Marriage may be out of fashion but it still confers considerable benefits to adults and children, according to a comprehensive study on the state of the family.

The Office for National Statistics has published definitive proof that married couples live longer, enjoy better health and can rely on more home care in old age than their divorced, widowed, single and cohabiting peers. Children who live with their married parents are also healthier, and can expect to stay in full-time education for longer, whatever their economic background.

It has always been thought that marriage had a positive effect on health, but the findings are the most solid evidence yet that, despite rapidly changing social attitudes and an end to the stigma of divorce and lone-parenting, marriage is still good for you.

It will add fuel to an already heated political debate on the family. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has promised tax cuts for married couples, and to change the tax credit system so that couples with children receive as much as single parents.

Read it all.

The Anglican Communion is heading for an almighty pile-up. Sometime in November, a conservative archbishop is planning to announce radical plans to adopt a breakaway group of conservative American dioceses, and the resulting collision could prove very messy indeed. Under the plans, between three and five dioceses will ”” over a period of time ””opt out of The Episcopal Church and affiliate with the conservative province thousands of miles away.

The proposals, which I have seen, have been drawn up over a number of months and follow extensive consultations between the bishops of the American dioceses and their counterparts in the province concerned. Lawyers have advised the American dioceses that they should enjoy greater protection than parishes when it comes to the inevitable tug-of-war with the litigious
leadership of the Episcopal Church over property because they are deemed to be legal entities in their own right. The dioceses will, however, have to respect all the legal niceties before opting out ”” most have to confirm fundamental constitutional changes at two subsequent meetings of their diocesan synods ”” so the realignment is expected to be staggered.

San Joaquin in California, which is due to take its second vote in December, is due to leap first, while Pittsburgh, headed by the leader of the conservative dioceses, Bishop Bob Duncan, will have to wait until the middle of next year. While this could appear, at least at first, to be more of a whimper than a bang, its cumulative effect could be momentous. Bishop Duncan may be guilty of hyperbole when he claims it is part of a new ”˜Reformation’, but at the very least it will create a dangerously unstable anomaly at the heart of the Communion.

Once the precedent is established, who knows what floodgates it may open across the rest of the Communion. The liberal leadership of the Episcopal Church is certain to claim that any diocese that opts out, presumably taking senior clergy as well as property with it, is now vacant and appoint new bishops and staff. For the first time, there will be rival dioceses, each claiming to be Anglican, operating in parallel within the same geographical boundaries. Conceivably, there will also be neighbouring parishes belonging to the rival dioceses, competing for worshippers.

Along with the other Common Cause partners, the realigned conservative dioceses will no doubt develop into a de facto parallel province within the Episcopal Church, creating an open wound. The new ”˜ecclesial body’ will be recognised by a number of conservative Primates, and disowned by a number of liberal ones, further intensifying strains across the whole Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has been told about these plans, but just at the moment he must feel like a rabbit caught in the headlights. At the time of writing, he was ensconced in a no doubt uncomfortable meeting with the increasingly quarrelsome Church of England bishops in London.

He has said that he will somehow consult all this fellow Primates about the next steps, possibly by writing or via personal telephone calls, but he cannot delay some sort of statement for long.In advance of the Episcopal House of Bishops’ meeting in New Orleans, he had all but ruled out calling an emergency Primates meeting after a number of liberals, anxious that they may be strongarmed into taking punitive action against the Americans, threatened to boycott it. But, amid growing evidence that he and his advisors are making up the rules of the game as they go along, he may rethink that option as at least it offers the tempting prospect of buying more time.

While Dr Williams was in New Orleans, he gave every indication that he was prepared to do almost anything to keep the Americans within the fold as long as they produced a “defensible”
compromise.

But whether he can plausibly defend the statement produced by the Americans remains to be seen, and much will now depend on the reaction of moderate conservatives such as the Primate of the West Indies, Archbishop Drexel Gomez.

In a newspaper interview a year ago, he revealed that he had a “nightmare” that the Communion would disintegrate into warring factions, bankrupting themselves in protracted legal battles over property. He painted a bleak picture of rival Anglican churches competing with each other on the same street. His nightmare is fast becoming reality.

–Mr. Jonathan Petre is the Religious Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in London; this article appears on page 24 of today’s edition of the Church of England Newspaper

At Speicher base in Iraq, US Army Spec. Jeremy Hall got permission from a chaplain in August to post fliers announcing a meeting for atheists and other nonbelievers. When the group gathered, Specialist Hall alleges, his Army major supervisor disrupted the meeting and threatened to retaliate against him, including blocking his reenlistment in the Army.

Months earlier, Hall charges, he had been publicly berated by a staff sergeant for not agreeing to join in a Thanksgiving Day prayer.

On Sept. 17, the soldier and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) filed suit against Army Maj. Freddy Welborn and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, charging violations of Hall’s constitutional rights, including being forced to submit to a religious test to qualify as a soldier.

The MRFF plans more lawsuits in coming weeks, says Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, who founded the military watchdog group in 2005. The aim is “to show there is a pattern and practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religious beliefs within the Department of Defense.”

Read it all.

