The Vatican will not create an enclave within the Roman Catholic Church for Anglicans opposed to women clergy and the ”˜gay agenda’, Rome’s La Civiltà Cattolica predicts.

In an October article entitled Catholic Anglican Relations after the Lambeth Conference (La Relazione tra Cattolici e Anglicani dopo la Conferenza di Lambeth) the semi-official Jesuit bi-weekly stated the “corporate unity” under discussion between the Vatican and traditionalist Anglicans “will not be a form of uniatism as this is unsuitable for uniting two realities which are too similar from a cultural point of view as indeed are Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics.”

“The Holy See, while sympathetic to the demands of these Anglo-Catholics” for corporate reunion, “is moving with discretion and prudence.” Opposition to the ordination of women to the ordained ministry and to gay bishops and blessings “is not enough,” the newspaper said. Anglo-Catholics should be motive not by a rejection of Anglicanism but by the “desire to join fully the Catholic Church,” Fr. Paul Gamberini SJ wrote.

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Grace Community Church in Mandarin plans to tell it on the mountain – or at least preach it from the pulpit – on Sunday, Jan. 4. And it’s not something former church member Rebecca Hancock wants her children or anyone else to hear.

The Jacksonville church informed Hancock, 49, this month it will make her “sexually immoral relationship” with her boyfriend public at that service.

Hancock, who is divorced, said she left the church in October because members confronted her over it. On Wednesday, she also sent the church a letter officially resigning – hoping to stop the action so her children, who attend services there, would not have to face her embarrassment.

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

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A key submission to the SEC in 2007. Read it carefully and read it all. Please note the dates. It is an almost 20 page pdf.

As Christians, church leaders and bishops in the Episcopal Church, we urge the General Assembly to act to abolish the death penalty (“Report fuels death debate,” Dec. 13).

As Christians, we are guided by the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Here he specifically rejects retribution by stating that even the teaching in the Old Testament of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is to be rejected in favor of the teaching that calls for reconciliation (Matthew, 6:38).

Responding to killing with more killing will not make society less violent. Retaliating for death with death is not simply punishment but a further justification of violence as a way of life. We simply cannot kill our way out of the violence.

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(ACNS) The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations (IASCER) held its last meeting in Kyoto, Japan, under the chairmanship of the Most Revd Drexel Gomez, Primate of the Church in the Province of the West Indies. The Commission is charged with reviewing current international ecumenical dialogues involving Anglicans, and provincial and regional initiatives towards unity with other Christians. IASCER consists of representatives from each international dialogue involving Anglicans, including the multilateral dialogue of Faith and Order, and of certain other commissions and networks, and consultants who bring particular regional or theological expertise.

Reports were received of all current bilateral and multilateral theological dialogues of the Anglican Communion, as well as of developments from particular regions of the globe. In the course of reflections on the current life of the Anglican Communion, the Commission also reflected further on aspects of the interface between ecumenical and Anglican Communion matters. This work is reflected in the documentation and resolutions produced at this meeting. These pieces of work will be published when available through the Anglican Communion website. IASCER also gave some considerable attention to reviewing the breadth of their work in the period since their formation and first meeting in 2000. It is the intention to produce a comprehensive report and review of their work (The Vision Before Us) which can be presented to the fourteenth meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, which will meet in Jamaica in May 2009.

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Negative views of the US military presence in the Gulf are part of a broader negative view of US relations with the Muslim world.

Most worldwide think the United States is disrespectful of the Muslim world, though only a minority thinks this is done purposefully. Given three options, only 16 percent on average across 21 nations say “the US mostly shows respect to the Islamic world.” Sixty-seven percent think the US is disrespectful, but 36 percent say this is “out of ignorance and insensitivity,” while 31 percent say “the US purposely tries to humiliate the Islamic world.” Only Americans have a majority saying the US mostly shows respect to the Islamic world (56%).

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New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage recently cut its staff by 12 percent as it projects smaller donations following the worst year for U.S. stocks since 1931.

In the wake of the arrest of Bernard Madoff in what’s being called the biggest scandal in philanthropic history, museum Deputy Director Ivy Barsky expects more pain.

“It’s devastating, even for those of us who aren’t directly affected,” she said.

Makes the heart sad–read it all.

Q: Who is the war on terrorism against? Is it al-Qaeda? Is it the tactic, which seems impossible to eradicate? Or is it Islamic radicalism?

A: What we’re confronting is an ideological conflict with an extremist world view that I don’t think is an accurate representative of Islam, but uses the language or hijacks Islam for an extremist agenda. It’s an ideology that’s reflected in al-Qaeda, and it’s reflected in Lashkar-e-Taiba, which everybody now knows because of (the Mumbai attacks). That is the struggle, and unlike the Cold War victory, I don’t think there’s going to be a wall that comes down. It will be a process of using hard power to strike back at the leaders and using soft power to change the breeding ground where people try to recruit.

Q: What lessons do you see for the United States from the Mumbai attacks?

A: Some people say take FEMA out (of Homeland Security) because they’re consequence management and the rest of the department is prevention and protection. But if you look at Mumbai, you see that’s not true. When you have an event, you have to coordinate your police and your military, and if you have fire and emergency responders, you have to coordinate those, too.

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Most American religious believers, including most Christians, say eternal life is not exclusively for those who accept Christ as their savior, a new survey finds.

Of the 65% of people who held this open view of heaven’s gates, 80% named at least one non-Christian group ”” Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists or people with no religion at all ”” who may also be saved, according to a new survey released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

This means 52% of Christians do not agree with the doctrines many religions teach, particularly conservative denominations.

