{"id":499,"date":"2008-02-20T16:04:06","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T16:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n.php"},"modified":"2008-02-20T16:04:06","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T16:04:06","slug":"presbyterian-high-court-bars-n","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n","title":{"rendered":"Presbyterian High Court Bars Noncelibate Gay Clergy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Daniel Burke<br \/>\nReligion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\n(RNS) The high court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has issued a landmark decision that unequivocally bars noncelibate gay and lesbian clergy and halts recent attempts to compromise on ordination standards.<br \/>\nMinisterial candidates in the PCUSA are required to be in faithful heterosexual marriages or remain celibate, though a compromise reached in 2006 was thought to potentially loosen those standards.<br \/>\nNo such loosening is allowed, ruled the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, the 16-member high court of the PCUSA, on Feb. 11.<br \/>\nThe &#8220;fidelity and chastity&#8221; requirement is &#8220;a mandatory standard that cannot be waived,&#8221; the court ruled.<br \/>\nWhile candidates for ordination may disagree with those standards, they are still required to obey them, the court said. The standards themselves can only be changed through a constitutional amendment at a biennial General Assembly, according to the court.<br \/>\nIn 2006, Presbyterians passed an &#8220;authoritative interpretation&#8221; of the constitution that many saw as a compromise, which would allow gay and lesbian candidates to declare a conscientious objection, or &#8220;scruple,&#8221; to the ordination standard. The local presbytery, or governing body, could then decide whether the candidate&#8217;s scruple touched on an &#8220;essential&#8221; of the faith.<br \/>\nIn January, Lisa Larges, a lesbian, used the &#8220;scruple&#8221; policy to pursue a path to ministry in the San Francisco Presbytery. Later that month, Minnesota Presbyterians approved the re-ordination of a gay man, Paul Capetz, who left ministry eight years ago because he would not take the celibacy vow.<br \/>\n&#8220;The San Francisco case does get stopped in its tracks,&#8221; said Jack Haberer, editor-in-chief of The Presbyterian Outlook and a member of the task force that brokered the ordination compromise. But since Capetz&#8217;s ordination had been reinstated, someone would have to seek to defrock him, Haberer said.<br \/>\nCapetz said the ruling left him &#8220;baffled.&#8221; He said he would not relinquish his ordination and that he had been certain the new &#8220;scruple&#8221; policy opened the door to gay and lesbian clergy.<br \/>\n&#8220;Everyone I talked to saw it that way. We thought a new way had opened up,&#8221; Capetz said Tuesday (Feb. 19).<br \/>\nConservative Presbyterians, however, were pleased by the ruling.<br \/>\n&#8220;We can now rest assured that our standards for ordination in the PCUSA continue to reflect the clear teaching of Scripture and the plain meaning of our constitution,&#8221; the Louisville, Ky.-based Presbyterians for Renewal said in a statement.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Daniel Burke Religion News Service (RNS) The high court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has issued a landmark decision that unequivocally bars noncelibate gay and lesbian clergy and halts recent attempts to compromise on ordination standards. Ministerial candidates in the PCUSA are required to be in faithful heterosexual marriages or remain celibate, though a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Presbyterian High Court Bars Noncelibate Gay Clergy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Presbyterian High Court Bars Noncelibate Gay Clergy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Daniel Burke Religion News Service (RNS) The high court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has issued a landmark decision that unequivocally bars noncelibate gay and lesbian clergy and halts recent attempts to compromise on ordination standards. Ministerial candidates in the PCUSA are required to be in faithful heterosexual marriages or remain celibate, though a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-20T16:04:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Presbyterian High Court Bars Noncelibate Gay Clergy","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Presbyterian High Court Bars Noncelibate Gay Clergy","og_description":"By Daniel Burke Religion News Service (RNS) The high court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has issued a landmark decision that unequivocally bars noncelibate gay and lesbian clergy and halts recent attempts to compromise on ordination standards. Ministerial candidates in the PCUSA are required to be in faithful heterosexual marriages or remain celibate, though a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-02-20T16:04:06+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n","name":"Presbyterian High Court Bars Noncelibate Gay Clergy","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-02-20T16:04:06+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-20T16:04:06+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/presbyterian-high-court-bars-n#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Presbyterian High Court Bars Noncelibate Gay Clergy"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}