While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.

The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. “Sustainable security” is to be established on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.

The detailed document, known as the Joint Campaign Plan, is an elaboration of the new strategy President Bush signaled in January when he decided to send five additional American combat brigades and other units to Iraq. That signaled a shift from the previous strategy, which emphasized transferring to Iraqis the responsibility for safeguarding their security.

That new approach put a premium on protecting the Iraqi population in Baghdad, on the theory that improved security would provide Iraqi political leaders with the breathing space they needed to try political reconciliation.

The latest plan, which covers a two-year period, does not explicitly address troop levels or withdrawal schedules. It anticipates a decline in American forces as the “surge” in troops runs its course later this year or in early 2008. But it nonetheless assumes continued American involvement to train soldiers, act as partners with Iraqi forces and fight terrorist groups in Iraq, American officials said.

Read it all.

Bishops from 22 dioceses in the United States and 29 dioceses in Africa joined the congregation of Madrid’s Iglesia Episcopal de España for a Eucharist on July 22. Joining the Rt. Rev. Carlos Lozano Lopez, bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church of Spain, at the altar were the primates of Burundi, Central Africa, Congo, and Southern Africa, as well as the primate of Brazil.

During the two-hour liturgy, based on the ancient Mozarabic Rite, the bishop welcomed three new honorary canons: Dr. Eliseo Villa and the Rev. Dr. Anthony Ball, International Office, Lambeth Palace, London; and the Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, rector of Trinity Church Wall Street, New York, were installed by the dean, the Rev. Susan Buell. The service was mainly in Spanish with English translation.

Read it all.

Figures from various denominations highlight one of New Zealand’s unexplored mysteries ”“ the gap between religious adherence in the five-yearly census and actual church attendance.

Recent statistics from the Presbyterian Church show a total attendance at Sunday services over the past year of 37,714 people ”“ just under 10 per cent of those who said they were Presbyterians in the 2006 census. Approximately a quarter of the attendees were under 13 years.

The Catholics put attendance at 17 per cent of the census figures, probably the highest rate of the mainstream denominations, while Anglicans are thought to score about 15 per cent.

If these numbers hold true for other denominations, a depressingly small proportion of New Zealand’s total population attend church – possibly between 5 and 10 per cent.

However, research indicates the actual attendance figures are higher than this.

Read it all.

The relationship of church to culture is a fascinating study that has caught the attention and analysis of serious scholars during the last generation. Ever since the “Word of God became flesh,” God has been interested in humans of different cultures throughout biblical history.

On occasion the church has been an ally or an enemy of culture. St. Paul wrote the Corinthians letters to deal with the challenges their culture presented to the church. Pastors, lay persons, ordinary human beings live in a culture and, depending on different perceptions of reality that guide them, adapt or reject the prevailing culture.

In a recent issue of Missiology, devoted exclusively to the treatment of “Mission and Contemporary Culture” (April, 2007), there are lucid expositions of the theme that challenge the reader and the serious student of Missio Dei.

One article worthy of consideration is “Church responses to culture since 1985,” by Professor Eddie Gibbs of Fuller Theological Seminary. He asserts: “The assumption of Western societies that immigrant groups would be gradually assimilated in the cultural melting pot are being challenged by those groups who ‘colonize’ in order to defend their religious-based values, some of them adopting a defiant stance in relation to the host culture.”

As an astute observer, clergy person, scholar and author, Gibbs analyzes the last half of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st. His analysis is very enlightening.

Read it all.

Bishop Edwin Barnes puts forward what may be the simplest of all the options for a structural solution for orthodox Anglicans to keep everybody happy and not frighten the liberal ascendancy

Clergy and others have been responding generously to my request for help in making proposals on the Governance of our future province. Some proposals have been modest, others more sweeping; but none has struck me as so comprehensive and simple as that from Fr Lawrence MacLean, our man in Florence. Since what he proposed needs a little fleshing out and explanation, please do not hold against him anything that follows; the brilliant idea is his, the pedestrian details are mine. Whenever we try to explain a ”˜free province’ or a ”˜third province’ to those in the liberal ascendancy, difficulties are at once asserted. You cannot have overlapping jurisdictions in the Church of England, they will say. The diocesan bishop will never relinquish any of his power to another bishop, they insist.

