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It is with sadness that we learned of the death on Friday night of the Revd Harry Rose, former Rector of Flin Flon, at his home in Cranbrook BC. Please remember him, his wife Nancy and the family in your prayers.

Welcome to the Revd Laura Piotrowicz as she begins her new ministry in the Birtle/Pelly Trail parishes, and to the Revd Nigel Packwood, as he takes on the Rivers/Miniota/Strathclair parishes. We also extend warm wishes to the Ven Paul Curtis, on his appointment as Bishop Jim's Vicar-General and Commissary.

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Forthcoming events at the Cathedral
also publicity leaflet • registration forms • video link for 2010 Camp

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Monday, February 8

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Tales from ACNA-Land
1: Putting the shoe on your foot – Seven Whole Days

For the latest in my “Tales from ACNA-Land” series, I’m writing about something that will be unpleasant for my friends in England. You see, ACNA or ACE or EACNANA or GAFCE or some such is coming to a village near you. Make no mistake, the secessionist agenda will spread to England as the C of E inevitably disappoints the radical right wing in its efforts to reshape Anglicanism.

Now at this point, all of my English readers are smiling knowingly and muttering something like, “Cheerio, old yank! This can’t happen here in merry olde England. That’s not how it’s done, guv.” Of course, it’s not how we did things in the US before the radical right began to seek the takeover of our national political, cultural, and religious life. (Reminder — the C of E does have at least one living schism.)

2: “Church Militant” gets new meaning

3: Duncan says Canterbury is “lost”

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The Facts about ACNA – a nine-point aide memoire

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Tim Tebow

The Tebow ad you didn't see – Washington Post Did you see the pro-life Super Bowl ad featuring college football star Tim Tebow and his mother Pam? Were you amused? Annoyed? Confused? If you blinked you probably missed the 30-second spot that ran after the Saints very first three-and-out possession in the first quarter. You didn't see the alternative version of the ad that Focus on the Family chose not to run. Ken Tucker, TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, wonders why FF chose the ad that was lighter, less effective and somewhat distracting (though funnier -- Tebow tackles his mother).

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Obama condemns Ugandan legislation during disputed prayer breakfast – ECNS

On a day when religious and political leaders in the U.S. held competing prayer breakfasts, U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned as "odious" proposed changes to Uganda's anti-homosexuality laws.
The Ugandan Parliament is considering a bill proposed by one of its members, David Bahati, that would introduce the death penalty for people who violate portions of that country's existing anti-homosexuality laws.

"We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are -- whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda," Obama told the National Prayer Breakfast, held Feb. 4 at the Washington D.C. Hilton Hotel.

Earlier, Clinton had told the gathering that the U.S. is "standing up for gays and lesbians, who deserve to be treated as full human beings. And we are also making it clear to countries and leaders that these are priorities of the United States." She said she had recently telephoned Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, whom she said she had met through the prayer breakfast, "and expressed the strongest concerns about a law being considered in the parliament of Uganda."

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Divine Impulses: Gayle Haggard on her husband's gay affair and why she believes he is heterosexual – Washington Post (video) The wife of scandalized evangelical leader Ted Haggard on her husband's "hypocrisy" and why she says that his affair was "the answer to our prayers." She also explains why she supports civil unions for gays. (Video by Elizabeth Tenety, Katharine Crnko)

Ted Haggard

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The Rt Revd Mary Glasspool

Have Faith in Love – NY Times THE election, two months ago, of the Rev. Mary Glasspool, a priest who has been in a committed relationship with another woman for more than 20 years, as a suffragan (assistant) bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, has brought added turmoil to the Episcopal Church in the United States and to the worldwide Anglican Communion. There has been sporadic schism since the regular ordination of women as priests in 1977 and especially since the election of the Rev. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. He is the first openly gay bishop in the history of those Christian bishops — Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Greek and Russian Orthodox among them — who trace their succession back to the apostles. In protest, several dozen parishes have aligned themselves with conservative Anglican bishops in Africa, and the Roman Catholic Church has offered to take in disaffected Episcopalians. In 2008, the leadership of the Anglican Communion, to which the American church belongs, tried to keep things together by urging the Americans not to elect other openly gay people as bishops until the Communion could establish more common ground. The Los Angeles electors’ choice of a gay woman as bishop has pushed the denominational envelope to the point of tearing.

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Sunday, February 7

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At least a million people in Haiti are currently in need of aid

G7 nations pledge debt relief for quake-hit Haiti – BBC The world's leading industrialised nations have pledged to write off the debts that Haiti owes them, following a devastating earthquake last month. Canada's finance minister announced at a summit in Iqaluit, northern Canada, that Group of Seven countries planned to cancel Haiti's bilateral debts. Jim Flaherty said he would encourage international lenders to do the same.

