“We met intentionally in New Orleans, as an act of solidarity with the people of Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf coast, so that we might represent the prayers and concern of the whole church, and offer a small contribution to the rebuilding effort,” Jefferts Schori said in her opening remarks of the one-hour webcast, anchored by the Rev. Jan Nunley, executive editor of Episcopal Life Media. “We were told that 100,000 housing units were lost during Katrina and its aftermath, displacing nearly 250,000 people. Of those housing units, only about 4,000 have been made habitable once again.”

Many of the bishops, their spouses, “as well as a number of our Anglican Communion visitors,” Jefferts Schori said, “participated in various rebuilding efforts on one day of meeting.”

“We pounded nails, placed dry wall, distributed sandwiches, and listened to the stories of despair and hope,” she said. “Faith communities, including the Episcopal Church, are the backbone of ongoing relief and rebuilding efforts, and it appears that their primary role will continue to be vital.”

She described the first part of the meeting as “an opportunity for the bishops to hear from our Anglican Communion visitors, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to share our own joys and concerns with them.”

Read it all.

Today is the 20th Anniversary of Black Monday. Joe Nocera had some interesting thoughts on this here, including this:

Having watched the way investors have behaved since the Crash of ’87, I’ve come to believe that most human beings are simply not hard-wired to be good investors. In the 1990s, a new kind of economics arose, called behavioral economics, which tried to show that investors weren’t so rational after all. So I can’t deny that one of the reasons I like Mr. Zweig’s book so much is he provides, at last, a scientific basis for this theory. It turns out that there is a new discipline called neuroeconomics, which combines biology, psychology and economics and tries to understand why we make the often foolish financial decisions we make.

The central finding, as Mr. Zweig put it, is that ”the brain is not an optimal tool for making financial decisions.” The part of our brain that tells us to act like rational investors tends to be completely overtaken by much more powerful emotional impulses — impulses, Mr. Zweig writes, ”that make us human.”

He’s got a million examples. ”Humans,” he writes, ”have a phenomenal ability to detect and interpret simple patterns. That’s what helped our ancestors survive the hazardous primeval world, enabling them to evade predators, find food and shelter and eventually to plant crops in the right place at the right time of year.” But, he adds, ”when it comes to investing, our incorrigible search for patterns leads us to assume that order exists where it often doesn’t.”

The Montreal branch of the Anglican Church will vote tonight on whether parishes in the diocese can formally bless same-sex civil unions, if they so choose.

The vote, to take place at their annual meeting, or synod, comes a week after the Ottawa diocese voted 177-97 in favour of a similar motion.

The result of the vote is only a recommendation. If Montreal Anglicans vote to follow their Ottawa brethren, Bishop Barry Clarke, head of the Montreal diocese, can choose to accept or reject their choice.

This week, Clarke said he had not made up his mind about the controversial issue, but he would be listening to what the 240 voting clergy and laity at the synod have to say.

The issue of homosexuality has ripped apart the worldwide Anglican community in recent years.

Read it all.

Burwell eventually attended seminary in Pittsburgh, served a church in Orangeburg for three years, then returned to Charleston and the Church of the Holy Cross.

“There was a struggling little place with very little future,” he says.

Burwell encountered a vestry averse to change. The church, itself, had been the same size for about 30 years.

Burwell wanted Holy Cross to grow, to seek out new members and create new services, and maintain tradition. The vestry saw matters differently.

One member told him, “Burwell, the only reason I’m on this vestry is to make sure you don’t get what you want.”

Burwell shakes his head. “Those were strange days.”

So he prayed, and eventually won over the church. Membership doubled in three years’ time. Old attitudes, hearts changed.

Holy Cross built a new parish hall, and the church added worship services and opened a branch on Daniel Island. Tent services are held in I’On in Mount Pleasant. Construction on a facility there is slated to begin before 2008.

In short, the church is thriving.

Now married for 31 years and the father of two daughters, Burwell still pulls from the old days. He dips into pop culture during his sermons, connecting with his parishioners just as he did with his listeners. Sometimes, he even finds time to pop into his home studio to record a few snippets.

“It’s been an amazing 20 years,” he says, “and I have a feeling we’re just getting started.”

Read it all.

