A senior Christian leader has warned much of the aid flowing into Pakistan to help deal with massive flooding may never be used for relief.
Retired Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, a Pakistani national who has spent much of his life in Britain, is visiting Australia to discuss issues around Islam and its growth in the West.
“The misery that the (Pakistani) people are in has been caused, to some extent, by corruption and incompetence,” Bishop Nazir-Ali told reporters in Canberra on Monday.
It was also my pleasure to visit His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of the Church of England, and later to pray with them and our fellow Christians in the evocative surroundings of Westminster Abbey, a place which speaks so eloquently of our shared traditions and culture. As Britain is home to so many religious traditions, I was grateful to have the opportunity to meet their representatives and to share some thoughts with them about the contribution that the religions can offer to the development of a healthy pluralistic society.
Naturally, my visit was directed in a special way to the Catholics of the United Kingdom. I treasure the time spent with the bishops, clergy, religious and laity, and with teachers, pupils and older people. It was especially moving to celebrate with them, here in Birmingham, the beatification of a great son of England, Cardinal John Henry Newman….
The Bishop of Warrington has issued a rallying call to the town’s community ahead of Back to Church day next Sunday, September 26.
Bishop Richard Blackburn is hoping people who have not been to church for weeks, months, or years will try the modern church.
Congregations have been handing out invitations to friends and family, and the bishop wants to further extend this invitation to the whole of Warrington.
IT is often thought the main threat of radical Islamism to the West and, indeed, the world, is terrorism. It is also said to be the isolation of Muslim communities, which allows extremists to recruit people to their cause.
Such views are not mistaken but they confuse effects with causes. What the world has to recognise is that we are not simply dealing with faith, but with a political, social and economic ideology. Radical Islamism is a worldview. Its nearest parallel, despite many differences, is Marxism.
Radical Islamists claim their all-encompassing program for society is rooted in fundamental Islamic sources. They reject the interpretations of Koran and sharia law offered by reformist or moderate Muslims. We must, of course, respect the faith of ordinary Muslims, but the ideology has to be met in a different way.
….the sheer sloppiness of Polly Toynbee”˜s tirade (yes, another one) in …[the] Guardian is breathtaking….
So, let’s pick on the worst elements of religious expression (which millions of religious people also find weird and/or dodgy), shall we, and ignore the rest? What response would I get if I used Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and the other usual suspects as the epitome of secular atheism? Like everything else in this world ”“ the real one in which most of us live ”“ religious institutions or movements comprise huge ranges of agreement and dispute with just about everything the institution or movement lays claim to. There is no objective monolith ”“ not even when leaders pretend there is.
And, just to be really clear, (elements of) the secular world looks on with utter perplexity at all sorts of religious motivation, belief and behaviour: self-sacrifice, humility, generosity, etc. (There I go again ”“ generalising”¦) The mere fact that ”˜the secular world looks on with utter peplexity’ tells us nothing other than that some people are perplexed by other people ”“ it says nothing about the subject of the perplexity itself….
Issues of immigration and evangelism will top the agenda as more than 100 bishops of the Episcopal Church gather Sept. 16-21 in Phoenix for their annual fall meeting, themed “Changing Contexts for God’s Mission: What is the New Invitation?”
The bishops also are expected to discuss congregational development and mission, all within a context of prayer, Bible study and worship.
At least 50 bishops and a dozen of their spouses — who are also gathering in Phoenix — plan to attend a Sept. 13-15 pre-meeting visit to the Arizona-Mexico border. The trip, organized by the Diocese of Arizona, aims to help bishops and spouses “spend time … on both sides of the border seeing conditions for themselves,” according to a statement released by Greta Huls, diocesan canon for communication.
My hopes as an Anglican bishop are twofold. Pope Benedict is a formidable philosopher and theologian. He has spent much of his ministry analysing the ebb-tide of faith in modern Europe. This is also a matter Archbishop Rowan Williams has devoted much attention to.
Instead of slogans on buses pressing an atheist cause, or the reverse, I hope the visit will promote real dialogue between those of faith, those in doubt and those who deny.
Secondly, Pope Benedict will meet his bishops and the Church of England bishops at Lambeth Palace. Anglican and Catholic bishops regularly meet but doing so with the Bishop of Rome will, I believe, reinforce and further encourage our common mission. Differences will remain but what we have in common far outweighs them.
Following the formal announcement and a press conference with the local media, Bishop Stephen spent the day touring the Diocese visiting some of his future colleagues and parishioners.
