As we’re sure many of our readers have noticed, we’ve had some issues with the timestamps of posts and comments being incorrect over the past week both here at TitusOneNine as have our friends and colleagues at StandFirm, with whom we share a server. Some comment threads have gotten quite confusing because the comment numbers and sequence have been unstable, with “replies” sometimes winding up above the comment which prompted the reply!

While our fearless tech leader is working on finding the cause and solution, we suggest you read this comment which I left on a thread earlier today. It offers suggestions on how to help minimize confusion in the comment threads should the sequence get jumbled (i.e. how to link to the comment to which you are replying).

Also, it gives you the link to the place in your account page where you can verify that your timezone and daylight savings time setting (if applicable) are correct.

Hope this is helpful. If questions persist, feel free to e-mail us at: T19elves@yahoo.com.

–elfgirl

Is there anyone out there who can show, based on the language of the canons themselves, and the language of the history and explanation of the Canon in White and Dyckman, the standard reference work on the canons, that the canons were followed in these two depositions?

I have seen much special pleading, dodging, and sophistry, but I have seen not one case of such a defense from anyone including the presiding Bishop’s Chancellor.

People who claim to speak for justice and polity continue to undermine their own witness and credibility in this matter and the clock is ticking–KSH.

At Preludium, the Rev. Mark Harris offers an argument why the deposition is supposedly effective. I greatly admire Mark, but in this case he appears to be abandoning judgment in favor of wishful thinking. Mark writes:

To read “whole number” as meaning a reference back to all the possible bishops (300 or so) absent or present would provide the parliamentary boondoggle of making some votes based not on those present but on those possibly present. One might suppose it would be a virtue of any democratic system to insist that a majority vote ought to be on the basis of the whole body of voters on the rolls, but it would be a virtue that would either require compelling voters to be present or it would be increasingly unmanageable.

Nonsense. Requiring certain actions to be approved by a stated percentage of an entire body is a common procedural safeguard. For example, if the U.S.
Senate wishes to remove a president from office (after impeachment by the House), a full 2/3 of all sitting senators must vote to convict, not just 2/3 of those senators present. If the Congress wishes to override a presidential veto, a full 2/3 of the entire membership of each house must approve the override. These requirements are hardly parliamentary boondoggles.

Mark writes:

The whole number of persons eligible to be present at the meeting is the list of 300. The list of bishops eligible to vote at the meeting are (i) persons present and (ii) persons part of the whole list.

If this were true, then the definition of a quorum in Art I.2 would be incoherent: ”A majority of all Bishops entitled to vote, exclusive of Bishops who have resigned their jurisdiction or positions, shall be necessary to constitute a quorum for the transaction of business.”

Under Mark’s argument, testing whether a quorum was present would entail counting up those bishop-voters who happened to be present, and then determining whether a majority of them were present. That, however, implies that the remaining minority of bishop-voters were somehow both present and not present at the same time. (Insert here your favorite joke about boring meetings.)

I would like nothing better than to see +Schofield defrocked and, independently, stripped in civil court of every stick of diocesan property he controls. But we need to face the facts: The deposition motion failed for lack of the required number of votes.

Read it all.

Three Episcopal churches in the city are in the process of merging into a single parish.
The Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 160 Rock St., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 125 Mason St., and the St. John’s-St. Stephen’s Episcopal Partnership, 711 Middle St., held a covenant-signing worship service Sunday at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension.
The new Episcopal parish will be named the Church of the Holy Spirit, located at 160 Rock St.
A fourth Episcopal church, St. Luke’s, 315 Warren St., has decided against joining the merger at this time.
“Over the past few years, none of those churches was going particularly well,” said the Rev. Wallace Gober, who was interim pastor of St. John’s-St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.
“They were doing okay, but it was the decision of the people that they could do more of the work of the church if they pooled their resources,” Gober said.

Read it all.

Then on the Stand Firm thread Commenter “Chancellor” adds this very helpful history of the applicable Canon:

A little history may be helpful here. From White and Dykman (1981 ed.), Vol. II, pp. 1079-80 (with emphases added):

The first canonical enactment on the subject of the “Abandonment of the Communion of the Church by a Bishop” was Canon 1 of 1853, which read as follows:

In all cases where a Bishop, Presbyter or Deacon of this Church . . . has abandoned her Communion . . . either by an open renunciation of the
Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of this Church, or by a formal admission into any religious body not in Communion with the same: such Bishop, Presbyter
or Deacon . . . shall thereupon be pronounced deposed; . . . and if a Bishop, by the Presiding Bishop, with the consent of the majority of the Members of the
House of Bishops.