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Sharing food, fun on final day of festival – Brandon Sun
 

Dressed in traditional clothing, moose-hide moccasins and a bright red sash, Laurence Belhumeur took a moment on Saturday to reflect on his Métis upbringing.

“I learned how to cook bannock when I was not even 10,” he said, as he sat on a bench at the Métis pavilion. “We hunted all our lives ... my dad was a trapper. We made all our own weapons.”

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Papers on property disputes, relating to ACNA

Affidavits have been filed by Prof Bruce Mullin in the cases of Ohio and Fort Worth. We know the speed at which the wheels of God grind. These papers may be of interest to those curious about the grist to the mill.

In addition, Anglican Essentials Canada has been doing a bit of rebutting.

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Christopher Hitchens, Religious in Spite of Himself? – ReligionDispatches Not long ago, Christopher Hitchens—pugilistic author of God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything—sat down for an interview with retired Unitarian minister (and self-professed “liberal Christian”) Marilyn Sewell. It wasn’t the usual sort of conversation that Hitchens has with “believers,” since his preferred sparring partners tend to be religious conservatives and apologists for fundamentalism (such as Douglas Wilson).

In a recent interview with a Unitarian minister, the Vanity Fair columnist seemed to be nibbling at the edges of what can only be described as spirituality, leading our author to wonder whether Christopher Hitchens isn’t the best of the New Atheists for his willingness to reject atheistic dogmas.

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Osama bin Laden and the Dalai Lama – Washington Post Are bin Laden and the Dalai Lama the reasons we fear Islam and embrace Buddhism? Here's a puzzling finding from the recent Gallup Poll on the attitudes of Americans towards different religions. Only two percent of Americans say they have a great deal of knowledge about Buddhism, and 14 percent report feeling some prejudice towards Buddhists. Meanwhile, only three percent of Americans claim they have a great deal of knowledge about Islam, and yet 43 percent claim some prejudice towards Muslims. How is it that a little knowledge about Buddhism correlates with broadly positive feelings towards Buddhists, but a little knowledge about Islam is linked to frighteningly negative views of Muslims?

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All used up – The Immanent Frame

There is a question that has been haunting me about our times and our collective condition, specifically in regard to American imperial decline: namely, how do we effectively mourn the exhaustion of the myth of American exceptionalism? My short answer is that our age of catastrophes—the catastrophic being one of the primary markers of the exhaustion of the myth of American exceptionalism—is in need of poetic responses and, in particular, what William James might call a poetic temperament.

In making this claim, I am looking for a way to open a space for a disposition and an outlook that I believe can help mourn the exhaustion of the myth of American exceptionalism. Let me be clear: I do not think that the myth of American exceptionalism has gone away quietly in the twilight of the Bush administration. In my estimation, the disenchantment of giving up the myth of American exceptionalism will involve experiencing the lived effects of the catastrophic, of coming to terms with cultural nihilism, and even with worldly collapse. It will involve relinquishing the comforts—metaphysical and otherwise—of being an imperial power.

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Assisted suicide – God forbids it, but isn’t it the greater moral act? – New Statesman

It's hard to reconcile a merciful God with the religious prohibitions against euthanasia
 

The assisted suicide clinic Dignitas in Pfaeffikon near Zurich.

What would any of us reply, if we were asked by an elderly relative facing a terrible, increasing infirmity whether we would agree to assist them to die rather than endure a terminal illness in pain and indignity? Such a question would be very difficult to deal with, but surely one's instinct - indeed, one's conscience - would direct us to put the wishes of the sufferer first. A YouGov poll in today's Telegraph suggests that most people in the UK agree. Three quarters of respondents said the law should be changed to allow the act of assisted suicide, which at present carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years. Four fifths said that even if the law was not amended, the prosecution should stay its hand in such circumstances.

The issue is very much of the moment after the recent cases of Kay Gilderdale and Frances Inglis. Given the lack of real clarity over the courts' opposite verdicts on these two women, the proposal by Sir Terry Pratchett for "euthanasia tribunals" to be set up appears a humane and sensible one. The author, who has Alzheimer's, is due to give a lecture to the Royal College of Physicians tonight in which he will say: "If I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice."

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The ‘Evolving’ Story of Teacher Who Burned Cross into Student’s Arm – ReligionDispatches In December 2008, Jenifer Dennis couldn’t believe that her family’s battle had been dragging on for a year. At the time, she’d expected it to be resolved by Christmas. Now another Christmas has passed and the case that began when her son came home from school with the mark of a cross burned into his arm seems no closer to a resolution. Meanwhile, the Mount Vernon School District is a divided community in this rural section of south-central Ohio. And John Freshwater, the 8th-grade science teacher who admitted to using an electrostatic device known as a Tesla coil on Zachary Dennis’ arm, remains a polarizing figure at the center of the fray. Despite the case’s layered subtexts much of the debate is over evolution.

