They take risks to try to get to the truth

Nicole Flennaugh has a college degree, office experience and the modest expectation that, somewhere in this city on the eastern lip of San Francisco Bay, someone will want to hire her.

But Ms. Flennaugh, 36, a widow, cannot secure steady, decent-paying work to support herself and her two daughters. Nearly two years after she was laid off as a customer service representative at the Educational Testing Service, and even after applying for dozens of full-time jobs, she has been getting by with occasional stints as an office temp.

“You’re used to making $17 an hour with benefits, and now you have to take any job for $8 an hour,” Ms. Flennaugh says. On a recent afternoon, she sat in front of a computer terminal at an employment center in a gritty part of town, scrolling dejectedly through online job listings while sending another batch of applications into the ether.

“I’ve literally sat and cried, but my friends with double degrees are doing worse,” she says. “It’s the economy. It’s really bad.”

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She is charged with the following:

c. Experience becomes the criterion through which the objective norms of morality are judged and set aside.

And she responds as follows:

Clarifications and Corrections

In Building Bridges, I recount that many Catholic gay and lesbian persons have prayed to God and have come to a conscience decision that their life experience, though contrary to the church’s teaching on homogenital behavior, does not separate them from God or the Church community.

I needed to explain more fully the Church’s teaching on conscience and the proper role that experience plays in its formation. In order to form a true conscience, one needs to interpret the experience of one’s life and the signs of the times6. Catholics are guided in this endeavor by the authoritative teaching of the Church, the witness or advice of competent people, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit7.

One’s conscience can make erroneous judgments. The Church teaches that a conscience decision to engage in homogenital behavior is an erroneous judgment and that a person must work to correct this erroneous conscience8. I must take better care to clarify this and stress that Catholics are called to follow this teaching.

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The Vatican has cracked down on feminist interpretations of the liturgy, ruling that God must always be recognised as Our Father.

In a move designed to counter the spread of gender-neutral phrases, the Holy See said that anyone baptised using alternative terms, such as “Creator”, “Redeemer” and “Sanctifier” would have to be re-baptised using the traditional ceremony.

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith said yesterday: “These variations arise from so-called feminist theology and are an attempt to avoid using the words Father and Son, which are held to be chauvinistic.”

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Update: The Zenit article on this is here.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Romans 8:19

Yet there is something remarkable about so much religious diversity. Elsewhere in the world, religious difference is often a cause for violence and ostracism. America so honors the principle of religious tolerance that it has brought it into the home. Pew’s statistic about church-switching may be less a sign of spiritual flakiness than an emblem of freedom.

It should be noted that a third of the survey’s “converts” have gone from one Protestant congregation to another. In short, America is not, on the whole, giving up serious worship for the sake of New Age platitudes. Half of Americans who grew up without any religious affiliation adopted one in adulthood. Clearly Americans are still convinced there is a such a thing as religious truth — and it’s worth their time to search for it. Sorry, Mr. Hitchens.

The Pew survey confirms what scholars have been saying for years about the winners and losers in this religious economy: Religions that demand the most of people are growing the fastest. The mainline Protestant churches — with their less exclusionary views of salvation, looser rules for sexual conduct and sermons about social justice — have lost membership, especially since the early 1990s. The more traditional evangelical churches keep growing.

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The increasing use of pornography is creating not a few problems. Late last year a judge in Melbourne, Australia, sentenced a man to 11 years in jail on a rape charge, reported the Age newspaper on Jan. 3.

Judge Damian Murphy, said that the Andrew Bowen had acted out a fantasy seen in material downloaded from the Internet.

The article’s authors, Maree Crabbe and David Corlett, commented that one consequence of Internet-based pornography is a shift to more extreme and violent sexual imagery. Scenes that are so degrading and humiliating that they would be banned from film and television are now freely available to anyone with a Web connection.

Crabbe and Corlett said that research shows a link between consumption of pornography and male sexual aggression. Even when the pornography is not violent, exposure to it tends to increase in the viewer tolerance of sexual violence.

Earlier last year a report published in Australia revealed record numbers of visitors to porn Web sites. According to a May 26 article in the Sydney Morning Herald, a survey found that 35% of Internet users had visited an “adult” site at least once in the preceding three months.

According to the article, psychologists and counselors say Internet pornography is a growing cause of marital problems due to increasing numbers of men who become compulsive users.

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An outpouring of negative economic and financial reports soured the mood on Wall Street Friday as banks and other lenders further tightened credit in their struggle to contain damage from losses on mortgages, business loans and related debt.

Shares sank, and investors fled to the safety of Treasuries as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 2.71 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 315.79 points, or 2.51 percent, to 12,266.39. Both indexes capped their worst four months since 2002.

Prices of municipal bonds, bank loans and high-yield debt all fell as well.

The markets for ultrasafe debt backed by the federal government and other nations were alone in posting gains. Some commodities, including gold, were also up.

