See what you make of their list.

The best modern parable of progress was, aptly, ahead of its time. In 1861 Imre Madach published “The Tragedy of Man”, a “Paradise Lost” for the industrial age. The verse drama, still a cornerstone of Hungarian literature, describes how Adam is cast out of the Garden with Eve, renounces God and determines to recreate Eden through his own efforts. “My God is me,” he boasts, “whatever I regain is mine by right. This is the source of all my strength and pride.”

Adam gets the chance to see how much of Eden he will “regain”. He starts in Ancient Egypt and travels in time through 11 tableaux, ending in the icebound twilight of humanity. It is a cautionary tale. Adam glories in the Egyptian pyramids, but he discovers that they are built on the misery of slaves. So he rejects slavery and instead advances to Greek democracy. But when the Athenians condemn a hero, much as they condemned Socrates, Adam forsakes democracy and moves on to harmless, worldly pleasure. Sated and miserable in hedonistic Rome, he looks to the chivalry of the knights crusader. Yet each new reforming principle crumbles before him. Adam replaces 17th-century Prague’s courtly hypocrisy with the rights of man. When equality curdles into Terror under Robespierre, he embraces individual liberty””which is in turn corrupted on the money-grabbing streets of Georgian London. In the future a scientific Utopia has Michelangelo making chair-legs and Plato herding cows, because art and philosophy have no utility. At the end of time, having encountered the savage man who has no guiding principle except violence, Adam is downcast””and understandably so. Suicidal, he pleads with Lucifer: “Let me see no more of my harsh fate: this useless struggle.”

Things today are not quite that bad. But Madach’s 19th-century verse contains an insight that belongs slap bang in the 21st. In the rich world the idea of progress has become impoverished. Through complacency and bitter experience, the scope of progress has narrowed.

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The manager’s amendment is light years removed from the Stupak-Pitts Amendment that was approved by the House of Representatives on November 8 by a bipartisan vote of 240-194. The new abortion language solves none of the fundamental abortion-related problems with the Senate bill, and it actually creates some new abortion-related problems.

NRLC will score the upcoming roll call votes on cloture on the Reid manager’s amendment, and on the underlying bill, as votes in favor of legislation to allow the federal government to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion on demand, to oversee multi-state plans that cover elective abortions, and to empower federal officials to mandate that private health plans cover abortions even if they do not accept subsidized enrollees, among other problems.

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Anglican Covenant is now in its “final” form, and it has been distributed to the Provinces of the Communion for their consideration. It is not greatly different from the third draft that we saw several months ago. I believe that the first three sections are an excellent – truly excellent – summary of what Anglicans believe and have in common. The full text is available at: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/commission/covenant/final/text.cfm

Section four is in a sense what the whole exercise has been about. The drafting of this Covenant was first proposed in the 2004 Windsor Report which was produced in response to the Primates’ concerns over the election and consecration of an openly non-celibate gay man as Bishop of New Hampshire.

It has been a lengthy process, and it will not be concluded soon. But section four of the Covenant outlines a process by which the majority of the Communion might be able to declare that a given action on the part of one of its member Churches (such as the consecration of an openly non-celibate homosexual bishop) is or would be “incompatible with the Covenant” and there might then be “relational consequences.”

From the beginning of the Covenant drafting process the Archbishop of Canterbury has been clear that he hoped we would create a Covenant that each member Province could voluntarily decide to “opt into” or not. He has envisioned a “two tier” or “two track” Communion in which those Provinces that choose to “opt into” the Covenant remain in “constituent membership” in the Communion, and those Provinces that “opt out” of the Covenant move into “associate membership” – something which he has compared to the status of the Methodist Church: it has an Anglican heritage, but it is really a separate denomination.

The Episcopal Church’s Executive Council has said that the earliest time in which TEC as a whole can officially consider the Covenant is the General Convention of 2012. But, in his response to my inquiry on behalf of our Diocesan Board, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said that dioceses are certainly free to “affirm” the Covenant if and when they choose to do so.

The Covenant has created a procedure by which those Provinces that “opt into” it can take action on behalf of the Communion as a whole to declare that certain actions are outside the bounds of our corporate life, and while the “relational consequences” are not spelled out in the Covenant itself, they clearly are foreshadowed by those Provinces which have declared “impaired” or “broken” communion with The Episcopal Church over the consecration of the Bishop of New Hampshire.