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Obama and the Dalai Lama – more empty words and confusion over Tibet – New Statesman Perhaps it is one area where President Obama feels he can afford to act tough, but news that he will meet the Dalai Lama despite Chinese protests is hardly going to do anything to improve relations already strained over US weapons sales to Taiwan, which mainland China claims as its own territory. Frankly, this seems to me to be the kind of empty posturing, frequently displayed in relation to the Burmese junta, that salves the consciences of the participants and makes no difference whatsoever to the people with whose plight we claim to be so concerned. To the Americans, this may simply be a meeting with the one religious leader in the world who, curiously, never seems to be subject to any kind of scrutiny -- a "living saint", as I have observed here before.

This exchange will achieve nothing for the Tibetans.

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Saturday, February 6

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Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, at Canterbury Cathedral

God and Wall Street – Newsweek It is quite striking that, in the Gospel parables, Jesus more than once uses economics as a framework for his stories: the parable of the talents, the dishonest steward—even, we might say, the vignette of the lost coin. Like our coexistence with the earth, like familial bonds, like the tensions of public political life, economic relationships help us see our humanity in the context of God's actions. Money is a metaphor; our monetary dealings shed light on aspects of our human condition that, rightly understood, tell us something about how we might relate to God. In my view, the contribution of theology to economic decision making is not only about raising questions concerning the common good—questions that deal with how this or that policy grants or withholds liberty for the most disadvantaged. Obviously, these are important issues. But we need to look with great care as well at what our economic practices are assuming and promoting about human motivation and integrity. In our culture, we have become used to an attitude in which economic motivations

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World's oldest monastery restored – BBC
 

Visitors take a tour of the newly-restored monastery

Egypt has completed the restoration of reputedly the world's oldest Christian monastery, called Saint Anthony's.

The monastery is believed to be 1,600 years old. The government-sponsored restoration project cost over $14m (£8.9m) and took more than eight years.

The monastery is a popular site for Coptic Christian pilgrims.

The restoration comes soon after Egypt's worst incident of sectarian violence in a decade, when six Copts were shot dead on Christmas Eve.

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Faith-Based Defiance – NY Times In 1995, one million black men — give or take a couple of hundred thousand — gathered on the National Mall in Washington. The Million Man March bested the March on Washington of 1963 in turnout but otherwise fell far short of that historic benchmark. It was a rebellion without a cause, lacking any specific political agenda, and its organizer, the notorious demagogue Louis Farrakhan, was as repellent as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was inspiring. Perhaps worst of all, the Million Man March announced its chauvinism in its very name, deliberately excluding half the black community.

A Baptist prayer meeting in Mississippi, 1964

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Scientists, you are fallible. Get off the pedestal and join the common herd – Guardian

Climatologists above all need to rediscover the virtue of self-criticism - or others will continue to question their evidence

So scientists are human after all. They are no different from bankers, politicians, lawyers, estate agents and perhaps even journalists. They cheat. They make mistakes. They suppress truth and suggest falsity, especially when a cheque or a plane ticket is on offer. As for self-criticism, that is for you, not me.

I am just ready to believe that the antics of the climate change scientists, revealed in this week's Guardian and elsewhere, have no impact on the facts of global warming. But then I must rely on those same scientists to say so. The Yamal-12 larches may be dodgy, the hockey stick limp and the Amazon stats subject to re-evaluation. The date of 2035 for a Himalayan apocalypse may have been a misprint for 2350 and 40,000 comments didn't spot it. But so what, they all say? The world is coming to an end because we are scientists and, like Nostradamus, we know.

What any layman must find alarming is the paranoia and exclusivity of the climate change community. The preparation of the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was apparently like that of a party manifesto. Data was suppressed and criticism ignored. The IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, dismissed sceptics as adherents of "voodoo science". Dark hints were made of commercial interest and Holocaust denial.

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A Rare Blend, Pro Football and Hasidic Judaism – NY Times
 

Alan Shlomo Veingrad, with beard, showing his Super Bowl ring Tuesday to students at the Chabad House in Los Angeles.

After practice one late-summer day in 1986, Alan Veingrad strode into the Green Bay Packers’ locker room, feeling both spent and satisfied.

An undrafted player from an obscure college, he had made the team and then some. On the next Sunday, opening day of the N.F.L. season, he would be starting at offensive tackle.

