Stung by rising gasoline and food prices, Americans are finding creative ways to cut costs on routine items like groceries and clothing, forcing retailers, restaurants and manufacturers to decode the tastes of a suddenly thrifty public.

Spending data and interviews around the country show that middle- and working-class consumers are starting to switch from name brands to cheaper alternatives, to eat in instead of dining out and to fly at unusual hours to shave dollars off airfares.

Though seemingly small, the daily trade-offs they are making ”” more pasta and less red meat, more video rentals and fewer movie tickets ”” amount to an important shift in consumer behavior.

In Ohio, Holly Levitsky is replacing the Lucky Charms cereal in her kitchen with Millville Marshmallows and Stars, a less expensive store brand. In New Hampshire, George Goulet is no longer booking hotel rooms at the Hilton, favoring the lower-cost Hampton Inn. And in Michigan, Jennifer Olden is buying Gain laundry detergent instead of the full-price Tide.

Behind the belt-tightening ”” and brand-swapping ”” is the collision of several economic forces that are pinching people’s budgets or, at least, leaving them in lit-tle mood to splurge.

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THE Church of England’s youngest bishop assumed his new role when he was consecrated in York Minster.

The Right Rev Mark Davies has been appointed to the landmark post at the age of just 45 and became the new Suffragan, or assistant, Bishop of Middleton in the Diocese of Manchester during a ceremony overseen by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu.

Dr Sentamu also consecrated his own chaplain, the Right Rev Robert Paterson, who now becomes the new Bishop of Sodor and Man based on the Isle of Man. He succeeds the Right Rev Graeme Knowles.

A third clergyman, the Right Rev Chris Edmondson, was consecrated during the ceremony on Friday as the new Suffragan Bishop of Bolton, succeeding the Right Rev David Gillett.

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For his part, Packer described the blessings that many of Canada’s Anglican bishops’ are willing to give to active gays and lesbians, as well as the bishops’ openness to diverse ways of interpreting the Bible, as “persistent unrepentant doctrinal disorder.”

The author of the 1973 book, Knowing God, which alone has sold more than three million copies, said it is “utterly tragic” that some conservative Anglicans felt they had no option but to leave the Anglican Church of Canada.

Asking himself why God would allow “poisonous liberalism” and its views of God and homosexuality to grow and flourish in Europe and North America, Packer said it must be so the West would eventually realize how dangerous such ideas are — “so the poison will be fully squeezed out.”

Packer maintained it is top leaders of the Anglican Church of Canada, not he and more than 2,000 fellow conservatives in the Anglican Network in Canada, who have changed their interpretation of Christianity since he moved from Britain to Canada more than 29 years ago to teach at Vancouver’s Regent College.

“I’m simply being an old-fashioned mainstream Anglican,” Packer said.

The Bible teaches, he said, that people who feel erotic attractions to people of the same gender “are called by God to remain chaste,” avoiding sexual relationships.

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The God Gap may turning against Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries.

Buried within the exit polls from Pennsylvania are some signs that Obama’s appeal may worsening with culturally conservative regular churchgoers.

That may not be too surprising given the controversies Obama encountered in the six-week run-up to the primary. Despite Obama’s later explanations, his comments at a San Francisco fundraiser that “bitter” small-town Americans “cling to” guns and religion are hardly likely to have endeared him to small-town churchgoers.

That followed circulation of a well-publicized video highlights reel of his former pastor’s incendiary sermons, including one in which the Rev. Jeremiah Wright declares blacks should sing “God Damn America” instead of “God Bless America.” Not only Wright’s comments but the African-style garb that the pastor is shown wearing every time the video clip is rerun no doubt feeds a suspicion that Obama’s outlook on life is far removed from the moral certitudes of religious traditionalists.