After meeting Diocesan Office staff and others he visited a farm in Ramsey. He then went to Hampton, the site of a new church, for lunch with others from the Diocese. In the afternoon he met with a headteacher from one of our church schools, and visited a small innovative hi-tech business and one of the Universities in Cambridge. His day concluded at Ely Cathedral where he joined worshippers for Evening Prayer.
Herewith the BBC lead in write up:
The retiring Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, has called for a renewed focus on social mobility in the light of “the long failure of the enlightenment project”. Speaking to James Naughtie, he said that in an “increasingly religious age” we needed to find new ways of dealing with the way “human beings mess things up”.
I’ve been ordained for over 30 years now, and during that time it’s been my privilege to be with a number of people as they died. Some were frightened not of annihilation, but of absurdity. Death sealed for them the emptiness of a life not fully lived. Death came too soon, before they could make sense of their life, before they could make one last attempt to give it meaning. They became vulnerable to attacks of despair in which their sense of the value of all that had gone before them drained away. The sting of death was not the loss of life, but the loss of meaning.
I face my mortality in the conviction that death is the gateway to the fulfilment of human life, not its extinction. I believe life is a pilgrimage of which the destination is God. The fears that assail me are more about the process of dying rather than the event itself. It’s not the dying that’s the issue: it’s living until I die. Jesus said that he had come that ”˜we might have life, and have it abundantly.’ Abundant living is both his promise and his gift, and I pray for grace to be open to it.
Sadly, we all know of individuals where in old age disease and chemical changes to the brain have effected irreversible changes in their personality, but I have also seen how a person’s true character can emerge in old age.
I suspect that the ordinariate will begin on a fairly small scale, while those in charge feel their way. There will be one or two parishes in every large centre of population to begin with. After a time, the new jurisdiction will grow. Parishes will become more numerous and also larger as more and more Anglicans join them and as local Roman Catholics, dissatisfied with the way their own liturgy is conducted, start attending on Sunday (this, I predict, will have a salutory effect on many existing Catholic Parishes). And as has already happened where Anglican Rite Parishes (mostly in the US) have been set up, they will become gateways back into the Church for lapsed Catholics. They will not be divisive, as some fear; on the contrary, they will be a great blessing for the English Church. But don’t hold your breath: this is all going to take time.
Professor Harries lauded Pullman for writing with “moral clout” and said he had enjoyed the book.
And he agreed with Pullman about the humane qualities of Jesus.
However, he said the author had put a “great abyss between Jesus the Good man and what the church has done to him”.
Prof Harries said this was not true to the New Testament.
A group of traditionalist Anglican bishops has admitted that Anglo-Catholic clergy are sharply divided over how to respond to the ordination of women bishops.
Fifteen bishops belonging to Forward in Faith, the largest Anglo-Catholic group in the Church of England, said members faced a range of options in response to the mid-July vote by the General Synod, to create women bishops by 2014 without meeting the demands of objectors.
They admitted that the Anglo-Catholic faction of the Church of England could not decide collectively what course of action to take.
The first woman bishop of the Church of England could be appointed by 2014, the Second Church Estates Commissioner told Parliament on July 27.
Speaking in response to a question from the member for Kingston upon Hull North, Diana Johnson (Lab), as to his “guess” when the Church of England might first see women bishops, the Second Church Estates Commissioner Mr. Anthony Baldry stated the legislation completed its Report stage at the meeting of General Synod at York.
The Church of England “needs strong Catholic hearts and voices” to defeat the proposed legislation on women bishops, a group of Anglo-Catholic bishops said in an open letter to their constituency last week.
The letter is signed by 15 bishops from Forward in Faith, including the Bishop of FulÂham, the Rt Revd John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Chichester, Dr John Hind, and the three Provincial EpisÂcopal Visitors. It urges traditionalists to “engage in the debate and discussion” when the legislation from General Synod goes to the dioceses, which is the next stage in the process.
The Bishops urge their supporters to be “active in the election process for the next quinquennium of the General Synod when the two-thirds majority in each House will be required if the legislation is to pass”.
The Bishops say these are “grave times” for the Church of England. Bringing in women bishops will mean a “disastrous cost to Catholic unity”, and will “not provide room for our tradition to grow and flourish”.
A group of traditionalist Anglican bishops has admitted that Anglo-Catholic clergy are sharply divided over how to respond to the ordination of women as bishops.
Fifteen bishops belonging to Forward in Faith, the largest Anglo-Catholic group in the Church of England, admitted that the Anglo-Catholic faction of the church could not decide collectively what course of action to take.
They said members faced a range of options in response to the mid-July vote by the General Synod, the church’s national assembly, to create women bishops by 2014 without meeting demands of objectors.