In his locker, Mr. Veingrad found the usual stuff, his street clothes and sweat suit and playbook. On a small bench, though, lay a note from the Packers’ receptionist. It carried a name that Mr. Veingrad did not recognize, Lou Weinstein, and a local phone number.

Alone in a new town, too naïve to be wary, Mr. Veingrad called. This Lou Weinstein, it turned out, ran a shoe store in Green Bay, Wis. He had just read an article in the paper about a Jewish player on the Packers, and he wanted to meet and welcome that rarity.

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Credo: We all have faith, whether or not we recognise it – The Times

How can we have faith in God when so much goes wrong and the world is so imperfect? askes the Very Revd John Shepherd, Dean of Perth.

There are lots of things in this life that are hard to understand. The hardest of all is God. How can we have faith in God when so much goes wrong in our lives, and the world is so imperfect?

In Jesus, God has come into our life, yet God has not fixed up our life, so why have faith? If there is a God, why is there evil? Tragedy? Sadness? Disappointment? Why are there accidents? Why is there illness? Why do people die too young? Why doesn’t God miraculously intervene, and take things over? Dictate how everything should go, and what we do, and how we live our lives?

But then, of course, we would have a world of fixed laws. Our lives would be totally regulated and controlled. We couldn’t decide anything for ourselves. We would not be allowed any choices, or any freedom of action.

So our lives would become non-lives. There would be no highs or lows. No modulations. No striving or hoping. No passion. We would have nothing that actually makes life worth living. We would have nothing to celebrate, for we would have achieved nothing ourselves.

Exclude the possibility of darkness in life, and we exclude the possibility of celebrating life. Exclude darkness, and the light is no longer special. If everything is light, there’s no light to strive for. There’d be nothing to try to do.

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Face to Faith – Guardian

How the General Synod works is more important than anything it decides

General Synod ahoy! Sadly for aficionados of genteel custard pie wars, bishops' gender is not slated for major discussion next week, although fans of turf – and astroturf – wars will take note of a private member's motion about a US dissident former Episcopalian group. Connoisseurs of murder at the vicarage may find some tasty morsels in the debate on terms and conditions of service for members of the clergy.

As Church of England politicians gather and the stories dribble out of the tearoom, many of the rest of us will feel Lent ­coming on. Years ago, when I was a young urban vicar, someone tried to ­persuade me to join the General Synod.

When I asked around my colleagues, one ­reverend ­colleague told me he would rather crawl down the road on his hands and knees in his pyjamas picking up doggie-doos (not his word) in his mouth and spitting them out into a bucket, than be on the General Synod – a ­challenging thought. It put me off, ­anyway. The fact that some of the church's most faithful clergy feel like this about the synod may help put things in perspective.

BBC FAQ on General Synod – Episcopal cafe

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Auklets and penguins: birds use feathers 'to touch' – BBC

“This provides a hitherto missing explanation for the origin of ornamental feathers,” says Dr Sampath Seneviratne, University of British Columbia
 

A whiskered auklet feels in the dark

Birds may use their feathers for touch, using them to feel their surroundings just as cats use their whiskers.

The revelation that feathers have this hitherto unknown function comes from research on auklets, birds that sport prominent plumes on their heads.

Auklets with bigger crests, that stick out further, bump into things less.

A wider analysis suggests that numerous birds, from parrots, penguins, pheasants and hummingbirds, also use their feathers to feel their way.

Details of the discovery are published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

Many species of bird sport elegant long feathers, either crests, beards or whiskers that adorn the head and face, or striking tail feathers.

Many of these feathers are thought to have a sexual function, being used to advertise a bird's virility to potential mates.

But Dr Sampath Seneviratne of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and Professor Ian Jones of Memorial University in St John's, Canada suspect they may also have a tactile function.

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Friday, February 5

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Accuracy of briefing paper on ACNA challenged – Church Times
 

A SENIOR CLERIC of the Anglican Church of Canada has identified inaccuracies in Lorna Ashworth’s briefing paper for her private member’s motion, which will come before the General Synod next Wednesday. Similar concerns are coming from the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Mrs Ashworth’s motion will urge the Synod to “express the desire that the Church of England be in communion with the Anglican Church in North America [ACNA}” (News, 22 January). Canon Alan Perry, a lecturer in ecclesiastical polity and former Prolocutor of the Province of Canada, rebuts allegations on clergy and property in her paper.

The Revd Brian Lewis, a Synod member from Chelmsford diocese, circulated the note to all members on Monday.

Mrs Ashworth states that six bishops and 69 priests are involved in ACNA, and that bishops and priests who have not left Church of Canada “are deposed without due canonical process”. Canon Perry says that only three former bishops of Church of Canada have associated themselves with ACNA: Bishops Donald Harvey, Ronald Ferris, and Malcolm Harding.