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As Kevin Warwick gently squeezed his hand into a fist one day in 2002, a robotic hand came to life 3,400 miles away and mimicked the gesture. The University of Reading cybernetics professor had successfully wired the nerves of his forearm to a computer in New York City’s Columbia University and networked them to a robotic system back in his Reading, England, lab. “My body was effectively extended over the Internet,” Warwick says.

It’s a far cry from his vision of transforming humanity into a race of half-machine cyborgs able to commune with the digital world””there is no spoon, Neo””but such an evolution is necessary, says 54-year-old Warwick. Those who don’t avail themselves of subcutaneous microchips and other implanted technology, he predicts, will be at a serious disadvantage in tomorrow’s world, because they won’t be able to communicate with the “superintelligent machines” sure to be occupying the highest rungs of society, as he explains in a 2003 documentary, Building Gods, which is circulating online.

Something of a self-promoter, Warwick, or “Captain Cyborg” as a U.K. newspaper once dubbed him, has appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and other shows on the TV talk circuit to tout his work. In his 2004 book, I, Cyborg, he describes his research as “the extraordinary story of my adventure as the first human entering into a cyber world.”

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It must be clear that development is not only about the growth of the economy in general; it is about the development of the human being with his/her capabilities and relationships with intermediary social groups (family, social, political, cultural groups etc.) within which he/she lives. This requires a change in perspective that recognises peoples as united by a common factor, their humanity being created with the imprint of the common God creator. Only by starting from this premise can we aim, within pluralist institutions, toward the achievement of the common good, which needs to be the primary objective of any society. The common good is neither an abstract goal nor a simple list of targets. It is simply the realisation of the primary needs of the person: the need of truth, love, and justice. These needs cannot be completely fulfilled but, by nature, the human being tends to support the tension of aiming toward their fulfilment.

As the world’s bishops stated in the Vatican II Council document, “Gaudium et Spes”: “Because of the increasingly close interdependence which is gradually extending to the entire world, we are today witnessing an extension of the role of the common good, which is the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily. The resulting rights and obligations are consequently the concern of the entire human race. Every group must take into account the needs and legitimate aspirations of every other group, and even those of the human family as a whole” (n. 26).

This is the essence of development, and it is something that concerns every person, rich and poor, because every man is always in development. In fact, development is not a target to reach; it is rather a path to follow: we can say that there is true development when persons are put in a position to follow their most important desires and needs. Following this premise, it is clear that the tension toward the common good finds its fulfilment within the relationships that human beings establish among each other. The common good, therefore, is fulfilled within belonging, within a people. As stated by His Holiness John Paul II: “Man, in keeping with the openness of his spirit within and also with the many diverse needs of his body and his existence in time, writes this personal history of his through numerous bonds, contacts, situations, and social structures linking him with other men, beginning to do so from the first moment of his existence on earth, from the moment of his conception and birth” (Redemptor Hominis, n. 14).

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The Holy See is asking for measures to keep the production of biofuels from bringing about increased food prices to the point of threatening starvation in many countries.

Monsignor Renato Volante, the permanent observer of the Holy See at the Rome-based U.N. Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO), participated in the FAO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean, which was held in Brasilia, Brazil, April 17-18.

Monsignor Volante proposed that the production of biofuels should not bring about a decrease in the production of agricultural products destined for the food market.

Biofuels are energy sources produced from a variety of different plants or plant products. Many developed countries have begun subsidizing the production of biofuels, which has resulted in decreased production of typical plant foods.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon encouraged today a coordinated effort to face the steeply rising price of food, which he said has developed into a “real global crisis.” He said some 100 million of the world’s poor now need aid to be able to buy food. Riots have broken out in some countries, such as Haiti, over the increased prices.

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Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, said in excerpts from an interview released on Thursday that people airing snippets of his fiery sermons were trying to paint him as “some sort of fanatic.”

Wright, who has kept a low profile since repeated televised airings last month of segments of his sermons, is semi-retired from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a church the Democratic presidential candidate joined 20 years ago.

