The Church of England has been accused of censorship for shelving a controversial debate about Islam.

A meeting of the Church’s “parliament” was due to discuss whether clergy should be doing more to convert British Muslims to Christianity.

The sensitive issue was highlighted last week by a senior bishop who accused Church leaders of failing to reach out to other faiths, and warned that radical Islam is filling a gap in society caused by the decline of traditional Christian values.

But now the Church has put off the debate on recruiting Muslims until next February at the earliest and will discuss the promotion of churches as tourist attractions instead.

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The legal tangle between the dioceses of San Joaquin – one Episcopal, one Anglican – has brought an allegation of wrongdoing against the financial investment firm Merrill Lynch.

In its quest to regain control over millions of dollars’ worth of real estate and investments, the fractured Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin has amended a lawsuit it filed in April against its former bishop, John-David Schofield, to include as defendants Merrill Lynch and the nonprofit Anglican Diocese Holding Corp., which is newly formed by Schofield.

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The biofuel debate is electrifying the UN food price crisis summit in Rome, pitting nations against each other and risking transforming bioenergy – once hailed as the ultimate green fuel – into the villain of the piece, the root cause behind global food price spikes.

Biofuel uses the energy contained in organic matter – crops like sugarcane and corn – to produce ethanol, an alternative to fossil-based fuels like petrol.

But campaigners claim the heavily subsidised biofuel industry is fundamentally immoral, diverting land which should be producing food to fill human stomachs to produce fuel for car engines.

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Senator Barack Obama heads into the general election with obvious advantages: He is a Democratic candidate running in a sour atmosphere for Republicans, in a contest where voters are hungry for change and coming out of a campaign in which he filled arena after arena with supporters.

Yet while he would like to shift his attention fully to the onslaught already coming from Senator John McCain and the Republicans, Mr. Obama still has problems in his own party that may overshadow everything else until he addresses them: How to repair relations with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her supporters and whether to offer her a spot on the ticket.

Mrs. Clinton used her final hours of the long primary season to make clear that she would be open to being Mr. Obama’s running mate. If there was ever any hope in Democratic circles that she would let Mr. Obama off the hook with an evasion or a flat declaration of no interest, Mrs. Clinton dashed it on Tuesday.

Like her husband, Mrs. Clinton has a way of becoming the center of attention even when the spotlight is supposed to be trained elsewhere, a reality that Mr. Obama will no doubt continue to confront no matter how he proceeds. It was hardly a surprise that Mr. Obama lavished praise on Mrs. Clinton and her accomplishments in his remarks Tuesday night.

Until he deals with the Clinton question, it could be hard for Mr. Obama to move on to what he would like to achieve next….

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Almost from the beginning, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s superior name recognition and her sway with state party organizations convinced Barack Obama’s brain trust that a junior senator from Illinois was not going to be able to challenge the Clinton political machine head-on.

The insurgent strategy they devised instead was to virtually cede the most important battlegrounds of the Democratic nomination fight to Clinton, using precision targeting to minimize her delegate hauls, while going all out to crush her in states where Democratic candidates rarely ventured and causes that were often ignored.

The result may have lacked the glamour of a sweep, but tonight, with the delegates he picked up in Montana and South Dakota and a flood of superdelegate endorsements, Obama sealed one of the biggest upsets in U.S. political history and became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to wrest his party’s nomination from the candidate of the party establishment. The surprise was how well his strategy held up — and how little resistance it met.

“We kept waiting for the Clinton people to send people into the caucus states,” marveled Jon Carson, one of Obama’s top ground-game strategists.

“It’s the big mystery of the campaign,” said campaign manager David Plouffe, “because every delegate counts.”

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CBS 2 News has learned that Francis Cardinal George is temporarily removing Father Michael Pfleger from his position as pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church on Chicago’s South Side.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports the move comes after several days of deliberation and consultation by the Cardinal, who first learned about Pfleger’s racially charged comments about senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from the pulpit of Trinity Unity Church of Christ last Thursday night.

The Cardinal immediately contacted Pfleger who agreed not to refer to the presidential candidates by name, but as CBS 2 reported at the time, there remained the possibility of some further disciplinary action against Pfleger.

The Cardinal reportedly spoke to Pfleger again Tuesday morning.

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Not yet, aging researchers say, but medical breakthroughs to significantly extend life and ease the ailments of getting older are closer than many people think.

“The general public has no idea what’s coming,” said David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School professor who has made headlines with research into the health benefits of a substance found in red wine called resveratrol.

Speaking on a panel of aging experts, Sinclair had the boldest predictions. He said scientists can greatly increase longevity and improve health in lab animals like mice, and that drugs to benefit people are on the way.

