Asked how the conference would address the issue of homosexuality, Archbishop Williams said one day on the schedule was reserved to consider “sexuality questions as they affect the ministry of bishops,” including a report on the listening process from the Rev. Canon Phil Groves of the Anglican Communion Office. “It [also] is inevitably going to be part of the conversations informally, day by day as people will bring to the conference what their anxieties are and what their hopes are. There will not be a resolution on this subject.”

Archbishop Williams reiterated that Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire has not been invited “and it’s proving extremely difficult to see under what heading he might be invited to be around.” Asked whether he had considered inviting all bishops, including CANA bishops and Bishop Robinson, Archbishop Williams said he had, but “I thought it best to stick fairly closely with what the Windsor Report recommends, that we should see this as an event for those who have accepted the general direction of the Windsor Report and haven’t flown in the face of its recommendations.”

Regarding the attendance of San Joaquin Bishop John-David Schofield, inhibited by the Presiding Bishop earlier this month, the archbishop said he is “waiting on what comes out of the American House of Bishops’ discussion of that. It’s not something I’ve got a position on yet. At the moment he still has an invitation.”

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Check it out from ABC’s Nightline.

The link is here.

Société Générale, one of the largest banks in Europe, was thrown into turmoil Thursday after it revealed that a rogue employee had executed a series of “elaborate, fictitious transactions” that cost the company more than $7 billion, the biggest loss ever recorded in the financial industry by a single trader.

Daniel Bouton, the Société Générale chairman, said the employee, later identified by other bank employees as Jérôme Kerviel, had confessed to the €4.9 billion fraud, although he did not appear to have profited personally from the trades. The bank has started legal proceedings against the employee, whom the governor of the Bank of France, Christian Noyer, said was currently “on the run.”

Later, a woman identified as the trader’s lawyer, Elisabeth Meyer, said on French television that he was “not fleeing” and was “available for judicial authorities.” She did not say where he was.

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S.C. women are torn between two historic quests playing out in Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary.

The race between U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who would be her party’s first female nominee, and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who would be his party’s first black nominee, has divided women along generational and racial lines.

It has split households and forced women to ponder racial and gender allegiances.

“I don’t like that because I’m looking for who would be the best candidate ”” period,” said Natasha Guess of Spartanburg, who has been teetering between Clinton, Obama and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. “I’m thinking about the issues. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a woman, an African-American or whoever.”

Guess knows that not everyone feels the same way. “My sister says the men have had their show. She’d like to see what a woman can do.”

How S.C. women vote Saturday will be a key to who wins. While much has been made of the power of South Carolina’s black vote ”” expected to account for about half of the Democratic primary turnout ”” women hold even more clout. They are expected to cast about 58 percent of Democratic primary votes.

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A bitter and potentially expensive battle over the question of who owns a historic Episcopal church in Bristol may be drawing to a quiet close.

Lawyers for a Bristol congregation, which defected from the Episcopal Church to join a more conservative Anglican group last year, and the Connecticut Diocese are negotiating an end to litigation over the church property, according to church sources.

Members of the Trinity Church parish and its pastor, the Rev. Donald Helmandollar, probably will vacate the property once the diocese’s lawsuit against Trinity is dismissed, the sources said.

Neither Helmandollar nor Connecticut Episcopal Bishop Andrew Smith would discuss the negotiations, citing the sensitive nature of the relationship between Trinity and the diocese.

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They may be found in every hotel bedroom, and are widely available in prisons and hospitals, but members of the clergy claim one of the last places you will find a Bible is in a church.

The absence of the Word of God from the pews is of such concern to the Church of England that it is to debate the issue at the next meeting of its General Synod, or “Parliament”, next month.

The complaint was raised by Tim Cox, a Synod member from Blackpool, who said he had been dismayed to discover that churches he visited “all too often” had no Bibles for worshippers to follow the readings and the sermon.

“Sometimes they have the passages printed in their noticesheet, sometimes they even have bibles available – but have them locked away in a cupboard without the key being available,” he said.

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The online poll, completed by 980 self-identified “evangelical/born again” respondents from January 17 to January 23, showed that 85-percent of evangelicals ranked the economy and “cleaning up government” as the most important or very important issues, compared to 61-percent who said the same about ending abortion and 49-percent who identified “stopping gay marriage” as a top issue.

In some ways, the survey reveals evangelicals to be quite conservative: 41-percent said they were Republican compared to 30-percent who were Democrats; 47-percent said they were conservative versus 14-percent who said they were liberal. Almost 80-percent said they attended church weekly or more than weekly and 84% said the Bible is the “inerrant word of God.”