Why I Voted No

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
(Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”)

He is our peace, making both groups into one and
destroying the barrier formed by the dividing wall,
the hostility between us. (Ephesians 2:14)

You may have read that in New Orleans on September 25 there was one vote opposed to the adoption of “A Response to Questions and Concerns Raised by our Anglican Communion Partners,” the House of Bishops’ reply to the demands made of the Episcopal Church by the Primates of the Anglican Communion in their February 19 communiqué from Dar es Salaam. That vote was mine. Let me explain.
Like others, I am deeply concerned about, and committed to, the unity of the Anglican Communion and, beyond it, that of the church catholic and ecumenical; the Body of Christ.
But the unity of the Anglican Communion is not based on the uniformity of its thirty-eight provinces, each of which brings to the whole the unique gift of who it is under the influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We, the Episcopal Church, are not today what we used to be, nor are we what we may be tomorrow.
Today, however, we are a church that endeavors to honor each individual for who she or he is, recognizing that, among other gifts, some are by nature gay or lesbian in their sexual orientation and, furthermore, should be as free as straight persons to make, with the church’s blessing, a life-long commitment of their lives to another.
In this belief, at the 2006 General Convention, I was one of sixteen bishops who voted against Resolution B033 calling upon bishops with jurisdiction and Standing Committees “to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.”
Howsoever diffuse a connotation may have attended the language of “restraint” then, its meaning was tightened on September 25 when the House of Bishops concurred “with Resolution EC011 of the Executive Council, commending the Report of the Communion Sub-Group of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates of the Anglican Communion as an accurate evaluation of Resolution B033 of the 2006 General Convention.”
The Sub-Group had noted that “by requiring that the restraint must be expressed in a particular way ”“ ”˜by not consenting ”¦’, the resolution is calling for a precise response, which complies with the force of the recommendation of the Windsor Report” ”“ the finding of the Lambeth Commission on Communion published October 18, 2004, in response to problems stemming from the reaction of conservatives to the consecration of the Bishop of New Hampshire. The group also noted “that while the Windsor Report restricted its recommendation to candidates for the episcopate who were living in a same gender union, the resolution at General Convention widened this stricture to apply to a range of lifestyles which present a wider challenge. The group welcomed this widening of the principle, which was also recommended by the Windsor Report, and commends it to the Communion.”
When, on September 25, the House of Bishops adopted this interpretation of B033 and affirmed that non-celibate gay and lesbian persons are included among those to whom B033 pertains, knowing that resolutions are recommendatory, not canonically mandatory, and that therefore compliance is voluntary, I honestly could not promise I would not consent to the election of a gay or lesbian priest to the episcopate.

–(The Rt. Rev.) Charles Bennison is Bishop of Pennsylvania
The House of Bishops went on to “pledge not to authorize for use in our dioceses any public rites of blessing of same-sex unions until a broader consensus emerges in the Communion, or until General Convention takes further action. In the near future we hope to be able to draw upon the benefits of the Communion-wide listening process. In the meantime, it is important to note that no rite of blessing for persons living in same-sex unions has been adopted or approved by our General Convention. In addition to not having authorized liturgies, the majority of bishops do not make allowance for the blessing of same-sex unions.”
I am not party to that majority. Consequently, again because resolutions are recommendatory, not mandatory, and because I could not presume that our clergy would cease from asking me for allowances to bless the union of gay or lesbian couples, I did not feel that in honesty I could voluntarily promise I would deny (though I have on occasion) such requests. Usually, indeed, I have granted permission if the vestry supports the priest in what is proposed, the priest agrees to make the marriage public in the parish, the priest has carried out the usual marriage counseling, and if, in my judgment, the union will prove to be a blessing to the church and the wider community as it usually has long already been.
Because the Book of Common Prayer includes a rubric stating that “for special days of fasting or thanksgiving, appointed by civil of Church authority, and for other special occasions for which no service or prayer has been provided in this Book, the bishop may set forth such forms as are fitting to the occasion,” I provide our clergy with “A Rite of Commitment to a Life Together,” of which I was a co-author in 1996, and ask that they use it for the service.
Despite the bishops stated effort on September 25 to be “clear and outspoken in our shared commitment to establish and protect the civil rights of gay and lesbian persons, and to name and oppose at every turn any action or policy that does violence to them, encourages violence toward them, or violates their dignity as children of God,” and their articulated support of “the Archbishop of Canterbury in his expressed desire to explore ways for the Bishop of New Hampshire to participate in the Lambeth Conference” (although, unlike the rest of us, he has not yet been invited), their mutual agreement to cease from consenting to the election of non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy to the episcopate and from allowing same-sex unions buttresses our society’s homophobia and heterosexism, and effects the very violence they sincerely deplore.
The “Response” equally encourages sexist violence against women by providing an alternative for bishops who refuse to welcome our duly-elected Presiding Bishop into their dioceses. While the Presiding Bishop was magnificent in her leadership of the New Orleans meeting, as she has been through her ministry as our primate this past year, I could not support her plan for episcopal visitors for dioceses that request alternative oversight, commended by the House of Bishops’ “Response,” any more than I could vote for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO) several years ago as affirmed by the Windsor Report, which with the episcopal visitors’ plan is seen as being consistent.

The most theologically misconstrued and ultimately un-pastoral part of the “Response,” however, comes when, after rightly saying they “deplore incursions into our jurisdictions by uninvited bishops and call for them to end,” the bishops turn around and express their expectation that “the Presiding Bishop will continue conversation with those dioceses that may feel the need for” episcopal ministries other than those of their own bishops, and that she will seek “communion-wide consultation with respect to the pastoral needs of those seeking alternative oversight.” Such actions would, if they occurred, smack of incursions ”“ simply more softly and subtly made.

