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For all her family’s generations of well-mannered breeding, Lizzie Post is not immune to the awkward moment. She was out to dinner not long ago with friends, and as the hour grew late, the wine flowed, and so did the foul language coming from her group. A man from another table came over and asked that they tone things down because he had children with him.

“I was really embarrassed,” winces Ms. Post, great-great-granddaughter of the legendary etiquette giant Emily Post.

But not so for one of her table mates. He said that it was the father who was out of line, that people curse, and that if the man wanted to take his children out in public, they’d better get used to it….

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Lionel Deimel, a member of St. Paul’s in Mt. Lebanon who blogs on church matters from a liberal perspective, declared his opposition to any local candidate before Father [Scott] Quinn was named. He argued that all local priests carry factional baggage and that the diocese was too ingrown….

The Rev. James Simons, a theological conservative who had a leading role in reorganizing the diocese after the split, hasn’t chosen a candidate yet, and said that the value of an inside candidate depends on the person.

“It can be argued both ways,” he said. “When you elect from within the diocese, the learning curve is less steep. You don’t have to learn the history because you lived the history. On the other hand, sometimes it’s good to have someone looking at things with fresh eyes. It all depends on who that individual is.”

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The last decade or so has seen a great resurgence of radical skepticism not only about God – the “new atheism” ”“ but also about Man. It is skepticism updated with reductionist attempts to explain human existence and experience, thought and feeling, in terms of matter alone. The mainstream view trumpeted in the “intelligent” media is that the moral sense, love, and reason are really just survival mechanisms developed in the course of human evolution. The mind is just the tool of a social primate developed in order to give it a competitive edge in procreation. As the effort of ‘the selfish gene’ to replicate itself, the mind can have no inherent claim on our loyalty. And God is just another construct, one which we would do well to discard. (The self-contradictory nature of such radical skepticism is rarely noticed. If reason is just a construct of the selfish gene, then the claim that reason is just a construct is itself a construct.)
The new atheists proclaim their gospel with the fervour of believers: God is dead, man is free, free from the destructive illusions of religion and morality, of reason and virtue. But then a someone dies, suddenly and cruelly, like the young man known to many in ..[this] parish [in [Eastern Georgia] who was killed in a freakish accident last weekend. And his death casts a pall of grief over his family, his friends, their families, his school, and many others. Yet if he was no more than an arrangement of molecules, a selfish gene struggling to replicate itself, there can be no reason for grief, or for the love that grieves, since these are (we are told) essentially selfish survival mechanisms left over from some earlier stage in hominid evolution. Friendship is just another illusion. But of course we do grieve, even the atheists. And in so grieving, they grieve better than they know (or think they know).

The grieving atheist cannot provide any reason why he grieves, or why he (rightly) respects the grief of others. For to grieve the death of such a young man is implicitly to affirm the reality of the soul. Man is embodied, to be sure; but what is embodied is a soul, capable of memory, reason, and love. To grieve the loss of anyone then is to lament the departure of a unique being, whose mind and heart have touched our lives in spontaneously beautiful and inimitable ways. To grieve is to travel even beyond the lost life of a loved one to the origin and source of the love we have known, and there to register our gratitude. To grieve, therefore, is to affirm that there is a higher source of value than ‘the selfish gene’ – there is a God, who is absolute truth and goodness, the very possibility of knowledge and love.

To love, to grieve, is to affirm the dignity of man; and to affirm the dignity is to acknowledge gratefully a special instance of God’s creative and lifegiving power expressed in one whose unique nature is gone. When we can no longer grieve, it is not God who dies, but we ourselves.

As C. S. Lewis says somewhere, God “whispers to us in our pleasures and shouts to us in our pains”. In our griefs God shouts, ”˜the Lord thunders out of heaven’, and his thunder dissolves the attempt to live as if he does not exist. We easily forget him; but he does not forget us, nor does he forsake us; and he permits these pains and griefs to fall upon us that we may turn to him again, and know him truly, not as our enemy but as our friend: as the one who “bears our griefs and carries our sorrows”. Our first need “in all our troubles” is (as the Litany teaches us) “to put our whole trust and confidence in him”. He confronts our grief and bears it, that he might transform sadness to joy, despair to hope, and death to new life. He does this in our souls and minds – a space from which the selfish gene is banished by necessity, and the soul that dies to itself inherits eternal life.

