Watch it all and note that women are hit particularly hard. A watershed, says one speaker. Worthy of careful thought.

A South American Anglican archbishop who adamantly opposes homosexual relationships is coming to Vancouver on Friday despite being told to stay away by Canada’s top Anglican.

Archbishop Gregory Venables, who claims to represent 15 breakaway Anglican congregations in Canada, will speak Friday at a gathering in Delta of the conservative Anglican Network in Canada.

Venables, who has been criticized as a rogue archbishop by Anglican colleagues in South America and elsewhere, is recruiting Anglican congregations in Canada and the U.S. that have opposed the ordination of homosexuals and the church blessing of their relationships.

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The Archbishop of Wales has denounced the pace of the devolution of law-making authority from Westminster to the Welsh Assembly as “tortuous and convoluted,” telling the BBC it would be “immoral” for the Assembly not to be granted further legal powers soon.

Archbishop Barry Morgan’s comments to the Good Evening Wales programme followed a ceremony at Windsor Castle where the Queen approved the transfer of new powers to the Welsh Assembly. The authority to enact laws assisting those with special learning needs was approved on April 9 and is the first of 10 orders ranging from mental health services to fire safety slated for devolution under the 2006 Government of Wales Act.

Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan said the ceremony marked “a little bit of Welsh history” as for “the first time in 500 years the people of Wales are now able to create laws to help improve their day-to-day lives.”

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Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.

Their pleas did not find a sympathetic audience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where regulators said high prices are mostly the result of soaring world demand for grains combined with high fuel prices and drought-induced shortages in many countries.

The regulatory clash came amid evidence that a rash of headlines in recent weeks about food riots around the world has prompted some in the United States to stock up on staples.

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The number of California homes lost to foreclosure in the first quarter surged 327% from year-ago levels — reaching an average of more than 500 foreclosures per day — DataQuick said in a report, warning that the widening foreclosure problem could “spread beyond the current categories of dicey mortgages, and into mainstream home loans.”

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WELSH vicars today called for couples to be able to get married in the Anglican church of their choice in Wales.

Yesterday it was announced that a Parliamentary committee is expected to give the go-ahead for engaged couples to get married anywhere in England, where they have lived for six months, or where their parents or grandparents were married.

But because the Church in Wales is disestablished, the marriage rules will not be relaxed in Wales.

As a result, couples in Wales are denied the same degree of matrimonial choice as those living a few miles over the border.

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Hillary Rodham Clinton survived yet another day.

There will be little time for celebration, though. Time and money are running out.

Her win Tuesday in the large and important swing state of Pennsylvania was hard-fought. Barack Obama’s well-funded effort to shut her down did not reach its ultimate goal of a surprise upset.

But Clinton now faces a dwindling number of contests, and she’s at a steep financial disadvantage.

Obama already is spending twice as much on ads airing in North Carolina and Indiana, the two states that come up next with primaries on May 6. He’s even advertising in Oregon, a state that he should win, where voting by mail begins in the first week of May.

He can afford to shower every contest with campaign dollars from the $42 million he had at the beginning of April, while Clinton is in debt. She’ll have to either persuade donors to give her more money to sustain her long-shot bid or float herself another multimillion- dollar loan.

In Pennsylvania, Clinton won with the support of whites, women and older voters, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks.

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Something mysterious (well, not really—but read on) has happened with regard to the corporate entity recognized under California law as the religious corporation sole associated with the Diocese of San Joaquin. Under California law, a “corporation sole” is a special kind of corporation—with just one shareholder, one officer and one director, who are all one and the same person—that can be formed by “a bishop . . . of any religious denomination, society, or church, for the purpose of administering and managing the affairs, property, and temporalities thereof.” (Calif. Corp. Code section 10002.)

There has been a corporation sole for the Diocese of San Joaquin in California ever since 1911. Each time a new bishop is elected, there is an amendment to the articles filed by the new bishop, naming him as the successor to the position. When the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield was elected Bishop in 1988, the articles were amended (albeit in 1992); and preceding the first convention vote in December 2006 to change the Diocesan Constitution, the articles of the corporation sole were amended in March 2006 to change the method of electing his successor. (That amendment caused four other Episcopal Bishops in California to issue an ultimatum to Bishop Schofield that they would file a presentment against him unless he rescinded the changes—the documents may be seen here.) On January 22, 2008, Bishop Schofield filed another amendment to the articles, changing the name of the corporation from “The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin, a Corporation Sole” to “The Anglican Bishop of San Joaquin, a Corporation Sole.”