. . .

This canon was enacted to meet the case of Bishop Ives of North Carolina, who, on December 22, 1852, renounced the communion of the Protestant Episcopal
Church and submitted himself to the authority of the Church of Rome. No canon on this subject had before been enacted, as there had been no need thereof . . . .

It was recognized that the canon, hastily enacted to meet an emergency, was far from perfect . . . . In the revision of the canons by [the] Convention [of 1859],
Canon 1 of 1853 was made Title II, Canon 8, and amended to read as follows:

If any Bishop . . . abandon the Communion of this Church, either by an open renunciation of the doctrine, discipline, and worship of this Church,
or by formal admission into any religious body not in communion with the same, it shall be the duty of the Standing Committee of the Diocese to make certificate
of the fact to the Senior Bishop . . .

Notice shall then be given to said Bishop . . . that unless he shall, within six months, make declaration that the facts alleged in said certificate are false, he will
be deposed from the Ministry of this Church.

And if said declaration be not made within six months as aforesaid, it shall be the duty of the Senior Bishop with the consent of the majority of the House of Bishops,
to depose from the Ministry the Bishop so certified as abandoning . . . .

It has thus been the case ever since the first version of the “abandonment” canon was adopted that a majority of the House of Bishops was required to consent to the
deposition of a Bishop.

Read it all carefully.

Hauntingly powerful–you need to listen to it all.

George Harley was a medical doctor from the USA who went as a missionary to Liberia with his pregnant wife. He had obtained his medical degree from Yale University and his Ph.D. in tropical diseases from the University of London. He served in a remote jungle area, which he reached after walking seventeen days with his pregnant wife. After five years there no one had responded to the gospel. Every week they met for worship, and the people were invited to come, but no African joined them. Then his son died. He himself had to make the coffin and carry it to the place of burial. He was all alone there except for one African who had come to help him.

As Harley was shoveling soil onto the casket, he was overcome with grief, and he buried his head in the fresh dirt and sobbed. The African who was watching all this raised the doctor’s head by the hair and looked into his face for a long time. Then he ran into the village crying, “White man, white man, he cry like one of us.” At the following Sunday service the place was packed with Africans.

Harley served in Liberia for thirty-five years. His achievements in numerous fields are amazing. He produced the first accurate map of Liberia. He was given the highest award Liberia could bestow. But before all that he had to give his son. When a bishop from his Methodist denomination pointed that out to him, his response, referring to God, was, “he had a boy too, you know.”

–From Ajith Fernando, The Call to Joy and Pain: Embracing Suffering in Your Ministry (Crossway, 2007), pp.96-97; and brought to mind because Bishop Mark Lawrence related this story in yesterday’s confirmation sermon at Christ Saint Paul’s, Yonges Island, South Carolina

Check it out.

Americans may fret that Wheat Thins cost 15 percent more than a year ago but in poor nations, such price hikes aren’t taken lightly. In Ivory Coast last week, women rioted against higher food costs, leaving one person dead.

In Haiti, four people were killed in protests last week over a 50 percent rise in the cost of food staples in the past year. From Egypt to Vietnam, price rises of 40 percent or more for rice, wheat, and corn are stirring unrest and forcing governments to take drastic steps, such as blocking grain exports and arresting farmers who hoard surpluses.

The UN International Fund for Agriculture predicts food riots will become common on the world scene for at least a year. The World Bank says 33 countries face unrest from higher prices in both food and energy.

Even in grain-rich America, wholesale food prices are rising at a rate not seen in 27 years. The most acute “ag-flation,” however, is in Asia and Africa, where food costs take up a higher proportion of family income. And the face of hunger is now seen more in cities as a historic shift takes place with more than half of the world’s population soon to be living in or near urban areas.

Read it all.

Fringed with sheer cliffs and the narrowest strips of flat land, covered in mountains of dense forest, the islands of the Goto Archipelago of Japan are some of the country’s most remote and forbidding. And yet atop hills overlooking fishing villages, reached by bridges and serpentine roads paved over just a generation ago, rise the steeples of Roman Catholic churches.

