News from Sweden

Go to www.scandhouse.org and click the link to read the Bishops' letter from the Mission Province.

Shrimp here, posting on Friday, thinking Cap'n Bill ought to have said a wee bit more. The letter is a response to the Swedish Parliament's approval of "gender neutral" marriage. For some years Sweden has offered legal same-sex unions (and such unions could then be blessed by priests of the [Lutheran] Church of Sweden), but had refrained from calling such unions "marriage."

The Missionsprovinsen ["Mission Province"] is described on Wikipedia as "a second, independent ecclesiastical province within the Church of Sweden . . . founded by members of the 'orthodox opposition' to the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate." The province was organized in 2003 and its first Bishop (there are now 3) was consecrated by Lutheran Bishops (in apostolic succession) from Kenya, Belarus, South Africa, and Norway in 2005.

And this becomes suddenly more relevant as the Iowa Supreme Court becomes the latest court to declare that "limiting" marriage to being between a man and a woman is "unconstitutional." Shrimp, of boggled-mind, out.