What is your response to the recent votes here in Canada, what do you think of these decisions?

It’s very, very, sad that it should come to this, it’s a tragedy for the church, for the church in Canada and for the church throughout the world ”“ but it shows how serious the division is. This has never happened before. It has happened significantly with very large groups in the United States in recent years and recently with a whole diocese moving ”“ and now it’s happening in Canada. It shows how serious this division is and how strong the convictions are which are pulling the church apart.

In your view is this solely about the Canadian churches stand on homosexuality? Does it go beyond that?

No. This is about two versions of Christianity which are in a strong state of difference. You’ve got the original biblical Christianity which the church, the Christian church throughout the world has held to over the past two thousand years and then you’ve got this new liberal post-modern Christianity which has evolved especially in the western world over the last 100 years or so. It’s like two ships that have gradually pulled apart and can longer really sail together and the trouble is it’s pulling the church apart as it does that.

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Kenya’s rival leaders broke their tense standoff on Thursday, agreeing to share power in a deal that may end the violence that has engulfed this nation but could be the beginning of a long and difficult political relationship.

The country seemed to let out a collective cheer as Mwai Kibaki, the president, and Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, sat down at a desk in front of the president’s office, with a bank of television cameras rolling, and signed an agreement that creates a powerful prime minister position for Odinga and splits cabinet posts between the government and the opposition.

The two sides, which have been bitterly at odds for the past two months, will now be fused together in a government of national unity.

But there are still many thorny issues to resolve, starting with how the new government will function with essentially two bosses who have tried unsuccessfully to work together before. The government must also deal with the delicate business of reassigning the choice positions already given to Kibaki’s allies.

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For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.

Either way, said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”

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In all my years as a parish priest, I advocated ”” indeed, insisted ”” that “it is desirable that every minister having the cure of souls shall normally administer the sacrament of Holy Baptism on Sundays at public worship when the most number of people come together” (Canon B21: Of Holy Baptism).

Yet now, in retirement, as I approach our parish church, and see the festive gathering ”” I wonder….

Sunday by Sunday, the faith is being sold cheap, and the opportunity for patient and welcoming pastoral teaching before Baptism (as allowed by Canon B22 (4)) is being lost. Elsewhere, evangelists may be dancing to the tune of Fresh Expressions of Church in all sorts of courageous innovations, but these popular Sunday jamborees are invitations to fresh perjury.

Perjury is a punishable offence, and yet we clergy who put the question “Do you turn to Christ?” could be accused of inciting it. It is no wonder that thoughtful members of our congregations become distressed at what they see; for solemn vows are being made, when it is often quite clear from the body language and the tone of the responses that the parents and godparents are doing no more than follow the script that has been put into their hands.

—The Rev. Ian Robins in this morning’s Church Times

Goldman Sachs economists estimate that as much as $3 trillion in mortgages could be underwater by the end of the year, leaving 30% of the country’s outstanding mortgages in negative equity. Since there is roughly $1 trillion in subprime mortgages outstanding, that means a large amount of better-quality mortgages, such as prime and Alt-A — a category between prime and subprime — will be attached to negative equity.

“The focus has been on the [interest rate] resets,” said Goldman Sachs economist Andrew Tilton. “But if you’re in a deep enough negative-equity position, defaulting has its own kind of logic.”

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For nearly two decades Evan Dooley quietly made a living trading commodities like wheat in his home state, Tennessee, far from the hurly-burly of Wall Street.

But on Thursday Mr. Dooley, 40, became the talk of the financial markets when MF Global, the giant commodities brokerage firm, accused him of making unauthorized trades that led to $141.5 million in losses for the firm. Mr. Dooley, the firm said, wagered on wheat futures with money he did not have.

Mr. Dooley, who worked in the firm’s Memphis office, had bought as many as 15,000 wheat futures, the equivalent of about 10 percent of the market for these contracts for any given month, company officials said. MF Global discovered the trades early Wednesday morning and ran up the losses as it desperately unwound the positions in a volatile market.

“This is a very disappointing situation for us,” said Kevin Davis, the chief executive of MF Global, in a conference call with investors and reporters on Thursday. The company’s stock plunged nearly 28 percent.