Both our Diocesan Board and our Standing Committee have already affirmed the first three sections of the Covenant, and there is a Resolution to be considered by our 41st Convention next month to do likewise. Now that the fourth section has been finalized Fr. Eric Turner (who proposed the original Resolution) will offer a substitute Resolution that the Convention affirm the Covenant as a whole.

I have repeatedly said that I believe the only hope for the Anglican Communion is in following the Archbishop’s lead in drafting and adopting this Covenant. I now urge the delegates to Convention to study it and affirm it on January 30.

It remains my personal commitment to uphold the Covenant, and I give you my assurance, again, that I will never consent to the election of a bishop (or for that matter a priest or deacon) living in a relationship of sexual intimacy other than marriage as the Book of Common Prayer defines and understands it (one man and one woman, in Christ).

Warmest regards in our Lord,

–(The Rt. Rev.) John W. Howe is Bishop of Central Florida

Foreclosures already pocked Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods but the downtown still was booming as the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago convened its annual conference in May 2007.

The keynote speaker, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, assured the bankers and businessmen gathered at the Westin Hotel on Michigan Avenue that their prosperity was not threatened by the plight of borrowers struggling to repay high-cost subprime loans.

Bernanke, who was in charge of regulating the nation’s largest banks, told the audience that these firms were not at risk. He said most were not even involved in subprime lending. And the broader economy, he concluded, would be fine.

“Importantly, we see no serious broad spillover to banks or thrift institutions from the problems in the subprime market,” Bernanke said. “The troubled lenders, for the most part, have not been institutions with federally insured deposits.”

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As we say farewell to a dreadful year and decade, this much we can agree upon: The person of the year is not Ben Bernanke, no matter how insistently Time magazine tries to hype him into its pantheon. The Fed chairman was just as big a schnook as every other magical thinker in Washington and on Wall Street who believed that housing prices would go up in perpetuity to support an economy leveraged past the hilt. Unlike most of the others, it was Bernanke’s job to be ahead of the curve. Yet as recently as June of last year he could be found minimizing the possibility of a substantial economic downturn. And now we’re supposed to applaud him for putting his finger in the dike after disaster struck? This is defining American leadership down.

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).

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I’ve long believed there are two basic strategies for dealing with climate change ”” the “Earth Day” strategy and the “Earth Race” strategy. This Copenhagen climate summit was based on the Earth Day strategy. It was not very impressive. This conference produced a series of limited, conditional, messy compromises, which it is not at all clear will get us any closer to mitigating climate change at the speed and scale we need….

Still, I am an Earth Race guy. I believe that averting catastrophic climate change is a huge scale issue. The only engine big enough to impact Mother Nature is Father Greed: the Market. Only a market, shaped by regulations and incentives to stimulate massive innovation in clean, emission-free power sources can make a dent in global warming. And no market can do that better than America’s.

Therefore, the goal of Earth Racers is to focus on getting the U.S. Senate to pass an energy bill, with a long-term price on carbon that will really stimulate America to become the world leader in clean-tech. If we lead by example, more people will follow us by emulation than by compulsion of some U.N. treaty.

In the cold war, we had the space race: who could be the first to put a man on the moon. Only two countries competed, and there could be only one winner. Today, we need the Earth Race: who can be the first to invent the most clean technologies so men and women can live safely here on Earth.

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If the doorman at Bergdorf Goodman seems a little more cheerful than usual this holiday season, or a salesman at Prada or Hermès offers to find a pair of shoes in your size without rolling an eye, do not act so surprised. Retailers are being extra nice, and not just to the regulars.

“They’re offering a glass of Champagne as you enter David Yurman,” said Kate Kreindler, a suburban student, referring to the high-priced jewelry store on Madison Avenue. She noticed she was receiving more-attentive service while shopping on that luxury strip on Monday.

A few steps away at Dennis Basso, a fur store, Mr. Basso himself was greeting customers. “It can’t hurt,” he said. “Stores that don’t normally have great customer service are trying harder. They’re reaching out and giving that special treatment to the … ” and here, he paused for emphasis, “ … Christmas shopper.”

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Check it out.

Some delegates were overjoyed with the choice. Some were disappointed. The emotions of still others may have been somewhere in between.