God shouts in our pains; and we awaken from dreams to the fact that he has travelled this way before. “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4) up to and into his Cross. The young man who died, the friend of so many, once ”“ wonderfully! – said, “If we really believe in God, there is nothing to be afraid of.” The friend who takes our grief and carries our sorrows confirms his testimony: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he ”¦ said, Behold I make all things new” (Revelation 21:4, 5).

——The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector of Saint John’s, Savannah, Georgia

The Church of England has issued a rare national apology for child abuse by some of its clergy.

The “unreserved” apology came on the day a damning report was finally published, months after its completion last year, detailing how a convicted paedophile persuaded the Church he was suitable to be ordained as a priest.

Roy Cotton went on to be approved as a Scout leader on the Church’s recommendation and to hold several jobs as a clergyman in the Chichester diocese where he abused at least 12 boys.

Read it all (requires subscription). Also, please note that you can read the full report mentioned here.

Catholics in Syria are so fearful of losing their lives at any moment that they say farewell to each other at the end of every Mass, the Archbishop of Damascus has said.

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Check it out if you wish to listen to this recent sermon.

As a woman, I have found that fertility and childbearing highlight my addiction to control more than almost anything else in my life thus far. Women are, after all, trained to control our bodies. Managing one’s appearance and conducting one’s body in a way that honors God are common female virtues in the church. Added to that is the resource of birth control, with which we can control our biological cycles.

This control has extended beyond pregnancy prevention into the realm of pregnancy facilitation. Women are now waiting longer to have children, some because they must, others because they can.

In truth, the control we have over our bodies is an illusion of power that inevitably comes crashing down. For me, the illusion crumbled when I began to think seriously about having children, and recent media stories reveal that I am not alone.

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There is indeed a dark side to emerging adulthood on campuses, and it does seem to be more problematic for women than men. One professor here polled her students and found that they agreed with sociologist Christian Smith’s concerns. But they thought there is even more peer pressure on young men than young women to be sexually active. The pressure on women students is to be good at everything and look good doing it. Young adults live in a culture in which one can ask questions like, “Who am I? What does it mean to be a responsible sexual being? How ought I to live?” and get no meaningful response, no wisdom, no counsel from the world around””just the ubiquitous reply, “Whatever.” Since that is what emerging adults typically hear, it is often also what they say.

–Jennifer Koenig and Bruce Benson in the January 25, 2012, Christian Century, page 27 (emphasis mine)

A retired Presbyterian pastor who spent her career ministering to gay men and lesbians has been censured by her denomination for marrying same-sex couples during the brief time such unions were legal in California.

The Rev. Jane Adams Spahr lost her final appeal before the highest court in the Presbyterian Church (USA), which released its opinion Tuesday. The tribunal ruled that the 69-year-old lesbian had violated the church’s constitution and her ordination vows when she officiated at the unions of 16 couples and called them marriages.

A lower court’s rebuke of Spahr was upheld, along with the warning that pastors should not represent the marriage of gay or lesbian couples as Presbyterian marriages….

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Ed Dobson is not afraid of dying. It’s the getting there that really scares him.

A former pastor, onetime Christian Right operative and an icon among religious leaders, Dobson has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. When he was diagnosed, doctors gave him 3 to 5 years to live.

That was 11 years ago….

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[Søren] Kierkegaard has a beautiful devotional titled “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.” The basis for the book is James 1:8 and he spends the majority of the space in the book psychologically evaluating what it means to will one thing and what many of the barriers are to willing one thing. The title of the work alone speaks beauty and simplicity to me. I believe Kierkegaard is getting at the heart of Jesus with the idea behind this book. Jesus said that only one thing is necessary and he said that the law is fulfilled in one commandment: Love God and love neighbor.

One of my favorite illustrations in the book is when Kierkegaard writes of a man who is courting a wealthy woman. The double-minded man, the man who does not will only one thing, is pleased by the fact that his marriage to the woman will result in financial gain. The man without a pure heart allows his love for the woman to be tainted by her situation and the gain which will come to him as a result. The man who courts the wealthy woman and wills only one thing, the man with a pure heart, hates any financial gain he may come to acquire by his marriage to the woman. The man has a disdain for the woman’s wealth, not out of jealousy or in any way which causes feelings of contempt for the woman, but for quite the opposite reason. The man has contempt for the woman’s wealth because it presents the possibility of his love for her losing its purity. The man who wills only one thing wants to do nothing but love the woman with his whole heart and with a pure heart. Any other thing which may cause him to love the woman with any less than a whole and pure heart is an enemy. He wants only to love the woman and he wants nothing to get in the way. The man with the pure hearts acts in a way which eliminates other possible competitors for his love.

