Green Bay’s controversial nativity scene came down from City Hall Wednesday.
Madison’s Freedom from Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit to keep it from ever going up again.
Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said the city did something unconstitutional and “really in your face.”
She wants a court order barring Green Bay from doing the same thing next year. They also want financial damages.
More than a fifth of the Church of England’s bishops could face the axe under new proposals being drawn up by its leaders.
Secret documents discovered by The Daily Telegraph reveal that the Church Commissioners – the financial wing of the Church of England – are considering reducing traditional funding for the hierarchy.
The proposals come in the wake of criticism that the Church is top heavy and the bishops too costly, while congregations are shrinking and parishes are strapped for cash.
When I was editing the Catholic Herald in the early 1990s, we thought we were living through the most momentous times for the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
We were witnessing the conversion of such Establishment figures as the Duchess of Kent, Ann Widdecombe and the Telegraph’s Charles Moore, but we never dreamed that one day an ex-prime minister would himself cross the Tiber. Or, indeed, that this news would be overshadowed by an even more important development: that for the first time since Henry VIII, there are more Catholics than Anglicans in this country.
This is not because the prayer for the conversion of “Mary’s Dowry” (England), with which Catholic children used to begin their school day, has been answered. Rather, Catholic immigrants, from eastern Europe as well as Africa, have filled the once-empty pews of Catholic churches across the country.
After more than 500 years of being a suspect minority, forced to convert, driven underground or abroad, the Church is now triumphant.
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has been named “Anglican of the Year” by members of the Church of England.
Dr Sentamu, the Ugandan-born Archbishop who won international plaudits after he cut up his clerical collar on live television in protest at the Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, beat the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, into second place.
The third-most-popular Anglican among members of the General Synod, the Church’s “parliament”, was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town.
In 2007, believers took their principles into the streets and the political arena. And sometimes, they found themselves opposing fellow believers. USA TODAY’s Cathy Lynn Grossman recaps key events and controversies….
129-year-old Episcopal congregation on the South Side will be disbanded after worship Sunday.
Attendance at the Episcopal Church of the Mediator, which is in the Beverly/Morgan Park area, has declined to about 30 people. At its peak, it had 250 members, church leaders said.
“It’s been coming,” said Mary Reich, a parish leader. “You can’t run a parish on 30 people. Most of our members are over age 55.”
The final service will be at 9 a.m. Sunday at the church, 10961 S. Hoyne. After worship and a time of socializing, a letter from the bishop of the Chicago Episcopal Diocese will be read.
The Rev. Michael Stephenson, a diocesan official, said the letter officially “secularizes” the building. Future use of the property will be determined by the bishop, he said.
A Global Anglican Future Conference is planned for June 2008. The aim of the Conference is to discuss the future of mission and relationships within the churches of Anglican Communion. Those who wish to retain biblical standards especially in the area of sexual ethics have spent much time and effort in negotiations on these issues in the last five years. They want to move on together with the gospel of Christ’s Lordship, a gospel which challenges us and changes lives. Israel is planned as a venue because it symbolises the biblical roots of our faith as Anglicans. I want those in the fellowship of our Diocese to know what this is about and why I am involved.
In 1998, the Lambeth Conference made it clear that the leaders of the overwhelming majority of Anglicans world-wide maintained the biblical view of sexual ethics ”“ that sexual relationships are reserved for marriage between a man and a woman. Five years later, however, actions were taken in Anglican Churches both in Canada and the United States of America which officially transgressed these boundaries in defiance of the Bible’s authority.
There was an immediate adverse result for those who wanted to maintain orthodoxy within these churches. They courageously protested against these actions, and as far as possible withdrew their fellowship from those who they perceived had broken God’s law. In doing so, they wished the world to know that they remained as genuine Anglicans. They had made no change in their basic beliefs and they understood themselves still to be in fellowship with the mainstream of the Anglican Church elsewhere in the world.
