Saying that they “lament and have cried over the widely reported mass shootings” in the United States, the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops said March 12 that they are also “outraged by the too often unseen and unacknowledged daily massacre of our young people in cities such as Chicago, Newark, Baltimore, Port-au-Prince and Tegucigalpa.”“This carnage must stop,” bishops said in a “Word to the Church” issued from the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina (Diocese of Western North Carolina) at the end of their March 8-12 meeting.
The bishops said they “embody a wide variety of experiences and perspectives with respect to firearms,” including as “hunters and sport-shooters, former members of the military and law enforcement officers.
“We respect and honor that we are not of one mind regarding matters related to gun legislation. Yet we are convinced that there needs to be a new conversation in the United States that challenges gun violence,” they said. “Because of the wide variety of contexts in which we live and our commitment to reasoned and respectful discourse that holds together significant differences in creative tension, we believe that The Episcopal Church can and must lead in this effort. In fact many in this church are already doing so, for which we thank God.”
A specific commitment “to lead a new conversation in our nations as to the appropriate use and legislation of firearms” and to commit to “specific actions to this end,” is, the bishops said, in keeping with their episcopal ordination vows to “boldly proclaim and interpret the Gospel of Christ, enlightening the minds and stirring up the conscience.”
More here-
http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2013/03/12/carnage-of-gun-violence-must-stop-bishops-say/
No comments:
Post a Comment