Before any of the four gospels was written, the Apostle Paul gave definition to “the gospel” of Christian theology over against the influential challenge of Gnostic thought.
Had Gnosticism won, the church would have become a club characterized by like-minded people. In the unlikely event such a church would have had bishops, their dioceses would have been made up of people who agreed with them ”“ about the role of women, the place of gay and lesbian persons, or any passing issue of the day. Their churches would have been homogeneous communities walled off from one another.

But just as the poet knew that “something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Paul understood that in Jesus every “barrier formed by the dividing wall” has been broken down. As it happened, Pauline thought prevailed, making possible a church that would be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic ”“ a heterogeneous church made up of “all sorts and conditions,” a corpus mixtum united not by uniformity of thought or action or feeling, but ultimately and only by the love we know in Christ.

Afraid we may be walled off from the Anglican Communion, and the Communion from us, in New Orleans my beloved episcopal colleagues did not, as some have commented, simply describe where we are now as a church. They built higher and thicker walls. They diminished the rich meaning of the Anglican Communion. They undermined the catholicity of the church.

I voted no because I believe we Episcopalians should be who we are, howsoever unique we may be, and offer ourselves freely as our gift to the Communion. If the Communion cannot accept us as we are at present, we can still humbly offer other gifts others may receive ”“ our companion relationships, our hands-on labor, our financial support, our seminary training, and our daily prayers. Such strikes me as the kenotic approach of self-oblation, self-emptying, to which the gospel calls us.

In fine print at the bottom of page 1 of the Diocese of Colorado proposed budget for 2008 is this interesting caveat:

This budget includes only normal legal expenses and no provision for extraordinary investigations and litigation. The Diocese expects that
there will be additional, significant amounts to be approved by the Standing Committee for such expenses in 2008.

Inquiring minds would just love to have a ball park figure. Oh well.

West Virginia had the honor of kicking off the fall diocesan convention season. You can find all the convention info here.

On one level most of the proposed resolutions aren’t too controversial. Nothing dramatic re: Same-Sex Blessings. Nothing about the Windsor Process, the Tanzania Communique or the Crisis in the Communion. Nothing about voting to leave TEC.

But, these resolutions are not exactly “Yawn-worthy” either. Take a close look. Resolutions are here.

How about Resolution 4 which starts out:

Concerning: Deletion of Clergy Minimum Compensation
WHEREAS, many churches in West Virginia are struggling with finances causing the closing or clustering of churches.
WHEREAS, in the Diocese many churches have lost almost 50% of their congregations over the last many years exacerbating this problem.

Lost 50% of their congregations?!?! Um, but, I thought our presiding bishop has said that TEC and its dioceses and parishes are all healthy and thriving.

Then there’s Resolution 9 on the Diocese’s giving to 815 which begins:

Concerning: Remitting Full Amount of National Church Assessment in Four Years
WHEREAS, In Article I of its Constitution, the Diocese of west Virginia accedes to the Constitution and Canons of the National Episcopal Church of the USA, and
WHEREAS, In various Canons the National Church, called the General Convention, mandates the payment of an assessment, also called “asking,” of a certain percentage sum of the income of each Diocese to support the National Church, and
WHEREAS, In 2007, and for some years prior, the Diocese of West Virginia has forwarded half or less than half of its assessment (asking) to the General Convention, and it proposes to submit only approximately 45.2% of the asking in its draft budget for 2008,

It’s interesting of course to see the fact that WV (a “reappraising” diocese) hasn’t been able to meet its full assessment for the National Church. Yet another sign that perhaps some dioceses are not as “healthy and vital” as 815 would like folks to believe. But even more interesting to this elf…. note the first line of the resolution: WHEREAS, In Article I of its Constitution, the Diocese of west Virginia accedes to the Constitution and Canons of the National Episcopal Church of the USA

Very interesting that. In fact one will note that in every resolution submitted by this individual, one Robert DuBose, that phrase appears. We wonder whose idea THAT was/is?

Readers, can you keep your eyes open for similar phrases about Acession to TEC’s Constitution and Canons in all of your diocesan resolutions? This elf has a hunch there is going to be a LOT of that language floating around. Thanks! Looking like it could be a very long and UNdull convention season. Stay tuned.

Sometimes what you don’t say speaks more tellingly than what you do. One famous case is that of the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze.” The dog did not bark because the crime was an inside job and the malefactor was known to him. Some such case applies to the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church in their latest Statement from New Orleans.

I will not rehearse the details of that Statement, as everyone under the sun has already done so. What I want to do is to pose three questions which the bishops chose not to address but for which I think there are obvious unspoken answers.

Read it all.

My experience as a clergyman within the Episcopal Church for some 17 years, was often one of great frustration and anger. Decisions were made of which I disapproved. Statements were made with which I disagreed. Every pronouncement from the National Church seemed to open the wound only wider. The result was never good for my spiritual well-being. It is one thing to start out one’s spiritual career with a notion that you will be among the “reformers.” This, in fact, is probably not good. The Church should exist to save us, not us to save the Church.

But it was also destructive to my spiritual well-being because I was frequently so deeply exercised about things over which I had no control. I could and did voice my opinion and even led one national movement that was engaged with structural change (we failed). But in such struggles other human beings can quickly become little more than adversaries – known by whatever name we know adversaries. Prayer without peace is deeply damaged prayer.

Read it all.