It was the second high-profile case of a single trader’s bad bets causing losses for a global financial firm. MF Global’s troubles, however, are small compared with the multibillion-dollar hole left in Société Générale after Jérôme Kerviel secretly wagered the bank’s money on stock futures.

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Bishop Howe said during the meeting Bishop Jefferts Schori invited bishops Howe, MacPherson, Michael G. Smith of North Dakota and James M. Stanton of Dallas to make a brief and “very informal” presentation during the March meeting, but the House of Bishops lacks veto power over it.

“If we do this right, it will strengthen the hands of the Presiding Bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Bishop Howe said. “This would make the Episcopal Visitor proposal more attractive. No one has requested an Episcopal Visitor yet. This brings together the Presiding Bishops’ initiative and some of what the primates envisioned in the communiqué from Dar es Salaam a year ago.”

Separately, bishops Howe and MacPherson confirmed that participants in the meeting at the Church Center had agreed not to speak to the media. They denied that any of the four diocesan bishops were responsible for an article revealing the plan published by the English Telegraph newspaper. Bishop Howe said he wrote his clergy in order to correct the misconception that this was a secret plan by Archbishop of Canterbury to pander to conservatives.

Bishop Howe also noted that the plan itself is very informal, having been written down as an outline by Bishop Stanton.

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This demonstrates the urgent need for physicians all over the U.S. to practice leadership in our individual practices, in our hospitals, in our healthcare organizations and in the political process. Physicians hold a trust to protect the health of our patients. We cannot abdicate this sacred trust.

A 2006 poll by the American College of Physician Executives showed that 60% of physicians are considering leaving medicine due to low morale and lack of autonomy and status. We practice medicine in the context of Medicare reimbursements that don’t keep pace with the rate of inflation, a mountain of medical school debt (over $200,000 for some of my colleagues), the constant threat of litigation, and years of delayed gratification. (In my case, 17 years of higher education: four years of college, four years of medical school, seven years of general surgery training and two years of fellowship.) We’re feeling harried, hassled and harassed, and it can be tempting to fall into survival mode, to start thinking, “I worked hard to get here and therefore my self-interests deserve to come first.” We defend this thinking by saying, “No margin, no mission.” If doctors can’t afford to practice medicine, we argue, how can the patient be helped?

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Words fail me, he was my theology professor in Vancouver B.C. from 1982-1984.

Here is another link:

http://www.anglicanplanet.net/TAPCanada0803b.html

One more link:

http://www.lambethconference.net/canada/?p=92

The Internal Revenue Service is investigating the tax-exempt status of the United Church of Christ for allowing presidential candidate Barack Obama to speak at a denomination conference last June. Obama is a member of the UCC through his Chicago church.

Church officials say the speech was not political and they took steps to avoid any appearance of political activity inside the event.

But in its letter to the denomination, the IRS expressed concerns about articles posted on the church’s website and contended that Obama volunteers were promoting his campaign outside the event. Federal law prohibits tax-exempt organizations from engaging in political campaigns.

In recent years, the IRS has conducted several investigations into the political activities of religious groups.

Listen to it all from NPR.

The sight of young people gathering on streets and in shopping centres is one of the things that can create alarm or suspicion in adults, who think such groups are going to be abusive or extreme in their behaviour. But today’s report from the Good Childhood inquiry ought to challenge many popular misconceptions about young people and our shared public space.

Set up by the Children’s Society in 2006, the inquiry has so far reported on children’s attitudes to friends, family and learning. What may come as a surprise in today’s findings is that many young people themselves feel that they are not safe or welcome in public places, sometimes because of aggressive gangs colonising these places, but also sometimes because of unfriendly adults. Hanging around in groups is often a way for many youngsters to feel secure, rather than a way of menacing anyone else. And the discouragement of games in public places intensifies the problem.

The inquiry’s earlier reports had few surprises – children value their friends, want stable, loving families with a proper parental presence and expect schools to be supportive and free from bullying.

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The ownership of three breakaway Ontario Anglican churches will be the subject of a courtroom battle Friday after the collapse of negotiations aimed at staving off legal proceedings.

Efforts to settle an ownership dispute between the Niagara Anglican diocese and three dissenting area congregations in southwestern Ontario – Lowville, Oakville and St. Catharines – broke down Thursday following several days of talks.

