Up to 350 international delegates are expected to attend Ireland’s first World Atheist Convention in Dublin this weekend.
Organised by Atheist Ireland, the event, from Friday to Sunday, will also see the launch of a newly restructured umbrella group for atheists worldwide, Atheist Alliance International. Its first chairwoman will be Tanya Smith of the Atheist Foundation of Australia.
Delegates from the US, Europe, South America and Australasia will attend.
Avert your eyes for a moment from the weak UK economic data and look at what we’ve learned about the US in the last couple of days. House prices have fallen 4.2% since the start of the year, meaning the 33% tumble from the 2006 peak is greater than the 31% decline seen during the Great Depression. The manufacturing sector appears to have stalled, with the purchasing managers’ index at its lowest level this year. And private-sector jobs are being created at the slowest rate since last September. It looks ”“ just as the bears predicted ”“ as if the US economy is struggling to cope with the end of quantitative easing (QE).
Send for more stimulants then? That’s what happened last year ”“ QE2 was launched in response to similarly discouraging data. But QE3 looks unlikely. The world, and US politics, has moved on. Standard & Poor’s may have been guilty of alarmism in warning about the negative outlook for US debt but the rating agency has stirred the debate in Washington about the relative merits of spending cuts and tax increases. QE3 would sit uneasily with a political mood of belt-tightening. Sceptics in Congress would argue (with some justification) that the law of diminishing returns had already set in ”“ a $600bn (£365bn) programme over the past eight months produced annualised growth of only 1.8% in the first quarter.
The US…[ ] is short of tools.
“Take heed lest you forget the LORD your God, by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes, which I command you this day: lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage…
–Deuteronomy 8:11-14
Our speaker was Clark Hoyt of the class of 1960, fomer public editor of the New York Times, who now works at Bloomberg News.
The Rev. Patrick Conroy was sworn in Wednesday (May 25) as House chaplain, making him the first Jesuit to hold the position, and the first candidate forced to navigate around the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal.
“It’s clear this loyal servant of the faithful is uniquely suited to serve as chaplain of the people’s House,” Speaker John Boehner said, noting that the chaplain “is the anchor of the House.”
Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
–Luke 7:44-50
When it comes to economic recovery, Minnesota is about as good as it gets….
According to government data, which show that state unemployment peaked at 8.5 percent in the downturn, employers slashed roughly 154,000 jobs but have added back fewer than 27,000 ”” or only about 18 percent of those lost.
Big local employers including Medtronic, a medical device maker, and Hutchinson Technology, which makes components for disk drives, have announced layoffs in recent weeks. Small to medium-size companies say they are nervous about government policy and are reluctant to hire.
A depressed real estate market remains a drag on the local economy ”” as it does in many other places.
Mr. [Stanley] Druckenmiller is puzzled that so many financial commentators see the possible failure to raise the debt ceiling as more serious than the possibility that the government will accumulate too much debt. “I’m just flabbergasted that we’re getting all this commentary about catastrophic consequences, including from the chairman of the Federal Reserve, about this situation but none of these guys bothered to write letters or whatever about the real situation which is we’re piling up trillions of dollars of debt.”
He’s particularly puzzled that Mr. [Tim] Geithner and others keep arguing that spending shouldn’t be cut, and yet the White House has ruled out reform of future entitlement liabilities””the one spending category Mr. Druckenmiller says you can cut without any near-term impact on the economy.
One reason Mr. Druckenmiller says he spoke up in 1995 was his recognition that the first baby boomers would turn 65 in 2010, so taxpayers would soon have to start supporting a much larger population of retirees. “Well,” he says today, “the last time I checked, it’s 2011. We don’t have another 16 years this time. We’re there. I don’t know whether the markets give us three years or four years or five years, but we’re there. We’re not going to be having this conversation in 16 years. We’re either going to solve it or we’re going to find ourselves being Greece somewhere down the road.”
Manchester City claimed their first piece of silverware for 35 years as Yaya Toure’s second half strike gave Roberto Mancini’s side a 1-0 win over Stoke City in the FA Cup final at Wembley.
Toure pounced to slam home an emphatic finish in the 74th minute to breach Stoke’s obdurate defence and give City their first FA Cup final win since 1969.