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First please go here and reread the necessary procedures for a petition nomination. Observe especially the following:

“A petition should come after a prayerful discernment about the preliminary slate and as a way to strengthen the slate,” advises Dean [George] Werner.

A nomination by petition requires ten signatures from individuals representing at least three parishes. Four of those signing must be canonically resident clergy, and of the six lay communicants in good standing in parishes of the diocese, three must be deputies to the Diocesan Convention. The petition must also include the consent signature of the person being nominated.

Now see what you make of Lionel Diemel’s take on this matter.

Michigan Court of Appeals judges will hear arguments Thursday on a case that could have serious repercussions for church members: Can what you confess to your pastor be used against you in a court of law?

A three-judge panel of the court is being asked to decide whether a Baptist pastor in Belleville violated Michigan’s priest-penitent privilege by testifying against a church member in a rape case.

“This is a very dangerous case because it could have very serious repercussions for religion,” the rape suspect’s lawyer, Raymond Cassar of Farmington Hills, said Tuesday. “If a pastor is allowed to testify against a member of his church about privileged communications, no one will want to confess their sins to their pastors anymore.”

Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Toni Odette argued in court documents that the privilege doesn’t apply in this case.

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Read it all noting especially the eleven page pdf at the bottom which quotes the Motion documents in full.

My experience as a married Catholic priest for 28 years brings to mind several thoughts, both practical and spiritual. First, the church must support new priests’ families financially. During my first years as a married Catholic priest, there were times when we could not pay the heating bill. When I was ordained, it was made quite clear to me that I should not look to the church as my main source of income but rather to a full-time job outside of the church. My parish duties have thus always been secondary.

Secondly, the new priests must be prepared for the spiritual struggles that come with the territory of being a married priest in the Catholic Church. It is difficult for children of priests to hear everyone call their father, “Father.” It is one of my regrets that I could never be a “normal Dad” who was able to attend school functions and sporting events. Priests’ wives often bear the brunt of this special status, for they must allow their husbands to be “priest” at a real cost to themselves and their children.

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More than 100 clerics in the dio­cese of London have written asking for the right to choose whether or not to officiate at civil-partnership ceremonies in church.

A letter sent yesterday to the London diocesan representatives on General Synod states: “We, the undersigned, believe that, on the issue of holding civil-partnership ceremonies in Church of England churches, incumbents/priests-in-charge should be accorded the same rights as they enjoy at present in the matter of officiating at the marriage of divorced couples in church. Namely, that this should be a matter for the individual conscience of the incumbent/priest-in-charge.

“We would respectfully request that our views in this regard are fully represented in Synod.”

The Government has relaxed the rules, so that now a civil partnership ceremony can be registered in a place of worship. It has, however, allowed exemptions, and the House of Bishops has insisted that the clergy observe a complete ban.

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It is quite legitimate that this issue is being raised. However, the unity of the Church and our core mission particularly in these sobering and challenging economic times, must remain paramount. I hope the discussion will continue in a prayerful and respectful way, whilst not distracting from the important ministry our churches are carrying out in their communities.

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With a nudge from their pastor, the 25,000 members of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta opened their hearts, and their wallets, to Ephren Taylor. And why not, given his glittering credentials? Mr Taylor billed himself as the youngest black chief executive of a publicly traded company in American history. He had appeared on NPR and CNN. He had given a talk on socially conscious investing at the Democratic National Convention. Snoop Dogg, a rapper, had tapped him to manage a charitable endowment.

So when Mr Taylor’s “Wealth Tour Live” seminars came to town, faithful ears opened wide. Eddie Long, the mega-church’s leader, introduced Mr Taylor at one event with the words: “[God] wants you to be a mover and shaker”¦to finance you well to do His will.” Mr Taylor offered “low-risk investment with high performances”, chosen with guidance from God.