Generally speaking, however, evangelicals ranked traditionally progressive or Democratic causes as more important than traditionally conservative or Republican ones. Twenty three percent said their views had become less positive about Republicans, twice the number who said they’d soured on Democrats, though half of respondents said they had become less positive about both parties. Almost 60-percent said they favored a more progressive evangelical agenda focused more on protecting the environment, tackling HIV/AIDs, and alleviating poverty and less on abortion and homosexuality.

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Pope Benedict called on the media on Thursday to practise “info-ethics”, saying it was often used irresponsibly to spread violence and impose “distorted models” of life.

In his message for the Catholic Church’s World Communications Day, Benedict said that while the media did much good, it was also often used for ideological reasons and tried to create reality rather than report it.

“When communication loses its ethical underpinning and eludes society’s control, it ends up no longer taking into account the centrality and inviolable dignity of the human person,” he said in the three-page message.

“For this reason it is essential that social communications should assiduously defend the person and fully respect human dignity. Many people now think there is a need, in this sphere, for ‘info-ethics’, just as we have bioethics in the field of medicine and in scientific research linked to life,” he said.

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We defend the truth of the Gospel against those who would deny the existence of any ultimate truth at all. Disguised in false humility, we hear of those who present themselves as humble seekers, but not jubilant finders. In fact, anyone who “finds” is held suspect, because the underlying philosophy here is that there is no absolute truth, and therefore the Christian journey is reduced to nothing more than a quest, but a quest that has no object, like an Easter-egg hunt without any eggs. And what we are finding in our young people is the frustration and dismay of such a quest. Post-modern philosophy, spewing forth from our universities and even through our high schools, touts a world that has no ultimate answers. The result? Get what you can while you can. Enjoy life to the fullest, for there is no universe of meaning out there. And look what is happening, especially in Western civilization: we are hot in pursuit of entertainment and personal peace. Billions of dollars are now spent in and through the entertainment industry, and the difficult truth-questions are left unaddressed. Even if there is an interest in Christianity by those in their teens and twenties, the question often is, “What’s in it for me?” I have recently talked with Anglican leaders who are dismayed that the younger generation of ordained clergy seem more concerned about their salary and pensions than about the Gospel and its demands upon their lives. Diacletian, one of the Roman Emperors during the decline of the Empire, once said, “Give them bread and the circus, and that will suffice.” In other words, keep the masses fed and entertained, and they won’t give you any trouble. Today, we Americans are, for the most part, well fed and highly entertained, and the truth questions drift by us as we go to our movies, our sporting events, play our “gameboys” and try to improve our skills at bridge or golf.

More insidious is the use of familiar language that conveys objective truth to us, but has been eviscerated of truth by its user. This demands of us the constant question, “What does that mean?” For example, an Episcopal bishop says, “I don’t say the Creed, I sing it.” What does that mean? Or the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church remarks, “Jesus is our vehicle to the divine.” What does that mean? Or even the seemingly comfortable affirmations that “we, too, believe in Jesus, the Bible, and the Creeds.” What does that mean? The temptation is to avoid the hard work of careful study and clear articulation of the faith. Someone can say, “I believe in the Bible,” and mean nothing more than “I admire and acknowledge the Bible as the ancient chronicle of human efforts to understand spirituality.” But look at what such a statement doesn’t say. And at the risk of appearing persnickety, we must confront the world with the truth question and continue to ask, “What do you mean by that?” No longer can we assume that words mean the same thing. Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass, understood the total collapse not only of language but of meaning itself when this world-view is adopted. Listen to this exchange from Alice and Humpty-Dumpty:

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’

Being master ”“ a world without ultimate Truth becomes a world without meaning, which means we must assign meaning to the world for ourselves. We become our own masters. We cannot assign meaning to the words “Jesus,” “The Bible,” “The Word of God,” “The Resurrection” or any number of other critical words in the Christian lexicon without changing the meaning of the Christian faith itself. We at Christ Church stand to affirm a universe that has meaning, described by words that have meaning, and we recognize that we are not to assign our own meaning to those words, but allow their historic and constant definitions to remain. Now, intellectual honesty may demand from us that we say “I cannot believe this or that,” but it will not allow us to fudge the meaning of the words and then proclaim, “I believe!”

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Keya Neal, owner of It’s All In The Cut hair salon on Dorchester Road talks politics with customers while styling Shakella Haynes’s hair. Neal, who did not always follow politics has been following this primary season closely.

For many black women, deciding who they’ll vote for in Saturday’s Democratic primary is a good kind of angst.

Do they vote for who could be the first female president or the first black president? It’s the first time they’ve had to choose between the two.

Yvette Jackson of Goose Creek said the choice isn’t at all bad, though she’s torn on what to do. She settled on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York after considering the two front-runners’ stances on key issues.

“Obama has the credentials, and I think he needs our support,” she said. “This may be what he needs in South Carolina to get him that vote to win the nomination. … If he couldn’t, then certainly, I’d be just as happy with Hillary.”

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