The Cup victory provided the proverbial icing on the cake for Mancini’s side, who clinched their primary objective of delivering a top-four finish for a Champions League spot next season, while it sealed a memorable day for the city of Manchester after United won the Premier League title.
The formation of the Anglican Ordinariate was a natural consequence of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mismanagement of the crisis facing the Anglican Communion, the leaders of the Gafcon movement said in a statement released on May 10.
In a strongly worded communiqué summarizing the work of their April 25-28 meeting in Nairobi, the archbishops of the Gafcon movement, representing a majority of the church’s members, voiced their displeasure with the usurpation of authority by Dr. Williams and the staff of the Anglican Consultative Council and laid upon their door responsibility for the de facto schism within the communion.
While the 13-point communiqué touched on administrative issues for the Anglican reform movement, including the creation of a Nairobi and London offices, the appointment of Bishop Martyn Minns as Deputy Secretary, and the calling of a second Jerusalem conference in 2013, the heart of the letter came in a sustained attack on the actions taken by London-based instruments of the Anglican Communion.
(The Episcopal Church Office of Public Affairs)
College For Bishops announces endowment campaign to insure future health, wellness, education of Episcopal bishops
The College for Bishops has announced the formation of a $15 million endowment campaign to insure the future of the organization, which is designed to provide education and formation for Episcopal bishops in all stages of their ministry.
The campaign, Endowing a Sustainable Future, is chaired by the Rt. Rev. F. Clayton Matthews, Bishop for Pastoral Development and Managing Director of the College for Bishops. He is joined by a group of 30+ other bishops from throughout the United States.
“Through its myriad of programs, offerings, and educational enrichment sessions, the College for Bishops has proven to be invaluable for our bishops, which in turn has greatly benefitted clergy and laity,” explained Bishop Matthews. “Our goal now is to make sure that these offerings are available for future generations of Episcopalians.”
The mission of the College for Bishops is to provide opportunities for education and formation that will strengthen bishops in their personal lives, as diocesan leaders in God’s mission and in their vocation in service to the Episcopal Church.
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About the College For Bishops
The College for Bishops was created in 1993 in response to a specific need to strengthen the Episcopal Church’s bishops. The College for Bishops received non-profit status in 2010.
The College for Bishops provides the only formal resource to engage and guide bishops in the Episcopal Church and some parts of the Anglican Communion in the formation of their episcopal ministry. It can take a minimum of three years for a newly-ordained bishop to become comfortable in his or her new role.
Since the health of bishops, clergy and congregations are tied together, through the College, bishops develop vision and resources to deepen their own and the Church’s sense of mission thereby giving them the ability to sustain the benefit of forming and supporting clergy and equipping laity within dioceses.
Among the programs: 90 Day Companion Program for a newly-elected bishops; New Bishops and Spouses’ Conference; Living Our Vows Program, a canonically mandated three-year transitional resource program; Short Courses, Small Group Studies and Continuing Education; CREDO for Bishops
“I have found the work of the College for Bishops to have had an immensely positive impact not only on bishops, but on the functioning of the entire Church,” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has noted. “I believe that it is essential to secure the future of this program in order to ensure the continued educational and formational growth of episcopal leaders in a community environment.”
If Christ turned water into wine, a watery journey has helped turn one of Christ’s churches into a wine store.
On May 5, a converted ferry laboured along the treacherous Bay of Fundy and up the Avon River carrying 30-tonne, 19th-century St. Matthew’s Anglican Church from its original site in Walton, N.S., to Newport Landing in the Annapolis Valley.
“St. Matthews had a journey lasting just over 24 hours riding tides that fell and rose over 43 feet,” says Stewart Creaser, the vintner who, with his wife, Lorraine Vassalo, purchased the church last year. St. Matthew’s had to wait out the winter by the bay before it was safe to move it. From the landing, the pale blue wooden house of worship, begun in 1837 and opened in 1844, will travel this week by flatbed truck about a kilometre down the road to its new home at the Avondale Sky Winery.
In a scene you don’t see every day at an Episcopal church, 30 Muslims knelt in prayer behind the altar at St. Mark’s Cathedral on Saturday, with a Christian cross as backdrop.
It was a break in “Confronting Islamophobia,” a conference that dissected false images of and prejudice against Muslims, but also heard their critics stereotyped and labeled.