The American actions also impacted churches all around the world. In particular the churches of the Global South had to own the name ”˜Anglican’ while living in societies where the actions of the Americans was condemned by all, especially Muslims. The action of some North Americans severely hurt the witness of these churches. It also hindered the good effect that membership of the Anglican Communion has for those who live in a situation where Christians are in a minority.
Since 2003, patient attempts have been made to call the offending North Americans back to biblical standards. Many American Anglicans are now more aware of the distress which their actions have caused others, and regret this impact. At the same time, however, others have condemned attempts by Global South Bishops to provide ministry for the orthodox Christians who still wish to be Anglican, but cannot continue to do so in the fellowship of the American churches. Individuals, parishes and even dioceses have left the original church, becoming associated with other dioceses in other parts of the world, and with new bishops being appointed from overseas to care for the disaffected.
RAY SUAREZ: You talk about preaching a sermon in which you mention some of these hard ideas about who Jesus, who God is and was in history. And you say, “Surprisingly enough, nobody walked out of church, but I did receive quite a few letters from people who were listening and didn’t like what they heard. This reaction suggested to me that I was doing my job.”
Is that your job as a preacher?
PETER GOMES: My job is, to coin a phrase used in the 19th century and adopted much by my old friend, Bill Coffin, “to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” So, in some sense, if the one thing the sermon does is wake you up so that you discover that you don’t agree, it’s done a good thing, in that respect.
But most people stop there. They say, “I don’t agree with that guy,” and they click him off, and they’ll never turn to him again, instead of pressing the matter. Why don’t I agree? Where does this lead us? Opening rather than closing conversations.
The decline in home prices accelerated and spread to more regions of the country in October, according to a series of private indexes released Wednesday.
Prices fell 6.1 percent from October 2006 in 20 large metropolitan areas, according to Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller indexes, compared with a 4.9 percent decline in September. All but three of the 20 regions saw real estate values fall, and even the three places ”” Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Charlotte, N.C. ”” where prices were up from a year ago saw prices fall from a month earlier.
The quickening decline in home prices could hurt the broader economy by leading to more foreclosures as homeowners have more difficulty refinancing mortgages and by sapping consumer spending as Americans feel less wealthy. But economists also noted that a faster descent from boom-era prices would allow the housing market to right itself sooner by removing vacant homes from the market.
Stocks fell modestly Wednesday in response to the latest home price data and on weaker than expected retail sales. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 0.4 percent, or 5.32 points, to 1,491.12; the Dow Jones industrial average was down 36.09 points, or 0.3 percent, to 13,513.24.
“The one disconcerting thing about the number is the rate that prices are falling is accelerating,” said Patrick Newport, an economist at Global Insight, a research firm outside Boston.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
–Lord Alfred Tennyson
Orthodox Primates with other leading bishops from across the globe are to invite fellow Bishops, senior clergy and laity from every province of the Anglican Communion to a unique eight-day event, to be known as the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) 2008.
The event, which was agreed at a meeting of Primates in Nairobi last week, will be in the form of a pilgrimage back to the roots of the Church’s faith. The Holy Land is the planned venue. From 15-22 June 2008, Anglicans from both the Evangelical and Anglo-catholic wings of the church will make pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where Christ was born, ministered, died, rose again, ascended into heaven, sent his Holy Spirit, and where the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out, to strengthen them for what they believe will be difficult days ahead.
At the meeting were Archbishops Peter Akinola (Nigeria), Henry Orombi (Uganda), Emmanuel Kolini (Rwanda), Benjamin Nzimbi (Kenya), Donald Mtetemela (Tanzania), Peter Jensen (Sydney), Nicholas Okoh (Nigeria); Bishop Don Harvey (Canada), Bishop Bill Atwood (Kenya) representing Archbishop Greg Venables (Southern Cone) , Bishop Bob Duncan (Anglican Communion Network), Bishop Martyn Minns (Convocation of Anglicans in North America ), Canon Dr Vinay Samuel (India and England) and Canon Dr Chris Sugden (England). Bishops Michael Nazir-Ali (Rochester, England), Bishop Wallace Benn (Lewes, England) were consulted by telephone. These leaders represent over 30 million of the 55 million active Anglicans in the world.