Parallel episcopates

Well, there is a diocese of the Church of England where parallel episcopates not only exist, but are celebrated. It is called the Diocese of Europe. The bishop of the Lusitanian Church, based in Lisbon, introduces himself saying, ”˜I am the Bishop of Portugal’. We are in full communion with him and his church. Similar rather more realistic churches exist elsewhere through Europe. Who can fail to know that we are in communion through the Porvoo agreement with most of the Scandinavian Lutheran churches? They have bishops with ancient sees, and seem to find no difficulty in surviving, despite the existence of our Bishop in Europe. More remarkable still, there is the Convocation of American Churches in Europe. Under their bishop, Pierre Welté Whalon, they are fully a part of TEC (the Episcopal Church, whose presiding bishop is the Most Revd Dr Katharine efferts Schori). The Convocation, it says, is ”˜a multinational, multiracial, multilingual and multicultural communion within the European Union ”“ a mirror image of the multinational, multiracial, multilingual and multicultural Episcopal Church in the USA.’ No doubt Bishop Geoffrey Rowell, Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, would claim something similar for his diocese ”“ though in this case relating to England and the Archbishop of Canterbury. So within the Anglican Communion there is at least one diocese which is perfectly happy to co-exist with another Anglican diocese.

Boundaries

Then what about the cure of souls? ”˜Receive this cure, which is both mine and yours’ says the diocesan on licensing a new priest in charge. It sounds grand, and harks back to the time of the first Elizabeth, when there were penalties for non-attendance at church, and the priest claimed the right to enter any home in his parish. The bishops might not yet realize it, but it is not like this any more. In theory, England is a place where every person has a parish church and a pari sh priest to care for him, and every parish church is bound to a diocese. Yet many bishops happily encourage clergy to ”˜plant’ churches in neighbouring parishes, whether the priest there is content for this to happen or not. So if clergy are forced to concede the rights of other priests to minister across parish boundaries, surely in justice the same should be the case for bishops? The whole notion of parish boundaries is fast disappearing. Why then such a fuss about diocesan boundaries?

The solution

So, what of the diminution of the power of a diocesan bishop when another bishop cares for priests in his diocese? The greater part of that power was conceded with the Act of Synod; the Provincial Episcopal Visitor has the pastoral and sacramental care of those who want it. What remains is mere legalism; and in any case, when bishops start claiming power over their clergy we cannot help remembering Jesus’ retort to Pilate, ”˜You would have no power unless it had been given to you.’ In short, there is a perfect solution for a free diocese already in existence. It is for parishes in England which have asked for extended episcopal care to have that care administered by the Bishop in Europe. The Diocese in Europe would become an entirely orthodox diocese; and, without moving any buildings or altering any boundaries, liberal clergy and congregations in Europe could ask for the oversight of the Bishop of the Convocation of American Churches. Instead of having to find friendly African or Southern Cone bishops to care for them, orthodox parishes and dioceses in the USA could associate themselves with the Bishop in Europe. He, no doubt, would make provision for them by appointing if necessary bishops who would work with him in caring for such congregations. He might also licence the English PEVs as Suffragans of Europe; and what a happy solution it would be if the Bishop of Fulham were to be reunited with the bishop whose former title was Bishop of Fulham and Gibraltar. Such a development would fit our Anglican ethos ideally. Reformation, not revolution. No great new organization; the Diocese of Europe already has its seats on General Synod, and its relations with the other English dioceses, besides being on good terms with Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox throughout Europe. Best of all, the enlarged diocese would be understood perfectly by the Catholic hierarchy in Rome. Our talk of ”˜free provinces’ has frightened our fellow Anglicans at home, who think a province too grandiose, and has confused our Catholic friends on the continent. A diocese is a better solution; since a diocese constitutes, for the Catholic Church, a ”˜particular church’. Such a church would be capable of entering into conversations with other churches, whilst retaining the highest possible degree of fellowship with others in the Anglican Communion. In mathematics, the simplest solution is called an elegant solution. Dare we hope that our Church will think this an elegant solution to the present predicament?