The Yin and Yang were represented in two keynote speakers at the conference, sponsored by about 40 Muslim, Christian and pro-Palestinian groups, even by Jewish Voice for Peace.
In his opening remarks, the Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, conceded that he himself was not a blogger but that his life has “changed” since he started receiving an “informal” digest of Catholic blogs every morning.
Lombardi said the Vatican will launch a multimedia news portal (www.news.va) in the coming months to harness the potential of expanding social networks. Catholic bloggers, he added, are influential because they give voice to “the public opinion in the Church.”
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life– the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us– that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
–1 John 1:1-4
[MICHELE] NORRIS: So when you described this, the wall came down, and you said your boy just zoom.
Mr. [REGINALD] EPPES: Yes. When…
NORRIS: Just was pulled out of the opening created by the wall. What happened?
Mr. EPPES: It was like somebody just had a slingshot on him, a rope or a rubber band and had traction on that rubber band and pulled him away. It was just that quick. And you could see nothing. You just feel I got – I think I got hit by the washing machine because that’s what I could see beside me because I got fractured ribs and a deflated lung from it….
[Later] We – when I got on the ambulance and came in to the hospital, my wife, she went back out and surveyed the place. And there’s nothing on the -there’s nothing on our concrete. There’s nothing.
NORRIS: Just a concrete slab.
Mr. EPPES: Just a concrete slab, you know, and then, I tell you, I’ll tell you this. I felt really bad for a lot of people who lost lives. I have my son, and I lost all my material stuff, all that’s gone. But, dude, I feel great, you know, with my kids and my wife are still here. And I do know that my wife I nor I would have lost any of our faith behind the incident if we lost any of our children.
–From an NPR story posted on Friday and quoted by yours truly in this morning’s sermon
On April 25, 2011 Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Company, which has issued directors’ and officers’ liability insurance to the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, sued the break-away faction led since November 15, 2008 by former Bishop Jack Leo Iker. A copy of the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Dallas, is HERE.
Among other things, the complaint seeks a declaration that, based on Judge Chupp’s amended summary judgment order signed February 8, 2011 and the Fort Worth Court of Appeals June 25, 2010 opinion that there can be only one Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, the Iker-led diocese affiliated with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone is not an insured under the directors’ and officers’ liability policy issued by the plaintiff. The complaint described the Iker faction as “a different entity formed by former clergy and members of (The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth)” and alleges that this entity “is not a Named Insured and cannot claim benefits of the Policy.” The complaint also seeks to halt a pending arbitration concerning the Iker-led diocese’s insurance claim for attorneys’ fees and defense costs relating to the litigation about the break-away.
The continuing Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, still a diocese of The Episcopal Church, is not a party to this new action
.
In a hearing Thursday afternoon, April 28, in the 141st District Court, the Hon. John Chupp postponed his previous order for the Diocese and Corporation to surrender all property, which would have taken effect on May 5, to an indefinite date in the future. He denied the plaintiffs’ request for extensive additional discovery, limiting his mandate to the taking of a single deposition.
The judge approved only the request to take the deposition of Jane Parrott, the Diocese’s Director of Finance. Her deposition is to be taken before Thursday, May 19, which Judge Chupp set as the next hearing date.
“They’ve got a right to do discovery,” said the judge. “I think I have to let them do this.”
But, in response to the plaintiffs’ six-page statement of requests, he added, “we’ll just have Mrs. Parrott [give her deposition].”
As discussion progressed, the judge set a limit of six hours for the deposition, authorizing only questions relating to the amount, if any, of a supersedeas bond which the Diocese may be ordered to post during the period of our appeal.
The parties will return to court on May 19, at which time the judge is expected to make his decision concerning the bond.
Conventional wisdom and the laws and constitutions of many states have long held that the pensions being earned by current government workers are untouchable. But as the fiscal crisis has lingered, officials in strapped states from California to Illinois have begun to take a second look, to see whether there might be loopholes allowing them to cut the pension benefits of current employees. Now the move in Detroit ”” made possible, lawyers said, because Michigan’s constitutional protections are weaker ”” could spur other places to try to follow suit.
“These things do tend to be herd-oriented,” said Sylvester J. Schieber, an economist and consultant who studies pensions.
The mayors of some hard-hit cities have said that the high costs of pensions have forced them to lay off workers: Oakland, Calif., laid off one-tenth of its police force last year after failing to win concessions on pension costs.