Japan’s persecuted Christians fled here centuries ago, seeking to practice their faith in one of the country’s southwesternmost reaches. They eventually forged Roman Catholic communities found nowhere else in Japan, villages where everyone was Catholic, life revolved around the parish and even the school calendar yielded to the church’s.

Today, one quarter of the roughly 25,000 inhabitants of the district, a collection of seven inhabited islands and 60 uninhabited ones, are Roman Catholic, an extraordinary percentage in a country where Christianity failed to take root. It is by far the highest level in Japan, where Catholics account for about one-third of 1 percent of the overall population and where the total number of Christians amounts to less than 1 percent.

But like Japan’s Roman Catholicism in general, this redoubt is also losing its vitality for reasons both familiar to Catholics in other wealthy nations and peculiar to Japan. Young Catholics here are loosening their ties to the church, their spiritual needs fulfilled elsewhere. Those who have left for the cities are marrying non-Catholics and are being absorbed into an overwhelmingly non-Christian culture.

Read it all.

ABCNews’ Mary Bruce Reports: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is actively courting the vice presidential nomination, Republican strategist Dan Senor said.

“Condi Rice has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning for this,” Senor said this morning on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

Read it all.

Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?

The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.

But to live,””to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered,””this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour,””this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.

When Tom stood face to face with his persecutor, and heard his threats, and thought in his very soul that his hour was come, his heart swelled bravely in him, and he thought he could bear torture and fire, bear anything, with the vision of Jesus and heaven but just a step beyond; but, when he was gone, and the present excitement passed off, came back the pain of his bruised and weary limbs,””came back the sense of his utterly degraded, hopeless, forlorn estate; and the day passed wearily enough.

Long before his wounds were healed, Legree insisted that he should be put to the regular field-work; and then came day after day of pain and weariness, aggravated by every kind of injustice and indignity that the ill-will of a mean and malicious mind could devise. Whoever, in our circumstances, has made trial of pain, even with all the alleviations which, for us, usually attend it, must know the irritation that comes with it. Tom no longer wondered at the habitual surliness of his associates; nay, he found the placid, sunny temper, which had been the habitude of his life, broken in on, and sorely strained, by the inroads of the same thing. He had flattered himself on leisure to read his Bible; but there was no such thing as leisure there. In the height of the season, Legree did not hesitate to press all his hands through, Sundays and week-days alike. Why shouldn’t he?””he made more cotton by it, and gained his wager; and if it wore out a few more hands, he could buy better ones. At first, Tom used to read a verse or two of his Bible, by the flicker of the fire, after he had returned from his daily toil; but, after the cruel treatment he received, he used to come home so exhausted, that his head swam and his eyes failed when he tried to read; and he was fain to stretch himself down, with the others, in utter exhaustion.

Is it strange that the religious peace and trust, which had upborne him hitherto, should give way to tossings of soul and despondent darkness? The gloomiest problem of this mysterious life was constantly before his eyes,””souls crushed and ruined, evil triumphant, and God silent. It was weeks and months that Tom wrestled, in his own soul, in darkness and sorrow. He thought of Miss Ophelia’s letter to his Kentucky friends, and would pray earnestly that God would send him deliverance. And then he would watch, day after day, in the vague hope of seeing somebody sent to redeem him; and, when nobody came, he would crush back to his soul bitter thoughts,””that it was vain to serve God, that God had forgotten him. He sometimes saw Cassy; and sometimes, when summoned to the house, caught a glimpse of the dejected form of Emmeline, but held very little communion with either; in fact, there was no time for him to commune with anybody.

–Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which kept coming to mind as I thought on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death in Memphis this weekend

(Press Release)

Late this afternoon, a judge of the B.C. Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Sigurdson, ordered the Diocese of B.C (on Vancouver Island). to allow the people of St Mary of the Incarnation (Metchosin) in Victoria, BC, back into their building in time for Sunday services.

At 7pm Friday, April 4, a St Mary parishioner discovered Bishop James Cowan of the Diocese of British Columbia supervising the changing of the locks and installation of a security system at the St Mary church building, 4125 Metchosin Rd, Victoria, BC. No notice was given to the clergy or approximately 185 parishioners who were displaced from the building they worship in and which they built and paid for.

