As the annual March for Life drew thousands to Washington Jan. 22, the 36th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion was marked around the country.

At Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, on the eve of the Roe anniversary, students were encouraged to attend a Holy Hour for life from 10 to 11 p.m. before embarking on an overnight journey to Washington for the March for Life.

The school “is very pro-life and since the mission of the school is education, our main focus on campus is educating students about the pro-life movement and how they can be pro-life,” said Emily Espinola, Students for Life president, in a statement.

But her organization seeks to carry the pro-life message beyond campus, she said, with advocacy throughout the year such as praying outside abortion clinics four days a week, training sidewalk counselors, hosting pro-life speakers on campus, and connecting with other universities and colleges to train pro-life student leaders.

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A very interesting example of the gospel of transformation at work. Well worth viewing with a small group or vestry for discussion.

An interesting piece about last fall.

Several government rescue packages later, the troubled German banking sector is still showing no sign of recovering from the financial crisis.

The discussion over what to do with the hundreds of billions of euros worth of toxic securities the banks still have on their balance sheets has received fresh impetus in Germany after it became clear that the Special Fund for Financial Market Stabilization — known as Soffin after its German acronym — is not succeeding in its intended aim of helping out troubled banks and jump-starting financial markets. Günther Merl, the head of the agency that manages Soffin, announced Wednesday that he was resigning — the second person to quit the agency’s steering committee within the last three months. Insiders say that Merl was frustrated at having his authority usurped by government and Finance Ministry officials.

Now the talk is of setting up a so-called “bad bank” to take over banks’ toxic securities — an approach backed by a number of leading German bankers. Sweden was able to successfully use this model in the early 1990s to combat its own credit crunch. The state even made money when distressed assets were later sold.

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Obama’s appeals to unity should not be taken for granted, however. Much was made recently of Russian thinker Igor Panarin’s prediction that the US will disintegrate in 2010. While well short of the mark, Panarin put his finger on a painful truth: America has become more divided and frail than many believe. The last two presidents, both baby-boomers who fought the culture wars, were very polarising figures. In Obama many of us see hope for a real oneness that is much needed.

All that said, I have deep concerns, on nothing so much as the issue of the commodification of life so prevalent in America. Obama famously said at Saddleback Church that the exact moment when life begins was a question “above” his “pay grade”. But if there even is a question whether it is life or not surely the error to make is on the side of life, otherwise we are like the hunter who shoots first in the forest and asks questions later.

My other great worry: America is in crisis over what exactly marriage is. Is it a social contract for the fulfilment of personal and sexual needs, or is it a lifelong covenant for the raising of children and of citizens who promote the common good? We seem to be veering ever more strongly in favour of the former, at the expense of the latter.

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Recent opinion pieces published in the Gazette about divisions in the Episcopal Church reveal more than intended.

One writes that only “four bishops” have left the church and that “the vast majority of Episcopal churches” don’t want to leave. This is the Episcopal Church’s oft repeated mantra — division in the church is numerically minor, therefore wildly overblown. This rhetoric fuels the crisis it seeks to deny. It isn’t helpful to claim that there is some smoke but no fire when there are flames everywhere.

It’s not simply four bishops but four dioceses that have left following arduous discernment processes that spanned two annual conventions. While only a small percentage of individual parishes have left, it’s a “figure’s lie and liar’s figure” argument.

The denomination’s membership has dropped by double digits annually in the last decade. By 2007, the average Sunday attendance had fallen to 103, the median attendance to only 69 people.

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Until the markets collapsed, the now-disgraced fund manager Bernard L. Madoff also did what his clients expected him to do, producing mysteriously high returns on their investments. Neither his investors nor the Securities and Exchange Commission seemed to care very much how he did it. In this sense, Madoff is to Wall Street as Governor Rod Blagojevich (apparently) is to Illinois machine politics: an egregious emblem rather than a mere anomaly. Just as it is hard to imagine how a politician so mediocre and unscrupulous could have flourished in a healthy political environment, it seems unlikely that Madoff’s scam could have gone undetected for so long in a healthy-and properly regulated-financial industry. (Of course, most investment managers did not commit fraud, and some of them were no doubt as surprised as their clients by the market’s precipitous decline; there has been incompetence to rival the corruption.)

The credit crisis was caused partly by a lack of due caution, both on Wall Street and in Washington. Paradoxically, it is now excessive caution that may keep us from adequately addressing it. The problem is too big to be solved by minor adjustments or executive temporizing. The Obama administration will need to undertake several large-scale reforms, which are bound to be unpopular with the banking industry and devotees of laissez-faire economics. Credit-rating agencies, for example, must no longer be allowed to work for the companies whose bonds they rate. Credit-default swaps, which were originally designed as a kind of insurance but later turned into an instrument for high-stakes gambling, need to be regulated. Investment firms and banks with financial divisions should be required to hold more capital, so that when things go bad they can cover their own losses instead of cadging a government bailout.

