There are no plans to cancel the meeting of Anglican Church leaders in Dublin this month, despite a boycott by up to a quarter of the primates, a senior Anglican has confirmed.
Up to ten of the leaders of the Anglican Communion’s 38 provinces have said they won’t attend the biennial meeting because of the presence of Katharine Jefferts-Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopalian Church of the United States and a supporter of gay bishops and same-sex marriage.
Brussels has called for sweeping powers for regulators to seize failing EU banks, sack board members, and impose haircuts on senior bank debt, aiming to ensure that taxpayers are never again held hostage by high finance.
There is no doubt that we are living in a time of immense challenge to faith. Atheism is on a campaign, and not only with Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins taking a lead. In the US, the Freedom from Religion Foundation – established in 1976 by Anne Nicol Gaylor and her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor – has grown in numbers from 5,500 in 2004 to about 16,000 today. It boldly claims that the history of Western civilization “shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion”. So much for the Church. Of course, the history of the twentieth century alone witnesses to the absolute disaster of Godless totalitarianism.
Europe’s challenge is no longer just economic. It’s also social and political. Cherished values and ideals are under assault. The euro, intended to nurture unity, has bred discord, as countries assign blame and argue over sharing costs. The social contract is being rewritten, with government benefits and protections being cut. In Ireland, the governing coalition seems doomed; one minority party has withdrawn its support.
The rescue of Ireland, as with Greece before, represents a gamble that Europe can arrest growing doubts and win the patience of bondholders and voters: persuading the investors not to continue dumping bonds (those of Ireland and other countries) in panic, which raises interest rates and could precipitate a self-fulfilling financial collapse; and persuading ordinary citizens to tolerate austerity (higher unemployment, lower social benefits, heavier taxes) without resorting to paralyzing street protests or ineffectual parliamentary coalitions. Whether the gamble will succeed is unclear, as are the potentially chaotic consequences if it doesn’t.
Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring risk on German, French and Dutch bonds have surged over recent days, rising significantly above the levels of non-EMU states in Scandinavia.
“Germany cannot keep paying for bail-outs without going bankrupt itself,” said Professor Wilhelm Hankel, of Frankfurt University. “This is frightening people. You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders. People have terrible memories of 1948 and 1923 when they lost their savings.”
The refrain was picked up this week by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. “We’re not swimming in money, we’re drowning in debts,” he told the Bundestag.
Irish Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan has said he expects the Irish Republic to accept a “very substantial loan” as part of an EU-backed bail-out.
Mr Honohan told RTE radio he expected the loan to amount to “tens of billions” of euros.
The final decision will be up to the Irish government, which has yet to comment.
Mr Honohan’s comments come as a team of international officials meet in Dublin for further talks on the debt crisis.
There will be sovereign defaults in the eurozone, with a default by Greece now inevitable. Ultimately the thing that underpins any country’s debts is its ability to raise enough tax to service and eventually repay them. Greece cannot hope to do that. Ireland will be pushed to do so but probably can. I would, however, worry about the long-term credit-worthiness of Portugal, Spain and Italy.
So then you have to ask whether a default of a eurozone state breaks up the eurozone. I don’t think we know the answer to that yet. We do know that the Germans, who hold the cards, will do absolutely everything they can to stop such a default, even if they have to grit their teeth as they do so. My instinct is that a country defaulting would not of itself lead to that country leaving the euro, but if its costs and prices were totally out of line, that probably would be the least painful way of extracting itself. If that is right in the short-term, things will be patched up and the euro will come through this downturn intact. But the next downturn, in five or 10 years’ time? Surely not.
“It seems difficult for Ireland to avoid tapping the fund unless they have new rabbits to pull out their hat,” said Julian Callow, chief European economist at Barclays Capital in London.
It is very likely Ireland will seek support from the 750- billion-euro ($1 trillion) fund, Reuters reported, citing euro- zone sources it didn’t name. The Finance Ministry in Dublin denied talks were under way. Amelia Torres, a spokeswoman for the EU’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, called the report “pure speculation.”
Ireland’s financial troubles loomed large Wednesday as investors – betting that the country soon could join Greece in seeking an EU bailout – drove the interest rate on the country’s 10-year borrowing to a new high.
The yield on 10-year bonds rose above 8 percent for the first time since the launch of the euro, the European Union’s common currency, 11 years ago.
The cost of funding Irish debt has risen steadily since September, when the government admitted its bailout efforts of five banks would cost at least euro45 billion, equivalent to euro10,000 for every man, woman and child in Ireland. That gargantuan bill, in turn, has made the projected 2010 deficit rise to 32 percent of GDP, the highest in post-war Europe.
Irish Catholic women feel that they are not sufficiently appreciated by the church, but their faith remains strong, according to a newly published survey.