In response to several readers: No, I do not plan a comment on the Episcopal priest in Seattle who says she is also a Muslim. In part because commenting on Episcopalian foibles and follies is like shooting fish in a barrel. It seems unfair. What else is to be said about a church in which John Spong, who is celebrated for denying almost every article in the creed, is a bishop in good standing? In any case, the lady in Seattle said it all. Of her simultaneous adherence to Christianity and Islam she commented: ”˜It wasn’t about intellect. All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.’ It wasn’t about intellect. This is a journal of ideas and it is beyond our competence to comment on a person who says she has no idea what she is doing. We have no personal or pastoral connection with her and therefore could not possibly comment on her problems with her identity or who she thinks she is supposed to be. It is of interest that she will, beginning this fall, be teaching the New Testament at Seattle University. But then that is a school ”˜in the Jesuit tradition’ and apparently is not about intellect either. And so, as aforesaid, we have no comment.”

–Richard John Neuhaus, “While we’re at it,” First Things 176 (October 2007), p. 75.

Whew. It’s time to gear up for the annual fall Diocesan Conventions spree. Forty-three conventions scheduled for October!!

We elves probably won’t have time to do the exhaustive coverage we attempted at least for part of the convention season last fall. We need readers’ help. PRIOR to your diocesan convention, please send us any important info on resolutions or budgets for your diocese. And then AFTER convention, send us info on what resolutions passed, your bishops’ convention address, etc. We’re counting on you!

Here are the list of October Conventions:

10/4/2007 – 10/7/2007 Alaska (St. Matthew’s Church – Fairbanks, AK)
10/4/2007 – 10/7/2007 Wyoming (Jackson, WY)
10/5/2007 – 10/6/2007 Colorado (St. John’s Cathedral – Denver, CO)
10/5/2007 – 10/7/2007 Montana (Copper King Hotel – Butte, MT)
10/5/2007 – 10/6/2007 North Dakota (Kelly Inn – Bismarck, ND)
10/5/2007 – 10/7/2007 South Dakota (Oacoma, SD)

10/12/2007 – 10/13/2007 Bethlehem (Cathedral Church of the Nativity – Bethlehem, PA)
10/12/2007 – 10/14/2007 Eastern Oregon (St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church – Prineville, OR)
10/12/2007 – 10/13/2007 Milwaukee (Italian Community Center – Milwaukee, WI)
10/12/2007 – 10/14/2007 Nevada (South Point Hotel – Las Vegas, NV)
10/12/2007 – 10/14/2007 Northern Michigan
10/12/2007 – 10/13/2007 Western Louisiana (Holiday Inn Convention Centre Hotel – Alexandria, LA)

10/18/2007 – 10/21/2007 Churches in Europe (American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris.)
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Arizona (Sheraton Crescent Hotel, Phoenix)
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 California
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Connecticut (Christ Church Cathedral – Hartford, CT)
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Dallas
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Eastern Michigan (St. John’s Church – Saginaw, MI)
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Fond Du Lac (Liberty Hall – Appleton, WI)
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Kansas (Kansas Expocentre – Topeka, KS)
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Quincy (Christ Church – Moline, IL)
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Rio Grande (Cathedral Church of St. John – Albuquerque, NM)
10/19/2007 – 10/21/2007 Spokane (Termplin’s Red Lion Hotel on the River – Post Falls, ID)
10/19/2007 – 10/20/2007 Western Kansas (Garden City, KS)
10/20/2007 – 10/20/2007 Southwest Florida (Venice Community Center – Venice, FL)
10/21/2007 – 10/21/2007 Puerto Rico (Coliseo Juan “Pachin” Vicens – Ponce, Santa Eucaristía – Puerto Rico)

10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Hawaii (St. Andrew’s Cathedral & Prince Kuhio Hoten – Honolulu, HI)
10/26/2007 – 10/28/2007 Idaho (Idaho Falls, ID)
10/26/2007 – 10/28/2007 Indianapolis (Holiday Inn Conference Center – Columbus, IN)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Maine (Bangor Civic Center – Bangor, ME)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Michigan (Holiday Inn South – Lansing, MI)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Minnesota (St. Paul River Centre – St. Paul, MN)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Nebraska (corrected per comment below)
10/26/2007 – 10/28/2007 Northwest Texas (San Angelo, TX)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Rhode Island (The Biltmore Hotel – Providence, RI)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 San Joaquin
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Upper South Carolina (Christ Church – Greenville, SC)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Utah (Cathedral Church of St. Mark – Salt Lake City, UT)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Western Massachusetts (Springfield Sheraton – Springfield, MA)
10/26/2007 – 10/27/2007 Western New York
10/27/2007 – 10/27/2007 El Camino Real (Sherwood Hall – Salinas, CA)
10/27/2007 – 10/27/2007 Northern Indiana
10/27/2007 – 10/28/2007 Springfield (Trinity – Jacksonville, IL)

You can find a list of all conventions here: by date, by diocese.

All the T19 diocesan convention posts will be under this category link

——
Update: We’re putting together an Excel Spreadsheet. It will have any links we find to the diocesan convention website, proposed resolutions, and then post-convention materials (final resolutions, bishops’ speech) if/when they are posted online. Here’s the link.

We’ll try to update it regularly. (So far we just have a few links for this weekend’s conventions. But we will add more over the weekend)

Local Episcopalians were briefed this week on where the long-simmering dispute involving the church’s stance on homosexuality stands, specifically the ordination of homosexuals.

The Rev. Lewis Payne of Quincy, a retired Anglican priest, presided over a general information meeting.