The contentious relationship between the Episcopal Church based in the United States and the worldwide Anglican Communion is appropriately called a “civil war over homosexuality” by The New York Times. I, also, think it is an event of civil stress about love and justice. In 1966, Joseph Fletcher, an Episcopal priest on the faculty of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote a book titled Situation Ethics in which he declared that “love is the boss principle of life” and “justice is love distributed.”

“God is love” is a fact of life some of us learned in Sunday school. We also learned that covenants, creeds, doctrines and traditions may pass away, but love endures. How, then, can a church with a responsibility of promoting love and justice adopt a policy of discrimination that prohibits homosexual people from being elected and consecrated as bishops? There is no evidence that such people cannot “love and be loved in return.” If love is the boss principle of life, arbitrary and capricious acts of discrimination against all sorts and conditions of people, including male and female people, heterosexual and homosexual people, is unjust and should cease and desist.

While other institutional systems in society — like government, the economy and education — identify principles other than love that are central to their mission, certainly love is the foundational principle of religion — all religions. It is our religious responsibility in society to remind other institutions to do what they are called to do in loving and just ways.

It is a shocking experience to see a religious institution like the Anglican Communion refuse to support gay couples and lesbian couples who wish to marry and homosexual people who wish to make a sacrificial offering of their leadership skills to serve the church as priests and bishops. It is regrettable that the church rejects such people, as if they were engaged in a demonized activity.

Read it all.

Stephen Crittenden: Welcome to the program.’

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist’. They’re the words of the great Brazilian theologian Dom Helder Camara, but they might just as well have been aimed at Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, who says the Catholic church’s criticism of the government’s WorkChoices legislation is ‘socialism masquerading as justice’.

In a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs, Mr Abbott said that the churches should butt out of politics, and that if they spent more time encouraging virtue in individual believers, and less time demanding virtue from governments we’d have a better society.

Well Tony Abbott has often been critical of Catholic social justice agencies like the St Vincent de Paul Society, and in recent times of Bishop Kevin Manning of Parramatta who says the Howard government’s IR laws are immoral. But the Minister says Industrial Relations isn’t a moral or religious issue at all. In fact he says a political argument isn’t transformed into a moral argument simply because it’s delivered with an enormous dollop of sanctimony.

Well not surprisingly, Australia’s church leaders have hit back. The Reverend Tim Costello has described Mr Abbott as ‘displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of Jesus and Catholic teaching’. And Archbishop Peter Jensen says he ‘defines virtue too narrowly, as though it’s merely about personal morality’.

Well in a few moments we’ll hear from leading Catholic historian and social justice advocate, Bruce Duncan, but first to Tony Abbott himself. And in this interview, recorded yesterday, Mr Abbott says if people are doing it tough in Australia, it’s their own fault because of the unfortunate personal choices they’ve made, or it’s God’s fault, but it’s not the fault of the Howard government.

Mr Abbott, thanks for your time today. In the late 19th century when Pope Leo XIII advocated on behalf of the rights and conditions of working people, he was labelled a socialist, and he responded that his opponents didn’t understand the difference between socialism and Christianity. Do you understand the difference?

Read it all.

“Viva Laughlin” on CBS may well be the worst new show of the season, but is it the worst show in the history of television?

It certainly comes close in a category that includes “Beverly Hills Buntz” in 1987 (Dennis Franz in a short-lived spinoff of “Hill Street Blues”), the self-explanatory “Manimal” in 1983 or last year’s one-episode wonder, “Emily’s Reasons Why Not.” “Viva Laughlin” is not even in the same league as “Cop Rock,” a 1990 experimental series created by Steven Bochco that leavened a gritty police drama with Broadway musical moments: cops and criminals breaking into song and dance. “Viva Laughlin” also features musical outbursts and is far worse.

It may be just me, but I don’t think she liked the show. Read it all.

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said he believes that “due process was followed” by the diocese of Ottawa when a majority of its synod members approved on Oct. 13 a motion asking its bishop to allow local parishes to bless civil marriages between same-sex couples.

“I believe due process was followed with respect to the handling of this resolution. The outcome of the resolution is a reflection of the mind of the church local in this matter,” Archbishop Hiltz told the Anglican Journal.

He also described diocesan bishop John Chapman’s statement that he would conduct wide-ranging consultations with the Canadian house of bishops, the diocese, and other Anglicans both at the national and international level before arriving at a decision as “entirely appropriate.”