The research, which compared attitudes between Catholic and Protestant women, found that 74 percent of Catholic women surveyed felt that the church did not treat them with “a lot of respect.” Among Protestant women, just 6.3 percent felt that lack of respect.
However, 61 percent of Catholic women said they looked to Mary as a positive role model who empowered them within the church, compared with 27 percent of Protestant women who looked to Mary.
It is no longer possible, it would seem, to leave the Catholic Church. Although the church in Ireland has been accepting applications to defect, many on foot of applications printed from the user-friendly CountMeOut website, it said on Tuesday that it would no longer process them. The website, which has helped disillusioned Catholics leave, has suspended offering the defection papers “until the situation has been clarified”.
In a somewhat ambiguously worded statement the Dublin archdiocese set out the situation for all dioceses: “The Holy See confirmed at the end of August that it was introducing changes to canon law and as a result it will no longer be possible to formally defect from the Catholic Church.” But, it continued: “This will not alter the fact that many people can defect from the church and continue to do so, albeit not through a formal process. This is a change that will affect the church throughout the world.”
It said the archdiocese planned to maintain a register “to note the expressed desire of those who wish to defect”. Last year, it said, 229 people had defected formally from the church through the archdiocese; the figure for this year so far is 312.
The visit by Pope Benedict XVI to England and Scotland last week could have been a disaster. Indeed, more than a few involved were worried: about the crowds who would come to see him and the prospect of large-scale demonstrations, and about the often gratuitously antagonistic commentary in much of the British press in the days before he arrived.
Instead, it bordered on the triumphant. Decent crowds, if not those matching the 1982 visit of Pope John Paul II, turned out to see him. Even larger numbers gathered as his popemobile passed by in Edinburgh, London and Birmingham, though a significant percentage were not locals, but tourists, or eastern European immigrants.
(ACNS) The next Primates’ Meeting of the Anglican Communion will be held in Ireland between the 25th and 31st January, 2011.
Senior bishops from Churches across the Communion will be invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams to attend the meeting taking place at the Emmaus Retreat & Conference Centre in Dublin, Ireland.
The Primates’ Meeting was established in 1978 by Archbishop Donald Coggan (101st Archbishop of Canterbury) as an opportunity for “leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation” and has met regularly since then. Today it has become an important consultative meeting for Primates and Moderators and is recognised as one of the Instruments of Communion.
Recent Primates’ Meetings have been held in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 2007 and Alexandria, Egypt in 2009.
As Bishops of the Church of Ireland, we join our voice to the widespread international condemnation of the plan to burn copies of the Islamic Sacred scriptures. This deliberate desecration of scriptures sacred to all Muslims is a gratuitous act of sectarianism and totally contrary to the Christian spirit of love and reconciliation. We recognise that the pain of this outrage will be felt by members of Islamic communities throughout the world.
Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has told priests that the Vatican has rejected the resignations of his two auxiliary bishops following their reported involvement in the Roman Catholic Church’s cover-up of child abuse.
The Vatican’s rebuff deals a blow to Martin, a veteran Vatican diplomat who was appointed in 2004 to lead Ireland’s most populous diocese through a growing storm of child-abuse scandals. From the start he has clashed with predecessors who suppressed reports of child molestation and transferred abusive priests to new parishes in Ireland, Britain and the United States.
“Following the presentation of their resignations to Pope Benedict, it has been decided that Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field will remain as auxiliary bishops,” Martin said in a letter sent this week to priests and other Dublin church officials.
In no uncertain terms, Green Party leader John Gormley has told the Catholic Church to zip its lip in the matter of gay unions in the Civil Partnership Bill. Mr Gormley reprimanded Bishop Christy Jones of Elgin — an ecclesiastical spokesman on family matters — for his opposition to the same-sex clause in the legislation. Gormley opined that we had “left the era of church interference behind us”.
However, a bishop is as entitled to articulate an opinion as anyone else. It would be a poor democracy indeed — it would be an authoritarian state, like East Germany — if a Christian bishop were prevented from preaching the Gospel as he saw fit.
Moreover, bishops also have constituencies and if you want to check that out, just turn up at Sunday Mass — or, more especially, a funeral — in any part of rural Ireland. Actually, politicians generally so well recognise the constituencies of bishops that they even collect money for their political parties at the gates of these locations of Sunday worship.
In one of his most concrete actions since a sexual abuse scandal began sweeping the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, Pope Benedict XVI on Monday appointed a high-profile team of prelates, including the archbishop of New York, to investigate Irish dioceses and seminaries.