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, calls the findings “a theological crisis for American evangelicals. They represent at best a misunderstanding of the Gospel and at worst a repudiation of the Gospel.”

Read it all. Given the ocean of pluralism, syncretism and universalism in the American religious landscape at present, this is hardly surprising. The key themes are the exclusivity of Christ and the scandal of the cross. And: the preferred way to ask the question is: are all those who are saved redeemed only through Christ? What matters on these questions is not simply what is said but what isn’t. Whereas Benedict XVI and Billy Graham, for example, hit the right themes on these matters, the leadership of the mainline denominations is quite inadequate–KSH.

We have a third of us that are immediate risk of being downwardly mobile, and that’s across the social classes.

The second third of us isn’t at immediate risk, but we know somebody who is. It may be a parent, a child, a friend, a neighbor. And for those people, they are taking pride in how little they’re spending for something.

And the third group is a group that’s paid off their mortgages. They basically have no real concerns. What they do know is that conspicuous consumption is now verboten.

—Economist Paco Underhill explaining the sharp downturn in consumer spending on the Lehrer News Hour

In 1992 Bailey became the Suffragan Bishop of Dunwich in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. During that time he was chairman of the finance committee of the Church’s Advisory Board of Ministry, dealing with the funding of ordination training.

His stay in Suffolk was brief, and in 1995 he became Bishop of Derby. The diocese, as well as containing rural areas, included considerable industrial activity and a large immigrant community. He made an immediate impact and one part of his programme was to visit pubs and nightclubs in the city centre. He helped to establish the Derby multifaith centre and was a governor of Derby University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Bailey was known as a pastoral and caring bishop who remembered people’s names and mixed with all ages and faiths. On the national scene he was for three years the chairman of the Churches Main Committee, which acts as a liaison group between all the churches and government departments. During his time in Derby, he was also Clerk to the Closet, a role that involves advising the Queen about the appointment of her Honorary Chaplains. For this work he was appointed a KCVO. He was a member of the House of Lords from 1999 to 2005. He retired to Gloucestershire, where he was an assistant bishop and served on the Gloucester Police Authority.

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By the time St. Peter’s voted in March 2007, facts had changed drastically. The diocese already had threatened to sue the leave-takers. It already canceled – with very little notice – the health plans of the clergy involved, making the ministers scramble to find other coverage.

The bank account of one of the departing – St. Stephen’s in Heathsville, Va. – had been frozen by its bank because two groups were laying claim to the assets. This made it impossible for the majority who left – and who had hung onto the property – to pay anything from utility bills to salaries.

Plus, the diocese held the deed to St. Peter’s property. So the folks at St. Peter’s voted to stay. Their vicar, Bob Koth, wanted out.

“I respected the congregation’s wishes,” he told me. “I struggled with the decision to stay in the Episcopal Church. As things dragged out, we were late in taking that vote.”

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Interesting.

One of Hong Kong’s most-respected bankers, who asked not to be identified, told me that the U.S.-owned investment company where he works made a mint in the last decade cleaning up sick Asian banks. They did so by importing the best U.S. practices, particularly the principles of “know thy customers” and strict risk controls. But now, he asked, who is there to look to for exemplary leadership?

“Previously, there was America,” he said. “American investors were supposed to know better, and now America itself is in trouble. Whom do they sell their banks to? It is hard for America to take its own medicine that it prescribed successfully for others. There is no doctor anymore. The doctor himself is sick.”

I have no sympathy for Madoff. But the fact is, his alleged Ponzi scheme was only slightly more outrageous than the “legal” scheme that Wall Street was running, fueled by cheap credit, low standards and high greed. What do you call giving a worker who makes only $14,000 a year a nothing-down and nothing-to-pay-for-two-years mortgage to buy a $750,000 home, and then bundling that mortgage with 100 others into bonds ”” which Moody’s or Standard & Poors rate AAA ”” and then selling them to banks and pension funds the world over? That is what our financial industry was doing. If that isn’t a pyramid scheme, what is?

Painful but important reading.

The deaths of young soldiers in Afghanistan and the assisted suicide of young and old that are making the headlines put dying on to the front pages of our minds.

I remember an Army Chaplain who’d served in the Falklands War telling me he’d spent the long sea voyage south preparing his troops mentally and spiritually for the possibility that some might die. And some did.

But what struck me about Jeremy Taylor’s book was the desire that we might die well and happily and that was written in an age when people did die younger and without the palliative care so available to us. By contrast today death at whatever age always seems a tragic event, almost unnatural, as if it were a failure of modern medicine. Yet even in our time we share Taylor’s hope of dying well. It’s that hope on which the whole Hospice movement has been built.

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The Anglican Church of Canada’s Council of General Synod (CoGS) has given its cautious approval to the principle of an Anglican Covenant, but has reserved judgment pending a review of the final text.

At its Fall meeting in Toronto last week, CoGS, the Canadian church’s governing body between meetings of the triennial General Synod gave an affirmative response to the question posed by the ACC/Primates Joint Standing Committee whether it cold “give an ”˜in principle’ commitment to the covenant process at this time, without committing itself to the details of any text.”

The 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion have been asked to respond to the current “St Andrew’s Draft” of the covenant by March. The Covenant Design Group is scheduled to hold its final meeting in London next April and issue a final revision for presentation to the May meeting of the ACC in Jamaica.

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