Read it all.

Sir, There seems to be a shortage of joy in the church if recent correspondence is a reliable guide.

The gospel teaches the promise of forgiveness of sins and eternal life for those who truly repent and receive God’s grace through Christ.

I understood that living in God’s kingdom starts in the here and now with the assurance of heaven hereafter. That assurance should be evidenced by widespread joy and confident proclamation of such
good news. Recent letters on the question of praying for the dead have not indicated widespread assurance of salvation. It is not surprising then that when I talk with people outside the church they have little idea of the distinctive message of the Christian gospel.

We must have confidence in what Christ has achieved and promised ”” it has the power to redeem individuals and change the world.

–J Longstaff, of Woodford Green in Essex in a letter to the editor to this week’s Church of England Newspaper, page 10

The New Orleans Statement by the US House of Bishops has generated a wide and contradictory spate of explanatory letters and speeches from the American bishops to their dioceses. While the Primates ACC Joint Standing Committee’s report of Sept 30 argues the New Orleans statement complied with the primates’ request for a moratorium on gay bishops and blessings, liberal and conservative bishops in the US are united in saying it promised no such thing.

Speaking at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral on Sept 30, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said the US Church was ”˜not going backward’ on gay rights. “All people, including gay and lesbian Christians and non-Christians, are deserving of the fullest regard of the church,” she said, noting the New Orleans statement was part of a larger conversation leading to the full inclusion of gays and lesbians into the life of the church.

Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison told his diocese he had voted against the New Orleans statement because he would not honour the gay bishop ban. The 2006 statement by the US General Convention to withhold consent for new gay bishops had been ”˜recommendatory, not canonically mandatory,’ meaning that ”˜compliance is voluntary’ he said. “I honestly could not promise I would not consent to the election of a gay or lesbian priest to the episcopate,” Bishop Bennison said.

Nor would Vermont honour the gay blessing ban. On Sept 28 Vermont Bishop Thomas Ely explained that the bishops had stated that “the majority of bishops make no allowance for the blessing of same-sex unions. Of course that means some bishops do” permit gay blessings. Bishop Ely said: “I am one who makes allowance for such blessings, and I intend to continue the current pastoral approach we have in place in the Diocese of Vermont for the blessing of holy unions.” He added that this was ”˜clearly addressed and understood in the House of Bishops’ and that gay blessings would be permitted.

Writing in the October issue of his diocesan newspaper, Washington Bishop John Chane stated that while his diocese did not yet have an official rite for the blessing of same-sex unions, the New Orleans statement would permit same-sex ”˜blessings to continue in the diocese’.

On Oct 9 the Bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson stated the Primates-ACC Joint Standing committee had ”˜misunderstood us’ when it reported the American House of Bishops had ”˜declared a
moratorium on all such public Rites’ of same-sex blessings. “Neither in our discussions nor in our statement did we agree to or declare such a moratorium on permitting such rites to take place,” Bishop Robinson said, adding that while it may be true of some dioceses it “is certainly not the case in my own diocese and many others.”

Bishop Robinson said that he had urged the Bishops’ statement ”˜be reflective of what is true right now in the Episcopal Church: that while same-sex blessings are not officially permitted in most dioceses, they are going on and will continue to go on’. He stated that he was unhappy with the final statement that said a ”˜majority of Bishops do not sanction’ gay blessings. This ”˜implied that a minority do in fact sanction such blessings, and many more take no actions to prevent them’. It was a ”˜mistake’ not to ”˜come right out and [say] so’.

The conservative bishop of San Joaquin John-David Schofield agreed with Bishop Robinson that the New Orleans statement was “neither [a] prohibition nor [a] restraint.” It merely turns a ”˜blind eye’ to the issue.

The Bishop of Dallas, James Stanton, was more sanguine than Bishop Schofield about the statement, stating the deliberations surrounding the report had been the most open and frank in his 15 years as a bishop in debating the topic. “But the final result, I must confess, is disappointing to me. I do not believe the answers requested by the Primates have been given. I do not believe we have moved very far ”” if at all ”” from where we were before this meeting in terms of the assurances sought,” he said.

The majority of US Bishops did not believe “our decisions as a House might be wrong and at any rate ought to be subject to the advice and concerns of our Communion brothers and sisters.” The final statement, he observed, was an admission that the centre could not hold and that the Church was ”˜walking apart’, Bishop Stanton concluded.