Now, quietly and without any fanfare, the Secretary of State’s Web site lists the corporation again under a new name as of April 8, 2008: the name has changed back to “The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin, a Corporation Sole”. Further research with this filing shows that it lists the sole member of the corporation as the Rt. Rev. Jerry A. Lamb, in Stockton, California, and that its agent for service of process is attorney Michael Glass of San Rafael, California.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Drivers were facing a £20 limit on fuel spending yesterday as panic buying intensified at Scotland’s filling stations.

Despite calls to motorists not to drain supplies, at least one station had to resort to rationing petrol and diesel.

Other filling station managers reported drivers losing their tempers in long queues.

Chris Furphy imposed at £20 maximum purchase for fuel at his Jet station in Dalmuir, Clydebank, in a bid to conserve stocks.

The move infuriated some of his customers.

Chris said: “It has been going mad in here all day, and the staff have been getting a lot of abuse.

“One woman stuck in £60, despite signs at every pump saying there was a £20 limit.

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The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll charts Clinton’s decline from a high point just after her victory in New Hampshire to a new low point this spring. In that time, her favorable rating underwent a 40-point swing among independents. In mid-January, 59 percent of independents said they had a favorable impression of her, compared to 39 percent unfavorable. Last week, it was the reverse: 39 percent favorable and 58 percent unfavorable.

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Over and over again…[Benedict] has made it clear that the marriage and family debate is central — not peripheral — to understanding the human person, and defending our human dignity.

For example, when receiving the credentials of the new U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his appreciation for America’s recognition of the important of a dialogue of faith and faiths in the public square and linked this to respect not only for religious freedom but for marriage as the union of husband and wife:

I cannot fail to note with gratitude the importance which the United States has attributed to interreligious and intercultural dialogue as a positive force for peacemaking. . . The American people’s historic appreciation of the role of religion in shaping public discourse and in shedding light on the inherent moral dimension of social issues-a role at times contested in the name of a straitened understanding of political life and public discourse-is reflected in the efforts of so many of your fellow-citizens and government leaders to ensure legal protection for God’s gift of life from conception to natural death, and the safeguarding of the institution of marriage, acknowledged as a stable union between a man and a woman, and that of the family.

Pope Benedict devoted about half of his message for the January 1 World Day of Peace to the significance of marriage in developing a culture of peace:

Consequently, whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace. This point merits special reflection: everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.

Marriage essential to world peace? This may strike American ears as an oddity…

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Check it out.

Clergy in six Lower Mainland Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) churches… denied charges they have abandoned their ministry.

In February, Bishop Michael Ingham of the Anglican Church of Canada Diocese of New Westminster issued a “Notice of Presumption of Abandonment of the Exercise of the Ministry” to nine Anglican priests and two ordained deacons. These priests and deacons – including world renowned theologian, the Rev Dr J I Packer – all serve in churches where parishioners had voted to join the Anglican Network in Canada.

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Stephen Kent: Well I too was pleasantly surprised by the book, especially given all the sometimes rocky pre-publication publicity it received. What struck me most about the book actually Morton’s discussion about the behind-the-scenes negotiations that went on involving Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Certainly a lot of us who observe Scientology wondered whether Kidman caused a problem for Scientology, because in part, her father is a psychologist, and also in part she never really seemed to be that committed. What I did not realise however was the extent to which the organisation apparently involved itself in that relationship.

Stephen Crittenden: They were there at the beginning, helping to set the marriage up. They were there when the children were being adopted, and they were there at the end when the marriage was falling apart.

Stephen Kent: It’s a very good observation. And it’s the case that many people take on the veneer of a partner’s marriage just for practical purposes and don’t internalise that particular faith, and that seems to be the pattern that Nicole Kidman followed. But of course her relationship with her parents, particularly her father, was going to be an ongoing problem. Scientology’s antipathy towards the mental health profession, psychiatry, but also psychology, is long-standing and well-known.

Stephen Crittenden: And what about Andrew Morton’s statement that Tom Cruise is the No.2 figure in Scientology; was that news to you?

