Those nicknames from the past ”” God’s Rottweiler, the Panzercardinal ”” don’t seem to stick anymore. After acquiring a reputation as an aggressive, doctrine-enforcing Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI has surprised many with his gentle manner and his writings on Christian love. But with the Christmas season upon us, there is growing proof that the 82-year-old Pope is also quite willing to play the part of Scrooge to defend his often rigid view of Church doctrine.

Benedict’s envoy to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, has announced that the Vatican will oppose a proposed U.N. declaration calling for an end to discrimination against homosexuals. At first blush, no one should be surprised to find the Catholic Church hierarchy butting heads with gay rights activists. But this particular French-sponsored proposal, which has the backing of all 27 European Union countries, calls for an end to the practice of criminalizing and punishing people for their sexual orientation. Most dramatically, in some countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, homosexuality can be punished by death.

Papal spokesman Father Federico Lombardi was forced to clarify that the Vatican continues to condemn the use of the death penalty for any crime, including those associated with homosexuality. Instead, Migliore said the Vatican’s opposition to the U.N. proposal was driven by concern that countries that prohibit gay marriage would somehow be targeted. Said Migliore: “Countries that don’t recognize the union between people of the same sex as marriage will be punished and pressured.”

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Recently, I asked a colleague about the quality of care her hospitalized mother was getting. “Well, you can at least have a conversation with her doctor,” she replied. Clearly this was a big relief.

High-level skills like reflectiveness and empathy are an important part of medical education these days. That is all to the good, of course. But as I noted last May in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, medical schools may be underemphasizing a much simpler virtue: good manners.

In the article, I described a common-sense method for spreading clinical courtesy that I call “etiquette-based medicine,” and I proposed a simple six-step checklist for doctors to follow when meeting a hospitalized patient for the first time….

See how many of the six you can guess before you read it all.

The Rev. Dr. Charles K. Robertson, Canon to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, has issued the following statement:

We will not predict what will or will not come out of this meeting, but simply continue to be clear that The Episcopal Church, along with the Anglican Church of Canada and the La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico, comprise the official, recognized presence of the Anglican Communion in North America.

And we reiterate what has been true of Anglicanism for centuries: that there is room within The Episcopal Church for people with different views, and we regret that some have felt the need to depart from the diversity of our common life in Christ.

The Rev. Dr. Charles K. Robertson
Canon to the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church
December 3, 2008

Theological conservatives upset by liberal views of U.S. Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans formed a rival North American province today, in a long-developing rift over the Bible that erupted when Episcopalians consecrated the first openly gay bishop.

The announcement represents a new challenge to the already splintering, 77-million-member world Anglican fellowship and the authority of its spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

The new North American Anglican province includes four breakaway Episcopal dioceses, many individual parishes in the U.S. and Canada, and splinter groups that left the Anglican family years, or in one case, more than a century ago.

Read it all.

Received via Email:

An after Chapel Address at Trinity School for Ministry
By the Very Rev Dr Justyn Terry, Dean and President
December 3, 2008

Today, in the town of Chicago, a new Province may be born. For some of you this will be a source of great joy and hope. For others of you it will be a source of great concern and discomfort. We have board members, faculty, staff, students and alumni on both sides of this. It is bound to be a time of tension. How are we to handle it? I ask us all to observe, and hold each other to account, to an ABC:

Be Aware of different feelings about all this. People with a high view of the Bible and a deep concern for world mission differ on how to respond to this crisis. Some see a need to withdraw from The Episcopal Church and realign with other parts of the Anglican Communion. Others see a need to stay in The Episcopal Church and witness to the Gospel from within. Both have deep concerns about where the leadership of The Episcopal Church is going. Both have a deep commitment to the Gospel. But they have reached very different conclusions about how to deal with it. Be aware of the differences.

Be Blameless in your talk. Controlling the tongue is notoriously hard, as James reminds us (Jas 3:8). But in this tense time, we need to be extra vigilant. Let us beware of letting our anger or our euphoria get the better of us. Let us look out for humor that puts other people down, and let us see instead how we can build others up. Remember Prov. 10:19: “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.” Be blameless in your talk.

Be Constant in prayer. Pray everyday for those with whom you disagree. Pray for the leadership of The Episcopal Church, for great blessing to be upon them. Pray for the witness of the Church to a watching world. Be constant in prayer.

We have an opportunity here to learn about living in the tension of a fallen world. May the Lord grant us abundant grace for these times of testing.

i found this helpful.

The rising cost of college ”” even before the recession ”” threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.

Read it all.