In a letter to the clergy of Central Florida, Bishop John W Howe stated he had voted against the final statement, saying it did not ”˜fully comply’ with the Primates’ requests ”˜but we came much closer than I ever thought we would’. The Bishops had made a “distinction between ”˜public Rite’ and ”˜private blessings’,” he said. Public rites would not be authorised, but there was ”˜an implicit acknowledgement that in some places private blessings are still being offered’, Bishop Howe wrote.

“In our failure to do all that the Primates asked of us I was unable to vote for the Bishops’ Statement, but I was grateful to see a far higher level of concern for the unity of the Communion evident throughout our meeting than I have ever witnessed previously,” Bishop Howe said, adding
“whether or not that level was high enough remains to be seen.”

–This article appears in the Church of England Newspaper edition of October 19, 2007, on page 7

The life of St. Eusebius, said the Pope, teaches the Church even today the need “to protect the hierarchy of just values, without bending to the trend of the moment, or to the unjust demands of political power.”

The Pontiff continued: “The authentic hierarchy of values, Eusebius’ whole life seems to tell us, does not come from the emperors of yesterday or today, but from Jesus Christ, the perfect man, equal to the Father in divinity, but at the same time a man like us.

“Therefore, the pastors, Eusebius reminds us, should exhort the faithful not to consider the cities of the world as their permanent dwelling, but rather to seek the future city, the definitive Jerusalem in heaven.”

The Holy Father added, addressing those present in St. Peter’s Square: “I too recommend to you with all my heart these perennial values.”

Read it all.

More than a decade after employers began cracking down on those who view online pornography at work, porn is continuing to create tension in offices across the nation ”” in part because laptop computers, cellphones and other portable devices have made it easier for risk-takers to visit such websites undetected.

Devices providing wireless access to the Internet appear to be giving the porn-at-work phenomenon a boost even as employers are getting more aggressive about using software to block workers’ access to inappropriate websites. About 65% of U.S. companies used such software in 2005, according to a survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, up from 40% in 2001.

Many employers say that because it’s so easy to access porn on portable devices ”” even those that are company-owned and outfitted to block access to adult-oriented websites ”” they are increasingly concerned about being sued by employees who are offended when co-workers view naughty images.

With wireless devices, close monitoring of workers is “impossible. There’s nothing you can do,” says Richard Laermer, CEO of the public relations firm RLM. “Liability is the thing that keeps me up at night, because we are liable for things people do on your premises. It’s serious. I’ll see somebody doing it, and I’ll peek over their shoulder, and they’ll say, ‘I don’t know how that happened.’ It’s like 10-year-olds. And it’s always on company time.”

Through the years, surveys have indicated that many workers run across adult websites or images while at work, but few say they have done so intentionally.

About 16% of men who have access to the Internet at work acknowledged having seen porn while on the job, according to a survey for Websense by Harris Interactive in 2006. Eight percent of women said they had. But of those who acknowledged viewing porn sites at work, only 6% of men and 5% of women acknowledged that they had done so intentionally.

Read it all from the front page of today’s USA Today.

Since 1867 it’s been the Archbishop’s personal bash. Does it have to be a Big Boys Business meeting for it to be worth my while? I am just not self-regarding enough to mind. If Rowan wants a Vatican Council Theme Party, fine. If he wants to partay by showing us his Simpsons Videos, fine. It’s his party, not mine. There is a self-important little prat in me who feels business meetings matter more than parties. Jesus disagrees. The Sanhedrin has business meetings on Thursday nights. Jesus has a meal with his friends. This is a matter of substance as well as style. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer says how grievous and unkind a thing it is, when a man hath prepared a rich feast, decked his table with all kind of provision, so that there lacketh nothing but the guests to sit down; and yet they who are called (without any cause) most unthankfully refuse to come.

Read it all (Hat tip: SS).

When it comes to the desired degree of religiosity in presidential candidates, most voters are like Goldilocks tasting bowls of porridge: Not too hot, not too cold, but just right.

Of course, what is “just right” in one political cycle may not be in another. Current conventional wisdom holds that many voters want a heavy dose of God-talk. Following the electoral successes of George W. Bush, candidates feel compelled to reassure (if Republican) or reach out to (if Democrat) the so-called “values voter” with professions of faith–however genuine or contrived.