“It’s not an if, but a when,” said Sinclair, who co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to pursue such drugs. The company, which is testing medicine in people with Type 2 diabetes, was recently bought for $720 million by GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s second-largest drug maker

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It is worth rehearsing Mr Obama’s emergence into the media spotlight two years ago, not so much for what it says about his undoubted political talents as for what it reveals about the US political system. Early in President Bush’s second term it was already clear, even to many of his supporters, that he had gambled boldly with his country’s prestige and self-belief, and lost. No whistle was required to start the race to find someone to rebuild those crucial components of democratic strength. By 2005 both main parties were canvassing dozens of potential candidates, noting experience and name recognition, but seeking more. In 2006, the national media started paying attention to the eloquent son of an African goatherd with a fervent following among Democrats in Illinois. His campaign to derail Hillary Clinton and become the first black president has since electrified the world.

Details of the delegate count no longer matter. This moment’s significance is its resounding proof of the triusm about America as a land of opportunity: Mr Obama’s opportunity to graduate from Harvard and take Washington by storm; the opportunity that the world’s most responsive democratic system gives its voters to be inspired by an unknown; the opportunity that outsiders now have to reassess the superpower that too many of them love to hate.

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Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois sealed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation’s first black president. Hillary Rodham Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential spot on his fall ticket without conceding her own defeat.

Obama’s victory set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a 46-year-old opponent of the Iraq War and a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war and staunch supporter of the current U.S. military mission.

Both men promptly exchanged criticism over the war in Iraq and sought to claim the mantle of change in a country plainly tired of the status quo.

The sweeping reforms of government we need won’t occur unless we change the political habits of Washington that have locked us in an endless cycle of bickering and stalemate. Washington is consumed by a hyper-partisanship that treats every serious issue as an opportunity to trade insults; impugn each other’s motives; and fight about the next election. This is the game Washington plays. Both parties play it, as do the special interests that support each side. The American people know it’s not on the level. For all the problems we face, what frustrates them most about Washington is they don’t think we’re capable of serving the public interest before our personal ambitions; that we fight for ourselves and not for them. They are sick of the politics of selfishness, stalemate and delay, and they have every right to be. We have to change not only government policies that have failed them, but the political culture that produced them.

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In our country, I have found that this cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because behind all the labels and false divisions and categories that define us; beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.

Read it all. Love him, be panicked by him or somewhere in between, but you just have to be thankful no matter what for public rhetoric like that these days–KSH.

What I didn’t say in the letter is that I have spoken with the head of our General Convention Deputation, Cookie Clark, and that with her I will be forming a diocesan study group on same-sex blessings. (Issues of the nature of Christian marriage, and the relationship of Church and State with regard to marriage, will be explored as well.) This group will not be expected to make a report to Diocesan Convention, or present me with a proposal for action. Rather, I see this group as doing the work we all need to be doing, in order to prepare for the debate which our Convention has asked to have happen next summer in Anaheim. I hope that, by doing that work, they will become a resource for all of us.

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People who fail to act over global warming are “as guilty” as Josef Fritzl – denying our children a future, a senior Anglican bishop has warned.

The Bishop of Stafford, the Rt Rev Gordon Mursell, said a refusal to face the truth about climate change was akin to locking up future generations and “throwing away the key”.

He insisted he was not accusing those who ignored the environment of being child abusers, but added that such shocking parallels were needed to make people aware of their responsibility.

Fritzl, 73, held his daughter Elisabeth captive for 24 years in a dungeon beneath the family home in Austria, repeatedly raping her and fathering seven children, one of whom died days after birth.

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(ENS) Bishop Edward Little of Northern Indiana and his Roman Catholic counterpart Bishop John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend jointly sponsored an event, titled “An Introduction to the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue,” on May 28 at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in South Bend.

“It was a joy for me to welcome Bishop John D’Arcy in what we hope will be the first of many helpful and positive discussions,” said Little.

During the evening event, which began with prayer in the church, both bishops underscored the need for closer ties and better understanding of one another’s churches. This was followed by a church supper and presentations by Mary Reath, chairman of the American Friends of the Anglican Centre in Rome, and Lawrence S. Cunningham, professor of theology at Notre Dame College.

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Seventeen months after she sat regally in her New York living room and calmly declared: “I’m in and I’m in to win,” Hillary Clinton stands on a stage in a stifling hot shed in South Dakota, coughing and spluttering, as her daughter, Chelsea, grabs the microphone from her hand to take over the show.