“The drumbeat of economic news has been unrelentingly bad,” said Edward Yardeni, a normally upbeat investment strategist. “The recession scenario is looking more and more credible.”

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John Mauldin has more on this, including the following:

Let’s look at 10 recent items which have come across my screen, which I think leave little doubt that we are in a recession. (It could just as easily have been 20, but I think 10 are enough to prove the point.) In no particular order:

1. After hovering above 50 in recent months, the Chicago ISM number dropped sharply to 44.5 in February, notching its lowest reading since December 2001 and coming in well below expectations. This brings this survey in line with the disastrous services survey of last month.

2. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey for the United States came in at 70.8. This is the lowest reading for the index in 16 years.

3. “The New York City Purchasing Manager’s Survey fell for the second consecutive month to 427.7 in February. The current conditions index fell to 43.4, down from 47.9 in January. The six-month outlook index was below 50 for the second consecutive month for the first time in the survey’s history; at 47.5 it was down from 70 in February of 2007. The worsening conditions reflect rising prices coupled with slower job growth and layoffs in financial services, as well as tightening credit conditions and higher unemployment.” (economy.com)

After you guess, watch it all–you may be surprised.

In a shocking upset Friday, Boeing lost the long-awaited and lucrative Air Force refueling-tanker contract to a competing bid based on an Airbus plane.

The Pentagon chose Northrop Grumman, partnered with Airbus parent EADS, to build the next generation of Air Force tankers, a contract worth an estimated $40 billion.

Boeing’s loss means the 767 assembly line in Everett will wind to a close around 2012 when the current commercial orders run out. No layoffs are likely, though, as the roughly 600 production workers plus supporting engineers will transfer to other programs, including the 787 Dreamliner.

But Washington state has lost out on the chance to add as many as 2,000 jobs locally at Boeing ”” and perhaps more than 6,000 new jobs overall.

Instead, those jobs will go to Europe and Alabama.

Large sections of the Northrop/EADS tanker will be built in Europe; they will be shipped across the Atlantic for assembly at a new widebody-jet plant to be built in Mobile, Ala., which will gain some 1,500 direct jobs.

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For Beliefnet, these are busy times. Super Tuesday, which featured two-dozen state primaries and caucuses, was followed hard by Ash Wednesday. In addition to political coverage, Caldwell and her team were juggling features on chronic pain, the top 10 spiritual moments from American Idol and the Beliefnet Film Awards. Someone had also proposed reviving the annual I Hate Lent blog. “A lot of people do hate Lent,” Caldwell agreed.

The morning meeting was a reminder of the ubiquity of religion in American life ”“ from politics to pop culture ”“ and hinted at the currents that are propelling Beliefnet. Each month, more than three million visitors flock to the site, according to ComScan, the media metrics company, making it the most popular religion destination on the internet.

One measure of Beliefnet’s influence is that it managed in this hectic election season to land exclusive interviews with several of the top US presidential candidates, including Mike Huckabee, John McCain, John Edwards and Barack Obama. Edwards talked about the importance of faith after the death of his son. Huckabee disclosed that the Lord gave him wisdom for the Iowa debates. And Obama reiterated that he is not Muslim, and said he prays each night that he is “an instrument of God’s will”. The two candidates who refused Beliefnet ”“ Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani ”“ were among the first to drop out of the race. All this from a site that did not exist a decade ago.

Beliefnet’s clout seems destined to grow….

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Barack Obama is turning Cleveland into the center of the religious struggle for the hearts and minds of voters in the 2008 presidential race.

From visits to evangelical megachurches in South Carolina to special appeals to black churches in Ohio, the most prominent member of the Cleveland-based United Church of Christ has been up front about his faith in ways few Democrats have been in recent years.

In a close election, the denomination with headquarters on Prospect Avenue downtown may put Obama into the White House by giving him the religious credibility to sway moderate faith-based voters to the Democratic ticket.

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A study published in this week’s Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine, an open-access scientific journal, raises doubts about dispensing such drugs so freely. Irving Kirsch, of the University of Hull, and his colleagues scrutinised the clinical trials for several new antidepressants, taking care to include those never published (but which, by law, have to be reported to the FDA). They found that SSRIs did not help the vast majority of depressed people much more than placebos did. The net benefits over placebos did not usually reach the level considered big enough to be of clinical significance by Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

This study points to two factors that bedevil proponents of SSRIs: publication bias and the power of placebos. Dr Kirsch believes published data “give an exaggerated view of a drug’s benefit.” People with very severe depression did see benefits above the NICE threshold, but even that was not a ringing endorsement. Dr Kirsch explains that this was not because SSRIs worked much better in the very seriously depressed, but rather that the effectiveness of placebos dropped off sharply in such people, making the drug look better.

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Senator BARACK OBAMA (D-IL, in speech): But what I am suggesting is this: Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.