Bishop Martyn Minns, a leading figure in the formation of the new province, said of the Archbishop of Canterbury: “It’s desirable that he get behind this. It’s something that would bring a little more coherence to the life of the Communion. But if he doesn’t, so be it.”

Bishop Minns, a priest who led his large, historic church in Virginia out of the Episcopal Church two years ago and was subsequently ordained a bishop by the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, said: “One of the questions a number of the primates are asking is why do we still need to be operating under the rules of an English charity, which is what the Anglican Consultative Council does. Why is England still considered the center of the universe?”

The Episcopal Church has about 2.3 million members ”” with about a third of those attending worship services on an average Sunday. The Anglican Church of Canada had about 650,0000 members in 2001, the last year that statistics were published, according to its Web site.

James Naughton, canon for communications and advancement in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and a liberal who frequently blogs on Anglican affairs, said he doubted that a rival Anglican province could grow much larger.

Read it all.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams told the annual meeting of the Compass Rose Society (CRS) in November that the tensions within the Anglican Communion are not going to be resolved any time soon. “Deep wounds heal slowly,” Williams told members of the CRS, which supports the ministries of the Archbishop of Canterbury by providing annual financial support and enhancing communication within the communion.

The Archbishop spoke at length about last summer’s Lambeth Conference of bishops and viewed a “photo cinema” presentation of Lambeth images from the Anglican Communion Office’s communications department. The Most Rev. Clive Handford, former primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, and Bishop Victoria Matthews of Christchurch in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, offered an update of the work of the Windsor Continuation Group and matters relating to the Anglican covenant.

Read it all.

Stream Starts around 5:15pm CST.
5:30 CST Press Conference
7:30 CST Worship Service

Can’t see the video? Click here and install the latest Flash Player.

The Rt. Rev. Keith L. Ackerman, who resigned last month as Bishop of Quincy, will serve as an assisting bishop in the neighboring Diocese of Springfield. The Rt. Rev. Peter H. Beckwith, Bishop of Springfield, said the Presiding Bishop’s office had been notified that the new position would become effective Dec. 1.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Archbishop Gomez said there was “a very high approval rating” for the ministry of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference, but he noted that the bishops raised questions “about the place of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and there were a lot of questions about the role of the primates’ meeting in Anglican polity.”

The Covenant Design Group will meet in March 2009 to develop a new draft and prepare a report to the ACC for its May 1 to 12, 2009 meeting in Jamaica.

Archbishop Gomez said he anticipates it would take three to five years for the provinces to sign up once a final draft was ratified by the ACC. “There is a strong feeling in some parts of the communion that the covenant, setting out our mutual responsibilities as a family of churches, needs to be in place as quickly as possible ”” although there are other voices which still believe we have a way to go before we arrive at a mature text,” he said.

Read it all.

Traditionalist Anglicans are to formally announce that they are setting up a new church in the US and Canada.

The move will make the long-discussed split in the Anglican Church in North America a reality.

It means in each country there will be two competing churches, both claiming allegiance to the Anglican Communion.

The American Church’s liberal stance on homosexuality has led some traditionalists, including some whole dioceses, to leave the Church.

Read it all.

Bishops from four dioceses emerged from the house of bishops meeting in October struggling with how to proceed with plans to introduce same-sex blessings in their dioceses.

While the majority of bishops agreed to a moratorium on same-sex blessings, the bishops from the dioceses of Ottawa, Montreal, Niagara and Huron, and from the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior faced pressure at home to offer same-sex blessings.

Given the strong support for a moratorium and the fact that two significant meetings will be held early in 2009 ”” Anglican primates meet in February and the Anglican Consultative Council meets in May ”” few decisions are expected to be made before the spring.

Read it all.

The above is the topic for the Mere Anglicanism 2009 Conference. It takes place from January 15 – 17, 2009 in Charleston, South Carolina. Among the speakers: The Rt Rev’d Michael Nazir-ali, Archbishop Valentino Mokiwa; Dr. Stephen Noll, The Rt Rev’d Robert Duncan, The Rt Rev’d Mark Lawrence, The Rt Rev’d Jack Iker, Archbishop Benjamin Kwashi, Dr. William Abraham, and Dr. Albert Mohler.

There is much more information available here.

Enlisted soldiers and Marines divorced their spouses at a higher rate in fiscal 2008 than at any other time in at least 16 years, according to Pentagon data released Tuesday.

About 4% of married enlisted troops in the Army and Marines, or 8,842 GIs and 2,842 Marines, obtained divorces during fiscal 2008, the numbers show. The data reflect a steady upward trend in divorce among the Army enlisted since 2003 and enlisted Marines since 2005.

