Raise your hand if you don’t quite understand this whole financial crisis.

It has been going on for seven months now, and many people probably feel as if they should understand it. But they don’t, not really. The part about the housing crash seems simple enough. With banks whispering sweet encouragement, people bought homes they couldn’t afford, and now they are falling behind on their mortgages.

But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business ”” subprime loans ”” has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?

I’m here to urge you not to feel sheepish. This may not be entirely comforting, but your confusion is shared by many people who are in the middle of the crisis.

“We’re exposing parts of the capital markets that most of us had never heard of,” Ethan Harris, a top Lehman Brothers economist, said last week. Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary and current Citigroup executive, has said that he hadn’t heard of “liquidity puts,” an obscure kind of financial contract, until they started causing big problems for Citigroup.

Read it all.

The year was 1990, I had just started my doctorate at Oxford, our daughter was one year old, and life was stressful as well as lonely. One of the brightest lights during that time was the wonderful and too little known film Truly, Madly, Deeply, starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. It lifted our spirits and we both remember it as if it were yesterday. If you ever get a chance, see it. In the meantime listen to this story about the film’s marvelous director from NPR –KSH.

Barring a tidal wave of negative letters being sent to the task force charged with rewriting The Episcopal Church’s “misconduct canons,” clergy and lay leaders may have to stop and ask themselves whether anyone might be offended before publishing a critical opinion piece or posting an edgy blog entry on the internet.

That’s because among the changes being proposed by the “Title IV Task Force II” are those that would expand the definition of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy to include virtually any public criticism of the church and its policies, and others permitting misconduct complaints to be filed “in any manner and in any form.” The task force recently released a draft of its work. Public comment on the 40-page document concludes June 30. The task force’s final report will be submitted for consideration to the 76th General Convention in 2009.

In an interview with Episcopal News Service, Steve Hutchinson of Utah, chairman of the task force, said the group sought to move away from a criminal justice model. He said the group recognized “that a reconciliation model is more consistent with our theology,” and that it should consider other professional-misconduct models, such as the American Medical Association’s code. There is “an emphasis on pastoral resolution” at all stages, Mr. Hutchinson told ENS, yet there is also a requirement that any pastoral resolution between a bishop and priest or deacon be reviewed and approved “so that there’s not the appearance of fair or unfair allegations or sweetheart deals.”

Read it all.

Mark Harris made an unimpressive and unconvincing argument that the canons do not mean what the words on the page indicate that they mean.

To this, Nathaniel Pierce responded as follows:

Mark:

Using the you cite figures from 2006, it really boils down to this: do you need a vote by 32 Bishops in order to depose a Bishop who is alleged to have abandonned the Communion of this church, or do you need 142?

If a Priest is charged with abandonment, a vote of at least 75% of “All the Members” of the Standing Committee is required (capital letters are in the text). Here, however, you argue that a mere 11% of the House can depose a Bishop on the same charge (based on the definition of a quorum as found in I.2 as of 2006).

Furthermore, you confuse two issues in your analysis. There is a difference between a “quorum” and “the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote.” This is clearly conveyed by the fact that I.2 defines these terms separately, distinctly, and clearly. In almost all circumstances the presence of a quorum enables the House to conduct its business. However, on this issue, deposing a Bishop for abandonment, the number of votes required by the canon is a majority of the whole number which in turn is clearly defined in I.2. To simply equate a quorum with the whole number, ie to claim that these two separate terms are interchangeable even though they are defined very differently in I.2, is ludicrous.

–The Rev. Nathaniel Pierce lives in Trappe, Maryland

Kendall,

You are doing the right thing in closing comments on Titus[onenine]. For some of the correspondents on the blog, it would appear there is something compulsive about their need to sound off in bombastic terms about virtually everything. One of the things I have done over the years is compare the tone of some of the secular blogs with those in the Christian family and, frankly, there is very little difference in tone even if most of the times believers have their language under better control.

It grieves me that believers do not have the self-control necessary to carry on a sane and measured conversation.

God bless you this Holy Week.

Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.

Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China’s Communist leadership.

France’s outspoken foreign minister, former humanitarian campaigner Bernard Kouchner, said the idea “is interesting.”

Kouchner said he wants to discuss it with other foreign ministers from the 27-nation European Union next week. His comments opened a crack in what until now had been solid opposition to a full boycott, a stance that Kouchner said remains the official government position.

Read it all.

In Pittsburgh, we have all had occasion to watch Bob Duncan over the past few years; at Trinity Cathedral we see him more than most. While his offices are next door, from time to time one will encounter a perambulating bishop wandering the corridors of the parish house, lost in thought. It is hard, though, to imagine the full impact of those years of struggle when, as the psalmist declares “the wicked bend their bows; they set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart.”

The poignancy of that moment in the service when the Bishop joined his clergy in reaffirming the promises that he made at ordination was all the more striking when one considers last week’s decision in the House of Bishops. At such a moment, it seemed peculiarly ironic that a denomination cannot distinguish between termination of the right to function in an ordained capacity within a particular national church (which all parties would seem to acknowledge as legitimate) and the declaration that a priest or bishop no longer holds valid orders for the exercise of ministry within the Anglican tradition (which, at the least, would seem to demand a trial with the same degree of rigor as that accorded Walter Righter thirteen years ago).

For all that, the homily was a much more pastoral offering that we have tended to hear from Bob Duncan in recent years, with but a single personal allusion.

Read it all.

Read it all.

‘What you sow, you reap.’ That’s how St Paul put it – five words for a massive universal principle. Actions create reactions, choices create consequences. . Time and again all of us are shocked and perplexed to find that what we’ve sown, we’ve reaped. And this week that very principle has shaped the news.

We may think, like Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York and scourge of sinners, that a decision to join a call-girl ring would be without consequences. He has found out how wrong he was. When the Bible says ‘Beware your sins will find you out’, it’s not talking about some divine judgment after death, but this immutable principle of choice and consequence. Our choices have consequences – and if they didn’t, there’s honestly not much point in making them.

Read it all.

2. RECALLED that the Lambeth Conference 1998 Resolution 1.10 on Human Sexuality expresses the mind of the Communion, as further endorsed in the Statement of the Primates’ Meeting (Lambeth, 15-16 October 2003) “as having moral force and commanding the respect of the Communion as its present position on these issues.” The Diocese of New Westminster, Canada (DNWC) authorized the Public Rite of Blessing for those in same sex relationship (May 2003) and the 74th General Convention of ECUSA confirmed the election of a priest in active same-sex relationship to the episcopate (May 2003), clearly against the letter and spirit of the abovesaid Resolution. Of particular grief was TEC’s decision to proceed with the consecration of Gene Robinson (Nov 2003) notwithstanding the unanimous agreement and plea of the Primates (Oct 2003) that if they go ahead with the decision, “the future of the Communion itself will be put in jeopardy” and that it will “tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level.”

3. NOTED TEC’s and DNWC’s further failure to adequately adhere or respond to the call for repentance by The Windsor Report (2004), the Communique of the Primates’ Meeting at Dromantine (Feb 2005) and in particular the various requirements in the most recent Communiqué of the Primates’ Meeting at Dar es Salam, Tanzania (Feb 2007) i.e. that TEC to unequivocally comply with moratoria on the consecration of persons in same-sex unions and on authorising any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions, to cease all legal action against those who feel unable to accept the direct ministry of their bishop or Presiding Bishop, and that TEC make provision for a Primatial Pastoral Council and Pastoral Scheme for pastoral care;

Read it all.

Much of our time together was spent on the hearing of reports and presentations, but the meeting was framed by two very emotional bookends.