None of these has been deposed, he says. “All three were already retired, and all three voluntarily relinquished their ministry pursuant to Canon XIX of the Anglican Church of Canada.” The other three bishops are “former presbyters recently consecrated as bishops by ACNA: Stephen Leung, Charles Masters, and Trevor Walters”.

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City to Review Hiring of Chaplains After an Attempt to Carry Blades Into Jail – NY Times

It was not clear what was more surprising initially to city officials: that one of the Department of Correction’s chaplains was accused of taking scissors and metal blades into a jail, or that the same chaplain had been convicted of murder.

Both disclosures about the chaplain, Imam Zulqarnain Abdu-Shahid, have led the Correction Department to conduct a review of the circumstances of his hiring.

While the review has not been completed, correction officials said Thursday that the department was aware of the chaplain’s second-degree murder conviction before he was hired, two years ago.

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Assisted-dying debate becomes muddled – Church Times (Leader)

SIR TERRY PRATCHETT, the fantasy author, argued this week that assisted suicide was “an idea whose time is really coming”. It certainly seems to be an idea that will not go away, despite being defeated convincingly five times in Parliament, the latest only in July last year. Sir Terry’s BBC lecture, together with the Gilderdale case, in which a mother was cleared last week of murdering her daughter, an ME sufferer, served as curtain-raisers for new guidelines to be issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, in the next few weeks.

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Haiti Charges Americans With Child Abduction – NY Times
 

Charisa Coulter and nine other Americans were charged Thursday in Port-au-Prince with abducting 33 Haitian children

Ten Americans who tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the country last week without the government’s consent have been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy, as Haitian officials sought to reassert judicial control after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The Americans, most of them members of a Baptist congregation from Idaho, had said they intended to rescue Haitian children left parentless in the quake and take them to what they described as an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic. But they acknowledged failing to seek approval to remove the children from Haiti, and several of the children have at least one living parent.

The Americans will face a potentially extended legal proceeding in Haiti and could, if convicted, face prison terms of up to 15 years.

In a sign of the cloudy nature of the case, the prosecutor, Mazar Fortil, decided not to pursue what could have been the most serious charge against the group, that of trafficking. The charges will now be considered by an investigative judge, who has up to three months to decide whether to pursue the matter further.

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Cherie Booth unfair to atheists? – Guardian (Andrew Brown)

Cherie Booth [wife of ex-PM Tony] has been accused of discrimination against atheists after letting a Muslim off with a suspended sentence

Everything we know about the case of Shamso Miah seems to come from one agency report of the court case. The same phrases are repeated in all the coverage, from the Daily Mail to the Independent, though there is a slightly different version in the local paper and they tell a sparse story: he was queuing in a branch of Lloyds TSB last August, after a visit to a mosque; there was a row about who was next in line, and he hit Mohammed Furcan twice before leaving the bank. Furcan ran after him out into the street, and Miah hit him for a third time, breaking his jaw.

He was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and came up before Cherie Booth, wife of former prime minister, Tony Blair, on 24 January this year. She suspended his six month sentence for two years, on the grounds that he was "a religious person and have not been in trouble before … you are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour."

So Terry Sanderson of the NSS has complained that this is discrimination against atheists:

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Dave Walker's Guide to the Anglican Church
 

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Thursday, February 4

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The Making of CBS's Pro-Life Ad – The Daily Beast The Tim Tebow ad airing Super Bowl Sunday has angered pro-choice groups. Dana Goldstein on the network's collaboration with the ad's right-wing sponsor—and the liberal debate over how to fight back. The major broadcast networks have avoided political advocacy ads for years, so CBS's decision to air the Tebow ad caught abortion rights advocates off guard. But Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian group founded by Dr. James Dobson, says that it has actually been working closely with CBS executives for months on the ad's script. "When you recall that Focus on the Family wants to overturn Roe v. Wade… this revelation is extremely, extremely disturbing," says NOW President Terry O'Neill.

Tim Tebow

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Christian Serbia maintains its faith in folklore – BBC
 

It's hard to reconcile a merciful God with the religious prohibitions against euthanasia , says Sholto Byrne

While Serbia is a deeply religious nation, it also happens to be steeped in superstition. The BBC's Mark Lowen finds that folklore and tales of medieval military glory are part of daily life for many Serbians.

Religion and ethnicity have always been fundamentally linked in this region. If you were Serb, you were Orthodox, and if you were Croat you were Catholic.

After decades of suppression under communism, religion again flourished as the 90s began - but it also fed ethnic division, playing its part in the Yugoslav wars that ensued.