Describing themselves as bishops “united in our belief that the Church of England is mistaken in its actions” they wrote to more than 1,300 Anglo-Catholic priests and deacons who, in June 2008, registered their opposition to women bishops in an open letter to Anglican leaders.
I once found myself working closely, in a cathedral fundraising campaign, with a local millionaire. He was a self-made man. When I met him he was in his 60s, at the top of his game as a businessman, and was chairing our Board of Trustees. To me, coming from the academic world, he was a nightmare to work with.
He never thought in (what seemed to me) straight lines; he would leap from one conversation to another; he would suddenly break into a discussion and ask what seemed a totally unrelated question. But after a while I learned to say to myself: Well, it must work, or he wouldn’t be where he is. And that was right. We raised the money. We probably wouldn’t have done it if I’d been running the Trust my own way.
I have something of the same feeling on re-reading C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I owe Lewis a great debt. In my late teens and early twenties I read everything of his I could get my hands on, and read some of his paperbacks and essays several times over. There are sentences, and some whole passages, I know pretty much by heart.
Millions around the world have been introduced to, and nurtured within, the Christian faith through his work where their own preachers and teachers were not giving them what they needed. That was certainly true of me.
Neither the Report of the Revision Committee nor the legislation itself shows a proper understanding of our reservations, however carefully these have been presented through the consultation process and in the College and House of bishops. It remains a deep disappointment to us that the Church at large did not engage with the excellent Rochester Report and paid scant attention to the Consecrated Women report sponsored by Forward in Faith.
We must now accept that a majority of the members of the Church of England believe it is right to proceed with the ordination of women as bishops, and that a significant percentage of those in authority will not encourage or embrace with enthusiasm the traditional integrity or vocations within it. Nor is it their intention or desire to create a structure which genuinely allows the possibility of a flourishing mission beyond this generation.
However, the closeness of the vote on the Archbishops’ amendment for co ordinate jurisdiction, concerns though there are about its adequacy, suggest at least a measure of disquiet in the majority about proceeding without a provision acceptable to traditionalists. The Catholic group fought valiantly on the floor of synod and we are grateful for that, and while many in the Church and press are speaking as if the legislation is now passed, final synodical approval is still some way off.
It appears to be the calm before the storm for the Anglican Communion.
Amid much debate and controversy, last month the Church of England decided to allow women to become bishops in the next two years.
The move greatly upset traditionalist Anglicans, who are now expected to leave the Anglican Communion in large numbers ”” although not just yet.
All of the traditionalists’ wishes were rejected at a heated July 9-13 meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod in York, England. The traditionalists had sought an amendment for alternative male bishops. The amendment would have allowed parishes unwilling to have a woman bishop to call upon a male alternative who would have his own autonomy and “joint jurisdiction” over those parishes.
There has been further reaction this week to the debate on women bishops at the General Synod in York, which left opponents to women bishops disÂsatisfied
The former Bishop of RichÂborough, the Rt Revd Edwin Barnes, speaking on BBC Radio 4, said that there was “nothing left” for traditionÂalists in the Church of England, but he hinted that the Pope’s proposal of an Ordinariate could offer a solution.
“All we have is empty promises, and some of the leaders in the women’s movement have said promises don’t have to be kept, promises are there to be broken; so there’s no trust left at all.
“Coming along with this, of course, has come the Pope’s offer of an Ordinariate, which has been an absolute lifeline, and has given us new hope in a way that nothing else has.”
[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]… asked: “Does the Government’s commitment to gender equality extend to great national institutions such as the Church of England?”
And he asked whether David Cameron intended to “have a word” with the bishops and archbishops currently in the Lords “in order that we may have some female bishops in this House before the end of this decade”?
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York made a brave attempt to amend the legislation and while I did not think it would have been able to achieve what some hoped it would achieve it was defeated in the House of Clergy. It is not often, if ever, that two Archbishops have proposed an amendment to such a contentious piece of legislation concerning the future unity of the Church of England; to have done so and not succeeded says a great deal about the problems of our synodical structures. The Draft Measure will now go to the dioceses for further scrutiny though it is highly unlikely that it will not gain the necessary support. It will return to the Synod in 2012 when it will need to gain the necessary two thirds majorities in all three Houses of Laity, Clergy and Bishops.