Stephen Kent: I hadn’t thought of it in the way that Andrew Morton framed it, and his framing was something along the lines that Tom Cruise is the No.2 person. Now certainly in an organisational sense, that claim is just not true, but it may be true in the context of the prestige that Tom Cruise has for other Scientologists, and from that standpoint Morton’s statement made a great deal of sense.

Stephen Crittenden: A couple of other things that struck me in Andrew Morton’s book: one is that Tom Cruise appears to have gone through the same step-by-step initiation process that everyone else in Scientology goes through.

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Consider what $20 will buy at your local grocery store.

Now consider that for the same $20 you could provide 100 meals to people living in an impoverished country.

Grace Episcopal Church is once again teaming up with Stop Hunger Now to provide 50,000 meals to people in need.

SHN is a nonprofit, international relief organization committed to ending hunger worldwide. The organization provides direct emergency food and other life-saving aid in crisis areas. SHN is headquartered in Raleigh and has provided more than $100 million of aid to more than 55 countries. Grace Episcopal first partnered with SHN in 2006.

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While many 18- and 19-year-olds await word from colleges, one of their peers has been accepted to a university ”” as a professor. Just days before her 19th birthday, Alia Sabur was hired to teach cell science at Konkuk University in South Korea.

Listen to it all from NPR.

Leaving aside the obvious problems with such a claim, let us, for the sake of discussion, simply grant it. One would think that–simply for the sake of appearances, to say nothing of legal strategy–it would then be in 815’s best interests to establish as much continuity as possible between the “new” DSJ–i.e. the one configured at the Lodi convention of March 29 of this year–and the “old” DSJ, that is, the one that was spun off as a Missionary District from the Diocese of California 97 years ago. One would think that it would be in the best interest of the Presiding Bishop and her counsel to be able to credibly say, “Several individuals have left, but the diocese remains. Look: We have retained eleven congregations, including the three largest ones, representing over half of the average Sunday attendance of the diocese. We have retained the most senior clergy, and six of the eight members of the Standing Committee, who have assured us that once Bishop Schofield resigns or is lawfully deposed, they will step in and perform their canonical duty. The Diocese of San Joaquin is still vital, diverse, and financially viable without any outside help.”

The ability to say all of this was within 815’s grasp. But, for reasons that I could only speculate about, they looked a Public Relations gift horse in the mouth and sent it packing. They rejected continuity, and chose instead to confect a new DSJ out of whole cloth, with only a little decorative embroidery from had come before. The fact that there is not the shred of a canonical basis for doing what they have done seems to count for nothing; what’s new is new and what’s done is done. The rule of law has been thrown under the bus of expediency.

The irony in all of this, and the actual point of this post, is that, in rejecting the path of maximum continuity, maximum numerical strength, and maximum credibility in the eyes a watching Anglican world, 815 has undercut its own Prime Directive than “only individuals can leave.” By their actions in electing to start over from scratch, they have tacitly admitted that the Diocese of San Joaquin did, in fact, leave the Episcopal Church. Why else would they have taken such pains to invent a new one–a new one that is every bit as ideologically monochrome as they accuse the old one of being, a new one that has retained not even a vestige of institutional or administrative continuity with the old one, and a new one that is wholly dependent on 815’s financial largesse and will, in effect, be a client diocese for as long as it is allowed to exist?

Apparently, dioceses can leave the Episcopal Church. One just did, and they made a new one to replace it.

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The Most Revd Gregory James Venables
Rioja 2995,1636 Olivos,
Province of Buenos Aires,
B1636DMG , Argentina

My Brother in Christ:

In this Easter Season I greet you in the name of our risen Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

It has come to my attention that you will be participating in the Anglican Network in Canada conference, “Compelled by Christ’s Love” taking place in Vancouver, B.C., April 25-26,2008. Your visit to Canada is without any reference to or consent from my office or that of the Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster. This represents a breach in what is considered normative in protocol among Primates and Bishops throughout the Communion.

I brought this matter before the House of Bishops meeting in Niagara Falls, Ont., last week. While we recognized that your motivation may be pastoral, there was a strong consensus that your visit at this time will further harm the strained relations between the Anglican Church of Canada and the Anglican Network in Canada.