“It was nothing major, there was nothing new,” Payne said. “These kinds of meetings are always held a couple of weeks before the (state) convention in each of the deaneries, or regional units.”

This year’s convention is scheduled for Oct. 19-20 in Moline.

The dispute over homosexuality in the church, which has been going on for at least 30 years, has worsened in part because of a larger clash about biblical interpretations. Tensions heightened in 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire.

At that time, St. John’s Episcopal Church of Quincy was part of a growing number of churches, parishes and dioceses around the country taking the first steps toward breaking away from the mainline denomination and placing themselves under the authority of a foreign bishop, most of them in Africa.

Read it all.

It was hardly a surprise but a cause for sorrow nonetheless: the House of Bishops, meeting in New Orleans, made a response to the requests of the Primates at Dar Es Salaam that offered little to repair the “tear in the fabric of the communion” caused by the consecration of Gene Robinson. They did pledge compliance in the election of bishops (no more Gene Robinsons) ”“ but then demanded that Gene Robinson be invited to Lambeth Conference in 2008. Their convoluted pledge not to authorize same-sex blessings is surely designed to permit local option (as is already happening). They demanded that the Global South Primates stop their pastoral interventions, but they had nothing serious to offer the conservative dissenters the Primates are trying to care for: the Pastoral Council proposed by the Primates was refused in favour of window-dressing; and the destructive policy of aggressive litigation against conservative dissent was not even addressed, let alone restrained.

Some will adjudge the result the best that could be hoped for under the circumstances. Others will even eagerly claim to find it satisfactory. But who really believes that is true? These are grudging assurances in words that inspire no trust, weasel words with built-in wiggle-room, a tactical maneuver, not a change of heart. The House has not renounced the imagined right of the Episcopal Church to do as it pleases, unconstrained by the teaching of the Bible, the historic Faith, or the Communion’s “bonds of affection”. They have not healed the breach their arrogance opened up, and that means it will only get worse.

The breach has now come to Savannah, in the decision by the Vestry of Christ Church to secure its future in the Faith, in the Anglican Communion, by placing the parish under the pastoral care of John Guernsey, a Virginia priest recently made bishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda in North America. This decision, made in conscience, cannot have been easy to make, and it deserves respect even from those who disagree with it. St. John’s Vestry has made no such decision, but I can testify to our respect for theirs; and also our continuing fellowship with them in the historic faith, and in “the bonds of affection”.

In response Bishop Louttit has asserted the Episcopal Church’s claim to Christ Church’s real property, on the grounds that parishes are “integral and constituent parts of a diocese and of the larger church.” But the obligations of “constituent” membership in the “larger church” run both ways. The constitutional obligations of the Episcopal Church – to uphold the Bible’s teaching, the Church’s historic Faith and Order, and membership in the Communion ”“ are the covenantal basis of its canonical claims to parochial real property. If it cannot fulfil the former, then the moral basis for the latter disappears.

–The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector, Saint John’s, Savannah

Following a school board meeting where parent complained about what the saw as an assault on traditional American celebrations, an Oak Lawn school district has decided to keep observing Halloween and Christmas, but only on the condition that Muslim holiday Ramadan is celebrated as well.

The school district had asked principals to tone down all holiday celebrations after a Muslim mother requested that her children be separated from others during lunch for the Ramadan fast.

But after heated remarks from many parents at the meeting Tuesday, the school board changed its position.

“Everything is staying the same,” school board member Dave Lis said. “Christmas is still Christmas, and Halloween is still Halloween.”

That’s good news to fifth-grader Samantha Ramirez, who looks forward to Santa’s annual visit to Columbus Manor School.

“We should be able to celebrate our thing, and they should be able to celebrate theirs, too,” the 10-year-old said.

Read it all.

Everything technologically possible need not be ethically permissible, and for this we need a bioethics that is open to the transcendent, said a Vatican official.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, the president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, said this during a conference co-sponsored by the Vatican dicastery and the Acton Institute, titled “Health, Technology and Common Good.” It was held at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Friday.

In his lecture titled “The Future for Health Care: Putting Technology at the Service of Man,” the 74-year-old cardinal said: “We know that biomedical technology holds a great deal of promise in the areas of diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

“But we must also be aware of the fact that technology and medicine are only a part of the health care system and undue insistence on their capabilities may give more emphasis in meeting the demands of the providers than that of the human persons.”

Cardinal Lozano Barragán continued: “The ultimate criterion in the use of all technologies must be the good of man.

“In discussing the sciences of life and reflecting on the experimental sciences that manipulate life, one wonders about correct human behavior in relation to human life, deficiency in human life, increase in human life, improvement in human life, procedures to be followed to obtain this improvement and deviations to be avoided.

Read it all.

From here:

The questions about who signed and who didn’t sign are all very interesting, as well as the discussions about conflict of interest, … [edited]

Regardless, the crucial issue here is that the JSC Report is a rather bald-faced lie. The requirements of Dar Es Salaam were quite clear, specifically:

That the HOB make itself clear that GC2006 meant that no bishop living in a same-sex relationship would be approved (not “exercise restraint”).

That the HOB make itself clear no same-sex blessings would take place, whether public or private.

That the Primatial Vicar scheme would be implemented–not another DEPO.

That lawsuits would cease.

Unless and until all these requirements were meant, border crossings would continue, with the approval of the Primates who agreed to DES.

The reappraisers understood this. I would ask the reappraisers to jog their memories to recall some of the rather vigorous opposition they offered to the DES Communique when it first come out.

