A Pastoral Letter on Two Issues in
our National Life that Require our Prayer and Action
to be read in all parishes of the diocese November 17 and 18th, 1998.
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
To: Parish Clergy
and Senior Wardens
From: The Bishop
Acting under the Canons, I am directing that the following letter
be read at all services of worship on the 17th and 18th of October;
in the alternative, it can be printed and distributed in service
leaflets. If you elect the second route, please advise people of
its presence during your announcements.
Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Diocese of Bethlehem,
Grace and peace to you from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus
Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I write to you regarding two issues in our national life that require
our prayer and action.
PRESIDENT CLINTON Let me first pass on to you what the Presiding
Bishop has said regarding the President of the United States in correspondence
with church members who have raised the issue with him.
"I respect, and hope that we will honor, the plea of President Clinton
for forgiveness. This is rooted in my understanding and experience
of God's boundless compassion and mercy. I am deeply mindful that
all of us, in various ways, are constantly in need of the grace of
forgiveness ourselves.
"At the same time, I realize there are very real questions about
the implications of the President's actions for the symbolic nature
of the Office of President, and the role of the President both as
leader of our nation and within the world community. These questions
must be addressed carefully and sensitively, and in a nonpartisan
manner, with the focus clearly on what is best for our nation."
Allow me to add a bit to Bishop Griswold's statement. I believe
that we have a clear duty as a church to teach each other and those
who will come after us that all relationships are built on the ability
to believe each other, and that lying, particularly under oath, destroys
what makes possible civilization, let alone community. We also need
constantly to reaffirm that the classroom and the workplace, with
their wildly uneven distribution of power, must be places that protect
from exploitation those who have the least power and perspective.
MATTHEW SHEPARD A fellow Episcopalian, Matthew Shepard, is dead
at the age of twenty-one because two men believed that his homosexuality
gave them license to beat him. Regardless of anyone's prior behavior,
there can be no mitigating circumstances in a case of premeditated
savagery. Opinions about the theological status of homosexuality
are distributed in a wide spectrum across our Church, but those who
hold extreme views on either end of that spectrum agree that no human
being is to be treated with disrespect, contempt, or violence. It
is a basic principle of democracy that no human beings should live
in fear for their lives; we are to live under law, not under terror.
A special burden lies on the Church not to let our debates about
sexuality give anyone a license to kill or to hate.
In your prayers this weekend, please remember Matthew and his family.
Please remember those who killed him. I also ask that you take time
to consider our culture of violence wherein many media -- they say
it's not personal, it's business -- most effectively teach our children,
day in and day out, that the solution to a problem is to kill or
cripple, and that violence is exciting and without consequence. We
do not have the money to communicate the Christian message with the
special effects of highly sophisticated multimedia, so it is doubly
important that our children hear directly from parents and other
figures of authority that the violence they see over and over again
is not the path Christians follow. To balance what is, in effect,
an abusive and weighted relationship between our culture's media
and our children, parents need to do the unpopular thing and limit
what their children see and hear so that their minds can mature with
some balance. We have a responsibility to protect young minds from
messages that desensitize us to violence and reduce Matthew Shepard's
death to just another story.
Faithfully yours, Bishop Paul V. Marshall October 14, 1998
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