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Assisted suicide – God forbids it, but isn’t it the greater moral act? – New Statesman

What would any of us reply, if we were asked by an elderly relative facing a terrible, increasing infirmity whether we would agree to assist them to die rather than endure a terminal illness in pain and indignity? Such a question would be very difficult to deal with, but surely one's instinct - indeed, one's conscience - would direct us to put the wishes of the sufferer first. A YouGov poll in today's Telegraph suggests that most people in the UK agree. Three quarters of respondents said the law should be changed to allow the act of assisted suicide, which at present carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years. Four fifths said that even if the law was not amended, the prosecution should stay its hand in such circumstances.

The issue is very much of the moment after the recent cases of Kay Gilderdale and Frances Inglis. Given the lack of real clarity over the courts' opposite verdicts on these two women, the proposal by Sir Terry Pratchett for "euthanasia tribunals" to be set up appears a humane and sensible one. The author, who has Alzheimer's, is due to give a lecture to the Royal College of Physicians tonight in which he will say: "If I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice."

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Powell does about-face on gays in US military – Sydney Morning Herald

The bid by the US President, Barack Obama, to lift the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military has received a boost with the retired US Army general Colin Powell coming out in support of the ban's repeal.

As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993, Mr Powell had opposed then-president Bill Clinton's attempt to end a ban on gays in uniform.

Instead, he backed a controversial compromise still in force known as ''don't ask, don't tell'' requiring service members to keep quiet about their sexual orientation or face expulsion.

But in an about-face, Mr Powell said times had changed.

''In the almost 17 years since the 'don't ask, don't tell' legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed,'' he said on Wednesday.

''I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week.''

Mr Powell's expression of support for lifting the ban came a day after the Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, endorsed Mr Obama's call to lift the ban.

Admiral Mullen told the committee that it was his ''personal belief'' that lifting the ban was the ''right thing to do''.

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Steven Monjeza (L) and Tiwonge Chimbalanga (R) face 14 years in jail

Malawi arrests 'gay-poster' man – BBC Malawian police have arrested a man for putting up gay-rights posters, amid a national debate over homosexuality - which is banned in Malawi. Peter Sawali had put up posters saying: "Gay rights are human rights", on a main road in Blantyre, police said. He was charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of peace. A controversy has erupted in the country after a gay couple were prosecuted for public indecency because they got engaged. Police spokesman Dave Chingwalu told the Associated Press news agency Mr Sawali's poster campaign had backing from foreign organisations. "We are still investigating because we believe there is a chain of people who were working with Mr Sawali," he said.

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Catholic clerical narcissism – Washington Post It's all right for the groundhog to become enamored of his own shadow, but it's unbecoming in Catholic clergy. Narcissism, I fear, is weakening the Church. We did not need a papal pronouncement to recognize that every cultural thermometer today reads a cooling towards organized religion and a rising social temperature for consumerism, sexual exploitation, and immediate gratification. I understand why there would be a tendency to "write off" a sinful world to focus on an inner-directed faith primarily concerned with one's own salvation. I just believe that narcissism - even if it is clerical and spiritual - can go awry. I was prompted to sound this alarm when reading about the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. The group describes itself as "an association of 600 Roman Catholic Priests and Deacons pledged to the pursuit of personal holiness, loyalty to the Roman Pontiff, commitment to theological study and strict adherence to the authentic teachings of the Magisterium." I am concerned about those who pretend that clerical narcissism is sanctity. Spiritualities often emerge in response to the particular problem of a certain age, as for instance the Franciscan Movement that was an antidote to the medieval Church's opulence. But not every spirituality has benefited the Church: Even being a conservative Catholic is no guarantee against heretical errors, as happened with Fr. Feeney and Archbishop Lefebvre.

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Haiti judge quizzes US missionaries over child case – BBC (video)

Up until now we have not encountered any who say they are an orphan ”

A group of 10 US missionaries who were arrested as they tried to take 33 children out of earthquake-stricken Haiti are being questioned by a judge. The investigative magistrate quizzed the five women for several hours and will interview the men on Wednesday.

Communications Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn-Lassegue said prosecutors would later decide whether to press charges.

The missionaries deny they were engaged in child trafficking, and insist they were trying to help vulnerable orphans.

On Monday, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive described them as "kidnappers" who had known "what they were doing was wrong". He said some of the children had parents who were alive, and that the Haitian authorities were trying to reunite them.

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Vegetative state patients can respond to questions – BBC (video)

Scientists have been able to reach into the mind of a brain-damaged man and communicate with his thoughts. The research, carried out in the UK and Belgium, involved a new brain scanning method. Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world.

Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.