So prevalent is the religion factor on the campaign trail these days that Beliefnet.com and Time magazine have developed the cheeky “God-o-Meter” to help voters sort out who is saying what about religion and why.

From Barack Obama’s “faith tour” of Iowa (needle up) to Fred Thompson’s admission that he doesn’t attend church regularly (needle down), the God-o-Meter tracks the candidates’ often surreal scramble to get God right.

But in the ever-shifting world of presidential politics, conventional wisdom about the need to appear deeply religious may be outdated. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, the two frontrunners, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani, are the candidates viewed as least religious by voters. Both are described as “somewhat religious” by a majority of people.

Read it all.

President Bush defended the awarding Wednesday of the nation’s top civilian honor to the Dalai Lama, the exiled religious leader of Tibet, and said that he will challenge Chinese leaders to support religious freedom during the award ceremony.

“I admire the Dalai Lama a lot. … I support religious freedom,” Bush said in a short-notice press conference at the White House.

Bush also said he had personally spoken with Chinese President Hu Jintao to say he would be attending the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony for the Dalai Lama, and Bush said the Chinese would be better off having diplomatic relations with the Tibetan leader.

“I have consistently told the Chinese that religious freedom is in their nation’s interest. I’ve also told them that I think it’s in their interest to meet with the Dalai Lama and will say so at the ceremony today in Congress,” Bush said.

Read it all.

It had the makings of a B horror movie: Crazed deer crashes through window and, bloodied but undeterred, careers through the halls terrorizing a school in a quiet New Jersey suburb.

But that is exactly what happened yesterday at the Lloyd Road Elementary School in Aberdeen when a 200-pound buck raced through a class of fifth graders and wandered the halls the way a gaggle of errant students would ”” ducking into the nurse’s office and some other rooms ”” before being shepherded out a back door.

It was just before 10 a.m., and Bonnie McCullough and Brenda Adelson were immersed in a vocabulary lesson with their class of 18 fifth graders.

“We heard this crash; I didn’t know what to make of it,” Ms. McCullough said. “It sounded like glass breaking, and I didn’t have time to look too much, and there was this brown blur.”

Read it all.

After our dinner, I snuck away to grab a glass of water, and at the doorway to the pantry I ran into Steve. He was dressed formally, in black with a white collar, with clean rimless glasses and neatly cut hair. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I do remember my first impression was something like, “Oh gosh, not a priest! I’ve got enough guilt already!” He thanked me for my comments during the discussion and introduced himself as the Episcopal chaplain. At the time, my knowledge was such that this brought up in my mind a small note-card which read only, “1: The American version of the Anglican Church; 2: Like the Roman Catholics, but without the pope.” (These assumptions are actually in many ways correct: the Episcopal Church is the American “daughter” of the worldwide Anglican Communion, so anyone who is Episcopalian is also Anglican.)

Steve asked about my religious background; I told him that my family is evangelical, but that I hadn’t been going to church for a while ”” two years in fact, and not because I was uninterested, but because I didn’t find our evangelical services helpful or enjoyable. I would leave on Sunday mornings feeling conflicted, angry and guilty ”” feeling unworthy without knowing how to make things right.

Read it all.

It may be helpful to distinguish two questions in relation to the JSC Report:

1. Has it been faithful to Windsor and Dar in the criteria it has set by which to judge
TEC?

2. Has it been accurate in its interpretation and assessment of the HoB’s response?

On the first question, it is clear that the JSC have not stuck to the letter of TWR or Dar. The HoB could have embraced the Windsor/Camp Allen Bishops’ resolutions which took this path but they refused. However, it is also clear that JSC have sought to determine whether or not, in practice, TEC has made a commitment to the two requested moratoria. Furthermore, their report understands the moratorium on same-sex blessings in a stronger sense than simply whether or not there is in existence an authorised rite. It appears to be requiring a moratorium that would mean (whatever the private and pastoral response to gay and lesbian Christians) there are no longer any public liturgies of blessing known to be occurring within TEC. Its test, in other words, is captured in the instruction of the Bishop of Hawaii ”“ there must be the bringing to an end of “any liturgies in our churches that might be construed by the reasonable outside observer as a formal public“blessing” or “marriage” of a same-sex couple”.