But the delegates fulfilled their charge, and we have a bishop-elect. Once the required consents are received from the standing committees and diocesan bishops of The Episcopal Church, Fr. Waldo will be consecrated bishop.

He will be our bishop. He will be my bishop.

Therefore we become a people called together with our bishop as the Body of Christ to do the work of Christ.

I am alarmed to discover that the bishop-elect is already under attack. I’ve read only a few of them; all are examples of the “anxious voices” we have pledged to avoid. And in some I’ve discovered twisted information, statements taken out of context and misused, and-I regret to say-some blatant untruths about Fr. Waldo. Some are even vicious.

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

Bishops William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., and John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, who chair the committees on Domestic Justice and Human Development and on Migration, respectively, joined Cardinal DiNardo in the Dec. 19 statement.

Although praising the manager’s amendment for including Casey’s expansion of adoption tax credits and assistance for pregnant women, the statement cited two remaining problems:

— “It does not seem to allow purchasers who exercise freedom of choice or of conscience to ‘opt out’ of abortion coverage in federally subsidized health plans that include such coverage. Instead it will require purchasers of such plans to pay a distinct fee or surcharge which is extracted solely to help pay for other people’s abortions.

— “The government agency that currently manages health coverage for federal employees will promote and help subsidize multi-state health plans that include elective abortions, contrary to longstanding law governing this agency.”

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The Obama administration said Monday it would begin levying hefty fines against U.S. airlines for subjecting domestic passengers to lengthy tarmac delays, the government’s latest response to a series of high-profile incidents.

The new rule adopted by the Department of Transportation sets fines of as much as $27,500 a passenger when airlines leave fliers stuck on a plane on the ground for more than three hours. Based on a delayed plane carrying 120 passengers, the fine could be as much as $3.3 million. The rule would apply to planes with more than 30 seats.

The Transportation Department has rarely issued fines for tarmac delays. The first case in recent memory came last month when the DOT fined Continental Airlines Inc. and ExpressJet Holdings Inc. $50,000 each, and levied a $75,000 fine against Mesaba Airlines.

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The healthcare reform bill that will go to the vote on the US Senate floor this week falls well short of Barack Obama’s original vision.

As the president took office at the beginning of this year, he laid out a plan for reform including a robust “public option” for a nationwide government-backed scheme that would inject a bolt of competition into the inefficient medical insurance market.

Instead, he is set next month to sign into law a bill that, while dramatically expanding healthcare insurance coverage, will largely leave insurance in the hands of private companies.

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The American Medical Association today endorsed the $871 billion, 10-year Senate health care bill.

“This bill advances many of our priority issues for achieving the vision of a health system that works for patients and physicians,” Cecil Wilson, the association’s president-elect, said in a statement he read at a news conference attended by several Democratic senators.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who attended the news conference, called the endorsement “the most important,” because of the “fundamental relationship between a patient and his doctor.”

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Even though I’m not sending Christmas cards this year ”“ ran out of time ”“ you are not going to escape my seasonal circular letter. It is filled not with the record of my many achievements, holidays taken, operations survived and the GCSE results of my imaginary children, but instead has a few tidings of great joy, because you seem to need them at the moment.

You sounded a bit down the other day when you were talking to the Daily Telegraph, complaining that our government assumes “that religion is a problem, an eccentricity practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities”. Well, the government is often right about that, so if I were you I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I’d be more worried if the government didn’t think religion was a problem.

The Telegraph came up with more why-oh-why material last week, publishing the results of a survey indicating that only half those questioned in this country called themselves Christian. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to that either. God will no doubt cope. Let me draw on the words of the Blessed Ian Dury and give you some reasons to be cheerful: one, two, three.

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Bearing on the church’s position is a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences that concluded: “Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify (a Christian’s) own beliefs.” In bumper sticker phraseology: “I said it; God believes it; that settles it.”

This phenomenon contributes to a nasty situation when the individual’s physical rejection of homosexuality or abortion — to name two — become, as the eminent philosopher Martha Nussbaum puts it, projective disgust toward others. This leads to regarding a group of people as inferior or evil, even to the point of wanting to kill or maim them.

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Despite last-minute efforts to improve the language on abortion and conscience rights in the Senate’s proposed health care reform bill, the U.S. bishops oppose its passage.

This was affirmed in a statement released Saturday by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the conference’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities; Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, chair of the bishops’ Committee on Migration; and Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, New York, chair of the Domestic Policy Committee.