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Wednesday, February 3

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Hooray for Holywood – Washington Post

Seven of the 10 movies that received "Best Picture" Academy Award nominations Tuesday, including front-runner "Avatar," were also among "The Most Spiritually Literate Films of 2009," according to the Web site SpiritualityandPractice.com.

But Hollywood apparently is in no danger of becoming Holywood, at least not according to Baptist Press. Only two of this year's Oscar-nominated films made BP's cut in "2009's Best Movies from a Christian Perspective." "Avatar," the leading contender for an Oscar, actually made the Baptists' list of "Worst" movies.

One moviegoer's spirituality is another moviegoer's hokum, I suppose. But the variety of faith-based reactions to nominated films like "Avatar," "The Blind Side," and "Up" is another indication of the alternative realities inhabited by religious liberals and conservatives.

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat chose Avatar as "the spiritual surprise of the year" for "creating an alternate world where the 'interconnectedness of all beings' is celebrated, and the natural habitat is revered,"

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Who will pray at Lebanon's rebuilt synagogue? – BBC
 

Work has begun in Beirut on rebuilding its long-abandoned synagogue

Rumours of the reconstruction of the city's historic Magen-Abraham Synagogue have been around for years but no one, it seems, could quite believe their eyes when the work actually began.

Regular outbreaks of fighting, most recently in 2006, and decades of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel have virtually obliterated Lebanon's once-thriving Jewish community.

Officially, the two countries have been in a state of war since the 1948 creation of Israel.

Jews began leaving Lebanon en masse in the late 1960s. Those who stayed still keep an extremely low profile. And so it came as a great surprise when a tiny Jewish community, believed to be fewer than 100 people, announced that they had managed to secure funds and permission to reconstruct their temple.

Work is now in full swing.

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Another Attack on Pilgrims in Iraq – NY Times

At least 20 people were killed Wednesday in Karbala when a bomb was detonated only miles from a sacred Shiite shrine during a week in which millions of pilgrims are converging on the holy city.

In addition to the fatalities, more than 100 people were wounded, according to local and national officials.

It was the second major bombing against Shiite pilgrims this week, and it underscored the helplessness of Iraq’s security forces to prevent attacks despite an imposing show of force.

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The necessity of Incarnation – Bishop Alan's Blog

Reflecting with the usual five friends on the last year’s joys, follies, grunts and frustrations, ecstatic and ordinary, long term trends emerge. We’ve been doing this together in this monastery at this time of year for almost thirty years, and someone noticed the way in which our conversation is less entirely than it was driven by ideals and the impossibility of bringing them to pass. We seem to have developed far greater acceptance of human realities over the past ten years or so. Rationalising this indicates that ideals, even good ones, need to take flesh or they don’t mean a thing. Cue D. H. Lawrence:

Demiurge
They say that reality exists only in the spirit
that corporeal existence is a kind of death
that pure being is bodiless
that the idea of the form precedes the idea substantial.

But what nonsense it is! (continues . . .)

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Do equality laws undermine religious freedom? – BBC

The Pope has said that the UK's Equality Bill imposes unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. Do you agree?

Religious leaders have voiced concern that the Equality Bill may force churches to employ sexually active gay people and transsexuals when hiring staff other than priests or ministers. Add your comment.

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Is Super Bowl an appropriate venue for pro-life ad? – Washington Post

The conservative Christian group Focus on the Family is sponsoring a pro-life ad, featuring football star Tim Tebow, during Sunday's Super Bowl. Should CBS show the ad? Should CBS allow other faith-based groups to buy Super Bowl ads promoting their beliefs on social issues? Is a major sporting event, or a TV ad campaign, an appropriate venue for discussing such vital and divisive culture-war issues like abortion?

The League: Who cares if Tim Tebow is pro-life?
 

CBS: don't help religion become a political football

This Super Bowl ad featuring Ted Tebow plays politics with faith. I have no doubt that Tebow is a person of faith, and he is entitled to his beliefs. Others are entitled to their beliefs. So, show everybody's faith-based ad, or don't show any. Otherwise, CBS is allowing ad time during the Super Bowl to become a political football. – posted by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

Should CBS be the arbiter?

I would love to use the Super Bowl as an opportunity to recite verse 5:32 from the Qur'an and try and convince millions of Americans that Islam does not condone violence and that the Qur'an deems taking of innocent life as an abomination. This pro-life message could go far in combating Islamophobia. – posted by Muqtedar Khan

Pro-life, anti-gay CBS

CBS made the wrong decision, but not for reasons most people suggest. Having rejected a Super Bowl ad from ManCrunch.com, a gay online dating service, as too controversial, CBS will nonetheless air a so-called pro-life/anti-choice ad sponsored by Focus on the Family. Both moves are probably good business, but lousy public policy. – posted by Brad Hirschfield

What if the Super Bowl were aborted?