In grainy video of sermons he delivered years ago, Wright is seen calling the September 11 attacks retribution for U.S. policies and condemning America’s failings on race.

At one point he shouts to his congregation, “God Bless America? No, God damn America.”

“The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly,” he told PBS’ Bill Moyers in the interview to be broadcast on Friday.

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JH: What is the effect of this being, going on, continuing unchecked?

ABC: Well certainly among the poorest the effect is the erosion of family life, the erosion of self confidence. There is still a stigma about debt even though it is taken for granted in so many quarters but the stigma means people don’t want to talk about it, they don’t necessarily want to go and get the best advice about it and for young people particularly it does become crippling, especially for children.

JH: And do you think that, putting aside that aspect of it, do you think when we see people becoming in the words of another former government minister, ‘filthy rich’, our attitude is, ‘I want a bit of that myself’ and therefore a good thing for society which is what America has until very recently appeared to believe, or do you think the opposite effect?

ABC: I think it is a bit of both isn’t it. I think there’s a degree of envy and cynicism that’s bred by disproportion and that leads people to feel even more alienated from the rest of society ”“ that the gulf is even greater between themselves, between people who can’t manage there own affairs – can’t take control of their own affairs/ circumstances – and these others. So there may be an element of I’d like some of that but here is also an element of what kind of society is this? Why should I trust this system when it rewards some people so disproportionately in a way that doesn’t connect at all where I am?

JH: So you are simply saying that the government and the politicians are more relaxed about that than you are and that you are taking…?

ABC: They seem to be. I wouldn’t mind if they were a little more worried.

JH: And in what sense? Exemplified how?

ABC: I don’t want to go into the details of how regulation of high salaries might be achieved because my primary concern today is simply with the poorest end of the spectrum where I think more can be done, more rapidly and in a more focused way.

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Painful but important viewing.

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The Rev. Canon William Gandenberger, canon to the ordinary for the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, said the legal filing by representatives from the newly constituted Episcopal diocese was not unexpected.

“I have been in contact with our chancellor and we are prepared to respond,” Canon Gandenberger said. “We have numerous options and we are looking at all of them carefully.” No decision has been made at this time, he added, noting that the diocese is currently preoccupied with preparations to welcome Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables. As primate of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, Bishop Venables claims primatial oversight of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin and has welcomed Bishop Schofield as a full member of that province’s House of Bishops.

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The government of Iran continues to supply weapons and other support to extremists in Iraq, despite repeated promises to the contrary, and is increasingly complicit in the death of U.S. soldiers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday in a stark new assessment of Iranian influence.

The chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, said he was “extremely concerned” about “the increasingly lethal and malign influence” by the government of Iran and the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, a special force that aids and encourages Islamic militants around the world. The Quds Forces in Iran were created during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and report directly to the leadership of Iran’s theocratic government.

Pentagon concerns about Iranian influence in neighboring Iraq is nothing new, but the content and tone of Mullen’s remarks left the impression that far from abating, the worries about Iran have intensified in recent months.

“The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago,” Mullen said. “It’s plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way.”

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There are at least two reasons why the situation of poetry matters to the entire intellectual community. The first involves the role of language in a free society. Poetry is the art of using words charged with their utmost meaning. A society whose intellectual leaders lose the skill to shape, appreciate, and understand the power of language will become the slaves of those who retain it–be they politicians, preachers, copywriters, or newscasters. The public responsibility of poetry has been pointed out repeatedly by modern writers. Even the archsymbolist Stephane Mallarme praised the poet’s central mission to “purify the words of the tribe.” And Ezra Pound warned that

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clean. It doesn’t matter whether a good writer wants to be useful, or whether the bad writer wants to do harm. . . .
If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