The prelates acknowledge the “good faith” efforts of several Senators in proposing changes to the bill, as well as several positive points of the Manager’s Amendment that was proposed Saturday.

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The Bishop of Guilford, the Rt Rev Christopher Hill has been elected vice-president of the Conference of European Churches (CEC).

On Dec 16 the CEC Central Committee elected Bishop Hill and the Rev. Cordelia Kopsch of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (EKD) as its vice presidents, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France as president of the fellowship of 120 Orthodox, Protestant and Anglican churches in Europe.

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The health-care debate in the Senate has, thankfully, returned to the paramount issue of cost. Unfortunately, the most obvious, time-tested and feasible approach to providing high-quality care at reasonable cost remains excluded from consideration.

The irony is that President Obama and a number of legislators have lauded the work of approximately 30 health-care organizations, caring for about 6 percent of the population, that for decades have provided care reliably better than average at lower cost. These are the “group employed models,” or GEMs, such as Geisinger Health System, the Marshfield Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. Two of these GEMs — the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic — have been ranked among U.S. News and World Report’s top five hospitals in the country. And shouldn’t all Americans have access to such better and cheaper care?

Most health-care organizations are run on a “fee-for-service” model. GEM organizations are different in that their physicians are employed, they are physician-led, and they work closely together and share information.

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Church bells rang and Catholics rejoiced across Australia yesterday after the Pope approved a decree that should lead to Mary MacKillop, a beatified nun, becoming the country’s first saint.

Australians were celebrating the news of her imminent canonisation, but none more so than the people of Penola, a small town in South Australia where Mother Mary lived for many years and founded an order dedicated to helping the poor in 1866.

“We have been waiting all these years and praying for it. We are just walking on air today,” said Claire Larkin, who helps to run a centre dedicated to Mother Mary in Penola, where church bells rang for five minutes on Saturday night when the news came through from the Vatican.

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Three children walk into a European state school””a Muslim, a Sikh, and an atheist. The Muslim and the Sikh are expelled because they wear religious clothing: a headscarf for the Muslim girl, and a turban for the Sikh boy. The atheist is welcomed into the school, but feels uncomfortable because her classroom has a crucifix on the wall. Whose religious freedom has been violated?

If you said the Muslim and the Sikh, you are wrong””at least according to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court recently shocked Europe by striking down an Italian law that put a crucifix on the wall of every state classroom. (Lautsi v. Italy) According to the Court, the presence of a crucifix interfered with students’ right to choose their own religion (or nonreligion).

Just four months ago, however, the same Court upheld a French law that forbids children from wearing any religious symbols in French government schools. (J. Singh v. France) Under that law, 14-year-old Jasvir Singh, a devout Sikh, was expelled from school for wearing a keski””a small, cloth under-turban similar to the Jewish yarmulke. He was forced to complete his schooling at a more tolerant Catholic school.

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An interesting list from the (London) Times.

Currently, nearly 700,000 people in Florida receive unemployment benefits. For employers such as Kevin Rusk, owner and founder of the Titanic Brewery and Restaurant in Coral Gables, it comes with a cost.

Rusk is one of the thousands of business owners statewide who soon will receive notice that his unemployment insurance premiums are rising ”” in fact, skyrocketing.

The minimum rate for employers with few claims, which was $8, is leaping to more than $100 per employee. That has left business owners like Rusk with sticker shock.

“In my business, if I said I was going to increase the price of a burger,” Rusk says, “I can increase it 5 percent, 10 percent, you know? They increased it 1,200 percent, and that’s just a sour pill for most people to swallow.”

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Falsani , the author of the book The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers, says that though the brothers’ films ”” full of violence and deceit ”” might not hew to traditional views of right and wrong, taken as a whole, they paint a clear picture.

“People say their worlds are chaotic, but I see a definite rhythm to good and bad,” Falsani says. “If you do something, there is an effect. When you make a choice and you make the wrong choice, you’re going to get it in their world. And then sometimes, as in the case of A Serious Man, even if you don’t make the wrong choice, you still might get it.”

Set in the Minnesota town where they grew up, in 1967 ”” the year that Joel would have made his bar mitzvah ”” A Serious Man is, according to Falsani, the Coen brothers’ most self-referential film, and also their most overtly religious.