“A long campaign,” the former First Lady chokes out between sips of water. Her husband, red-faced and exhausted – and having just apologised for another angry outburst in front of reporters – looks on wistfully at the final rally of his wife’s presidential bid, an endeavour that has been transformed from an inevitable juggernaut into a costly train wreck.

It was an extraordinary moment, exactly five months after the first contest in Iowa, to see the former First Family in the dying moments of the longest primary campaign in history, a gruelling journey across America that was meant to end in a Clinton restoration and has instead bought a very different inevitability: defeat at the hands of Barack Obama.

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Stonington police have arrested the pastor of an Episcopal church accusing him of hosting a graduation party that resulted in two girls getting sick on alcohol.

The Rev. Mark Robinson of Calvary Episcopal Church was arrested Monday on charges stemming from a party at his home Sunday night.

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Speaking at a “unity service” June 1 at St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago, Father Michael Pfleger said his remarks the week before at Trinity United Church of Christ were about racism, not politics.

“All my life, I have had to deal with the reality of racism,” the St. Sabina pastor said in a statement to the media before his homily. “I have committed myself to tearing down the walls that divide us wherever they stand.”

He said the days following the dissemination of the YouTube clip in which he mocked Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York were “the most painful days of my life, even more so than the death of Jarvis, my foster son.”

Jarvis was gunned down in gang crossfire not far from St. Sabina in 1998.

“This was a new level, when the world is meeting you for the first time in a minute-and-a-half YouTube clip,” he said.

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From the Bishop of Western Kansas:

A very interesting and disturbing phenomenon has occurred due to a reinterpretation of the Canons of the Episcopal Church. The decision was made to use a Canon formed to ease the transition for a priest to leave the Anglican Church (of which The Episcopal Church is a part) and go to another Apostolic faith community without trial or expenses, non-necessary paperwork and meetings, which a regular renunciation would have required.

A good Canon constructed to work as Christians together in one faith: when spiritual disciplines change and new callings and discernment lead us apart. But now that same Canon has been reinterpreted to mean that a bishop may depose a priest when they disagree or when that clergyperson sees that they can no longer remain in the Episcopal Church, but she/he may be called to another Anglican entity (Province, Church, Ministry) which shares, supposedly, the same faith and Holy Orders.

It has been used nearly 300 times in the past six years. The words have been reinterpreted to speak to a Bishop and his/her clergy instead of a Holy Order within the whole of the Anglican Communion. The interpretation now leans to saying that people are ordained to this Church (TEC) and not to the worldwide Communion.

This has been extended to bishops for the first time and now all pretence of investigation, trial, evidence and Anglican identity can be ignored to solve problems that should be dealt with pastorally.

In fact, some few bishops have said they will never depose a clergyperson under these circumstances and have actually sat down with clergy and churches (which they refuse to litigate against) and have worked out pastoral solutions to very difficult and challenging issues. No one has been deposed.

Fiscal responsibilities have been satisfied, and even though all arrangements do not satisfy everyone, the Church does not sue its own and cast aside faithful, loving clergy who just can not belong to a Church which has so changed from when they took their vows, that some no longer recognize the Church where many first came to Christ.

I actually have a dear friend and priest who was deposed from his office. How many times did he meet with his Bishop? How many people advised him of the gravity of the situation? How many questions were asked of him as to why he was doing what he was doing and believed as he did? Absolutely none. He received a letter one day saying he could no longer be a clergyman in the Episcopal Church. No reason asked. No reason given.

When I was ordained a priest 28 years ago I could go to any Anglican Church in the world and as a recognized Anglican in Holy Orders of the Anglican Communion, I could be invited to celebrate, preach or otherwise minister with summary permission from ecclesiastical authorities. Today, I would stand in judgment of my beliefs and practices in many of the world’s Anglican Provinces. Why? Because the Episcopal Church no longer validates Anglican Orders but only those conferred by bishops within The Episcopal Church (also named TEC).

In years past, if I was given a call to another Province, I could go and serve, never being deposed whether I came back or not. What has changed? The Episcopal Church’s understanding seems to be that their orders only extend within the ecclesiastical package of what was known as ECUSA, PECUSA and ultimately the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and applies to TEC only.

The Episcopal Church has declared that it is indeed a church apart from the Anglican Communion. And this has not occurred because of sexuality, women’s ordination, differences in doctrine, nor polity.

It has happened because The Episcopal Church no longer recognizes the universality of Anglican Holy Orders and truly is no longer a member of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church most of us were ordained into. How far will the separation go? I fear it will eventually be complete and Episcopalians can throw away all the books which claim it is an Anglican Church because it will have divorced itself from its past and become something apart.