The parish and the diocese had been engaged in a discussion regarding an amicable process to address the property issues with the assistance of Archbishop Terry Buckle. The congregation was hopeful these discussions would avoid the need for court proceedings, so the diocese’s actions came as a complete surprise.

Earlier this year, on February 17, St Mary parishioners voted 105 to 14 ”“ an overwhelming, 88 per cent majority ”“ to seek episcopal oversight and protection from Bishop Donald Harvey and the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC). Immediately prior to the vote being taken, the diocese had attempted preemptive action by inhibiting the two priests ”“ the Venerable Sharon Hayton and the Rev Andrew Hewlett. The congregation proceeded with the vote in the absence of the clergy who had been prohibited from having contact with the congregation by the terms of the inhibition.

More recently, a negotiated agreement between the diocese and the clergy and people of St Mary resulted in a Joint Statement, posted to the diocesan website, which says in part, “On behalf of the Diocese of British Columbia, Archdeacon Bryant-Scott has agreed to the continued use of the building of St. Mary of the Incarnation, Metchosin by the Anglican Network congregation pending further discussions with The Most Reverend Terry Buckle.”

“We are very grateful that the people of St Mary will be able to worship in their building again this Sunday,” said Cheryl Chang, a director of the Anglican Network in Canada. “We have said all along that there are serious legal issues as to the ownership of these properties and we have asked the courts to preserve the status quo in the parishes while these bigger issues are being determined. We regret that court proceedings were necessary to defend the right of the congregation to continue worshipping in their church buildings. We continue to pray for and seek amicable discussions to resolve these issues.”

On February 29th, a judge in the Ontario Superior Court issued a short-term interim decision allowing three Niagara-area ANiC parishes exclusive use of their properties. A further hearing was held on March 20 regarding a longer term order, but the judge has not yet released her decision.

Anglican Network in Canada parishes are committed to remaining faithful to Holy Scripture and established Anglican doctrine and to ensuring that orthodox Canadian Anglicans are able to remain in full communion with their Anglican brothers and sisters around the world. Since the ANiC launched its ecclesial structure last November under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, it has received two bishops ”“ Donald Harvey and Malcolm Harding ”“ and 15 parishes.

I’m a reappraiser. Heck, I’m a lefty/liberal who usually posts here to point out weaknesses, inconsistencies and bigotry in re-asserter arguments.

The process used against Bishop Cox stinks to high heaven. The canon was willfully misread. We progressives are right about a lot of things, but we’re dead wrong if we defend this proceeding.

Not only that, but this was stupidly handled and unnecessary. The PB had Cox dead to rights–he was proud of what he did–but now he’s been railroaded and given his health he’s been made a potential martyr. Not a good moment for a group that claims to seek (social) justice within (and without) the church.

The HOB should admit it is wrong, repent and either

A. Do it correctly, or

B. Just forget the whole thing

–Dan Ennis in an earlier comment on this blog

When a fellow student at Rutgers University urged Didi Onejeme to try Philosophy 101 two years ago, Ms. Onejeme, who was a pre-med sophomore, dismissed it as “frou-frou.”

“People sitting under trees and talking about stupid stuff ”” I mean, who cares?” Ms. Onejeme recalled thinking at the time.

But Ms. Onejeme, now a senior applying to law school, ended up changing her major to philosophy, which she thinks has armed her with the skills to be successful. “My mother was like, what are you going to do with that?” said Ms. Onejeme, 22. “She wanted me to be a pharmacy major, but I persuaded her with my argumentative skills.”

Once scoffed at as a luxury major, philosophy is being embraced at Rutgers and other universities by a new generation of college students who are drawing modern-day lessons from the age-old discipline as they try to make sense of their world, from the morality of the war in Iraq to the latest political scandal. The economic downturn has done little, if anything, to dampen this enthusiasm among students, who say that what they learn in class can translate into practical skills and careers. On many campuses, debate over modern issues like war and technology is emphasized over the study of classic ancient texts.

Rutgers, which has long had a top-ranked philosophy department, is one of a number of universities where the number of undergraduate philosophy majors is ballooning; there are 100 in this year’s graduating class, up from 50 in 2002, even as overall enrollment on the main campus has declined by 4 percent.