Cheryl Chang, director of the Anglican Network in Canada, which supports the dissenting parishes, said the two sides found a lot of common ground but couldn’t agree on who should ultimately maintain possession of the church properties.

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The Rt. Rev. Valentino L. Mokiwa, Bishop of Dar es Salaam in the Anglican Church of Tanzania, was elected archbishop of the province Feb. 28 during a special session of the General Synod in Dodoma.

Bishop Mokiwa will be installed in Dodoma on May 25. He succeeds the Most Rev. Donald L. Mtetemela, whose second five-year term concludes in May. Primates in Tanzania are limited to a maximum of two five-year terms under that province’s constitution. Archbishop Mtetemela will continue as Bishop of the Diocese of Ruaha for the next five years, while also serving as chancellor of St. John’s University in Dodoma.

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A Delaware school district has agreed to revise its policies on religion as part of a settlement with two Jewish families who had sued over the pervasiveness of Christian prayer and other religious activities in the schools.

One family said it was forced to leave its home in Georgetown because of an anti-Semitic backlash.

The settlement, which was approved Tuesday, includes payments to the families that both sides would not disclose. Although the settlement resolves many complaints in the suit, against the Indian River School District, the parties are proceeding with litigation over the school board practice of beginning its sessions with prayer.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and defendants said their clients were satisfied with the settlement. On local blogs, the anger many people felt toward the families for protesting Christian prayer at school events has flared anew.

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The priest at a breakaway Anglican church in St. Catharines has reportedly been suspended.

Church of the Good Shepherd Rev. Gerry Brodie was suspended with pay Tuesday afternoon by the Anglican Diocese of Niagara, Church warden Pat Decker told Osprey News Network Wednesday.

She said Archdeacon of Lincoln and Rector Bruce McPetrie had been appointed administrator of the church, which voted Sunday to leave the diocese and align with the more conservative Anglican Network in Canada.

“We, at this moment in time, are conducting business as usual,” Decker said Wednesday afternoon.

“We have not vacated the premises and we have not been asked to do so … at this moment.”

McPetrie and Brodie couldn’t be reached for comment.

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Yet the key to Buckley is to understand that he was a rebel, but not a heretic. He fancied himself and his politics to be anti-establishment, yet he was part of the American establishment against which he rebelled. He never went so far as to be cast out, or to attempt to be cast out…

What was true on a political level was also true on a personal level. Many of Buckley’s best friends were liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith. He got along famously with Norman Mailer, with whom he debated frequently during the 1960s. When I was writing his biography, I was always puzzled by this side of Buckley, and after I had done a draft, I hold him that I couldn’t figure out how the young Buckley, who as a teenager was pretty insufferable and not well-liked, became a man of such wide-ranging and close friendships. I had gone through Buckley’s papers at Yale, which trace his political career, but at that point, he gave me a stack of letters that he had written to his mother and sisters when he was in the army at Fort Benning at the end of World War II.

What I found in those letters was a clue to the mystery that is Bill Buckley. When he was at officer’s training school, Buckley, who was only 18 at the time, couldn’t get by on his good grades and brilliance, and found himself not only disliked, but on the verge of being flunked out of officer candidates’ school. In the letters he wrote, Buckley revealed a fear and anguish about his place in the world and how people thought of him. He got his commission, but he also learned that he had to leaven his own political and intellectual convictions with a tolerance for people who didn’t share them. He would sometimes condemn their views, but he would not condemn them. By the time he arrived at Yale, he was pretty much the Buckley whom we’ve known for the last sixty years–witty, arrogant, but always with a certain restraint, even at times a gentleness and consideration. And I think that same sense of limits and boundaries–a sense of how far he could and couldn’t go–affected the way he conducted himself politically.

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My hope was that the audio and/or video would be able to be released publically so that people could form their own conclusions based on their interaction with the material. Unfortunately because some of the participants chose to share details of a quite personal and intimate nature that is not going to be possible. I hope to have more on this as time and schedule allows–KSH.

To our minds this passage of the Windsor Report is not recommending a ten-month process; it is recommending something much more like a ten-year process.

Our present disagreements are deep; they are the result of not listening to one another for many decades. The most shocking allegation of the Windsor Report was that the Church in North America had sprung to its honoring of homosexual partnerships without having done the theological work to back it up.