The first was the announcement that in spite of intensive lobbying by many bishops of our church, the Archbishop of Canterbury has decided not to permit Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire to participate in any capacity at the upcoming Lambeth Conference in July. Although Bishop Robinson was the only American bishop not to receive a formal invitation, it had been hoped that a way could be found to have him present in an unofficial capacity. This news was greeted with great sadness by most of the House, and we are working to find ways support our brother during our time in England, and especially to invite our counterparts in the Anglican Communion to meet with him. I invite you to read all the documents that are posted on the Episcopal News Service website, including Bishop Robinson’s very moving response to the Lambeth decision, as well as a resolution passed by the House in support of him. Whether one agrees with him or not, it is important to remember that he is a duly elected Bishop and that his exclusion is hurtful not only to him, but to the integrity of the American church.

The other sad moment in our time together came when we took action to depose two bishops of the church who had violated their ordination vows by working to take parishes out of the Episcopal Church, Bishop John-David Scofield of San Joaquin, and Bishop William Cox, retired Suffragan of Maryland.

Read it all.

Gatherings of top religious leaders and even some heads of state will take place this year in the United States, at the Vatican, and in Britain, aimed at defusing tensions between the West and the Muslim world.

The first-of-their-kind dialogues ”“ which will kick off in July ”“ will begin with theological discussions but seek practical results. Yet they’re stirring some debate within the faith groups as to the proper way to engage “the other” and whether common ground can be found.

The initiative was sparked last October by “A Common Word Between Us and You,” an open letter from 138 Muslim clergy and scholars from more than 40 nations to the leaders of all the world’s major Christian churches. Concerned that “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians,” the Muslim leaders proposed dialogue on the basis of the shared principles of “the love of God, and love of the neighbor.”

Most of the churches responded positively, buoyed both by the letter and the authority of those who signed it ”“ representing most schools of Muslim thought.

Read it all.

Canadian Bishop who is part of a high-level advisory group to the worldwide Anglican Communion has been elected Bishop of Christchurch.

The Rt Revd Victoria Matthews is currently bishop-in-residence at Wycliffe College in Toronto. She was Bishop of Edmonton for 10 years from 1997 to late last year, and Suffragan (Assistant) Bishop of Toronto from 1994-97.

She narrowly missed being elected Primate of Canada last year.

Announcing the appointment today, the Primate of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, NZ and Polynesia, Archbishop Brown Turei, said he looked forward to welcoming Bishop Matthews into the church of these islands. “I’m sure that, with all her experience, she will make a good contribution to our life and witness,” he said.

Bishop Matthews, 54 and unmarried, is only the second woman to become a diocesan bishop in New Zealand. The first was the Rt Revd Dr Penny Jamieson, Bishop of Dunedin from 1989-2004.

Bishop Matthews chairs the Canadian Primate’s Theological Commission, and has just been appointed to the Windsor Continuation Group, which will look at crucial questions about the shape of Anglican common life around the world.

Read it all.

Psychologist David Barash’s Op-Ed article “Want a man, or a worm?” uses a veneer of outdated science to rationalize personal opinions. Using Eliot Spitzer’s sad sexual peccadilloes as a news peg, Barash makes the threadbare argument that men just can’t help themselves, titillating his readers with the tattered news that male animals copulate with more than one mate — an example of “extra pair copulations,” or EPCs, as biologists call them.

As it happens, I just finished reading a book on EPCs and other sexual behavior in animals — Marlene Zuk’s excellent “Sexual Selections, What We Can and Can’t Learn about Sex from Animals.” Zuk, a professor of biology at UC Riverside, takes a more logical and analytic approach than Barash, whose inspiration on male infidelity seems to have burst unedited from his reptilian brain.

Read it all and read the piece to which she is responding also.

Fiercely debated legislation last year to put a Bible course in public schools has landed in the hands of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott for an opinion on what it means.

And that’s hardly a surprise, since state lawmakers couldn’t agree on what the wording meant last May when they passed HB 1287, the so-called “Bible bill.”

Just about everyone agrees a Bible course cannot be used to endorse, promote or disparage any faith and that the purpose of the class is to help students understand the Bible as literature.

Read it all.

Listen to it all from NPR.