If the Measure is passed -if it isn’t the issue will not go away-the landscape in the Church of England for traditional Catholics and Evangelicals will be bleak. There will be no resolutions to be passed, no Episcopal Visitors to petition for, the Act of Synod will be abolished and the episcopal ministry of the Bishops of Beverley, Ebbsfleet and Richborough will not exist. The process of reception so ably explained by Dame Mary Tanner in New Directions a few months ago has been forgotten. All the promises which were made to us in the early 1990’s about having a permanent honoured place in our Church have been ignored. No doubt many of the supporters of women’s ordination will say there has been compromise on both sides. They will point out they preferred a simple piece of legislation without a statutory Code of Practice. However, from our point of view, this legislation offers us little hope. It addresses none of the issues which are of concern to us and about which we have argued for so long. The only provision will be that a parish can request a male incumbent or the sacramental and pastoral care of a male bishop when needed. It is simply not sufficient for those for whom it is supposed to apply. Far from providing for those who have serious theological objections to the ordination of women the legislation allows parishes to discriminate against women.
I cannot overemphasise how serious this situation is for us….
Birmingham youth leader Helen Tomblin has jumped out of planes, abseiled down buildings and tackled white water rafting but she thinks she may have bitten off more than she can chew with her latest challenge ”“ the Tough Guy.
Superfit Helen is aiming to complete the notorious course near Wolverhampton when Tough Guy holds its summer event, known as the Nettle Warrior, later this month.
And the 36-year-old from Stirchley is training flat out to ensure she is up to the grade for the gruelling run and assault course which attracts competitors from around the world.
Helen, who is the Bishop’s advisor for youth mission for the Anglican church in Birmingham, says she believes this may be her toughest challenge yet.
….even a retired bishop like myself, having no vote in the proceedings, can see that we’re now at a critical time in the Church’s development. For the core principles of the traditions within the Church of England seemed to have reached a near unbreachable gulf over the issues of the provisions for those opposed to women bishops. And there’s a further development, for some, the need for holding the church together in unity, whatever the compromises which must be made to do so, has itself become a firm principle, disturbing those who believe that unity at any price can’t trump other deeply held principles.
The truth is that compromise can be both an evasion of duty where a clear obligation is avoided for the sake of some secondary advantage, or at the other extreme, compromise in the Church may be an attempt to discover God’s will where two seemingly core principles dictate different courses of action which seem to be incompatible. It’s because of this possibility that the Church has spent so many years trying to come to a common mind over women bishops.
But the debate isn’t purely between principle and compromise, for the General Synod had before it and accepted draft legislation which already showed significant compromise to both sides. Whatever the final outcome the Church won’t be forcing priests or congregations to accept the ministry of women bishops without the further provision of a bishop whose ministry they would welcome.
It is clear that the fundamental principle of freedom of belief and of the right to manifest one’s own belief must continue to be upheld in a free society, whether for Christians, Muslims or anyone else.
Such a principle does not, however, exist in isolation and has to be balanced against other considerations of the common good and of public order.
As far as the wearing of the Burka is concerned, there are, first of all, questions of safety.
Bishop Stephen Platten of Wakefield and Dean Colin Slee of Southwark debate appropriate choices for music at weddings. The segment begins at about 20 minutes and 50 seconds in and lasts about 5 minutes.
Go here to find the audio link (only available 6 more days).
The Church of England has always prided itself on its inclusiveness and its ability to accommodate a wide range of often conflicting views under one big tent. But for four days last weekend, the age-old policy failed when the General Synod met in the bleak concrete bowl of the University of York’s Central Hall to decide upon the ordination of women bishops.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York wanted to make special provision for those members opposed to women bishops but were narrowly defeated. The failure of the measure suggests that Synod will only stretch so far and no further to accommodate minority groups.
Drs Rowan Williams and John Sentamu gambled that mainstream synod members would be reluctant to vote against them and that their intervention would help prevent the split in the Church they so desperately hoped to avoid. But this time things were different.
Huddled around tables after enjoying a generous dinner, or walking deep in conversation around the university grounds, these mainstream Anglicans, it was clear, were in defiant mood.
“The vast majority of us are in favour of women priests. You either have them or you don’t,” said one elderly lay member, adding, “We’re fed up with making allowances for the minority. The Church must move forward.”
The largest Anglo-Catholic group in the Church of England is expecting an exodus of thousands of Anglicans to Catholicism after a decision to ordain women as bishops without sufficient concessions to traditionalists.
Stephen Parkinson, director of Forward in Faith ”“ a group that has about 10,000 members, including more than 1,000 clergy ”“ said that a large number of Anglo-Catholics are considering conversion to the Catholic faith.
His comments came after the General Synod, the national assembly of the Church of England, voted at a meeting in York to approve the creation of women bishops by 2014 without meeting the demands of objectors.
A statement from Forward in Faith advised members against hasty action, saying now was “not the time for precipitate action”.