The rate of married enlisted soldiers getting divorced went from 3.7% in 2007 to 3.9%. For married enlisted Marines, the rate went from 3.6% to 4%, records show.

From 2007 to 2008, there was a 5.4% increase in divorces for soldiers, and an 11% increase for Marines, records show.

Makes the heart sad. Read it all.

After a decade of robust gains, America’s health has leveled off and may be poised to take a plunge, an analysis warns.

The 2008 America’s Health Rankings, out today, offer a comprehensive look at nearly two decades of progress in access to medical care, immunizations, prenatal care, infant mortality, heart disease deaths, smoking cessation, deaths by infectious disease, violent crime and occupational fatalities.

The analysis of 22 measures indicates that the nation’s health improved by 18% from 1990 to 2000. For the past four years, however, progress has stalled. What worries health experts most is that ballooning waistlines, addiction to tobacco and mounting rates of chronic diseases threaten the gains.

Read it all.

Still, every nurse has a story about obnoxious doctors. A few say they have ducked scalpels thrown across the operating room by angry surgeons. More frequently, though, they are belittled, insulted or yelled at ”” often in front of patients and other staff members ”” and made to feel like the bottom of the food chain. A third of the nurses in Dr. Rosenstein’s study were aware of a nurse who had left a hospital because of a disruptive physician.

“The job is tough enough without having to prepare yourself psychologically for a call that you know could very well become abusive,” said Diana J. Mason, editor in chief of The American Journal of Nursing.

Laura Sweet, deputy chief of enforcement at the Medical Board of California, described the case of a resident at a University of California hospital who noticed a problem with a fetal monitoring strip on a woman in labor, but didn’t call anyone.

“He was afraid to contact the attending physician, who was notorious for yelling and ridiculing the residents,” Ms. Sweet said. The baby died.

Read it all.

Check it out–I especially commend the article “Preparing your Church for the future” on page 7.

At the moment, D.C. and Detroit are brooding on a Morton’s Fork: Watch the American automakers auger in and take hundreds of thousands of jobs with them, or bail out these failed and incorrigible companies whose management so richly deserves whatever hell (flying coach?) awaits them.

Tops on the critics’ list of grievances is Detroit’s failure to anticipate the inevitable. Why didn’t these companies sufficiently invest in next-generation technology — fuel-efficient small cars, high-mileage hybrids, plug-ins and all-electric vehicles — that could help wean the U.S. off foreign oil and take the automobile out of the climate-change equation? As the auto executives again bring their begging bowl to Congress, a consensus is forming: No bailout unless Detroit builds greener cars.

From my perch, as someone who drives all of the Big Three’s North American product offerings, I think a lot of the anger is reflexive and misplaced.

Read it all.

Although the body is primarily seen as an orthodox alternative to the current national churches in North America, [Martyn] Minns stressed there is still diversity.

“I think what we’re saying is that there’s a theological heart to what we’re doing but there’s a variety there,” he explained. “There’s a common set of theological assumptions that unite us but we’re not all jumping out of the same box.”

Within The Episcopal Church, however, the diversity was too broad.

“Some pushed the envelope too far and so as a reaction some said we can’t go that far; we need to come out and at least have some definition to what we believe,” the CANA bishop said.

Minns labeled the new body as “orthodox, Anglican, mission-minded, biblically-centered.”

“I would it’s basically a fairly traditional Anglicanism with a passion for mission,” he briefly explained.

Read it all.

When Peter Nicholson’s mother suffered a series of strokes last winter, he did something women have done for generations: he quit his job and moved into her West Hollywood home to care for her full time.

Since then, he has lost 45 pounds and developed anemia, in part because of the stress, and he is running out of money. But the hardest adjustment, Mr. Nicholson said, has been the emotional toll.

“The single toughest moment was when she said to me, ”˜And now who are you?’ ” he said. “My whole world just dropped. That was the pinnacle of despair.”

Read it all from this past Saturday’s New York Times.

Although many evangelicals were not quite ready for a Mormon presidential candidate this election season, others were quick to join Mormons’ efforts to pass California’s ballot proposition banning same-sex marriage.

Evangelicals were the largest group of Americans who expressed reservations about voting for a Mormon candidate in surveys conducted last year. But leaders of the successful Proposition 8 campaign said that evangelicals, Mormons, and Roman Catholics cooperated more extensively than ever before to rally California to ban gay marriage.

“I think this is the ironic part, because everybody seems very content to work together on these issues of common values,” said Mark DeMoss, an evangelical publicist and early supporter of Mitt Romney. “But the moment a Mormon man presented himself as a candidate for President, people said, ‘That’s a line we as evangelicals can’t cross.’ ”

Read it all.

