humility that will then lead to the mutual thriving of those in our communities and extend outwards to the world around us.
Hospitality does not mean inviting people into the most sacramentally intimate spaces of the Christian life, it means being honest about intentions, healthy boundaries, the shape and form such commitments will take, and yes, eventually, the intimate sharing of one body with another. If consent is important in our debates about sexual boundaries, how is it also not important for sacramental boundaries?
Bishop Gregory H. Rickel: “whenever this particular clause regarding statute of limitations has arisen, my response has always been, ‘there [is] no statute of limitations in the Body of Christ.’”
“We hope that this temporary suspension of the statute of limitations will be one way for the church to come to terms with cases of sexual misconduct in our collective past.”
Bp. Andrew Dietsche: “[I]t was shattering, or difficult to comprehend, that Paul Moore, a figure of extraordinary inspiration for so many of us, also bears the epithet ‘Serial Predator.’”
