From Religion News Service: 

***A special session of the United Methodist Church voted to strengthen the denomination’s ban on the ordination and marriage of LGBTQ people. 

Delegates to the General Conference, the global denomination’s decision-making body, passed the so-called Traditional Plan by a vote of 438-384. 

Passage of the Traditional Plan left both its supporters and opponents alike worried about the future of the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination, and raises the possibility of a large split of the general congregation. 

 

***Three bishops from the Episcopal Diocese of New York have written an open letter to their clergy and parishioners to protest a request by the Archbishop of Canterbury.  The Archbishop requested two American gay bishops not bring their spouses to the Anglican Communion’s Lambeth Conference in July of 2020. 

All three New York bishops have decided to attend, citing their wish to maintain a voice for the Diocese of New York at the Conference regarding sexuality and the inclusion of LGBTQ people. 

 

***The most senior Catholic cleric ever charged with child sex abuse has been convicted of molesting two choirboys in Australia 

Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis’ top financial adviser and the Vatican’s economy minister, received a unanimous verdict in December of 2018. The court had forbidden the publication of details until this week. 

The jury convicted Pell of abusing two 13-year-old boys whom he had caught swigging sacramental wine in a rear room of Melbourne’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in late 1996, and of indecently assaulting one of the boys in a corridor more than a month later. 

Pell had maintained his innocence throughout, describing the accusations as “vile and disgusting conduct” that went against everything he believed in. 

 

***  The allegations of “sexually inappropriate words and actions” against founder of Willow Creek Community Church Bill Hybels, are credible. That’s according to an independent group of Christian leaders advising the church. 

Hybels’ alleged behavior, directed mostly at women connected to the Chicago-area megachurch, took place at various points during his more than four decades of leadership. 

Hybels has publicly and privately denied allegations of misconduct, according to the report. 

After Hybels stepped down, the church’s elders admitted that he had sinned and called on him to apologize. All the church’s elders and Hybels’ successors eventually resigned over their handling of the issue. 

 

*** Jewish and Muslim communities in Belgium are seeking to overturn a recent ban on the ritual slaughter of animals that they say is discrimination cloaked in an animal protection mantle. 

More than 50 religious groups have lodged complaints with the country’s Constitutional Court in the hope of repealing the new legislation. 

The Muslim halal and Jewish kosher rituals require that animals should be in perfect health when they are slaughtered by having their throats slit and their blood drained. Under a new law, animals will have to be rendered unconscious — or stunned — before being killed, a method that animal rights advocates argue is more humane.