Or, as George Orwell wrote after the Second World War, “One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language. . . .” Poetry is not the entire solution to keeping the nation’s language clear and honest, but one is hard pressed to imagine a country’s citizens improving the health of its language while abandoning poetry.
The second reason why the situation of poetry matters to all intellectuals is that poetry is not alone among the arts in its marginal position. If the audience for poetry has declined into a subculture of specialists, so too have the audiences for most contemporary art forms, from serious drama to jazz. The unprecedented fragmentation of American high culture during the past half century has left most arts in isolation from one another as well as from the general audience. Contemporary classical music scarcely exists as a living art outside university departments and conservatories. Jazz, which once commanded a broad popular audience, has become the semi-private domain of aficionados and musicians. (Today even influential jazz innovators cannot find places to perform in many metropolitan centers–and for an improvisatory art the inability to perform is a crippling liability.) Much serious drama is now confined to the margins of American theater, where it is seen only by actors, aspiring actors, playwrights, and a few diehard fans. Only the visual arts, perhaps because of their financial glamour and upper-class support, have largely escaped the decline in public attention.

THE most serious question for the future of American culture is whether the arts will continue to exist in isolation and decline into subsidized academic specialties or whether some possibility of rapprochement with the educated public remains.

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In a recent speech Tom Doyle described the Catholic church in the United States as ‘a swamp of toxic waste’, and he accused the US bishops of running ‘a self-serving public relations campaign by which they continue to try to flip the whole mess around, make themselves look like victims and demonise anyone who has ever challenged their collective stupidity, cruelty and total lack of compassion.’

Tom Doyle, welcome to the program. Do these repeated apologies by Pope Benedict and his decision to meet with some of the victims, represent a real breakthrough moment in the clerical abuse crisis?

Tom Doyle: I think it is a breakthrough moment in a number of ways. I think it’s a breakthrough moment because he did more, said more, and communicated more truly human concern in six days that Pope John Paul II did in 25 years with regard to the issue of sexual abuse of clergy, and you have to remember that although this has been front and centre in people’s concerns and in the media since 2002, the public awareness of the issue has been going on since at least 1984, starting in the United States.

Stephen Crittenden: You even were involved at that time.

Tom Doyle: I was very much involved.

Stephen Crittenden: Warning the Vatican.

Tom Doyle: Yes. And the Bishops Conference in the United States. And they knew it. And there were several major explosions since then that received a tremendous amount of media coverage over here, but they would always subside, and we’d lose the momentum somehow or other. Boston January 2002, the momentum has not stopped.

Stephen Crittenden: Was this apology something that also had to happen? Because if it hadn’t happened, it would have cast a pall over the entire trip.

Tom Doyle: I think that’s a good observation and I totally agree. There was a lot of skepticism when the trip was announced months ago, would he say anything about this issue? Would he do anything about this issue? Then even up to just before the trip started, the feeling was that he would probably mention it at least once, possibly once or twice. But there was skepticism that anything concrete would happen.

Stephen Crittenden: I must say I was very surprised that he actually met with victims. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Tom Doyle: I was very surprised myself.

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IT IS exceptionalism week in the world of American think-tanks. No fewer than three of them””the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and the Manhattan Institute in New York City””have arranged discussions of a fat new book on the subject, “Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation”, edited by Peter Schuck and James Q. Wilson. But, as Hegel feared, do the thinkers understand a concept just as it stops being relevant? Does the owl of Minerva really fly only at dusk?

All countries are exceptional. But America likes to think of itself as exceptionally exceptional, different from other advanced industrial countries not just in its social arrangements but also in its underlying values. America has a smaller state than other comparable countries and a more unequal distribution of wealth. It is also more strongly committed to what Margaret Thatcher once called “Victorian values”””individualism, voluntarism, patriotism.

American exceptionalism has been increasing ever since the rise of the modern conservative movement from the late 1960s onwards. The current Bush administration, with its commitment to conservative values at home and assertiveness abroad, is the most exceptional administration in recent years. But the book raises a new question: is a new cycle, dominated by a rejection of conservatism and a convergence with West European norms, about to dawn?

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