Southern Cone Primate Gregory Venables said: “While there are many calls for shared mission, it clearly must rise from common shared faith. Our pastoral responsibility to the people that we lead is now to provide the opportunity to come together around the central and unchanging tenets of the central and unchanging historic Anglican faith. Rather than being subject to the continued chaos and compromise that have dramatically impeded Anglican mission, GAFCON will seek to clarify God’s call at this time and build a network of cooperation for Global mission.”
Tuesday was my first Christmas dinner. As Jews, my family have never “done” Christmas. My wife’s (we got married earlier this year) have, however, always had the full-on turkey, presents and crackers.
They’ve done so because Christmas is now almost entirely devoid of any religious element. For the overwhelming majority of us, Christmas is simply a fun, national, secular holiday.
This Christmas, only about 2.7 million people went to an Anglican church service. To put that figure in perspective, an estimated 3.5 million of us spent part of Christmas Day shopping online ”“ not to mention the 84 people who filed their annual tax return online last Christmas Day.
So although it’s an annual tradition for Christian leaders to issue a Christmas homily, one has to wonder why they still bother ”“ because the metamorphosis of Christmas from religious to secular holiday is part of the same process that renders bishops and priests increasingly irrelevant. When the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks, for instance, his words no longer carry automatic weight because of the office he holds. We first choose whether or not we respect him, and then decide whether to pay attention.
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes to our realm, howbeit he was not far from us Acts 17:27 before. For no part of Creation is left void of Him: He has filled all things everywhere, remaining present with His own Father. But He comes in condescension to show loving-kindness upon us, and to visit us. And seeing the race of rational creatures in the way to perish, and death reigning over them by corruption; seeing, too, that the threat against transgression gave a firm hold to the corruption which was upon us, and that it was monstrous that before the law was fulfilled it should fall through: seeing, once more, the unseemliness of what was come to pass: that the things whereof He Himself was Artificer were passing away: seeing, further, the exceeding wickedness of men, and how by little and little they had increased it to an intolerable pitch against themselves: and seeing, lastly, how all men were under penalty of death: He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should have the mastery””lest the creature should perish, and His Father’s handiwork in men be spent for nought””He takes unto Himself a body, and that of no different sort from ours. For He did not simply will to become embodied, or will merely to appear. For if He willed merely to appear, He was able to effect His divine appearance by some other and higher means as well. But He takes a body of our kind, and not merely so, but from a spotless and stainless virgin, knowing not a man, a body clean and in very truth pure from intercourse of men. For being Himself mighty, and Artificer of everything, He prepares the body in the Virgin as a temple unto Himself, and makes it His very own as an instrument, in it manifested, and in it dwelling. And thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the corruption of death He gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father””doing this, moreover, of His loving-kindness, to the end that, firstly, all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone (inasmuch as its power was fully spent in the Lord’s body, and had no longer holding-ground against men, his peers), and that, secondly, whereas men had turned toward corruption, He might turn them again toward incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from the fire.
–Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov’d imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod’s jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
–John Donne
I saw a stable, low and very bare,
A little child in a manger.
The oxen knew him, had Him in their care,
To men He was a stranger.
The safety of the world was lying there,
And the world’s danger.
–Mary Coleridge
Come to your heaven, you heavenly quires!
Earth hath the heaven of your desires;
Remove your dwelling to your God,
A stall is now His best abode;
Sith men their homage do deny,
Come, angels, all their faults supply.
His chilling cold doth heat require,
Come, seraphim, in lieu of fire;
This little ark no cover hath,
Let cherubs’ wings his body swathe;
Come, Raphael, this babe must eat,
Provide our little Toby meat.