But this work has been a central engagement of Anglican theology in North America for three if not four decades. The thing is that the rest of the church did not read that work; we did our theology but no one else bothered to read it.

Only in this way can the surprise of the rest of the Communion at Gene Robinson’s consecration be explained; to us, at the time, it seemed a perfectly natural development. That is why our disagreements can only be resolved “in an educative context” – there are four decades of education to catch up on, and that cannot be accomplished in ten months.

Actually the most shocking thing is that the author is shocked to be charged with not having done the theological homework necessary. Read it all.

From: The Right Reverend William C. Wantland, Bishop Retired of Eau Claire And The Right Reverend Maurice M. Benitez , Bishop Retired of Texas

This letter constitutes our final effort to obtain information from you as representing the leadership of the Episcopal Church about the amount currently being expended in the extensive litigation in which the Episcopal Church is engaged.

We directed our last letter to the Executive Council. We received our answer in a letter from two attorneys, who are members of the Council, writing on behalf of the full Council. Conveyed in a three page letter, their answer to us is:

IT’S A SECRET.

We then wrote to the two lawyer members of the Executive Council to get a specific response to our questions about the funding of the litigation. In late January, they replied, stating that no funds for litigation have come from either the Pension Fund or Trust Funds. However, they refused to disclose the amounts being expended on litigation.

We now ask you, the Executive Council, why do you feel the necessity for refusing to furnish information on the cost of litigation? You have lawyers. You clearly know that there is NO provision in Federal, State or Canon law for the Executive Council to withhold from members and officials of the Church, information on money being spent on behalf of the Church and presumably for the benefit of the Church. You cannot point to a single legal basis for concealing such information. Your answer is simply, “IT’S A SECRET”.

Such an answer is not acceptable. If there is nothing wrong with these expenditures, then why do you refuse to reveal the amount? It should not be a secret, and you owe the Church and its membership the courtesy of an honest answer.

+William C. Wantland ( signed ) + Maurice M. Benitez (signed)

Ireland, a country that used to export its Catholic clergy around the world, is running out of priests at such a rate that their numbers will have dropped by two thirds in the next 20 years, leaving parishes up and down the land vacant.

The decline of Catholic Ireland, for decades the Pope’s favourite bastion of faith in Europe, has been regularly predicted, as the economic successes of the Celtic Tiger brought growing secularisation. But new figures have starkly set out the fate of the Irish priesthood if action is not taken by the Church to reverse the trend.

One-hundred and sixty priests died last year but only nine were ordained. Figures for nuns were even more dramatic, with the deaths of 228 nuns and only two taking final vows for service in religious life.

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I have seen the future of evangelical Christianity, and it is pierced. And sometimes tattooed. And often has one of those annoying, wispy chin beards.

Those who think of evangelical youths as the training cadre of the religious right would have been shocked at Jubilee 2008, a recent conference of 2,000 college students in Pittsburgh sponsored by the Coalition for Christian Outreach. I was struck by the students’ aggressive idealism ”” there were booths promoting causes from women’s rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection. Judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life ”” but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture. More than a few came up to me between sessions in anguished uncertainty, unable to consider themselves Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative ”” homeless in the stark partisanship of American politics.

Many observers have detected a shift ”” a broadening or maturation ”” of evangelical social concerns beyond the traditional agenda of the religious right. But does this have political implications?

Perhaps. Recent Zogby polls in Missouri and Tennessee found that about a third of white evangelicals who showed up on primary day voted Democratic. The sample sizes were small. Yet John Green, a senior fellow with the Pew Forum, finds the results interesting. “These results are higher than usual. Typically these numbers would be about a quarter.”

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Abu Dhabi has about 9 percent of the world’s oil and 0.02 percent of its population. One result is a surfeit of petrodollars, much of which is funneled into a secretive, government-controlled investment fund that is helping to shift the balance of power in the financial world….

ADIA is the largest of the world’s sovereign wealth funds, giant pools of money controlled by cash-rich governments, particularly in Asia and Middle East. But Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest of the seven Arab emirates, says little about its fund. Few outsiders know for sure where ADIA invests, or even how much money it controls. And secrecy breeds hyperbole; some estimates of the fund’s size exceed $1 trillion.