On the second question, the interpretation and assessment offered was undoubtedly a very generous one. The rejection of the Dar Pastoral Scheme and Council was largely passed by and TEC’s replacement proposals of Episcopal Visitors and wider consultation accepted as a viable alternative model. In addition, there was a willingness to accept the claimed constraints on the HoB due to the alleged supremacy of General Convention in TEC’s polity and a strong and maximalist reading of their commitments (especially in relation to same-sex blessings) that depended more on reading between the lines with a very strong presumption of good faith than on any evidence in the HoB statement (or apparently discussions) itself or any evidence on the ground in many dioceses of TEC. While it will, perhaps, be some time before the generous reading of B033 is tested, it is already becoming clear that the assessment in relation to same-sex blessings was overly optimistic and that a good number of bishops and dioceses have no intention of ending their current practice. What should have been evident from the wording of the statement is now crystal clear in the light of subsequent statements ”“ nothing in the HoB statement is likely to alter the assessment of the Communion Sub-Group Report (para 17) that it is “not at all clear whether, in fact, the Episcopal Church is living with the recommendations of the Windsor Report on this matter” and the Primates’ statement at Dar (para 21) remains as true after NOLA as before ”“ “we understand that local pastoral provision is made in some places for such blessings. It is the ambiguous stance of The Episcopal Church which causes concern among us”. The proof of the pudding will, as always, be in the eating but it seems almost certain that liturgies blessing same-sex unions will continue being conducted in the face of the congregation with the explicit or implicit authority of the bishop in a significant number of dioceses. Furthermore, though contrary to JSC’s maximalist interpretation of the HoB response, this outcome is quite compatible with (indeed perhaps the best understanding of) the intended and plain sense of the HoB statement itself.

In summary, although it may be argued that the JSC slightly lowered the bar set by Windsor/Dar, on the whole they kept faith with the developing Windsor process in terms of the criteria they used. However, the more serious problem is that ”“as has become increasingly obvious since its report was published – they gave the HoB credit for clearing the Windsor/Dar bar when, in fact, they have demonstrably fallen short. That failure at New Orleans sadly means the Archbishop of Canterbury must now face even more difficult decisions than those JSC have already outlined in Part Two of their report.

Read it all.

Dozens of conservative parishes will start ordaining their own clergy in an open revolt against their bishops if the Church of England continues its liberal drift, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.

Dr Rowan Williams was told that evangelicals would increasingly defy Church rules and their own bishops by parachuting in outsiders to carry out irregular ordinations of “orthodox” candidates.

The warning came from Reform, a 1,700-strong evangelical network, which is setting up structures to allow it operate as a resistance movement within the Church.

Read it all.

President George W. Bush said Wednesday that he thought Russia still wanted to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. But stepping up his own rhetoric, the president warned that for Tehran to possess such a weapon raised the risk of a “World War III.”

That comment, made during a 45-minute news conference, came as reporters probed for the president’s reaction to a warning Tuesday by President Vladimir Putin of Russia against any military strikes on Iran to halt the nuclear work it has continued in defiance of much of the world. Iran says the program is purely peaceful.

“If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it’d be a dangerous threat to world peace,” Bush said. “So I told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested” in ensuring Iran not gain the capacity to develop such weapons.

“I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously,” he said.

Read it all.

From several emails.

My brothers and sisters:

I am grateful for the considered way in which the House worked together in New Orleans, and for our demonstration of solidarity with the people of Louisiana and Mississippi. I am finding that most of you would rather focus on the latter!

I have received from Rowan both a thank you for his time among us, and a copy of the Joint Standing Committee report. This has been posted online in a number of places, and I hope you have seen it by now.

Rowan is asking that I report to him by the end of October the sense of this Province, precisely on the following:

“…how far your province is able to accept the JSC Report assessment that the House of Bishops have (sic) responded positively to the requests of Windsor and of the Dar es Salaam message of the Primates. The report sets out clearly for us the requests that were made, both in the context of the Windsor Report and of the Dar es Salaam Communiqué; there are other issues that have been raised in general discussion around the Communion, and indeed in the TEC communiqué, but I hope you will concentrate on the very specific matters put before the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops. I shall welcome not only your reactions but also proposals for any next steps we should take together. My intention is firmly to honour the discernment of all the primates and the wider Communion at this juncture…”

Let me note that consultation in your Diocese will undoubtedly be helpful, and if you can give me an indication of what that looked like, I would be most grateful. I have finally had time to read all of the submissions on Communion Matters, and I am struck by the breadth of comment received and its coherence. Henry Parsley and the Theology Committee are to be deeply thanked for their effective work on this, in a short time-frame.

