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Here's where the case gets even messier: Westbrook is also a licensed professional counselor, so Penley is suing under the Texas Licensed Professional Counselor Act. She says Westbrook's license obliges him to keep information revealed in counseling secret. Appeals Court Judge Anne Gardner apparently agreed. Westbrook, she wrote,

argues that to the extent the regulations and statutes applicable to licensed professional counselors apply to Westbrook in his "pastoral capacity," they impose an impermissible and unconstitutional burden on his First Amendment rights. This argument fails because Penley is not arguing that Westbrook committed clergy malpractice or that he was otherwise negligent while providing pastoral counseling. Rather, Penley alleges that Westbrook provided negligent secular counseling to and for Penley and that his counseling services fell below the reasonable and prudent standards of care applicable to any licensed professional counselor under the same or similar circumstances.

This one may be much tougher to adjudicate than whether a Roman Catholic politician "obstinately persisting in grave sin" by supporting abortion should be denied Communion.

In any case, can we Protestants please start talking about church discipline again? And perhaps on more issues than marital affairs?

More articles

AIDS:

• Message in AIDS program faulted | Botswana's success in providing the latest medicine to treat AIDS patients in villages of dirt-floor huts hides a darker reality — the deadly disease continues to spread at alarming rates (The Washington Times)
• AIDS money spent on bingo | A D.C.-based AIDS charity spent thousands of dollars of federal grant money on cigarettes, movie tickets and bingo games, an audit by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development disclosed (The Washington Times)
• Stricter rules for AIDS funds written | Proposed changes to the guidelines for giving federal money to AIDS-prevention programs would require approval of educational materials before they are posted on the Internet (The Washington Times)

Gay marriage rite developed in Vt.:

• Liturgy for gay marriages developed in Vt. | Vermont's Episcopal Diocese has become the first in the country to develop a liturgy — a script for a religious service — in response to a state law making same-sex unions legal (Associated Press)
• New rites for Vt. civil unions | Episcopal bishop sees three-year trial period (The Boston Globe)
• Two rectors to continue blessing unions | The rectors of Episcopal parishes in Milton and Arlington, barred by the Episcopal Church from solemnizing same-sex marriages, say they have stopped signing all marriage licenses, but will continue blessing homosexual and heterosexual couples in religious wedding ceremonies (The Boston Globe)

Archbishop twice agreed to appoint gay bishop:

• Canon fodder | The decision to appoint Canon Jeffrey John as its first gay bishop last year split the Church of England. In a revealing new book, the Guardian's religious correspondent Stephen Bates lays bare the politics, maneuvering and hypocrisy behind one of the most ignoble episodes in the Church's history (The Guardian, London)

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June (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48