I wonder if CBS would have accepted an ad, paid for by the Alzheimer's Association or the American Medical Association, about the higher incidence of early Alzheimer's and other brain disorders among ex-football players who have sustained concussions? – posted by Susan Jacoby

Pro-choice should mean letting CBS choose

Those who do not like the message in the Tim Tebow ad can easily change the station, turn off the sound, or go to kitchen for a few minutes. I don't think anyone is going to be forced to watch either the Super Bowl or its ads. – posted by Ramdas Lamb

Money can buy abortions and anti-abortion ads

Here in America we are, and should be, free to buy abortions and anti-abortion ads. We are not, and should not be, free to kill "abortionists" or to suppress "speech." – posted by Willis E. Elliott

One nation, under football

Perhaps Super Bowl commercials will evolve from arguments about "Tastes great! No, less filling!" to "Jesus is Lord! No, Jesus is myth!" I've participated in debates on the latter topic, but there's a time and place for such discussions. The Super Bowl is neither the time nor the place. – posted by Herb Silverman

Two wrongs do not preserve our rights

This advertisement may be part of the future of advocacy, particularly in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's recent ruling regarding corporate and union participation in political campaigns. I just hope that people on both sides of any critical human issue will not divert millions of dollars from delivery of services to the coffers of the corporate media. – posted by Jack Moline

Tuesday, February 2

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Pope condemns gay equality laws ahead of first UK visit – Guardian

Benedict XVI says legislation safeguarding rights of same-sex couples violates 'natural law'
 

Pope Benedict XVI has condemned British equality legislation for running contrary to "natural law" as he confirmed his first visit to the UK later this year.

In a letter addressed to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, the pope praised Britain's "firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all".

However, he criticised UK legislation for creating "limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs". It is thought his comments relate to laws that came in last year preventing adoption agencies from discriminating against gay couples and also Harriet Harman's equality bill, currently going through parliament.

Pope: I'll visit but I don't like your equality laws – Independent

Pope Benedict misses the point in his attack on UK equality law – The Times

Papal aggression – Guardian (Andrew Brown)

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France: Catholic Church Rejects Ban on Full-Face Veils – NY Times

The [Roman] Catholic Church warned the government on Monday against banning full-face Muslim veils, saying France must respect the rights of its Muslims if it wanted Muslim countries to do the same for their Christian minorities. A parliamentary commission has urged the National Assembly to pass a resolution condemning full veils and then ban them. “If we want Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries to enjoy all their rights, we should in our country respect the rights of all believers to practice their faith,” said Bishop Michel Santier, the top French Catholic official for interreligious dialogue.

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Saudi child bride drops divorce from 80-year-old man – BBC A 12-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia has withdrawn her request for a divorce from her 80-year-old husband. The girl, from Qaseem province east of Riyadh, was married last September in return for a dowry of $22,600 (£14,174) paid to her father. She and her mother had asked a court to annul the marriage on the grounds the girl had been raped. But now the girl has withdrawn her petition, saying she wants to respect her father's wishes.

There are calls in Saudi Arabia to regulate child marriage

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Church criticises 'cut off their hands' solution to ongoing attacks – Ecumenical News Intl

An Indian church leader has criticised the chief minister of India's southern Karnataka state for saying that those responsible for a continuing series of attacks on churches should have their hands cut off.

In apparent exasperation about criticisms of government action following the attacks in Karnataka, its chief minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, declared, "I am telling you, chop off the hands of these people if you catch them."

Yeddyurappa belongs to the Bhartiya Janta Party which controls the state government. Opponents say the BJP has a Hindu nationalist agenda. A national TV channel quoted the chief minister as making his comments during a public meeting on 27 January.

"We do not want hands to be chopped off; we want the government to arrest the culprits and bring them to justice," Methodist Bishop Taranath S. Sagar, president of the National Council of Churches in India, told Ecumenical News International on 28 January.

Bishop Sagar, based at Bangalore, pointed out that the "virtual immunity" that existed following attacks on churches was at the root of the continued violence.

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Abuses spur call for funeral-service reforms – Washington Times

Regulations a state matter, critics insist

The cement liners of the grave sites were smashed open and their contents moved and dumped into holes in empty areas of Illinois' Burr Oak Cemetery. Empty grave sites were then resold to new customers, until 2009 when workers discovered what was going on.

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That was the week that was. It’s over – let it go

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“God writes in two books. One is the Bible; the other is daily events.
In both, God’s hand is richly in evidence. In neither, normally, is God unequivocally clear.”

God’s world on Monday, February 8, 2010