An earlier article of mine in New Directions, about dual membership of churches, has drawn a good deal of comment, most of it favourable. It would be a great help to those of us working on the question of Governance, if readers could send suggestions by email or letter to me. Little think-tanks can dream up great solutions; but any solutions have to be workable.

–From the July 2007 edition of New Directions

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America saw a slight drop in membership in 2006, continuing a trend of decline of more than a decade.

The total of baptized members at the end of 2006 was 4,774,203, a 1.6 percent decrease from the 2005 total of 4,850,776, denomination officials said.

The denomination has lost about 466,000 baptized members in the last 16 years, said the Rev. Lowell G. Almen, ELCA secretary. In 1990, there were 5,240,739 members.

Read it all.

What is the point? I have been racking my brain lately asking myself”“and others”“this question, desperately trying to find a sound answer. What is the point of remaining in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury? Reading articles such as this one brings this question again to the forefront of my mind. What is the point?

We should recognize as many Catholic bishops as possible (i.e., to “be in communion” with them), but schism occurs when major differences arise (usually accompanied by sin on at least one side) such that the Church can no longer recognize “catholicity” in the other. In the case of the Episcopal Church, “impaired” or even broken communion exists between many of the orthodox bishops and the heterodox bishops, and from an ecclesiological perspective, many of the sees are vacant (hence the need for missionary efforts from the Global South). Of course, the heterodox have no concept of Catholic ecclesiology, so they view this as “boundary crossing” which is patently absurd, considering they have no concept of much of anything Catholic. But I digress. The question I have been pondering is, what is the point of being in communion with Canterbury?

Read it all.

By confirming the historical accuracy of a tiny detail, a two-inch clay tablet long in the possession of the British Museum has given ammunition to those who believe that the Bible ”” specifically, in this case, the book of the prophet Jeremiah ”” is history. That, at least, is what the believers are claiming.

The tablet itself is certainly genuine. On July 10 the Museum announced that a Viennese expert working his way through thousands of similar clay documents in its possession translated one dating from 595 B.C that described a gift of 1.7 lbs. of gold to a Babylonian temple by a “chief eunuch” named Nabu-sharrussu-ukin.

A museum official called it “a world-class find.” What makes the ancient but seemingly mundane receipt significant is that the book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) mentions the exact same official ”” though under a different transliteration, Nebo-Sarsekim, and a different title, chief officer, as accompanying the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar when he marched against Jerusalem in 587.

Read it all.

I have spent much of my own professional life focusing on the predicament of faith communities that strive to be modern while simultaneously cleaving to tradition. Consider the situation of those Christian evangelicals who want to participate actively in mainstream politics yet are committed to a biblical literalism that leads them to oppose stem-cell research and advocate intelligent design in the classroom. To some secularists, the evangelicals’ predicament seems absurd and their political movement dangerously anti-intellectual. As it happens, I favor financing stem-cell research and oppose the teaching of intelligent design or creationism as a “scientific” doctrine in public schools. Yet I nonetheless feel some sympathy for the evangelicals’ sure-to-fail attempts to stand in the way of the progress of science, and not just because I respect their concern that we consider the ethical implications of our technological prowess.

Perhaps I feel sympathy because I can recall the agonies suffered by my head of school when he stopped by our biology class to discuss the problem of creation. Following the best modern Orthodox doctrine, he pointed out that Genesis could be understood allegorically, and that the length of a day might be numbered in billions of years considering that the sun, by which our time is reckoned, was not created until the fourth such “day.” Not for him the embarrassing claim, heard sometimes among the ultra-Orthodox, that dinosaur fossils were embedded by God within the earth at the moment of creation in order to test our faith in biblical inerrancy. Natural selection was for him a scientific fact to be respected like the laws of physics ”” guided by God but effectuated though the workings of the natural order. Yet even he could not leave the classroom without a final caveat. “The truth is,” he said, “despite what I have just told you, I still have a hard time believing that man could be descended from monkeys.”