This is all overshadowed by the unarguable hash that was made of the intervention itself. But I would nonetheless maintain that this incompetence doesn’t condemn the enterprise wholesale. A much-wanted war criminal was put on public trial. The Kurdish and Shiite majority was rescued from the ever-present threat of a renewed genocide. A huge, hideous military and party apparatus, directed at internal repression and external aggression was (perhaps overhastily) dismantled. The largest wetlands in the region, habitat of the historic Marsh Arabs, have been largely recuperated. Huge fresh oilfields have been found, including in formerly oil free Sunni provinces, and some important initial investment in them made. Elections have been held, and the outline of a federal system has been proposed as the only alternative to a) a sectarian despotism and b) a sectarian partition and fragmentation. Not unimportantly, a battlefield defeat has been inflicted on al-Qaida and its surrogates, who (not without some Baathist collaboration) had hoped to constitute the successor regime in a failed state and an imploded society. Further afield, a perfectly defensible case can be made that the Syrian Baathists would not have evacuated Lebanon, nor would the Qaddafi gang have turned over Libya’s (much higher than anticipated) stock of WMD if not for the ripple effect of the removal of the region’s keystone dictatorship.

Read it all.

Sex may be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “infidelity,” but there are other types of “unfaithful or disloyal acts,” other ways spouses cheat on each other.

In the wake of the revelations regarding former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s trysts with high-dollar call girls, couples ”” especially women ”” were giving their own relationships the once-over. In online chats and call-in radio programs, the discussions followed a common theme: “What would I do if that happened to me? Surely I would have had a clue it was coming. And anyway, how could he spend serious money on an affair or a prostitute ”” or on anything else, for that matter ”” without my knowing?”

How indeed. Many couples commit monetary deceit in their marriages. Someone lies about finances or doesn’t share the details. It can be innocuous, such as fudging on the cost of purchases or hiding a spending spree. Or it could be more significant, such as having a secret credit card or bank account, serious enough to be considered what some relationship experts call “financial infidelity.”

Read it all.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Bishop Price told The Living Church he was not consulted on the number of votes needed for a deposition and he does not recall the resolutions approving the depositions of bishops Schofield and Cox being “singled out” as requiring a higher threshold of consent prior to enactment.

Title 4, canon 9, section 2 states that the vote requires “a majority of the whole number of bishops entitled to vote,” a higher threshold than that necessary to conduct business. There were 116 bishops registered at the meeting at 6 a.m. on March 12. The total number of bishops eligible to vote is 294, according to online sources.

“None of the votes taken were unanimous, each having both negative votes and abstentions,” Bishop Price said. “However, the affirmative votes were so overwhelming that the Presiding Bishop declared them as having passed and no one challenged her ruling.”

Read it all.

The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia recently completed its Annual Council amid raging controversy over the biblical teachings of the church and vicious litigation. A lot of people are getting hurt in this strife. So I read with interest the press releases and statements in the newspapers and blogs regarding what took place at the DOV Council.

Given what was said and what has been written about a group of churches known as the Anglican District of Virginia, I must spend a moment correcting the record. I must defend the members of ADV, as any shepherd would defend his flock against attack.

Overwhelming majorities of the ADV congregations exercised their American rights of freedom of religion, freedom of affiliation, and freedom of choice when they voted 14 months ago to separate from The Episcopal Church. Their referendum was based on the unfortunate reality that The Episcopal Church is on a prodigal course away from its Christian and Anglican roots.

Contrary to what the DOV has been saying publicly, many of the individuals who chose not to vote with the majority are still active members of ADV churches.

Read it all.

If the three deaths were connected, no one on the island could say exactly how. The first, a 15-year-old, killed himself at his home near the high school in February 2007. The second, a 17-year-old ”˜A’ student and an athlete, committed suicide last October.

The third, a 16-year-old found dead at home in January, may have been an accidental death, not a suicide. None had been good friends.

Yet they were all islanders, talented and well-liked students in a high school of 400 that had not had a suicide for more than 40 years.

The small year-round community on Nantucket Island, deeply shaken, turned to outside experts for help.

Read it all.

Kendall+

Thank you so much for your blog. It really is the best source of information on TEC available. I also greatly appreciate your various “off topic” posts that remind one and all that we live in a real world, most of which has never heard of TEC, nor would care if they did.