The pope had announced that he would open the investigation in a strong letter to Irish Catholics in March. In the letter he expressed “shame and remorse” for “sinful and criminal” acts committed by members of the clergy, following two scathing Irish government reports documenting widespread abuse in church-run schools and the Dublin archdiocese.
Although the pope has spoken out against abuse in recent weeks and accepted the resignation of five Irish bishops for their failure to address child sexual abuse, Monday’s announcement seemed aimed at showing that the Vatican is committed to combating the crisis with actions as well as words. The pope’s March letter had been criticized by some as calling more for spiritual renewal than offering direct action against abusers and the bishops on whose watch abuse happened.
If the trouble starts — and it remains an “if” — the trigger may well be obscure to the concerns of most Americans: a missed budget projection by the Spanish government, the failure of Greece to hit a deficit-reduction target, a drop in Ireland’s economic output.
But the knife-edge psychology currently governing global markets has put the future of the U.S. economic recovery in the hands of politicians in an assortment of European capitals. If one or more fail to make the expected progress on cutting budgets, restructuring economies or boosting growth, it could drain confidence in a broad and unsettling way. Credit markets worldwide could lock up and throw the global economy back into recession.
For the average American, that seemingly distant sequence of events could translate into another hit on the 401(k) plan, a lost factory shift if exports to Europe decline and another shock to the banking system that might make it harder to borrow.
“If what happened in Greece were to happen in a large country, it could fundamentally mark our times,” Angelos Pangratis, head of the European Union delegation to the United States, said Friday after a panel discussion on the crisis in Greece sponsored by the Greater Washington Board of Trade.
I hope today’s report will help to reassure everyone that while important challenges remain, the Catholic Church in Ireland has come a long way in addressing the failings of the past. I welcome in particular the report’s two clear conclusions: “Firstly, that children should be safer today within the church than they once were. Secondly, those that seek to harm children should feel much less secure.”
I also welcome the news that 2,356 individuals have been trained and are now acting as child safeguarding representatives in parishes across the country, with coverage of all parishes to be achieved in the coming months. This represents an extraordinary achievement by any standard and is a remarkable example of lay participation in the life and ministry of the church. I want to thank all those who give of their time, talent and expertise in safeguarding children. Building whole communities that actively keep children safe, together with effective structures of accountability and transparency, is the key to the future of child safeguarding within the church and, indeed, within society as a whole. Each one of us has to take responsibility for keeping children safe and for addressing the attitudes and practices which had such tragic consequences for so many children in the past.
There is no room for complacency. The tragic experience of the past reminds us that constant vigilance is needed as well as full adherence to robust, comprehensive and ongoing systems of accountability. As Pope Benedict XVI said to the bishops in his pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland: “Only decisive action carried out with complete honesty and transparency will restore the respect and goodwill of the Irish people towards the church to which we have consecrated our lives. This must arise, first and foremost, from your own self-examination, inner purification and spiritual renewal.”
The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina is seeking to establish a missional partnership with the Church of Ireland Diocese of Kilmore Elphin and Ardagh.
Who: Our team consists of 14 teens and 3 adults that represent 8 churches as well as Porter Gaud (Episcopal) School.
What: As ambassadors, we will seek to build relationships with and serve alongside local teens to reach out to others in their communities. Our team will begin by joining the youth of their diocese in attending a large youth event, then travel to two communities where we will engage with young people. Our aim will be to share our faith with others and encourage the youth of the Church of Ireland while getting to know one another’s cultures. Then in the summer of 2011, we will host a group from their diocese here in South Carolina to continue developing the partnership.
Just been on Irish radio with the estimable Clifford Longley to talk about the weekend’s child-abuse developments. Clifford takes a pop at Dr Rowan Williams for apparently acting as another church leader scoring points at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church with his “lost all credibility” comments. I pursue the “they just don’t get it” line, saying that outrage directed at the media and the Archbishop of Canterbury makes the Catholic Church in Ireland look arrogantly dismissive of this terrible crisis.
But it’s two Irish phone-in guests from the pews, as it were, who provide a microcosm of the severity of this issue. John and Frank go hammer-and-tongs on the issue, one of them invoking a terrible history by placing the child-abuse crisis in the context of Spanish Roman Catholics siding with General Franco in Spain, the other accusing him of “losing his religion” and suggesting that 99 per cent of Irish priests are innocent (I’d put that percentage higher actually).
In truth, I probably stoke the fire by saying that Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All Ireland, should have resigned….
At St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, apologised to abuse victims, saying: “Crimes against children have indeed been committed, and any Catholics who were aware of such crimes and did not act to report them brings shame on us all.”
During his Easter sermon, Archbishop Nichols told worshippers at Westminster Cathedral that to appreciate the Easter message, “we have to begin with our own sin and shame”.
He said: “In recent weeks the serious sins committed within the Catholic community have been much talked about.