Elsewhere there is pension envy: some private sector workers, who have learned the hard way that their companies can freeze or reduce their pensions, resent that the pensions of public workers enjoy stronger legal protections. But government workers, many of whom were recruited with the promise of good benefits and pensions, say that it would be unfair ”” and in many cases, very likely illegal ”” to change the rules in the middle of the game.
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that ”” pierced ”” died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
–John Updike (1932-2009)
Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the Services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day ”” Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another ”” Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost.
In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death the Christ continues to effect triumph.
”“Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983)
My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass. But thou, O LORD, art enthroned for ever; thy name endures to all generations. Thou wilt arise and have pity on Zion; it is the time to favor her; the appointed time has come. For thy servants hold her stones dear, and have pity on her dust. The nations will fear the name of the LORD, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. For the LORD will build up Zion, he will appear in his glory; he will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their supplication. Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the LORD: that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the LORD looked at the earth, 20 to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die; that men may declare in Zion the name of the LORD, and in Jerusalem his praise, when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the LORD.
–Psalm 102:11-22
Gracious God, the Beyond in the midst of our life, who gavest grace to thy servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer to know and teach the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and to bear the cost of following him: Grant that we, strengthened by his teaching and example, may receive thy word and embrace its call with an undivided heart; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson will speak about religion and young people April 6 at 4:30 p.m. in Sage Chapel and April 7 in New York City on advocacy for gay rights. Both programs are sponsored by Cornell United Religious Work (CURW).
Robinson’s talk, “How Religion Is Killing Our Most Vulnerable Youth,” is the 2011 Frederick C. Wood Lecture at Cornell. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Robinson is the first openly gay noncelibate priest ordained as a bishop in the United States, and he has more than 25 years of service in the Episcopal Church.
I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
The Pittsburgh Episcopal diocese and 41 breakaway Anglican parishes scattered throughout Western Pennsylvania are ready to discuss their financial differences.
“At this point, negotiations are the way forward,” said Bishop William Ilgenfritz of St. Mary’s, the Anglican parish in Charleroi, which is waiting for the Episcopal diocese to set a starting date for talks.
Negotiations over property issues are expected to take place on a parish-by-parish basis, church leaders said, although it’s not clear when negotiations will begin.
Championing the rights of the individual and relegating the authority of God has significant consequences for the way in which religious faith and the learning that derives from religion is viewed at large. Perhaps we can see this motif at work in the recent development of the English Baccalaureate by the new coalition government.
To a certain extent the government has sidelined the value of religious education in society by failing to include it with the essential components of the new educational qualification.
Failing to recognise RE amongst the humanities subjects being taught towards this new qualification, surely implies a judgment about what religious education can contribute towards the formation and education of the human person? Such a move declares that the influence of religion on contemporary British society and its structures of education are to be significantly underplayed. Our own Faith Leaders Group has made representations to the Government.
I grew up around evangelical church leaders who were hardcore about spiritual fasting, sometimes going a week on just water or 40 days on just fruit juice. (I never made it more than a day.) When I started running in mainline circles, I was thrown by the way people used the word “fast” to mean giving up chocolate or beer or television…
O Eternal God, who through thy Son our Lord hast promised a blessing upon those who hear thy Word and faithfully keep it: Open our ears, we humbly beseech thee, to hear what thou sayest, and enlighten our minds, that what we hear we may understand, and understanding may carry into good effect by thy bounteous prompting; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
–Euchologium Anglicanum
Day in and day out, the global flow of goods routinely adapts to all kinds of glitches and setbacks. A supply breakdown in one factory in one country, for example, is quickly replaced by added shipments from suppliers elsewhere in the network. Sometimes, the problems span whole regions and require emergency action for days or weeks. When a volcano erupted in Iceland last spring, spewing ash across northern Europe and grounding air travel, supply-chain wizards were put to a test, juggling production and shipments worldwide to keep supplies flowing.
But the disaster in Japan, experts say, presents a first-of-its-kind challenge, even if much remains uncertain.
Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, and a vital supplier of parts and equipment for major industries like computers, electronics and automobiles. The worst of the damage was northeast of Tokyo, near the quake’s epicenter, though Japan’s manufacturing heartland is farther south. But greater problems will emerge if rolling electrical blackouts and transportation disruptions across the country continue for long.