The Bishops believe that we have made adequate and appropriate provision for the pastoral care and Episcopal support of all members of the Anglican Church of Canada, including those who find themselves in conscientious disagreement with the view of their Bishop and Synod over matters of human sexuality.

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But the one thing which will be remembered above all after the visit of this very different Pope to the United States is the simple word “sorry”. The Holy Father recognised that there was no way he could celebrate the essence of his own faith amongst new friends without first offering a deep and profound apology for previous wrongs- and particularly to the victims of terrible abuse by representatives of his own church in former times.

The protection of children, young people and vulnerable adults is now a massive priority for any organisation working with and for them. And whilst the putting in place of stringent measures to protect children in the future is admirable – we cannot forget those who have suffered terribly in the past and who still bear the scares of previous wrongdoing.

By saying sorry so openly and unequivocally, Pope Benedict’s confession and appeal for forgiveness has obviously rallied many Americans behind him and given millions of Christians a basic reminder of how true repentance can lead to a fresh start. There’s no room for complacency but there’s certainly an opportunity to live out perhaps the most famous prayer of all: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.

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Jay Leno recently made fun of a commercial for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in which she referred to playing pinochle as a child at her grandfather’s lake house in Pennsylvania.

“Pinochle?” Mr. Leno said quizzically to his late-night audience. “Well, that’ll help with the young voters, huh? I mean, come on. What kids aren’t playing pinochle now?”

The joke about the old card game captured a truth about this year’s Democratic primary: Mrs. Clinton has generally bypassed younger voters. And they have bypassed her, flocking instead to her rival, Senator Barack Obama. At the same time, she has attracted older voters, those who grew up in the pre-Internet era and might actually have played pinochle.

In a campaign where demographics seem to be destiny, one of the most striking factors is the segregation of voters by age. In state after state, older voters have formed a core constituency for Mrs. Clinton, who is 60, while younger voters have coalesced around Mr. Obama, who is 46. Age has been one of the most consistent indicators of how someone might vote ”” more than sex, more than income, more than education. Only race is a stronger predictor of voting than age, and then only if a voter is black, not if he or she is white.

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Gasoline prices surpassed $3.50 a gallon nationwide for the first time and oil jumped to a record on Monday as the long rise of energy prices showed little evidence of giving way to recession fears.

The national average price for regular gasoline is up 22 percent from a year earlier, according to AAA, the automobile club. Some analysts expect it to approach $4 a gallon this summer, when demand is at a peak. Diesel fuel prices reached a record $4.20 a gallon on Monday, on average, compared with $2.93 a gallon a year earlier.

In trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for next-month delivery settled Monday at $117.48 a barrel, up 79 cents, a new high. Oil prices have more than quadrupled in the last five years, and some analysts say that oil will reach $125 a barrel this year.

The latest rise in energy prices was prompted by reports that a Nigerian rebel group had blown up pipelines in the Niger Delta. An earlier attack on a pipeline, last week, forced Royal Dutch Shell to curtail exports by 169,000 barrels a day.

Because there is little spare capacity worldwide and supplies are tight, slight disruptions in oil production anywhere can push up prices.

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At least 30 people were shot over the weekend in Chicago. Six died. Authorities point to the usual culprits ”” gang warfare and easy access to guns. Police had just released statistics showing the city’s murder rate fell in March compared to a year earlier.

listen to it all from NPR.

(ENS) Episcopal Church House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson has asked diocesan General Convention deputations to find ways to comment to their bishops about the second draft of the proposed Anglican covenant.

Anderson made her request in an April 21 letter emailed to all deputies and first alternate deputies. The full text of the letter is below.

“We are told that the bishops at the Lambeth Conference will not be making a decision on the Anglican covenant, nor will they be ratifying any draft of the covenant,” Anderson wrote, reminding deputies that “the only body with authority to commit the Episcopal Church to an Anglican covenant is the General Convention in which bishops, priests and deacons and lay persons share authority.”

Thus, she wrote, “the input of the clergy and laity of the Episcopal Church is especially important as the Anglican Communion considers the development of a covenant.”