None (I repeat, None) of the above requirements were met at NO. And everyone knows this. Why then, the reappraisers are so happy about the JSC Report is baffling to me. Either, the reappraisers are thrilled that the HOB was given a pass on a blatant deception. Or, the HOB was not being deceptive, in which case the reappraisers are thrilled because the JSC is lying when it says that the HOB said something they did not say.

Or the reappraisers are thrilled because they are being portrayed as illiterates. All your vigorous opposition to DES back in February was based on a misreading? DES really didn’t ask for the things that you all were so upset about? And your rejoicing at KJS’s claims that she didn’t actually sign anything were misplaced?

Of course, the other possibility is that the JSC is just as blatantly dishonest as the HOB statement coming out of NO. And the reappraisers are thrilled either because they approve of the deception, or they are thrilled because all that matters is a Lambeth invite, and if deception is the necessary price for a ticket to Lambeth, it is an expensive price, but one worth paying.

And the sad thing is that the latter is the most plausible likelihood.

We are indebted to Terry Mattingly at Get Religion for bringing this story from the Baltimore Sun to a wider audience. The Baltimore Sun article is unique because it is based on letters to the editor to an Amish newspaper during the last year, many from the relatives of the girls who were killed or injured. The letters and thus the article are deeply moving. Here’s an excerpt from TMatt’s blog entry on this. The link to the longer original Baltimore Sun piece is at the end. We agree with Terry. The article is really must reading.

But the newspaper letters also offered insights into the lives of the children who survived, which is a side of this drama previously kept private. Four of the girls were quickly back in school, even as they continued to recover from their wounds. But that is not the end of that story:

A fifth girl, 7-year-old Rosanna King, suffered a serious brain injury. She was removed from life support within two days of the shooting and was expected to die. Instead, she has become a living miracle for the Amish, who found inspiration as she progressed from bed to wheelchair and began to recognize family members and laugh out loud. But progress has been slow. . . .

One writer wondered whether the community could do more for her.

“Maybe we are not praying hard enough,” wrote Yonie Esh of Georgetown. He seemed to hesitate at the idea. “But then again we want to say, ”˜Thy will be done.’ If I write something that I should not, I do apologize. I certainly do not want to offend anyone.”

When Rosanna returned to church for the first time after the shooting, the moment generated considerable excitement.

“She doesn’t talk . . . but so precious to have her around,” wrote Susanna Stoltzfus.

This is a very simple story, based on these letter from inside a community that prefers to keep its sorrows and joys private. The simplicity is what makes the story so powerful.

Life continues in Nickel Mines. It was fortunate that the Sun found a way to take readers inside that story, without violating the lives of those who are living it. This is must reading.

Here’s Terry’s blog entry.

Here’s the full Baltimore Sun feature article by Julie Scharper.

Christ Church leaders say biblical authority rests at the center of their decision to leave the Episcopal Church.

But now that they’ve left, the only question remaining is: Who gets the property?

According to attorneys with experience in church property laws, the odds are stacked against Christ Church.

However, church leaders say historical and current documents clearly list the wardens and vestry as its owners.

The Episcopal Church claims ownership to all church properties. The denomination considers individual parishes to be held in trust by the congregation.

Macon attorney W. Warren Plowden Jr. said he has argued cases for the United Methodist Church, which also operates under a hierarchical governance system.

“In Methodist cases, the courts will look at deeds, the discipline of the United Methodist Church and, if it’s incorporated, the corporate documents,” he said.

Read it all

CHATHAM COUNTY tax documents show the Protestant Episcopal Church owns six local properties. Christ Church is not one of them.

Both the Bull Street church building itself, and the nearby structure that holds the parish house, offices and children’s school are owned by the Christ Church wardens and vestry.

That’s an important bit of information, considering the local congregation’s recent announcement that it intends to separate from the Episcopal Church of the United States.

Christ Church, the 274-year-old “Mother Church of Georgia,” has had a long-running dispute with church leaders over scriptural issues.

Nationally, much press has been given to arguments over the ordination of women, the blessing of same-sex marriages and the ordination of practicing homosexuals into the ministry.

However, Christ Church pastor Rev. Marc Robertson said those issues are not central to the local church’s concerns.

Instead, they focus on the greater Episcopal Church’s unwillingness to unequivocally back such basic tenets as the authority of scripture, the divinity of Christ and the availability of salvation through Christ’s sacrifice.

American Episcopal leaders have been fairly heavy-handed in addressing those concerns.

Read it all.

From here:

The Anglican Communion Office has issued a report, purportedly from the Joint Standing Committee of Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council essentially affirming the US House of Bishops statement of last week. In an astonishing piece of manipulation the one conservative (Mouneer Anis) who had attended the meeting in New Orleans was squeezed out of the drafting process whereas the US Presiding Bishop was included. The ACO is heavily funded by the US Episcopal Church and has for a long time been considered to be manipulating agendas and events in order to promote the revisionist cause. This latest move adds weight to the concerns and destroys any credibility the report might have had.

The report has been posted on the ACO website should anyone think it worth reading. As we predicted beforehand it is taking the view that the US Bishops did just enough (which they didn’t) in order to satisfy the requirements made of them. Clearly it had already been agreed what the report would say and how the US Bishops would have to phrase their response in order to match it.

Jefferts Schori, who was in San Francisco to help celebrate the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, voiced her support for gays and lesbians several times during her visit. However, at a church forum Sunday morning, parishioner Christopher Hayes ”“ who’s in a long-term same-sex relationship ”“ told her, “I want to hear that we’re not satisfied with where we are right now.”