I left ECUSA about 12 years ago when I was working for an educational institution and did not have a cure. I could easily see where the church was headed and determined that my first ministry was to my family who should be protected from so much that goes on in the church. Years later, through a chain of events that only God the Holy Spirit could have orchestrated, I am the rector of a fledgling church plant. Although events in the Episcopal do not directly affect me any more, they do have an indirect effect. So I believe I have to keep posted on what is transpiring, and your blog is one of my best aids in this effort.

Please be encouraged that your blog is an encouragement to many.

Regarding the flaming… [comments by some] to your blog, my suggestion is that you require all who post to use their real names. That would change things considerably, although likely not completely solve the problem.

Peace in Christ this most holy of weeks,

Hilarious!

Watch it all.

By the time I finished the meetings of the JSC, I realised that I lost many of the hopes which I had before the meeting. Several friends discouraged me to attend the JSC meeting but I insisted to go as I don’t believe in withdrawal. Jesus is our best example in this regard. He spoke the truth boldly everywhere He went. Some accepted the truth, some refused and some wanted to murder Him, but He never stopped speaking the truth and meeting His friends as well as His enemies.

My hopes diminished for the following reasons:

Ӣ I cannot see any desire to follow things through as decided before.
The Windsor Report (TWR) recommendations, which was accepted by everyone since it was produced in 2004 is a very good example. These recommendations were affirmed during the Primates meeting in 2005, everyone waited for TEC and Canada to respond. TEC’s responses were unclear and the Primates at Dar es Salam requested a clear response by the 30th of September. The response was clearly inadequate as Archbishop Rowan mentioned in his Advent letter. What action did we take or recommend in the JSC meeting? The answer is nothing. Moreover, the very people who cause the current crisis are invited to Lambeth Conference and this contradicts with TWR as will as Dar es Salam recommendations. This widens the gap and distrust between the two sides within the Communion.

Read it all.

Read it all.

For life among the white working class of Dewsbury looks like a foreign country. And because we don’t live there, and are never likely to, we have no concept of the reality in which hundreds of thousands of British children, just like Shannon, grow up.

Since 1997 the middle classes have heard Gordon Brown chunter on about his goals for ending child poverty in Britain, but they have done so with a profound lack of engagement. Poverty? In modern Britain? Yeah, yeah, we all know what that’s really about, don’t we? Feckless parents who waste all their money on widescreen TVs and booze and don’t have enough left for the children. We know the type. But the truth is, we don’t have a clue what modern social deprivation means.

Poverty has a new face now, and it’s called Shannon Matthews. What her sad little story has destroyed, possibly for ever, is the convenient middle-class myth of coherent, material poverty. Instead, it has revealed that what devastates the lives of modern children is something altogether much worse ”“ inner poverty; poverty of the soul.

Read it all.

Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland have urged communities to halt sports activities on Sunday morning, especially those involving children, to avoid competition with worship services.

In their bid to keep Sunday morning worship time sacrosanct, the Irish Bishops Conference said scheduling such events before noon violated a long-standing consensus “whereby sporting and leisure activities for young people on Sundays did not begin until early afternoon.”

But spokesman Danny Lynch of the Gaelic Athletic Association, Ireland’s largest sporting organization, said it had no choice but to continue all-day scheduling on Sundays.

Read it all.

The wife of a clergyman beaten up in a faith-hate attack outside his church described the community’s shock and distress yesterday after taking the Palm Sunday service on her husband’s behalf.

Canon Michael Ainsworth is expected to be released from hospital early this week after being attacked 12 days ago in East London.

The attack has led to fears of an increasing number of religiously aggravated attacks on Christian clergy and concerns that the problem is overlooked by police and prosecutors.

Speaking after giving the service at St George’s-in-the-East Church in Shadwell, the Rev Janina Ainsworth, 57, who is also a priest in the Church of England, said that the couple had taken much strength from the support offered from around the country. “There is a lot of shock and distress around the congregation and the area,” she said.

Read it all.