Let Gabriel be now His groom,
That first took up His earthly room;
Let Michael stand in His defence,
Whom love hath link’d to feeble sense;
Let graces rock when He doth cry,
And angels sing this lullaby.
The same you saw in heavenly seat,
Is He that now sucks Mary’s teat;
Agnize your King a mortal wight,
His borrow’d weed lets not your sight;
Come, kiss the manger where He lies;
That is your bliss above the skies.
This little babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at His presence quake,
Though He Himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmèd wise
The gates of hell He will surprise.
With tears He fights and wins the field,
His naked breast stands for a shield,
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows, looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns, cold and need,
And feeble flesh His warrior’s steed.
His camp is pitchèd in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall,
The crib His trench, hay-stalks His stakes,
Of shepherds He His muster makes;
And thus, as sure His foe to wound,
The angels’ trumps alarum sound.
My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;
Stick to the tents that He hath pight;
Within His crib is surest ward,
This little babe will be thy guard;
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
Then flit not from this heavenly boy.
–Robert Southwell
In Bethlehem
On Christmas Morn
The lowly gem
Of love was born
Hosannah! Christus natus est.
Bright in her crown
Of fiery star
Judea’s town
Shone from afar
Hosannah! Christus natus est.
For bird and beast
He did not come
But for the least
Of mortal scum
Hosannah! Christus natus est.
While beasts in stall
On bended knee
Did carol all
Most joyously
Hosannah! Christus natus est.
Who lies in ditch?
Who begs his bread
Who has no stitch
For back or head
Hosannah! Christus natus est.
Who wakes to weep,
Lies down to mourn?
Who in his sleep
Withdraws from scorn?
Hosannah! Christus natus est.
Ye outraged dust
On field and plain
To feed the lust
Of madmen slain
Hosannah! Christus natus est.
The manger still
Outshines the throne
Christ must and will
Come to his own
Hosannah! Christus natus est.
–Countee Cullen
“I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On Christmas day I weep
Good Friday to rejoice.
I watch the Child asleep.
Does he half-dream the choice
The Man must make and keep?
At Christmastime I sigh
For my good Friday hope
Outflung the Child’s arms lie
To span in their brief scope
The death the Man must die.
Come Christmastide I groan
To hear Good Friday’s pealing.
The Man, racked to the bone,
Has made His hurt my healing,
Has made my ache His own.
Slay me, pierced to the core
With Christmas penitence
So I who, new-born, soar
To that Child’s innocence,
May wound the Man no more.
–Vassar Miller
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here is all aright.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast,
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world’s desire.)
The Christ-child stood at Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown.
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
–G.K. Chesterton
Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,
Make thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
My heart for very joy doth leap,
My lips no more can silence keep,
I too must sing, with joyful tongue,
That sweetest ancient cradle song,
Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given
While angels sing with pious mirth.
A glad new year to all the earth.
–Martin Luther
One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who asked it say, ‘freed’ from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian. Conversely, once you have accepted that, then you will see that all other well-established Christian miracles–because, of course, there are ill-established Christian miracles; there are Christian legends just as much as there are heathen legends, or modern journalistic legends–you will see that all the well-established Christian miracles are part of it, that they all either prepare for, or exhibit, or result from the Incarnation. Just as every natural event exhibits the total character of the natural universe at a particular point and space of time; so every miracle exhibits the character of the Incarnation. Now, if one asks whether that central grand miracle in Christianity is itself probable or improbable, of course, quite clearly you cannot be applying Hume’s kind of probability. You cannot mean a probability based on statistics according to which the more often a thing has happened, the more likely it is to happen again (the more often you get indigestion from eating a certain food, the more probable it is, if you eat it again, that you again have indigestion). Certainly the Incarnation cannot be probable in that sense. It is of its very nature to have happened only once. But then it is of the very nature of the history of this world to have happened only once; and if the Incarnation happened at all, it is the central chapter of that history. It is improbable in the same way in which the whole of nature is improbable, because it is only there once, and will happen only once.