This same grappling with tension ”” and the same failure to resolve it perfectly ”” can be found among the many Muslims who embrace both basic liberal democratic values and orthodox Islamic faith. The literature of democratic Islam, like that of modern Orthodox Judaism, may be read as an embodiment of dialectical struggle, the unwillingness to ignore contemporary reality in constant interplay with the weight of tradition taken by them as authentic and divinely inspired. The imams I have met over the years seem, on the whole, no less sincere than the rabbis who taught me. Their commitment to their faith and to the legal tradition that comes with it seems just as heartfelt. Liberal Muslims may even have their own Joe Lieberman in the Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress.

The themes of difference and reconciliation that have preoccupied so much of my own thinking are nowhere more stark than in trying to make sense of the problem of marriage ”” which is also, for me, the most personal aspect of coming to terms with modern Orthodoxy. Although Jews of many denominations are uncomfortable with marriage between Jews and people of other religions, modern Orthodox condemnation is especially definitive.

Read it all.

Update: Jewcy has a Q and A with Noah Feldman here.

These days one can hardly get to eat one’s sandwiches, cucumber or otherwise, without being bothered by yet another stunningly patronising report on the state of the poor.

Today there’s one from Chicago, bearing the remarkable revelation that older people who cannot read or understand basic health information die younger than people who can. Researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine interviewed 3,260 patients aged 65 or older in order to come up with the extraordinary conclusion that “more education tends to result in better job opportunities, a higher annual income and access to housing, food and health insurance”. Wow. Who would have thought it. All that work, all those interviews, all that precious time. And what a result.

Last week there was a similar example of the blindingly obvious from researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Geography, working for the Rowntree Foundation, who found that inequality in Britain is at a record high, with the gap between the rich and the poor widening over the past 40 years.

On the life of your nearest private equity squillionaire, you would never have guessed it.

Read it all.

They sat facing each other, 14 evangelical preachers on one side, 12 U.S-based Arab diplomats on the other. Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the U.S., listened as introductions began, and he found himself amazed.

“Robertson, Falwell, Youssef. … I had heard these names before,” Fahmy later recounted, “and I have to admit I was surprised they were here.”

The initiative launched at that July 2 meeting came as a surprise to many. The evangelical community is known for its support of Israel, and many of its most outspoken leaders, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, have made incendiary comments about the Muslim world. But in recent months, an unusual rapprochement has begun between these two powerful communities, and the sons of some of those same pastors are participating.

Both sides have a lot to gain from a thaw. At a time when the evangelical leadership is seeking new outlets for influence, both domestically and abroad, it provides the possibility of an entree into the Arab world. For the representatives of the Arab-Muslim world, it offers the potential for improving relations with a previously hostile community as well as with Americans in general.

Whether this dialogue will lead to any concrete changes in an increasingly tense environment remains to be seen.

Read it all.

A few years ago I received an invitation from an Episcopal group in the San Francisco Bay area. “We want you to talk to us about Jesus,” they said, “and we want you to make it personal.”

Nobody had ever asked me to “make it personal” before. Trying to figure out what to say, I wrote the words “Me and Jesus” on a page. I reflected on those words. What emerged was the story of “me and Jesus”””of what I could remember about Jesus from my childhood, adolescence, early adulthood all the way to the present. I see now that my “personal and academic pilgrimage” has been tied to the figure of Jesus from the very beginning.

I was born into a Lutheran family of Swedish and Norwegian descent, the youngest of four children. I grew up in the 1940s, in a town of 1,600 people in northeastern North Dakota, near the Canadian border. It’s a world that now seems very far away….

Read it all.