Maybe that is what the majority want. Then those who have trouble with the historic Creeds of the Church can cut those out of the liturgies and declare a universal salvation at no cost or sacrifice. And it will be worth what people are willing to give for it. As little as possible.

—(The Rt. Rev.) James M. Adams is the Bishop of Western Kansas

In an effort to block posthumous rebaptisms by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Catholic dioceses throughout the world have been directed by the Vatican not to give information in parish registers to the Mormons’ Genealogical Society of Utah.

An April 5 letter from the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, obtained by Catholic News Service in late April, asks episcopal conferences to direct all bishops to keep the Latter-day Saints from microfilming and digitizing information contained in those registers.

The order came in light of “grave reservations” expressed in a Jan. 29 letter from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the clergy congregation’s letter said.

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This story is not exactly an evergreen–more of a counter-cyclic perennial that blooms every time the economy slows down. At each turn, the news that tax revenues fall during recessions is greeted first with surprise, and then with indignation. This is perhaps why no one has expected the states to anticipate this bewildering state of affairs by building up their reserves to levels adequate to weather the really rather moderate financial storms that beset them during lean times.

Too, these articles rarely see fit to mention the other ways in which these wounds have been self-inflicted–the habit of making ever more lavish pension promises to the public sector unions, for example. Public pension funds are now officially a disaster. Politicians promised benefits without funding them. The befuddled fund managers seem to have mistaken beta for alpha, pouring their assets into riskier asset classes because they couldn’t make up the deficit on a safe, modest appreciation every year. If these were private companies, most of those managers and their bosses would be under indictment. The problem is about to get worse, of course, because when do pension funds need the most topping up? During downturns, when asset values decline.

Read it all and I found many of the comments worthwhile as well.

Update: In South Carolina the Governor and the state Government are aggressively fighting over exactly this problem:

Harry E. Bolick, who owns a Greenville-based consulting and engineering firm and who came to hear [Governor Mark] Sanford speak in Greer, said he was “amazed” when the governor said the Legislature proposed borrowing $100 million from Medicaid.

Sanford said he found it necessary to veto expanded health care for children under Medicaid because he doesn’t think it’s sustainable.

[State Senator John] Land said the $100 million wasn’t borrowed, but was unspent funds from last year.

Sanford said the state budget approved by the Legislature doesn’t include higher costs for gasoline and builds in a $20 million shortfall in education and an $8 million shortfall in the Corrections Department. Land said agencies can’t spend more than the Legislature allocates.

Land said expanding the health care for 70,000 poor children under Medicaid by $21 million would return federal monies fourfold. “That is just poor business to turn down that money,” he said.

Sanford said this is the last chance to “hold the line on spending.”

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Maybe [Rowan] Williams has given up. But one Anglican bishop, a brave soul who happens to have a Muslim name, has not. Pakistan-born Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, has made it clear that England has to fight for its cultural life and cannot yield to Islamic extremists who he says are taking advantage of the moral vacuum left by a nation that has largely abandoned Christianity in the wake of the 1960s cultural revolution.

As Archbishop Williams was busy surrendering his nation and his faith earlier this year, Nazir-Ali dared to publicly refer to the no-go areas in Muslim neighborhoods and blame them on government multicultural policies that create divisiveness. For that, this courageous clergyman has received death threats.

England would do well to listen to Nazir-Ali, tune out Williams and resist giving in to the impulses of opinion shapers who have opted for moral cowardice. If not, there will be no England, no Great Britain, left.

As it is, England has become a revolving door of migration, the rotation of which is putting a new face on an old nation. Britons are leaving in large numbers and are being replaced in larger numbers by outsiders.

While many of the foreigners relocating in Britain are skilled workers who are necessary to the health of the economy, the country is experiencing a brain drain, the worst in 50 years, the media say. The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development says no other nation is losing qualified people so fast.

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Members of the diocese of the Yukon, meeting in Whitehorse on May 31, failed to elect a new bishop, and Archbishop Terrence Buckle said he would postpone his retirement and remain in office.

Archbishop Buckle, who is 67, had said earlier this year that he would retire at the end of 2008. Canadian Anglican bishops generally retire before or at the age of 70.

Through seven rounds of voting, the 35 delegates assembled at Christ Church Cathedral were not able to give any of the five candidates the required simple majority in each of the two houses of clergy and laity as well as an overall two-thirds majority.

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The San Joaquin Diocese, which covers Lodi to Bakersfield and east to Mammoth Lakes and Ridgecrest, split this year over what Schofield perceives as a growing liberalization of the national Episcopal Church. Schofield strongly opposed the consecration of V. Eugene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire. Schofield maintains that Robinson’s appointment violates scripture.