“In the Episcopal Church the belief that God speaks uniquely through bishops, laity, priests and deacons, enables our participatory structure and allows a fullness of revelation and insight that must not be lost in this important time of discernment,” Anderson wrote. “The joint work of the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops is the highest institutional expression of this belief. It is thus crucially important that our bishops go to Lambeth with a sense of where their General Convention deputations (and their diocese) are with respect to the current state of the Anglican covenant.”

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MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare.

“I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn’t believe it ”” this is the first time in my life I’ve wanted to try baking cakes and I can’t get any butter,” said the frustrated cook.

Japan’s acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.

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With baby boomers preparing to retire as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, a growing chorus of demographers and labor experts is raising concerns that workers in California and the nation lack the critical skills needed to replace them.

In particular, experts say, the immigrant workers needed to fill many of the boomer jobs lack the English-language skills and basic educational levels to do so. Many immigrants are ill-equipped to fill California’s fastest-growing positions, including computer software engineers, registered nurses and customer service representatives, a new study by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute found.

Immigrants — legal and illegal — already constitute almost half of the workers in Los Angeles County and are expected to account for nearly all of the growth in the nation’s working-age population by 2025 because native-born Americans are having fewer children. But the study, based largely on U.S. Census data, noted that 60% of the county’s immigrant workers struggle with English and one-third lack high school diplomas.

The looming mismatch in the skills employers need and those workers offer could jeopardize the future economic vitality of California and the nation, experts say. Los Angeles County, the largest immigrant metropolis with about 3.5 million foreign-born residents, is at the forefront of this demographic trend.

“The question is, are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty or near poverty wages?” asked Ernesto Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a leadership development organization. “Right now we’re headed toward becoming a Third World city. But we can change that.”

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Some journalists, he said, don’t think that religion matters. Thus, many editors get sweaty palms when it comes time to dedicate time, ink and money to the subject. Few seek out trained, experienced religion-beat reporters.

“The prevailing ethos among most of our editors is that the public square is the province of the secular and not a place for … religious messages to be seen or heard,” said [William] Burleigh in an interview for my chapter in “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion.” Oxford University Press will publish this book, produced by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life, late this fall.

“As a result,” Burleigh said, “lots of editors automatically think religion is out of place in a public newspaper. That’s what we are up against.”

The key is that this is a journalism problem. Any effort to improve coverage will fail if journalists are, as commentator Bill Moyers likes to put it, “tone deaf” to the music of religion in public life.

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To say she was a practicing Catholic would be an understatement. For years, Maria Aparecida Calazans was a mainstay at her Long Island church, joining dozens of fellow Brazilian immigrants for the Portuguese language Mass on Sunday mornings. She and her husband, Ramon, were married at the church. Their two daughters were baptized there, and every Friday she attended a prayer meeting that she had helped organize.

But six years ago, her husband went to a relative’s baptism at a Pentecostal church in a warehouse in Astoria, Queens, and came home smitten.

The couple made a deal. “We would go to the Pentecostal service on Thursdays and to Mass on Sundays, and then we would decide which one we felt most comfortable with,” Mrs. Calazans said.

Within 40 days, they had given up Roman Catholicism and embraced Pentecostalism, following the path of the estimated 1.3 million Latino Catholics who have joined Pentecostal congregations since immigrating to the United States, according to a survey released in February by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

“I feel whole here,” Mrs. Calazans, 42, said one recent Sunday in the Astoria sanctuary, the Portuguese Language Pentecostal Missionary Church, as she swayed to the pop-rock beat of a live gospel band. “This church is not a place we visit once a week. This church is where we hang around and we share our problems and we celebrate our successes, like we were family.”

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This is a difficult letter to write but I must let you know that I have submitted my resignation to the Metropolitan of Rupert’s Land effective September 1, 2008. I begin that day a new ministry as Rector of the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas.

I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the privilege of serving with you these past 17 years, first as Dean and, since 1993, as Bishop. Our sense of call to Texas is a positive one but at the same time I felt that it would be an opportunity for the Diocese to be overseen with a fresh pair of eyes, and to enjoy the excitement and momentum a change of bishop brings.

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Pope Benedict XVI ended his six-day trip to the United States with a mass for nearly 60,000 people Sunday at Yankee Stadium in New York. When the pope arrived last week, most American Catholics knew little about him. But the 81-year-old pontiff seems to have changed his image and America’s vision of the Roman Catholic Church.

Listen to it all.