Fr. Montgomery also objects to the non-canonical open invitation to communion printed in our service leaflet. As ordinary of the chapel, I have articulated this policy in full awareness that it does not comply with the canonical provision about communion and baptism. One reason seminary chapels are traditionally “ecclesiastical peculiars” is so that they will have the freedom to push the edges of liturgical practice in the direction of the church’s emerging theology. There is a serious theological argument abroad these days about the relationship of baptism and Eucharist. To characterize the open invitation as “liturgical universalism” misconstrues the state of the argument. Those of us who favor open communion do so knowing that the church has historically seen one sacrament as a precondition for the other. We simply question, in the present pastoral situation, the propriety of following that practice.

Read it all

From the Manassas Journal Messenger:

The Rev. John Guernsey, rector of All Saints’ Church in Dale City, will not leave his 850-member congregation when he assumes his new position as a bishop for the Anglican Church of Uganda this fall.

“I’m still serving here and still have the responsibility to care for this congregation,” said Guernsey, 54, who has led the church since 1981. “My heart is here. It’s my primary calling.”

The consecration, which was announced last month, is set for Sept. 2 in Mbarara, Uganda.

As bishop, Guernsey will oversee 26 churches and 70 clergy in the United States. The churches are located throughout the country: New York, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Texas, Kansas, Montana and California.

There are four in Virginia: Eternity Anglican Church in Richmond; South Riding Church and Church of the Holy Spirit, both in eastern Loudoun County; as well as Christ Our Lord Church in Lake Ridge. All Saints’ started the Christ Our Lord Church.

“It’s a bit overwhelming right now,” said Guernsey.

Read it all.

Night after night, our hidden cameras captured what security experts tell us is a disaster waiting to happen.

The X-ray machines were off, the metal detectors were closed, and bags with unknown contents were carried to the secure side of the airport where the planes are.

We watched as a security guard let people with purses, coolers and suitcases
walk right through – bags unchecked.

Even more surprising, some of the people you trust to keep you safe planned it this way.

Larry Wansley is widely regarded as one of the nation’s top airline security experts. “It’s a frightening situation, I’ve just simply never seen anything like it,” he said. “I really honestly have not.”

He’s the former head of security for American Airlines, and currently consults the U.S. Government and airports around the world. We brought him in to take a look at what we found.

“It is not security,” he said. “It truly is not security. Anything can be going through there. I don’t get it.”

Read it all.

From Christian Today:

The Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, the Most Rev Alan Harper, has spoken out on the “sin” of division plaguing what he calls the “tortured” Anglican Communion.

Speaking in his address on the Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene, he said he had come to believe that “division is a greater sin even than heresy”.

He appealed to fellow Anglicans to remember Paul’s call for patient forbearance in his letter to the Ephesians, warning that disunity and “open rupture” were a “sign that the full stature of Christ remains absent from the Body”.

Archbishop Drexel Gomez warned the General Synod of the Church of England earlier in the month that, “Unless we can make a fresh statement clearly and basically of what holds us together we are destined to grow apart”.

Archbishop Harper referred to his comments by adding that “a spirit of arrogance on both sides is causing people of genuine faith and undoubted love for the Lord Jesus to bypass the requirement for patience and for making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”.

Read it all.

As I have been working with Communion Matters in preparation for a gathering in our congregation, I find myself disheartened. Not only is it confused and confusing, but it seems politically-driven, desiring rank-and-file Episcopalians to concur with special pleading being made by this Anglican province which has run foul the rest of the Anglican Communion. It is designed like a questionnaire whose outcome is already predetermined, and the predetermination is that the Episcopal Church at the very best wants to sit loose to the wider Communion.

Read it all.

Trinity Communion Church is moving into the former All Saints Church building at 759 Winona Blvd.

The congregation of more than 100 people, which currently holds services at St. John Fisher College, purchased the building from the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester for $475,000.

Fr. Robert Dalgleish of Trinity Communion Church says groups of parishioners have been working hard on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays to prepare the church for use in September.

The church plans to go paperless, so additions will include large plasma screen monitors that can be used to display hymn lyrics, readings and information.

“So people can look up and worship rather than looking down at a bulletin,” said Dalgleish.

Trinity Communion Church is part of the International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church, which uses the word “Episcopal” as a description of its church governance and is not a break-off group of any Episcopal denomination.