–C.S. Lewis
We cannot avoid immediately asking: Why are so few children born in Italy and other Western countries? The principal reason for the scarcity does not have to do with economic factors. From an economic point of view, the births should increase as we move up through the levels of society, or as we move from the global South to the global North; but we know that the contrary is true.
The reason is deeper: It is the lack of hope, and the lack of what hope brings with it, namely, confidence in the future, vital drive, creativity, poetry and joie de vivre. If you wed, it is always an act of faith; bringing a child into the world is always an act of hope. Nothing can be done in the world without hope. We need hope like we need oxygen to breathe. When someone is about to faint we say, “Give them something strong to help them breathe.” Something similar should be done for a person who is about to let themselves go, to give up on life: “Give them a reason for hope!” When hope is reborn in a human situation, everything looks different, even if nothing in fact has changed. Hope is a primordial force. It literally works miracles.
The oldest in the Shepherd’s Heart program is a Vietnam-era veteran in his early 60s; the youngest, an Iraq war veteran in his early 20s. Plans are to add two beds for women on the second floor of the converted Crawford Roberts church, Wurschmidt said.
“As a pastor, and as a chaplain, part of my job is to look at the whole picture — to love them with God’s love and, especially the veterans, to love them because of what many of them have done for our country. It’s unbelievable what some of these guys have done for our country,” Wurschmidt said.
The remnants of their duty — brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, among them — can be devastating. Families collapse. Many veterans turn to alcohol or drugs, and the isolation of the street beckons.
“They’ve caused pain for their loved ones. They don’t want to do that again, so they isolate themselves,” Wurschmidt said.
He began walking those streets soon after his family’s move to Pittsburgh 14 years ago. As he did in Denver, where he lived before, Wurschmidt went looking for homeless enclaves.
“I was blown away by the number of Vietnam veterans on the streets,” he said.
The boldest meditation on the meaning of Jesus comes in the tale of the Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” in which Jesus is interrogated by the Grand Inquisitor. The crime of Jesus consists precisely in the affection that so many otherwise ignoble humans have for him.
How dare Jesus inspire such widespread trust?
A relatively small number “of the great and the strong,” the Inquisitor argues, can carry the burden of freedom, “while the millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, who are weak but love Thee” cannot bear freedom’s weight.
Only an elite minority is worthy to manage the world. The rest, taken up with narrow concerns for bread and money, and consoled by miracles and mysteries, must live for subservience. The masses are to blindly meet their meager needs, while bowing before the authority of those few who are capable of higher aspirations.
The crime of Jesus was to say no to this. Dostoevsky sees in him an invitation addressed to every person, to regard himself or herself as capable of overcoming the limits of birth, circumstance, class, culture, and even time. That the Grand Inquisitor, an official in the movement that claims Jesus as founder, regards this invitation as an offense is Dostoevsky’s way of pointing to the transcendent significance of Jesus, beyond Christian belief.
Monsignor Bill Parent of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Waldorf aims his sermon at the “Santa Clauses,” as churches call them — those who come to church only at Christmastime.
“The goal in whatever you’re preaching is to inspire,” Parent said, “and explicitly to invite people who have been away or aren’t coming regularly to be a more regular part of the parish community.”
At Harvest Life Changers, a nondenominational church in Woodbridge, the Rev. Lyle Dukes focused yesterday’s sermon on linking the Christmas story to the everyday difficulties faced by his parishioners, such as the mounting number of home foreclosures as well as the frustration of high gas prices and lost jobs.
“We’re in some challenging times,” he told 1,500 worshipers. “But Christ was born in challenging times. . . . In spite of all this crazy stuff going on, he was born alive and well.”
Church member Lori Douglas pronounced the sermon “awesome.”
“So many of us today are going through challenging times,” Douglas said. But Jesus “made it through, and it’s a lesson on how we can make it through.”