Read it all.

THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.

Read it all.

David Aaronovitch, using the pulpit of his column, challenged me to justify an “outrageous claim” that I made in my Easter sermon. I said that there was a “militantly atheist and secularist lobby” that believes that “we have the right to kill… surplus old people”. He replied that it was simply not true.

But there is clearly a strong body of opinion – part of a larger, albeit unorganised, secularising or atheist agenda – pressing in this direction. Such an agenda doesn’t need protest marches. It has powerful politicians and journalists presenting the case.

Lord Joffe’s “assisted dying” Bill, rejected by the Lords last year, was, at one level, about “voluntary euthanasia”. The normal word for that is, of course, suicide. But his Bill was about those too ill to achieve that unaided – it was proposing not just “voluntary dying” but “lawful killing” by people enlisted by the patient. You can’t reduce this, as Mr Aaronovitch implied, to “people having a right to end their own lives”. The question is, do other people have the right to help them do so? Those who support this Bill reckoned they do.

He might want to come back at me on two other counts. First, I said “old” people. But clearly young people, too, suffer debilitating and incurable diseases. Reports from the Netherlands suggest that moves are being made to extend the euthanasia protocol to cover new-born children.

Read it all.

“People ask a great deal of their priest, and they should. But they should also understand that it is not easy to be a priest. He has given himself in all the ardor or youth, yet he still remains a man, and every day the man in him tries to take back what he has surrendered. It is a continual struggle to remain completely at the service of Christ and of others.

A priest needs no praise or embarassing gifts; what he needs is that those committed to his charge should, by loving their fellows more and more, prove to him that he has not given his life in vain. And as he remains a man, he may need, once in a while, a delicate gesture of disinterested friendship… some Sunday night when he is alone.

*
“Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Mark 1,17).

“You did not choose me: I chose you. I appointed you to go on and bear fruit that shall last…” (John 15, 16)

“Forgetting what is behind me, and reaching out for that which lies ahead, I press towards the goal to win the prize which is God’s call to the life above, in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3, 13-14).

*
Tonight, Lord, I am alone.
Little by little the sounds died down in the church.
The people went away,
And I came home,
Alone.

I passed people who were returning from a walk.
I went by the movie house that was disgorging its crowd.
I skirted cafe terraces where tired strollers were trying to prolong the pleasure
of a Sunday holiday.
I bumped into youngsters playing on the sidewalk,
Youngsters, Lord,
Other people’s youngsters, who will never be my own.

Here I am, Lord,
Alone.
The silence troubles me,
The solitude oppresses me.

. . . . . . . . . .

Lord, I’m thirty-five years old,
A body made like others,
Arms ready for work,
A heart meant for love,
But I’ve given you all.
It’s true, of course, that you needed it.
I’ve given you all, but it’s hard, Lord.
It’s hard to give one’s body; it would like to give itself to others.
It’s hard to love everyone and to claim no one.
It’s hard to shake a hand and not want to retain it.
It’s hard to inspire affection, only to give it to you.
It’s hard to be nothing to oneself in order to be everything to others.
It’s hard to be like others, among others, and to be other.
It’s hard always to give without trying to receive.
It’s hard to seek out others and to be, oneself, unsought.
It’s hard to suffer from the sins of others, and yet be obliged to hear and bear them.
It’s hard to be told secrets, and be unable to share them.
It’s hard to carry others and never, even for a moment, be carried.
It’s hard to sustain the feeble and never be able to lean on one who is strong.
It’s hard to be alone,
Alone before everyone,
Alone before the world,
Alone before suffering,
death,
sin.

*
Son, you are not alone,
I am with you;
I am you.
For I needed another human instrument to continue my Incarnation and my Redemption.
Out of all eternity, I chose you,
I need you.

I need your hands to continue to bless,
I need your lips to continue to speak,
I need your body to continue to suffer,
I need your hearts to continue to love,
I need you to continue to save.
Stay with me, son.

*
Here I am, Lord;
Here is my body,
Here is my heart,
Here is my soul.
Grant that I may be big enough to reach the world,
Strong enugh to carry it,
Pure enough to embrace it without wanting to keep it.
Grant that I may be a meeting-place, but a temporary one,
A road that does not end in itself, because everything to be gathered there, everyting human, leads toward you.