“As sad as it is when a church closes, it’s a wonderful thing for us to see a strong community to worship in the space,” said Rev. Canon Carolyn Lumbard, the canon for congregational development and communication for the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester. “We wish them well.”

Read it all.

Every town and city has “insiders” and “outsiders.” Insiders tend to have deep family roots in the community, belong to its dominant religious group and political party, and play active roles in civic affairs. Particularly in small towns, insiders get upset when outsiders challenge the symbols that reflect the majority’s beliefs and values.

On the surface, Jimmie Greene and Louanne Walker both qualify as insiders in rural McCreary County, Ky., a stronghold of hard-shell Baptists and rock-ribbed Republicans. They are, in fact, cousins whose ancestors settled in the Cumberland Mountains back in Daniel Boone’s days. Jimmie and Louanne grew up together, attended the same elementary school and worshipped in the same Baptist church. Jimmie served four terms as the county’s “judge executive,” and Louanne has worked for 20 years in the welfare office.

But Louanne quickly became an outsider when she challenged her cousin’s decision to hang a copy of the Ten Commandments in the lobby of the McCreary County courthouse in Whitley City, a town of just over 1,000 residents. Talking with me recently over coffee in her kitchen, Louanne traced her decision to her mother, Nellie, an “outsider” from neighboring Pulaski County who married into the huge Walker clan.

“She was a Democrat, a liberal, a strong-minded person,” Louanne said. “She was a big supporter of the church, but she was also a supporter of separation of church and state, and she brought me up that way.”

Read it all.

From the Telegraph:

The Archbishop of York has warned conservative Anglican leaders that they will effectively expel themselves from the worldwide Church if they boycott next year’s Lambeth Conference.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, Dr John Sentamu pleaded with them to attend the conference despite their war with liberals over homosexuality.

But he told them that if they “voted with their feet” they risked severing their links with the Archbishop of Canterbury and with historic Anglicanism, a breach that could take centuries to heal.

“Anglicanism has its roots through Canterbury,” he said. “If you sever that link you are severing yourself from the Communion. There is no doubt about it.”

Read it all.

The United States and Iran have set a date for ambassador-level talks in Baghdad on the deteriorating security situation in Iraq””the first such meeting since late May, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday.

The two sides will sit down together on Tuesday, according to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Reeker, amid U.S. allegations that Tehran is supporting violent Shiite militias in the country.

Zebari told The Associated Press by telephone that the discussions would be at the ambassadorial level and would focus on the situation in Iraq, not U.S.-Iran tensions.

Iraq’s fragile government has been pressing for another meeting between the two nations with the greatest influence over its future, and Iran has repeatedly signaled its willingness to sit down. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week that Washington was also ready to hold new talks with Iran on the security situation in Iraq.

Read it all.

MR. BROOKS: Well, if we leave, we could see 250,000 Iraqis die. You had the John Burns’ quotation earlier in the program. So are we willing to prevent 10,000 Iraqi deaths a month at the cost of 125 Americans? That’s a tough moral issue, but it’s also a tough national interest issue because we don’t know what the consequences of getting out are. And the frustration of watching the debate in Washington, very few people are willing to, to grapple with those two facts, that there’s””that the surge will not work in the short-term, but getting out will be cataclysmic. And you see politicians on both sides evading one of those two facts. But you’ve got to grapple with them both.

MR. HAYES: And, and one of the things that the president said at this discussion that David was at, and I was at as well, was that he intends to make the case that, “Look, this is going to be a disaster if we get out.” He didn’t say it in exactly those terms, but he’s going to start making, in many cases, the negative case. “Look at what Iraq will look like if we leave. We have a moral obligation to the Iraqis to stay.”

MR. WOODWARD: And the problem, though, is, we don’t know. People can say, “Oh, it’s going to be a disaster.”

MR. BROOKS: Uh-huh.

MR. WOODWARD: I mean, you cite numbers which you have pulled out of the air of 10,000 dying. I mean, that’s””that””where does that come from?