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A month after Anabella and Matteus Potter were born in 2009, their parents, Adriana and Robert, agreed to disagree on what to do with two other embryos created in the same petri dish as their twins.

Grateful for the in vitro fertilization that enabled the Elmhurst, Ill., couple to become parents, Adriana Potter, 38, believed donating the embryos to advance reproductive technology or treat debilitating diseases would be the most life-affirming choice. Robert Potter, 44, imagined having more children or donating the embryos for another couple to do the same.

Anabella and Matteus made up their parents’ minds. Watching the brother and sister blossom into beautiful toddlers compelled them to have both embryos implanted last November.

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For the second time in a decade, the Rev. Thomas McKenzie has found himself in an ugly church fight.

Back in 2004, it was over sexuality and salvation in the Episcopal Church.

Now it’s over power and money, the spat between leaders of the Anglican Mission in the Americas ”” made up mostly of former Episcopalians like McKenzie ”” and the overseas Anglican group that adopted them.

“It’s sinful, it’s ugly, it’s wrong,” said McKenzie, pastor of Church of the Redeemer in Nashville and a former Episcopal priest. “And it doesn’t bring honor to the name of Christ.”

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Update: Please note–this link no longer works for me but I found it over here.

Church leaders say the announcement reopened old wounds and created new ones among Episcopalians here.

“When he left (in 2007), it was painful, but we respected his decision,” said the Rev. Daniel Gutierrez, canon to the ordinary for the 18,000-member Diocese of the Rio Grande. “But then for him to turn around and take this position and try to lure other priests is a betrayal.”

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The film follows Robinson as the church grapples with how to handle lesbian and gay issues. Robinson’s election brought to a head divisions between liberal and conservative Episcopalians, and between the U.S. church and more conservative members of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Filmmakers followed Robinson to England in 2008, where he was excluded from the Anglicans’ Lambeth Conference of bishops. And they followed him to the Episcopal Church’s 2009 General Convention, where leaders voted to allow blessings of same-sex marriages, civil unions or domestic partnerships (where legal) and allow gay men and women to become bishops.

Along the way, they interviewed Robinson, his family and other church leaders, many of whom supported his quest for equality and some of whom did not. In one scene, a woman sobs that she is torn between wanting to do what’s best for the people around her while also remaining true to Scripture.

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Read it all and check out all that is available.

S. admits it. She and her husband have been lying to her in-laws about going to church. I suggested they were fibbing, but whatever you call it, the truth remains: it’s so much easier to pretend, on the phone to her husband’s minister father and his wife, that the religion S. and her husband both grew up in remains a part of their daily life. But as S. said when she described her quandary to me, the differences between the way she and her husband practice their religion and the way his parents do can’t be tiptoed around for long ”” not with a chatty toddler in the mix.

S. wanted to know how she and her husband could navigate this generational divide without alienating his parents (and although S.’s husband wasn’t the writer, he’s trying to figure this out, too). And (as many of you suspected) she was kind of hoping for a bigger endorsement of taking the easy way out: teaching her daughter the art of evasion, and dancing around the subject forever more.

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Four churchwardens have resigned from a small rural parish in Kent in a long-running saga in which the diocesan bishop was forced to intervene.

In their extraordinary joint letter of resignation the four churchwardens accuse their rector, Dr David Attwood, of “poor personal relationships with several leading parishioners” and of being “extremely verbally aggressive” on a visit to one former churchwarden.

The four ”” Penelope Bell, Trevor Champ, Roger Flint and Michael Moore ”” say that when he arrived in 2002, having overcome an original rejection, the three parishes of Sundridge, Ide Hill and Toys Hill near Sevenoaks were thriving, with growing congregations and healthy finances.

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The Very Rev Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, has instructed an eminent employment lawyer to complain to Church officials after being rejected for the role of Bishop of Southwark.

Sources say the dean, one of the most contentious figures in the Church, believes he could sue officials under the Equality Act 2010, which bans discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. Such a case could create a damaging new rift within the CoE.

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[Sara] Ritchey provides some useful historical background that outlines the early medieval shift to an all-celibate clergy. But I was struck by her naive ignorance of the recent history of the Catholic Church. The existence of Priests’ wives should, she tells us, provide the occasion on which “a real conversation about the continuation of priestly celibacy might begin.”

Might begin?…

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