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After charges that it illegally promotes Christianity with a nativity scene at Fire Station 12 in West Ashley, the city of Charleston removed the creche from display.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates separation of church and state, sent a letter dated Dec. 17 to Mayor Joe Riley and Fire Chief Thomas Carr notifying them of the city’s Constitutional breach and requesting removal of the creche from the fire station. The letter expressed dismay that the problem has occurred for at least six years. A local resident had complained to the organization about the creche, the letter states.

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All these things””plus Wall Street and Washington and the general sense that most of our great institutions have forgotten their essential mission””add up and produce a fear that the biggest deterioration in America isn’t economic but something else, something more characterological.

I’d like to see a poll on this. Yes or no: Have we become a more vulgar country? Are we coarser than, say, 50 years ago? Do we talk more about sensitivity and treat others less sensitively? Do you think standards of public behavior are rising or falling? Is there something called the American Character, and do you think it has, the past half-century, improved or degenerated? If the latter, what are the implications of this? Do you sense, as you look around you, that each year we have less or more of the glue that holds a great nation together? Is there less courtesy in America now than when you were a child, or more? Bonus question: Is “Excuse me” a request or a command?

So much always roils us in America, and so much always will. But maybe as 2010 begins and the ’00s recede, we should think more about the noneconomic issues that leave us uneasy, and that need our attention. Not everything in America comes down to money. Not everything ever did.

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The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has just released a fascinating study on the state of religious freedom around the world.

Two years in the making, with a third year needed to analyze and collate the data, the study finds that 64 of the 198 nations studied — about one-third of the countries in the world — have “high or very high restrictions on religion.” But because many of these are among the most populous nations on Earth, in fact 70% of the world’s people live in countries where practicing their faith can be difficult or even impossible.

Pew studied both official and unofficial obstacles to freedom of worship, those imposed by the state and those that abound in society at large.

In some countries, governments are very restrictive but the public is quite open to other creeds. China is a good example. Most ordinary Chinese express support for the right of all people to believe and worship as they choose, while the Chinese cracks down, often murderously, on Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and others.

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Obama’s overhaul would also change how private firms insure workers. Perhaps 18 million workers could lose coverage and 16 million gain it, as companies adapt to new regulations and subsidies, estimates The Lewin Group, a consulting firm. Private insurers argue that premiums in the individual and small group markets, where many workers would end up, might rise an extra 25% to 50% over a decade.

The administration and the CBO disagree. The dispute underlines the bills’ immense uncertainties. As for cost control, even generous estimates have health spending growing faster than the economy. Changing that is the first imperative of sensible policy.

So Obama’s plan amounts to this: partial coverage of the uninsured; modest improvements (possibly) in their health; sizable budgetary costs worsening a bleak outlook; significant, unpredictable changes in insurance markets; weak spending control. This is a bad bargain. Benefits are overstated, costs understated.

This legislation is a monstrosity; the country would be worse for its passage. What it’s become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama’s self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of “universal coverage.” What it’s not is leadership.

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On a September afternoon, about 60 prominent Christians assembled in the library of the Metropolitan Club on the east side of Central Park. It was a gathering of unusual diversity and power. Many in attendance were conservative evangelicals like the born-again Watergate felon Chuck Colson, who helped initiate the meeting. Metropolitan Jonah, the primate of the Orthodox Church in America, was there as well. And so were more than half a dozen of this country’s most influential Roman Catholic bishops, including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, Archbishop John Myers of Newark and Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia.

At the center of the event was Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic who is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker. Dressed in his usual uniform of three-piece suit, New College, Oxford cuff links and rimless glasses­, George convened the meeting with a note of thanks and a reminder of its purpose. Alarmed at the liberal takeover of Washington and an apparent leadership vacuum among the Christian right, the group had come together to warn the country’s secular powers that the culture wars had not ended. As a starting point, George had drafted a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage.

Two months later, at a Washington press conference to present the group’s “Manhattan Declaration,” George stepped aside to let Cardinal Rigali sum up just what made the statement, and much of George’s work, distinctive. These principles did not belong to the Christian faith alone, the cardinal declared; they rested on a foundation of universal reason. “They are principles that can be known and honored by men and women of good will even apart from divine revelation,” Rigali said. “They are principles of right reason and natural law.”

Read it carefully and read it all.