MR. BROOKS: Well, A, it comes from John Burns. Second, it comes from the national intelligence…

MR. WOODWARD: Well, no, he doesn’t say 10,000.

MR. BROOKS: Well, no, no, but it talks about genocide.

MR. WOODWARD: Yeah.

MR. BROOKS: So I just picked that 10,000 out of the air.

MR. WOODWARD: OK, but that””we’ve got…

MR. BROOKS: The National Intelligence Estimate says that””well, most people, as Burns reports, say it will get much, much worse. So that’s the, that’s the dilemma.

MR. RUSSERT: But, David Brooks, you, you will hear a lot of people will say, you know, “The administration has made misjudgments before about WMD, about the level of troops needed, about being greeted as liberators. They could be wrong about what would flow from a redeployment of American troops.”

MR. BROOKS: Absolutely they could be wrong. And, and so we’ve””and, and it could be that peace will break out. But I think, if you look at Iraq, you see four or five civil wars going on at once. You see Shia fighting each other. You see the Sunni-Shia thing. It could be that there’s””this is just a process they need to go through, and there’s no way we can stop it in any case. Joe Biden was very honest this week. He said it’s a moral failure if we leave, but we’re going to have to do it. That at least is grappling with the issue.

Read it all.

On 10 July, L’Osservatore Romano published a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), entitled “Responses to some questions regarding certain aspects of the doctrine on the Church”. I have no idea why the document has been produced, nor where these “questions” come from. It is, in fact, dated 29 June. Perhaps publication was delayed so that it could come out under the smokescreen created by the long-awaited appearance of the motu proprio by which the Pope, overriding the authority of the episcopate (although he denies that he is doing this) has given widespread permission for the use of the unreformed Missal of 1962.

The fifth and last of the questions addressed in the document runs as follows: “Why do the texts of the Council and those of the Magisterium since the Council not use the title of ”˜Church’ with regard to those Christian communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century?”

The answer given is that, “according to Catholic doctrine, these communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church”. Accordingly, these ecclesial communities “cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called ”˜Churches’ in the proper sense”. The authority for that final clause is given, correctly, as the highly contentious declaration Dominus Iesus, which the CDF issued, over the signature of Cardinal Ratzinger, in June 2000.

The expression does not, however, occur in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Update: Sarah Hey has comments on this here.

———–
Update #2:
Referenced in the comments below are the following:

A blog entry by the Rev. Jan Nunley at TEC’s EpiScope blog

An article by Steve Waring in the Living Church.

As Bishop for the Church of England in Europe I am privileged to visit many significant places. Last month I found myself in what were at first sight two very contrasting contexts. Early in June I was in Geneva and was taken to visit CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, where a huge accelerator is under construction that will enable experiments to be conducted into fundamental particles, the sub-atomic world of energy at the heart of seemingly solid matter, and which can also provide us with understanding of the origins of the Universe. The great accelerator is being assembled from parts made across the world with a precision that enables them to fit perfectly and completely together ”“ an image of human communion and cooperation that is startling in a world which is so often divided. When lowered, again with wonderful precision, into the circular tunnel, several kilometres in diameter, this extraordinary machine will enable physicists to search for the Higgs particle ”“ a particle believed to exist but which has not yet definitively been shown to exist. So from beginning to end this experiment, and the huge cost of the equipment needed for it, is a work of faith.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will be meeting with the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church on 20 and 21 September. Later, the Common Cause of Bishops in the Americas, including Canada and Recife, Brazil will meet as the September 30 deadline for the response of The Episcopal Church to draw back from its apostate stance draws near.

While the captain and officers on the bridge of the good ship The Anglican Communion work out how to avoid the rocks for which it is heading, and others recommend improvements to improve its superstructure, below decks some American passengers are being persecuted for holding, promoting and sharing the faith which the Communion has held dear. This outrage, in defiance of the clear requests of the Primates in Tanzania in February, should be continually before us as we read the news of proposals, covenants and new bishops being consecrated for America.