“For our part, we have been reflecting on them deeply, acknowledging our guilt and our need for forgiveness.”
(For important background on this which broke when we were taking a news break on the blog, please follow all the links here).
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressed his “deep sorrow and regret” after saying the Catholic Church in Ireland had lost “all credibility”.
In Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said Archbishop Williams had spoken with him by phone explaining his “sadness” regarding some “unfortunate words” in his interview.
An article on Thursday about the fallout from the Roman Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe misstated the estimated number of children in Ireland who were victims, according to two government reports last year. The report said the children numbered in the tens of thousands, not the “hundreds of thousands.”
Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee, who stepped aside as Bishop of Cloyne a year ago after an independent report found he had failed to respond adequately to child abuse claims in Country Cork.
It’s a miserable end to the career of a man who was once private secretary to Popes Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II. It was Magee who was supposed to have discovered the body of John Paul I in 1978, though it later emerged that a nun had found the pontiff dead in his bedroom. The Vatican, in its wisdom, thought it was more “appropriate” that a priest should be named as the discoverer. As Magee has since put it: “I did find the body of His Holiness. I just didn’t find it first.” All theories that John Paul I were murdered are, incidentally, the most utter nonsense.
Anyway, all eyes now should be on Cardinal Sean Brady, Archbishop of Armagh. I would be surprised if the Pope did not accept his resignation, too ”“ though it looks as if we shall have to wait until after Easter for a decision.
Colm O’Gorman, a survivor of Irish clerical sexual abuse and a campaigner on behalf of other victims, said the pope had failed to “acknowledge the cover-up of the rape and abuse of children by priests, to take responsibility for it, and to show how he would ensure it never happened again.”
“There was no acceptance of responsibility for the now-established cover-up, no plan to ensure that children will be properly protected around the global Church, and no assurance that those who rape and abuse will be reported to the civil authorities,” O’Gorman said in Monday’s (March 22) Herald newspaper.
The Vatican inquiry into church practices in Ireland will be carried out by senior figures, most likely led by a cardinal, according to Vatican sources.
The inquiry, in the form of an Apostolic Visitation, was signposted in Pope Benedict XVI’s pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland at the weekend.
Although no final decisions have yet been made about the nature and the timing of the inquiry, Vatican sources yesterday confirmed that the visitation will focus primarily on the handling of sex abuse cases.
The visitation is expected to include the Archdiocese of Dublin, the Diocese of Ferns and many of those institutions which featured in last summer’s Ryan report, while it may also take in a number of, or indeed all, the other Irish dioceses.
It could hardly get worse. Sex scandals are breaking over the Catholic church with such fury…that the Vatican has felt bound to defend Pope Benedict XVI himself. Children at some Catholic schools in Germany have been systematically abused; paedophiles were transferred to other jobs, rather than dismissed or prosecuted. Abuse has surfaced in Austria and the Netherlands. In Ireland Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate, has admitted that he was present in 1975 when two teenage boys were persuaded to sign oaths of silence about their abuse by Father Brendan Smyth. The church defrocked Smyth, but nobody, including Cardinal Brady, told the police about his crimes and he remained free to abuse boys for two decades.
Yet denial still reigns. Bishop Christopher Jones, head of the Irish episcopate’s committee on family affairs, has complained that the church is being singled out, when most abuse happens inside families and other organisations. “Why this huge isolation of the church and this huge focus on cover-up in the church when it has been going on for centuries?” he asked.
He is right that other secretive outfits (orphanages in authoritarian countries, say) are home to shameful abuse, but that misses the point. No church can expect to be judged merely against the most depraved parts of the secular world. If you preach absolute moral values, you will be held to absolute moral standards. Hence, for Catholics and outsiders alike, the church hierarchy’s inability to deal with the issue is baffling.
Faced with a church sexual abuse scandal spreading across Europe, Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday apologized directly to victims and their families in Ireland, expressing “shame and remorse” for what he called “sinful and criminal” acts committed by clergy.
But the pope did not require that church leaders be disciplined for past mistakes as some victims were hoping; nor did he clarify what critics see as contradictory Vatican rules they fear allow abuse to continue unpunished.
“You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry,” the pope said in a long-awaited, eight-page pastoral letter to Irish Catholics. “Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated.”
The strong letter was written in language at once passionate, personal and sweeping. And the pope did take the relatively rare step of ordering a special apostolic delegation to be sent to unspecified dioceses in Ireland to investigate. But even that action raised questions among critics who wondered what the investigators might unearth beyond what was found in two wide-ranging and scathing Irish government reports released last year. One of those reports said the church and the police in Ireland had systematically colluded in covering up decades of sexual abuse by priests in Dublin.