Lord, tonight, while all is still and I feel sharply the sting of solitude,
While men devour my soul and I feel incapable of satisfying their hunger,
While the whole world presses on my shoulders with all its weight of misery and sin,
I repeat to you my “yes” — not in a burst of laughter, but slowly, clearly, humbly,
Alone, Lord, before you,
In the peace of the evening.

–Michel Quoist, Prayers (English translation of the 1963 French original, Avon Books, 1975, pp. 64-68) and used by yours truly at last weekend’s Diocesan Daughters of the King retreat

Imagine being adopted, with no understanding of your cultural or genetic background. You don’t know your heritage or what diseases you are genetically predisposed to. Most of us have some idea about the roots of our family tree, but little understanding of what those lower branches mean in terms of our predisposition to a host of diseases and ailments.

Now, a group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists from around the world have developed a computer algorithm that can quickly trace an individual’s genetic ancestry with only a small sample of their DNA. In fact, the program can trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background.

The multi-disciplinary approach, published in the September 2007 edition of the journal PLoS Genetics, allowed the research team to address this type of research in a novel way. Unlike previous computer programs that required prior knowledge of an individual’s ancestry and background, the new algorithm looks for specific DNA markers known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced snips), and needs nothing more than a DNA sample in the form of a simple cheek swab.

Read it all.

Divorce and abortion are offences in the sight of God, Pope Benedict XVI charged Saturday, while calling on the Catholic Church to be merciful to those who had experienced such events.
“The ethical judgement of the Church on divorce and abortion is clear and well-known,” he told participants in a Catholic congress on marriage and the family.

“They are serious offences… which violate human dignity, inflict deep injustice on human and social relations and offend God himself, guarantor of conjugal peace and origin of life,” he said.

Read it all.

When Benedict XVI travels to the United States this month, ecumenical and interreligious relations are a priority on his agenda, according to an aide of the nation’s conference of bishops.

Father James Massa, executive director of the U.S episcopal conference’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, said this is because “the Pope is convinced that there will be no peace in the world until there is peace among the religions. That is why he comes to the table of dialogue here in the U.S. and in Rome, with hope and abiding conviction.”

Father Massa told ZENIT that this Holy Father “brings an amazing theological depth to ecumenical and interreligious relations.”

The Pontiff’s schedule during his five-day U.S. trip includes four stops dedicated to building these relationships. On April 17, the Pope will meet with 200 interfaith leaders at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C.

At the conclusion of that meeting, he will meet with religious representatives of the Jewish community to present to them his greetings for the feast of Passover, which begins for the Jewish people on April 19.

Read it all.

Teenagers should be given the right to medically assisted suicide and the parents of terminally ill younger children should be able to choose euthanasia under proposals from members of Belgium’s coalition government.

The plans to extend rules allowing doctors to perform euthanasia on terminally ill people suffering “constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain” comes amid heated Belgian debate on the issue.

Under existing Belgian laws, in place since 2002, patients, other than newborn babies, must be over 18 to qualify for assisted suicide, a situation that Bart Tommelein, leader of Belgium Liberals, wants changed.

Read it all.

I quote one response from the former Suffragan Bishop of South Carolina and now Assistant bishop of the Dominican Episcopal Church, William Skilton:

I have found it increasingly difficult to even enter into meaningful conversation regarding immigration issues that we face as a nation.

Where talk used to be of helping, teaching, sharing and even feeding, this has been replaced by a clamor of voices calling for apprehending, jailing and deporting those “strangers and aliens in our midst.” (New York Times colunnist) David Brooks, writing in The Post and Courier late last year, stated that “month by month, the ideas that once prevailed on the angry fringe enter the mainstream and turn into conventional wisdom.”

As the furor goes on and we seem to focus on how to deal with these fellow human beings, stories and statistics are used to brand them as possible terrorists, immorals, criminals and undeserving welfare recipients.

That many are illegally in the U.S. is true, but let us realize that most would not have ever been afforded the opportunity to receive a visa to come.

They are here seeking a better life for themselves and for their families, a life which would not be theirs had they not risked their lives to reach the “land of the free.”

It is interesting to note in the listing of those giving their lives for our country how many names just don’t sound like “us” Americans, but some would say, “Oh, no, that is different. …”

I think back in history and I am constantly reminded that my ancestors came seeking freedom and opportunity. They were welcomed, and we were blessed.