Meanwhile orthodox parishes in the United States are being sued by the central bureaucracy of The Episcopal Church for property which the local church has invested in for generations but which the central bureaucracy now claims as it own. People may leave The Episcopal Church, but buildings or property may not. In some cases churches are being sued for the crayons from the Sunday School. In other cases a pastor moving to a parish cannot get a mortgage to buy a house because he is named in a lawsuit and the mortgage company fear that all his assets might be seized including “their” house. One Diocese is spending £20,000 to £25,000 a month just to defend itself from lawsuits emanating from the central bureaucracy of The Episcopal Church.

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Although the Vatican said Protestant denominations “cannot be called ”˜churches’ in the proper sense,” it recognized the Orthodox communities as true churches because they have apostolic succession and “many elements of sanctification and of truth.”

But it also said the Orthodox Church is harmed by the “defect” or “wound” of not recognizing the primacy of the Pope. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches separated nearly 1,000 years ago in the Great Schism of 1054.

The Rev. Paul Albert, pastor of St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church in Sylvania, said that from the Orthodox perspective, “We are a councilor body and no one patriarch speaks with infallibility. The authority is Christ, and he is in the midst of his church.”

He said the Orthodox Church has a different interpretation than do Catholics of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 16:18, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

“Peter was not in any way above the other apostles and that misinterpretation by Rome has been the source of a lot of problems,” Father Paul said.

Some church leaders see the latest controversy as a chance to promote their own beliefs.

Just as Catholics don’t consider the Southern Baptist Convention to be a church, “evangelicals should be equally candid in asserting that any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church,” said the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., in an online blog. He is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

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The South Korean hostages were abducted from a bus travelling from Kandahar to Kabul on Thursday.

They are reportedly Christians on an evangelical and aid mission. At least 15 are said to be women. A Taleban spokesman said on Sunday that they were in good health.

The Taleban say they want to swap the 23 men and women for jailed fighters and are also demanding that South Korean forces leave Afghanistan.

Earlier, Gen Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan defence ministry, told the BBC: “We have surrounded the area. We haven’t launched an attack right now and we are assessing the situation.”

A spokesman for Nato forces said it was unaware of an operation but was ready to help the Afghan and South Korean governments if asked.

The seizure is the largest-scale abduction of foreigners since the fall of the Taleban regime in 2001.

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More women are graduating from seminaries, but in most faiths few are senior or solo clergy.

“If you have a senior rabbi who is a man, and the congregation is looking for an associate rabbi, they will look for a man or a woman,” Shanks said. “But if the senior rabbi is a woman, they will say ‘We already have a Advertisement woman.’ So that’s another piece we’re looking at.”

The June 28 “State of Women in Baptist Life” survey shows Baptist congregations led by women are increasing — but slowly.

“Women are inching up, but we still have a long, long way to go,” said Karen Massey, religion professor at Mercer University in Atlanta and a member of the group that commissioned the study. “The more mainline churches are years ahead of us.”

Nationwide, about 600 women ordained in moderate and liberal Baptist denominations serve as senior or solo pastors. In California, of a total of 10 female pastors, three women head congregations.

What clergywomen in other faiths call “the stained-glass ceiling” is more like a skylight in Miller’s Unitarian Universalist faith. Women hold forth each Sunday on more than half of the denomination’s pulpits.

She was the first female minister to bear a child during her tenure. Now, fertile leaders have formed a support group: They are the “Reverend Mothers.”

“If the senior ministers of large churches tend to be male, (that is) because they are toward the end of their careers,” said Unitarian Universalist Association spokeswoman Janet Hayes.

In the mainstream Presbyterian faith, women make up close to half the clergy.

But in most faiths, female clergy — especially senior clergy — are in the minority.

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“Urgency engulfs the manager; yet the most urgent task is not always the most important. The tyranny of the urgent lies in its distortion of priorities. One of the measures of a manager is the ability to distinguish the important from the urgent, to refuse to be tyrannize–d by the urgent, to refuse to manage by crisis.”

–R. Alec Mackenzie, also from this morning’s sermon