The sticking points for the Century, and the mainline more broadly, came when these core principles seemed to be in conflict. Ethical differences that were allowed, even welcomed, during discussions sometimes got swept under the rug when the time came to make public pronouncements. Continuing the cycle, public pronouncements that better represented the views of some religious bodies than of others could impede ecumenical endeavors. Most vexing, what common ground could committed ecumenists find with Christians whose ethics or conception of the church’s public role caused them to eschew World Council of Churches-style ecumenism?

One of the few watercooler stories that still circulates about Morrison highlights these difficulties. In the early 1960s, editorializing on developments in the WCC, Martin Marty and another young Century editor urged Protestant leaders to take Orthodox concerns about that institution more seriously. Morrison, whose old age and blindness generally kept him away from the office, stormed in to register his complaint about the editorial. The young bucks threw his own definition of the church at him, arguing that, if the church exists wherever the character of Christ is formed, then the Orthodox are part of the church, and pains should be taken to keep them at the ecumenical table. Morrison fumed, “But if we wait for the Orthodox, I won’t live to see Christian unity!”

Morrison’s magazine has not lived to see Christian unity or a truly Christian century. Its antagonism (lessening all the time) toward some branches of American Christianity might even have impeded these goals, but it presses on. It has recently returned to its roots as a publication for ministers, adding columns on preaching the lectionary and increasing coverage of pastoral matters. The imperialism associated with pretended universality has abated. The Century serves churches, rather than an imagined single church, as the voice of a creative minority. It is mainline, not broadly mainstream. And yet, like the Protestant mainline, it has far too rich a heritage simply to fade away. As it moves into a new century, it still merits our respect.

Read it all.

I can clearly remember sitting on the front porch with my brother and watching down the street for my uncle’s car. We knew he was coming sometime that day and with him would be our cousins. We were not a patient duo. We had many plans of forts to build in the basement and, if it was winter, snowball fights to be staged. These plans burned in our minds and every minute that passed meant one less minute to play.

To keep the boredom at bay we would play tricks on each other. If I caught my brother not looking down the street I would excitedly say, “There they — aren’t!” He would do the same to me when I tired of gazing down the empty street.

Every now and then we would hear a car coming. We would crane our necks to see who it was but be deflated when we realized it was not our uncle. After the momentary disappointment faded we would go back to watching and waiting.

I think the Gospel writer had this kind of watchfulness in mind when he exhorted the faithful to stay on the lookout for the coming of the Lord.

— Jeff Hedglen

“To say we are going to have two provinces, two sets of churches in the same geographic region because of theological or political differences … could have ramifications not just for us but for the rest of the Communion,” says [the Rev.] Canon [Charles] Robertson.

The debate over homosexuality and biblical authority has long spurred talk of schism. Many provinces have “impaired” or “broken” ties with the Episcopal Church over such issues. But last summer, traditionalists held a Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem and declared that, rather than split from the Communion, they were forming an orthodox fellowship within it. They urged formation of the new province in North America.

“Paradoxically, it may seem as though this step is a division, but it is really to help us not to divide by giving us more flexibility,” says Archbishop Jensen, secretary for GAFCON’s leadership council. He spoke by phone as a “close observer,” not officially for the council.

Read it all.

“It’s very tempting but a bit dangerous to over-interpret what happened,” said Luis Lugo, executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. “Clearly Obama improved across all religious groups, but the economy just overwhelmed every other issue.”

Still, the 2008 campaign was remarkable for the ways religion — or religious figures — played such a prominent role. Obama was forced to sever ties with his fiery pastor of 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, for sermons that were deemed racist, anti-American and at times downright bizarre. McCain, in turn, was forced to return the endorsements of Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee and Ohio’s Rod Parsley.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson tried to play kingmaker by first saying he would not vote for McCain “under any circumstances” and later calling the Palin pick “God’s answer” to prayer. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the candidate who proved most popular among religious conservatives and who won the Iowa Republican caucuses in January, failed to gain traction despite ads that dubbed him a “Christian leader.”

Obama and Biden both faced strong opposition from Catholic leaders over their support of abortion rights. One American cardinal, James Stafford, called Obama’s election “apocalyptic” and a South Carolina Catholic priest told Obama supporters to head to confession before receiving Communion.

All of that, Lugo said, shows that voters want their politicians to be at least somewhat religious — but prefer to make up their own minds, without the interference of politically outspoken clergy.

Read it all

An Anglican Chant Weather report?