The Reverend Susan Russell, president of Integrity, a national organization of LGBT Episcopalians and their straight friends, told the Bay Area Reporter the bishops’ pledge treats gays and lesbians as “expendable.”

Tom Jackson is the president of Oasis, the LGBT ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of California. The diocese consists of San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin counties, and part of Santa Clara County. The diocese, which has 27,000 members, has seen many blessings for same-sex unions over the past 30 years.

The church’s next general convention is in July 2009. Jackson said the bishops’ controversial pledge has “energized a lot of people.” Russell said Integrity is working with other organizations to address same-sex unions at the convention. Many have expressed optimism that things will change after that meeting.

Read it all.

In its report, however, the Anglican panel said the bishops’ pledges had “clarified all outstanding questions” and given the needed assurances.

At the same time, the panel urged the Episcopal Church to do more to provide pastoral care and oversight to disaffected conservatives within its ranks. At least four dioceses, including Fresno-based San Joaquin, are taking steps to break with the national church and align with conservative Anglican bishops abroad. More than 50 Episcopal parishes, including several in Southern California, have done the same.

Unless adequate reassurances can be given to dissident congregations and dioceses, “there will be no reconciliation either within the Episcopal Church or within the wider Anglican Communion,” the report said.

But the panel also appeared to rebuke several Anglican primates who had established networks of breakaway Episcopal parishes in the United States, calling for an end to such practices. “We believe that the time is right for a determined effort to bring interventions to an end,” the report stated.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, said in a statement Wednesday that she was pleased with the committee’s finding that the church had fulfilled the primates’ requests.

Read it all.

The diocese of Ottawa’s regularly scheduled synod will decide Oct. 12-13 whether to request its bishop to grant permission for clergy to bless same-sex relationships.

It is the first diocese to consider the matter since the triennial General Synod, the Anglican Church of Canada’s national governing body, agreed in June that same-sex blessings are “not in conflict” with core church doctrine, but declined by a slim margin to affirm the authority of dioceses to offer them.

The Ottawa motion, moved by Ron Chaplin, a member of the diocese’s branch of Integrity, a support group for gay Anglicans, and Canon Garth Bulmer, rector of St. John the Evangelist, reads: “Be it resolved that this synod requests that the bishop grant permission for clergy, whose conscience permits, to bless duly solemnized and registered civil marriages between same-sex couples, where one party is baptized; and that he authorizes an appropriate rite and guidelines for its use in supportive parishes.”

The new diocesan bishop, John Chapman, said in a statement that if the motion passes, “it will leave the matter with the bishop to render a decision.”

Read it all.

Response to the Report of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Primates On The Reply of the American House of Bishops

The JSC has determined that the American HOB has responded adequately to requests from the Anglican Primates for clarification of their response to the Windsor Report both in terms of the approval of additional bishops in committed same-sex relationships and the approval of same-sex blessings.

The JSC concludes that a majority of bishops have committed themselves to withhold consents to election of candidates for bishop in same sex relationships. This is I believe actually the case. The meeting in New Orleans did express a consensus that consents would be withheld at least until after the next General Convention. I suspect that if there is a Lambeth Conference in the offing the HOB will in all likelihood refrain from giving the necessary consents until after Lambeth.

The JSC has accepted the declaration of the HOB that TEC has not authorized public rites for same-sex blessing though reserving the right for private pastoral response. The JSC makes clear that “we believe that the celebration of a public liturgy which includes a blessing on a same-sex union is not within the breadth of the private personal response envisaged by the Primates in their Pastoral Letter of 2003, and that the undertaking made by the bishops in New Orleans is understood to mean that the use of any such rites or liturgies will not in future have the bishop’s authority, ”˜until a broader consensus emerges in the Communion, or until General Convention takes further action.’”

At this point the statement becomes really an exercise in subterfuge….
The JSC accepts the undertaking made by the HOB in terms that the HOB never set and which are contradicted by numerous facts on the ground and the explicit statements of many bishops. By saying that such blessings when they take place are “without the bishop’s authority” the JSC is replaying on the communion wide stage the comical picture of LA bishop Bruno denying that the same-sex blessing described in the New York Times announcement page was going forward with his knowledge or authority. This is an attempt to finesse an issue that even the secular press will find duplicitous. It is inconceivable the HOB would discipline any of its members for allowing public same-sex blessings. A real undertaking not to authorize would mean to discipline those who take unauthorized action. This seems an attempt to generate a legal fiction for the purpose of giving TEC a pass by virtue of living into a legal fiction that it did not in its deliberations agree to. Meanwhile the spirit of Windsor cooperation which is what is really needed has been simply repudiated. The JSC is trying to give the HOB a way of playing the character Sargent Schultz from the sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. Schultz the German guard turned a blind eye to the shenanigans of the prisoners and when asked by his superiors about transgressions said famously, “I know nothing, I know nothing.” By its finesse and fine parsing of language the JSC is helpfully feeding the HOB this line. They are saying in effect, “we are going to say we take it in this way, you don’t protest and you will be able to say, ”˜we know nothing.’”

The JSC also takes up the issues of alternate Primatial Oversight. It encourages the Presiding Bishop to consult further with dissenting groups but “we believe the Presiding Bishop has opened a way forward. There is within this proposal (the plan announced at NOL) the potential for the development of a scheme which, with good will on the part of all parties could meet their needs.” So they ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to use his office to bring together the leaders of TEC and the dissenting dioceses for further negotiation but put their prestige behind what the PB has put on the table. They suggest that possibly the Panel of Reference might be resurrected.