Please note the relatively short time available to do this – let me suggest that Monday, 29 October would be a helpful target – and that what is most needed are your brief impressions following conversation in your diocese.

I remain

Your servant in Christ,

(The Rt. Rev.) Katharine Jefferts Schori

“Let none eat or drink of your Eucharist except those who have been baptised in the Lord’s Name. For concerning this also did the Lord say, ‘Give not that which is holy to the dogs.'”

–Didache ix.5, trans. Kirsopp Lake.

“This food we call Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake, except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour being incarnate by God’s word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. For the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, thus handed down what was commanded them: that Jesus, taking bread and having given thanks, said, ‘Do this for my memorial, this is my body’; and likewise taking the cup and giving thanks he said, ‘This is my blood’; and gave it to them alone.'”

–Justin Martyr, First apology 66, trans. Edward Rochie Hardy.

Devout U.S. Catholics like himself may stand apart from much of the nation on abortion, homosexuality, and embryonic stem-cell research, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a packed audience at Villanova University yesterday, but he insisted “there is no such thing as a ‘Catholic judge.’ ”
“The bottom line is that the Catholic faith seems to me to have little effect on my work as a judge,” he declared.

Invited to speak to that very question – “the role of Catholic faith in the work of a judge” – the famously opinionated justice rendered his decision just three minutes into his keynote lecture at Villanova Law School’s annual Scarpa conference on law, politics and culture.

“Just as there is no ‘Catholic’ way to cook a hamburger,” he said to a murmur of laughter, “I am hard-pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic.”

Read it all.

Pupils at a city middle school will be able to get birth control pills and patches at their student health center after the local school board approved the proposal Wednesday evening.

The plan, offered by city health officials, makes King Middle School the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available to students in grades 6 through 8, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

There are no national figures on how many middle schools, where most students range in age from 11 to 13, provide such services.

“It’s very rare that middle schools do this,” said Divya Mohan, a spokeswoman for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care.

The Portland School Committee voted 5-2 for the measure.

Read it all.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori opened an hour-long live internet interview with a prepared statement recapping the events of last month’s House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans and its controversial response to the primates’ communiqué.

Wearing reading glasses and a dark jacket and looking directly into the camera, she acknowledged on Oct. 16 that progressives and conservatives had been disappointed by portions of the statement, but that its scope was intended to be broad. “That is an Anglican stance,” she said. “It recognizes that the body is larger than any one of us.”

She defended continued membership in the Anglican Communion, tying it to the church’s ability to witness to a broader audience on behalf of the normalization of homosexuality. She concluded the statement by declaring, “There will be no outcasts in this church, whether because of sexual orientation” or theological belief.”

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Television viewing has long been linked with poor eating habits. So when University of Minnesota researchers embarked on a study of family meals, they fully expected that having the TV on at dinner would take a toll on children’s diets.

But to their surprise, it didn’t make much difference. Families who watched TV at dinner ate just about as healthfully as families who dined without it. The biggest factor wasn’t whether the TV was on or off, but whether the family was eating the meal together.

“Obviously, we want people eating family meals, and we want them to turn the TV off,” said Shira Feldman, public health specialist at the university’s School of Public Health and lead author of the research. “But just the act of eating together is on some level very beneficial, even if the TV is on.”

The research, published this month in The Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, is the latest testament to the power of the family meal. While many parents worry about what their kids are eating ”” vegetables versus junk ”” a voluminous body of research suggests that the best strategy for improving a child’s diet is simply putting food on the table and sitting down together to eat it.

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From ACNS:

16-October-2007 – Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndunganes’ statement on The Episcopal Church – South Africa

”˜Now is the time of God’s favour’ writes St Paul, reminding us that in every present moment we must grasp the opportunities offered by God’s reconciling grace (2 Cor 5:16-6:2).

The Episcopal Church has grasped that opportunity, and committed itself to the path of reconciliation. Now the rest of the Anglican Communion must make sure the moment is not lost.