KIM LAWTON: Barack Obama has long urged the Democratic Party not to run away from religion. He has spoken openly about his own beliefs, and his campaign has employed a vigorous faith-based outreach strategy. Experts say this has earned him support within the religious community, but religion has also generated controversy for him.

This week, Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan joined the ranks of religious leaders offering praise for Obama. Farrakhan called him “the herald of the Messiah.” This raised concern among Jewish leaders who have criticized Farrakhan for using anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Barack Obama was asked about it during Tuesday’s Democratic debate.

Sen. OBAMA (speaking at Democratic Candidates Debate in Ohio): You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. I think they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support.

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In a statement given to The Living Church, Bishop Jack Leo Iker of Fort Worth said he was “disheartened” that to date he has been “unable to secure a future, safe place for this diocese within The Episcopal Church,” and “saddened by the fact that the HOB has been unwilling to make adequate provision for us in response to our appeal for alternative primatial oversight.”

Bishop Iker described the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church as a “toxic environment,” and said he will not be attending the meeting at Camp Allen March 7-16.

“In recent years I have increasingly dreaded the thought of attending another meeting of the House of Bishops of TEC,” he said. “For me, the small-group table discussions are places of hostile confrontation, not support and affirmation.”

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The odd thing is that dignity seems to go hand in hand with humility. Only when people discovered that they were not gods were they able to reach their full stature as human beings. Finding God, humanity found itself. Losing God, it is at risk of losing itself. For the biblical view of the human person – free, responsible, lonely yet capable of redeeming his or her loneliness through the moralisation of love – is what gave Western humanism its singular glory. For once, the human person confronted God in a realm of freedom and was lifted to the heights.

When human beings lose faith in God they lose faith in human beings. They abandon their moral qualms about abortion. Some, like the biologist Francis Crick, have no problem with infanticide. They favour voluntary euthanasia, death on demand. They give their support to eugenics and “designer children”. For what, after all, are we but a random concatenation of genes, a handful of dust?

Faith does not disagree; “From the dust you came and to the dust you will return.” It merely adds one detail. There is within us the breath of God. We have immortal longings. Lose this and we will lose all else. We will have knowledge without wisdom, technology without reticence, choice without conscience, power without restraint.

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I linked to a website this morning without making it clear that I found it offensive and manipulative. My apologies for any confusion.

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(Note: The initial blog post about this story was here).

The March 3, 2008 issue of The New Yorker contains an article by Honor Moore which is drawn from her forthcoming book A Bishop’s Daughter (prepublication copies of which are in circulation). While the book is, in the main, autobiographical, Ms Moore goes into considerable detail about the private life of her father, Paul Moore, Jr., the 13th Bishop of New York.

Her description of him comes as a shock to many of us. The man that so many of us knew and admired was a man of enormous personal courage, a passionate, articulate, and tireless champion of the poor, the disenfranchised and the most desperately helpless in society. He was all that, but as Ms Moore tells us there was another side to him, a man who led a secret double life. While on the one hand he inspired people to work for, and hope for, a community that could stand against the powers of oppression and exploitation, on the other he was himself an exploiter of the vulnerable.

Ms Moore’s article brings to light what appears to be her father’s decades long violation of his wedding vows. This was an offense of the most serious nature. Any person who has extra-marital relations commits an offense….

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Some recent media stories have implied that women’s ordination is somehow an issue in the current crisis in the Canadian Anglican church. It is not.

While the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone currently does not practice women’s ordination, the North American churches which have sought and received refuge under the Primate of the Southern Cone are completely free to practice their consciences on this matter.

Of the eight clerics currently licenced by Anglican Network in Canada moderator Bishop Donald Harvey under the jurisdiction of the Province of the Southern Cone, three are women, including the Rev Desiree Stedman (Ottawa) who holds the prestigious role of assistant to Bishop Harvey.

The real issue is theological: the profound differences on key Christian teachings and the irreconcilable views of the Bible. Even to say the issue is sexuality is a gross simplification. Sexual ethics is merely the tip of the iceberg, a reflection of much deeper theological constructs.

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An Ontario Superior Court judge ruled on Feb. 29 that the diocese of Niagara may not send its clergy into two area churches in the next two weeks to hold Sunday services for members of the congregations that remain loyal after most of their fellow parishioners voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada.

“I am disappointed with the decision today, but we have to respect and abide by it. I feel for those faithful members of the parishes. We will try to make some arrangement for them if we possibly can,” said Bishop Michael Bird, who is based at the diocesan office here. It was the first court decision since 11 Anglican Canadian parishes decided, at their regular vestries (annual meetings) in February, to separate. They now identify themselves as part of the Anglican Network in Canada.

Clergy and lay people who supported separation were cheered by the ruling. “We are so thankful. We want to be able to worship together as a community uninterrupted. (Those loyal to the diocese) are more than welcome to attend any of our services,” said Rev. Ray David Glenn of St. George, Lowville.

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