They encourage the ABC to use his office to discourage law suits on all sides. This is the single positive contribution in the report.

The JSC scold those primates who have offered emergency pastoral care to American parishes for not abiding by the Windsor Report and call for a determined effort to bring interventions to an end. They ask the ABC to convene talks between the intervening bishops and the TEC bishops of the diocese in which the interventions occur.

The JSC commends the listening process called for by Lambeth.

The JSC suggests that the there is an emerging consensus in the communion “which says that while it is inappropriate to proceed to public Rites of Blessing of same-sex unions and to the consecration of bishops who are living in sexual relationships outside of Christian marriage, we need to take seriously our ministry to gay and lesbian people inside the Church and the ending of discrimination, persecution and violence against them. Here The Episcopal Church and the Instruments of Communion speak with one voice.”

The essence of the JSC report is to try to sell on a Communion wide basis the American HOB fiction that because no new liturgies have been authorized and no new elections consented to the American Church is Windsor compliant.

There is a willful distortion of reality in this report that raises the most serious questions about whether the Primates can themselves be an instrument of unity and exercise meaningful authority in the communion. This report will not help the communion stay together. It is in every way a clever and artful (in the sinister sense of that word) document designed to deceive and cry peace where there is no peace. It can only seem odious to plain speaking people looking for plain talk about the really somber prospect of the break up of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. The ABC and the Primates have been badly let down by this report. I look with anticipation for a minority report from Bishop Mouneer Anis.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, said she was gratified by the panel’s conclusions. “The Joint Standing Committee report has recognized the hard work of the House of Bishops,” Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori said in a statement, “and that our responses reflect our repeatedly expressed desire to remain in full communion with the rest of the Anglican Communion.”

But a conservative member of the committee immediately took issue with the report, saying his input was not included.

“The response of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church represents a superficial shift from their previous position,” the committee member, the Most Rev. Mouneer Hanna Anis, primate of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, wrote in an e-mail statement. “Therefore I strongly disagree with the report.”

Committee members traveled to New Orleans with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the communion’s spiritual leader, to talk to the Episcopal bishops about the tensions in the communion.

The Joint Committee submitted its report to Archbishop Williams, and he has sent it to all the primates and members of the Anglican Consultative Council, a representative body of bishops, priests and lay people. They are to respond to the archbishop by the end of the month.

“This is one voice, and other voices need to come in and say whether the Episcopal Church has indeed satisfied” the primates’ demands,” said Canon James M. Rosenthal, spokesman for the Anglican Communion Office.

Read it all.

The Chicago Cubs begin their century-long quest for a World Series title in earnest today in the shadow of one Steve Bartman.

Few fans will forget the earphones, the hat, the sweatshirt, the cursed right arm that reached over the Wrigley wall to deflect a ball away from Moises Alou in Game 6 of the 2003 N.L.C.S.

“This preceded a cascade of plays and misplays that squandered the team’s best chance to reach the World Series since 1945,” writes The Times’s Joe Lapointe, who describes the Cubs as “the most hexed and vexed team in American sports.”

Read it all.

Two San Diego court employees are suing the Superior Court because they say they have been prohibited from holding a lunch-hour Bible study in the courthouse.

The federal civil rights suit claims court officials unfairly denied the group’s request to meet in an empty courtroom or jury deliberation room.

The lawsuit says the Bible study group had met in the courthouse regularly since 2000, but in April 2006, court officials banned the meeting, saying it violated court policy.

Mindy Barlow, one of two plaintiffs in the case, said yesterday that the lawsuit isn’t about money.

Read it all.

A committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth recommended Monday that the diocese leave the U.S. Episcopal Church and affiliate with another province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Because the proposal involves a constitutional change, it would first have to be approved at the diocese’s annual convention Nov. 16-17 and again in 2008, Bishop Jack Iker said.

“This is just a first step,” Iker said.

Read it all.

Read it all.

As part of Plan A, its nationwide campaign to foster access to safe and affordable contraception, the National Council of Jewish Women has been encouraging local communities to tackle the topics that stir controversy ”” like religion, emergency contraception, and insurance coverage.

Those will all be up for discussion on Wednesday evening, Oct. 10, at a forum sponsored by NCJW’s Union County Section, and hosted by Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains. The program is open to the community.

The speakers will include two religious leaders known for their willingness to engage in open debate: Beth Israel’s Rabbi George Nudell, who will discuss Jewish perspectives on birth control, and Rev. Geoffrey B. Curtiss of All Saints Episcopal Parish in Hoboken, who will offer a liberal Christian perspective….

Curtiss will represent the New Jersey Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the state branch of a national interfaith clergy association founded to defend the constitutional right to abortion.

Earlier this year, Curtiss was one of the RCRC experts who developed “In Good Conscience: Guidelines for the Ethical Provision of Health Care in a Pluralistic Society.” The guidelines were in part a rebuttal to what it called “sectarian restrictions imposed on health care,” including the Catholic Church’s directives banning abortion services at Catholic healthcare institutions.

Read it all.

Chuck Feeney became a billionaire in the duty free shop business. Then he gave away $600 million anonymously. As the Daily News wrote of the reclusive philanthropist,

Chuck Feeney is what Donald Trump would be if he lived his entire existence backward.

.

Read it all.