I deeply believe that Holy Scripture is painfully clear, that my call to love is a non-negotiable calling ”” one that I have embraced. I am not permitted the “luxury” of choosing what I like or don’t like; what I will obey and what I will not obey.

As a Christian, I am called to embrace the stranger and render radical hospitality to those who are most vulnerable, for we are fellow “sojourners in this land” (Exodus 23:9; Deuteronomy 24:17, 18).

I believe there is a reasonable solution, which will honor the dignity of the “least of these” while protecting our borders from unwarranted intrusion and the dangers that this might bring.

I believe the “faith community” needs to turn from its deafening silence, and stand and speak with a moral voice of reason, reconciliation and love.

The Rt. Rev. William J. Skilton

Read them all.

The Contributors are:

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University

Diane Purkiss, Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford

George Bernard, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton

Take the time to listen to it all.

“We are pleased with this initial victory today,” said Jim Oakes, vice chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia, which includes the 11 congregations. “We have maintained all along that the Episcopal Church and Diocese of Virginia had no legal right to our property because the Virginia Division Statute says that the majority of the church is entitled to its property when there is a division within the denomination.”

The law, passed in the mid-1800s, stemmed from doctrinal disputes in the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, Judge Bellows wrote.

The law has been little used since then, because the courts are reluctant to wade into religious disputes, said Carl W. Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.

But this case and one before the California Supreme Court regarding the property of three former Episcopal parishes there indicate a new willingness of some courts to review these matters, Mr. Tobias said.

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The demand for new homes in the Columbia region slowed significantly so far this year.

Builders in a six-county area received permits to build 676 homes and apartments in the first two months of the year, down 38 percent from a year ago, according to U.S. Census data.

Also, builders in Richland, Lexington and Kershaw counties saw a 33 percent drop to 1,082 single-family homes in the first three months of the year, according to the Home Builders Association of Greater Columbia.

“We were expecting a downturn. I don’t know if I was expecting that much,” association executive director Earl McLeod said.

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They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece ”” not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

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JOHN MCWHORTER, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute Center For Race and Ethnicity: Well, it depends on what you consider his legacy to be.

It definitely is for me, in terms of thinking about what needs to be done to alleviate the kinds of problems that Professor Charles just mentioned.

But what does worry me is that I think that, for a lot of people, King’s legacy is roughly that he led a bus boycott, that he went to jail in Birmingham, that he made a big speech in Washington, and he got shot. And, so, it’s all the dramatic things that sit in the memory the most, where it’s really, for me, the most interesting part of King’s legacy is the painstaking, grinding negotiations with the powers that be, or the powers that were, that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That stuff was really hard.

And it doesn’t make for good theater, that part of things. But those were the sorts of things that really did provide the kind of lives that we younger black people are leading. And what worries me is that I think some people see that wonderful speech at the March on Washington, or they think about King in jail, and there is an idea that what creates change is drama, and so that to complain, to talk about the things that are wrong in a fierce and articulate voice is, alone, a kind of activism, rather than getting back to the kinds of real grassroots kind of work on a national level that King was involved in.

And, so, my sense of King’s legacy, I think, is a little more mundane in terms of the sorts of things I imagine, which is him sitting with his lieutenants, and, you know, hashing things out with President Kennedy and the attorney general Robert Kennedy. That, to me, is what is amazing, because who else was going to do that at that time?

And notice that it’s hard to say that, on a national level, anybody is doing that sort of thing today.

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From the time Anglican pilgrims arrived in Jamestown, it’s as if America and the Episcopal Church have been soul mates ”“ for better or for worse.

Now come the country’s culture wars over sexuality, conservative versus liberal, change versus tradition. And the 2.4-million-member denomination that has given us more U.S. presidents than any other, along with its first-ever woman leader, is not being spared.

Nearly five years after a gay priest was elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, the fallout continues. One diocese has seceded from the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Dozens of congregations, including nine of the 50 churches in the San Diego diocese, also have broken apart.

“I think we live in an increasingly polarized society and these particular actions in the church echo that,” said Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who in 2006 was elected the presiding bishop ”“ chief spiritual leader ”“ of the U.S. church.

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