That means there are two San Joaquin Dioceses, one that is Episcopal and one that is Anglican under the Southern Cone. The Episcopal San Joaquin Diocese reorganized on March 29 in Lodi and appointed Jerry Lamb as the new bishop.

The new Lodi congregation will be a “mission church” sponsored by St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Manteca. Riggsby said he has served at St. Mary’s and an Episcopal church in Copperopolis.

Riggsby said he has no intention of attracting conservatives away from St. John’s Episcopal Church.

“We’re not anti-Episcopal,” he said. “I’d like to work with them. I’m not going to lay my beliefs like a sledgehammer.”

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Americans are more downbeat about their personal financial situations now than they’ve been in decades, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, an attitude likely to dominate this year’s presidential and congressional elections.

A 55% majority of those surveyed say their families are worse off financially than they were a year ago ”” the highest number since Gallup first asked the question in 1976 and a jump of 11 percentage points since February.

Just 26% say they are better off.

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But Bishop John-David Schofield of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin also will be attending the conference. He has received his Lambeth study materials and has begun familiarizing himself with them, according to the Rev. Canon Bill Gandenberger, canon to the ordinary of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin.

“Bishop Schofield received and accepted his invitation to Lambeth shortly after the invitations were first issued,” Canon Gandenberger said. “Shortly thereafter he received the study material common to all the bishops.”

Canon Gandenberger said he had no knowledge of any further correspondence from either Archbishop Williams’ office or the Lambeth planning committee.

In a related development, the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin amended its civil complaint against the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin on June 2, adding Merrill Lynch and the “Anglican Diocese Holding Corporation” as defendants.

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Already, pressure is building in Chicagoland, like tectonic plates grinding up against each other ”” the weight of 99 years of being the second-banana Second City, this bustling, cultured and sometimes even beautiful city by the lake.

Terrible signs are pointing toward disillusionment. Fans are wielding signs that say It’s Gonna Happen. And just the other day, a Republican legislator sent a letter to The Chicago Tribune advocating the state’s desired purchase of historic Wrigley Field ”” “at the same time as we are planning for a World Series this fall.”

Oh, dear. This is the legislative version of the dippy enthusiasm that in 2003 led a decent and knowledgeable Cubs fan to stick his hands where they didn’t belong ”” interfering with a foul fly ball about to nestle into the glove of Moises Alou, after which calamity struck.

Overcoming 99 years of heartbreak will be much harder than the Angels’ winning the 2002 Series in their 42nd season, after several gruesome collapses, or the Red Sox’ eight straight victories at the end of 2004, eradicating all the silliness about the jinx of the Babe, or the White Sox’ winning in 2005 for their first time since 1917, before the gambling scandal of 1919.

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The South American primate who has welcomed dissenting Canadian Anglican parishes into his province says he sees the beginning of the end of the world-wide Anglican Communion.

“I believe we’re in the early stages of divorce,” Archbishop Gregory Venables, presiding (national) bishop of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, told a news conference during a meeting of the Anglican Network in Canada from April 25 to 26.

“I think there comes a point when a marriage is no longer a marriage and you have to recognize it,” he said. But Archbishop Venables suggested that Anglican churches could still stay together in some form. “Maybe we can have an Anglican federation,” he said.

In an interview with the Anglican Journal, Archbishop Venables noted that air travel and the Internet have re-structured international networks.

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there’s been a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

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These shows, we’re told by Hollywood, are “reality programs” reflecting “normal” families. They are, network executives would have us believe, more accurate depictions of the American family than fictional families of old: the Cleavers, the Bradys, the Huxtables, even the Simpsons. But when did any of our realities include buying a $9,000 grill like Denise Richards, or sitting down with our youngest daughter to watch a porn tape possibly starring our oldest child?

Completely missing from these shows is the one thing that keeps us tuning in, year after year, to reruns of Leave it to Beaver, The Brady Bunch and The Cosby Show, the same ingredient that has kept The Simpsons on the air longer than any other sitcom in the history of television. At the end of It’s Complicated or Living Lohan we are not left with the belief that a family, headed by a wise and loving parent, will somehow come through its struggles better off and stronger for having worked through them together. Rather, we are left shocked at the complete and utter absence of a true parental figure and certain that, somehow, any problems those families encounter are largely caused by the parents themselves. If watching these shows leaves us with that same warm, fuzzy and affirmed feeling that the sitcoms of old did, it’s simply because ”” by comparison ”” our realities look so much more sane than theirs.

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