As the careful and comprehensive report of the Joint Standing Committee makes clear, the House of Bishops have now provided the necessary clarifications and assurances on the responses General Convention had given to issues raised in the Windsor Report. We now have a basis for going forward together, working alongside one another to restore the broken relationships both within the Episcopal Church and within the wider Communion.

The Episcopal Church has borne unprecedented scrutiny into its affairs, often with scant regard either for its legitimate internal polity or for the principle, observed since the ancient councils of the Church, of local jurisdiction and non-interference, and in the face of all this has had the courage to take hard decisions. The Presiding Bishop, in particular, is to be commended for her self-denial in the generosity of the provisions proposed for the ministry of Episcopal Visitors. Others should now respond by also abiding by the recommendations of the Windsor Report, as the Joint Standing Committee Report underlines.

This has not been an easy road to travel. Much remains to be done and we must continue to strive earnestly together to find the path ahead. The experiences of my own Province, both through the terrible divisions of the apartheid years, and in the differences of our earliest history (which contributed to the holding of the first Lambeth Conference), have repeatedly demonstrated that holding fast to one another yields lasting fruit, while separation solves very little. Our God is the God of reconciliation, not of division, and we can take courage that he will continue to guide our way forward. I am sure that as we continue to abide in Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord, in whom lies the gift of unity, that we will find ourselves, our churches, our world-wide Communion, refined and strengthened, for the life of worship, witness and service to which we are called.

I normally roll my eyes at anything that smacks of the ”˜Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ vibe, but this post about gender differences in the blogosphere caught my attention.

According to Alex Iskold’s research, men dominate the top 20 blogs tracked by Technorati, which tend to focus on technology, while women blog more about books and family than men.

The results are hardly surprising ”“ the blogosphere is bound to reflect pre-existing interests, which are bound to reflect pre-existing cultural factors – but do they matter?

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In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Mary Nalls, an 81-year-old retired social worker here, has some thoughts about the matter. Her granddaughter Ashley Jones was 14 when she helped her boyfriend kill her grandfather and aunt ”” Mrs. Nalls’s husband and daughter ”” by stabbing and shooting them and then setting them on fire. Ms. Jones also tried to kill her 10-year-old sister.

Mrs. Nalls, who was badly injured in the rampage, showed a visitor to her home a white scar on her forehead, a reminder of the burns that put her into a coma for 30 days. She had also been shot in the shoulder and stabbed in the chest.

“I forgot,” she said later. “They stabbed me in the jaw, too.”

But Mrs. Nalls thinks her granddaughter, now 22, deserves the possibility of a second chance.

“I believe that she should have gotten 15 or 20 years,” Mrs. Nalls said. “If children are under age, sometimes they’re not responsible for what they do.”

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Despite popular parlance, consumerism is not a problem of how much one consumes. No, it is a problem of why one consumes: that is, in a consumerist society like ours, we buy things to tell others, and ourselves, who we are.

This sounds shocking, but it’s a truth we all instinctively recognize. We all know what soccer moms and NASCAR dads are, what makes a yuppie different from a punk rocker, and we know it because we know what each group likes to buy. Differences in purchasing habits create the constellation of our social universe in modern America. But though our purchasing habits may vary, we share a habit of purchasing.

In a buy-to-be culture, money has to change hands. Whatever we decide to be in a consumerist society, our being it is dependent upon having the necessary funds. If who we are is up for sale, then one cannot be if one cannot shop! And one cannot shop unless one has access to wealth.

Wealth is the secret beneficiary behind every transaction, the god overseeing consumerist society who is satisfied by the offering of our financial resources toward our own self-creation. I refer here not to abstract ideas–like poverty, riches, and so on–nor to actual money, but to a real spiritual agent at work in the world. When we buy something to satisfy consumerist impulses, we pay for the item–but more significantly, we pay homage to the force of wealth that is at work.

Each consumerist purchase is a prayer offered up to wealth, whether intended or not. When we believe ourselves to be made new by that which we buy, we say, in effect: “You, O Wealth, you are the one who creates me. You shape me. You make me who I am. You establish me on the earth. You lift me up in the world, and set my place amongst the esteem of others.”

And this is serious business, because it flies in the face of one of the New Testament’s most striking teachings.

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