Before long, ADIA will certainly reach that mark. But for now bankers, former employees and analysts familiar with the fund peg it at $650 billion to $700 billion – an amount that is still more than 15 times the size of the Fidelity Magellan Fund. In all, sovereign wealth funds in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Singapore, China and Russia together control more than $2 trillion, a figure that could approach $12 trillion by 2015, analysts say.

Such riches, coupled with the more-aggressive stance being taken by ADIA and other sovereign funds, has raised concern that these investors will wield their wealth for political as well as financial reasons.

ADIA’s secrecy is also drawing scrutiny. The fund has no internal communications department, although it says it is setting one up. When sovereign fund leaders from around the world descended on Davos, Switzerland, in February for the World Economic Forum, no one from ADIA saw fit to show up.

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The House has approved $18 billion in new taxes on the largest oil companies.

The money collected over 10 years is intended to provide tax breaks for wind, solar and other alternative energy sources and for energy conservation.

The measure passed by the House by a 236-182 vote Wednesday as lawmakers cited record oil prices and rising gasoline costs.

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Accounts of violence in Kenya are more than just news stories to Joseph Ngotho; they are the latest news about the fate of his homeland and his dispossessed family.

“They had homes and businesses. Now they are living in churches or communal compounds,” Ngotho said.

Democratic stability in this African nation disintegrated last year when a power sharing agreement between political rivals fell apart.

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I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Two parishes in the Diocese of New Westminster have voted to ask to be added to the list of places where same sex blessings may take place.

St. Mary’s Kerrisdale in Vancouver, and the Church of the Holy Spirit in Whonnock, Maple Ridge (formerly St. John’s Whonnock), by large margins voted to ask Bishop Michael Ingham to grant his permission for the parish to conduct services for persons in committed, monogamous same sex relationships.

At present, same sex blessings may take place only in eight parishes of the diocese.

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From the diocese of Fort Worth website:

Archbishop Gregory Venables, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, has accepted an invitation from Bishop Iker to make a pastoral visit to the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth during the first weekend of May. He will be accompanied by his wife, Sylvia.

On Friday, May 2, Archbishop Venables will meet with all the clergy of the Diocese at the Church of the Holy Apostles, and then on Saturday, May 3, he will address a specially-called Convocation of the 2008 convention delegates at St. Vincent’s Cathedral. The purpose of the convocation is to provide information: Archbishop Venables will answer questions from the delegates, but no legislation will be considered.

On Sunday, May 4, Archbishop Venables will preach in the morning at the Cathedral, and on Sunday evening at St. Andrew’s Church in downtown Fort Worth. Question-and-answer forums will follow the services at both churches.

Archbishop Venables was born in England and grew up near Canterbury.

After he and Sylvia were married in 1970, the two felt called to serve as lay missionaries in Paraguay, where they moved to in 1978, sponsored by the South American Mission Society (SAMS.) According to a biographical sketch in a recent issue of the San Joaquin Star, it was while serving in Paraguay that Archbishop Venables felt called to the ordained ministry, and he was ordained a priest in 1984. He was consecrated to serve as Auxiliary Bishop to Peru and Bolivia in 1993 and elected Presiding Bishop of the Province in 2001. He has also served as the Diocesan Bishop of Argentina since 2002, and he and Sylvia reside in Buenos Aires. They have a son, two daughters and two sons-in-law, all of whom are serving in ministry within South America.

The Diocese of Fort Worth is considering aligning with the Province of the Southern Cone, and this visit will help clarify the practicalities, benefits, and possible drawbacks of such a move.

A priest has told how compulsory celibacy was part of his personal journey away from the Catholic “church of his youth” towards the Anglican ministry.

The Very Reverend Dermot Dunne also spoke of his concerns over the Catholic Church’s teaching against birth control, on not allowing divorce to couples in broken marriages, as well as its refusal to admit women to the priesthood.

He was speaking in Dublin yesterday at the announcement of his appointment as Dean of the Church of Ireland’s Christ Church cathedral.

Currently the Church of Ireland Archdeacon in the diocese of Ferns, Dean-elect Dunne becomes Christ Church’s first Dean since the 16th Century Reformation to have received his theological education in a Catholic seminary, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

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