Above all, Congress and the new administration should steer Wall Street back toward its principal function, which is to direct capital to the productive part of the economy, not to peddle complex derivatives or place high-risk bets with other people’s money.

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We owe this choice of the passage from the prophet Ezekiel to our Korean brothers, who felt the call of this biblical passage strongly, both as Koreans and Christians. In the division of the Jewish people into two kingdoms they saw themselves reflected, the children of one land who, on account of political events, have been divided, north from south. Their human experience helped them to better understand the drama of the division among Christians.

Now, from this Word of God, chosen by our Korean brothers and proposed to all, a truth full of hope emerges: God allows his people a new unity, which must be a sign and an instrument of reconciliation and peace, even at the historical level, for all nations. The unity that God gives his Church, and for which we pray, is naturally communion in the spiritual sense, in faith and in charity; but we know that this unity in Christ is also the ferment of fraternity in the social sphere, in relations between nations and for the whole human family. It is the leaven of the Kingdom of God that makes all the dough rise (cf. Matthew 13:33).

In this sense, the prayer that we offer up in these days, taking our cue from the prophecy of Ezekiel, has also become intercession for the different situations of conflict that afflict humanity at present. There where human words become powerless, because the tragic noise of violence and arms prevails, the prophetic power of the Word of God does not weaken and it repeats to us that peace is possible, and that we must be instruments of reconciliation and peace. For this reason our prayer for unity and peace always requires confirmation by courageous gestures of reconciliation among us Christians.

Once again I think of the Holy Land: how important it is that the faithful who live there, and the pilgrims who travel there, offer a witness to everyone that diversity of rites and traditions need not be an obstacle to mutual respect and to fraternal charity. In the legitimate diversity of different positions we must seek unity in faith, in our fundamental “yes” to Christ and to his one Church. And thus the differences will no longer be an obstacle that separates but richness in the multiplicity of the expressions of a common faith.

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Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals’ personal data.

The Google Drive, or “GDrive”, could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user’s personal files and operating system could be stored on Google’s own servers and accessed via the internet.

The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as “the most anticipated Google product so far”. It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world’s computers, in favour of “cloud computing”, where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.

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President Barack Obama and his top advisers sought over the weekend to broaden the appeal of his proposed $825 billion economic-stimulus package and to defend the way they are pushing it through Congress, even as officials said the administration would move quickly to tighten the U.S. financial regulatory system.

But some senior Republicans said Sunday that they would oppose the stimulus plan as it now stands.

With action moving on several fronts, officials said the administration would make wide-ranging regulatory changes, including stricter federal rules for hedge funds, credit rating agencies and mortgage brokers, and greater oversight of the complex financial instruments that contributed to the economic crisis.

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The process for applying to be recognized as a diocese, cluster or network of the Anglican Church in North America is now available.

Recognized dioceses, clusters and networks will be able to fully participate in the inaugural convention of the Anglican Church in North this June in Bedford, Texas.

In many cases, existing groups of churches, already organized and under the authority of a bishop, will apply for recognition. Those forming new groups will need to begin the process of organizing themselves, selecting leadership and building a common life.

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Please guess before you look.

He may not be in with the local Emo cult, and you’re unlikely to see him hanging out at a skateboard park. But the Holy Father moved one step closer to cool today when he launched the Vatican’s own YouTube site on Google.

Pope Benedict XVI said he wanted to reach out to “the digital generation”, but in doing so he warned the young against the dangers of “sharing words and images that are degrading of human beings, that promote hatred and intolerance, that debase the goodness and intimacy of human sexuality or that exploit the weak and vulnerable”.

In a message marking World Communications Day, the 81-year-old said new digital technologies were “bringing about fundamental shifts in patterns of communication and human relationships”.

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In light of the California court’s ruling, Bishop Lamb sent letters Jan. 14 seeking dialogue with those who have disaffiliated. One letter was sent to clergy who have accepted canonical licenses issued by the Southern Cone; the second was sent to church-goers.

“There has been enough pain and suffering on all sides of the issue of separation from The Episcopal Church,” Bishop Lamb wrote to clergy. “It is time for us to speak to one another face to face about returning to the fold of The Episcopal Church or setting forth a plan for gracious leave-taking.”

Shortly before the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin’s annual convention last October, Bishop Lamb inhibited all of the San Joaquin clergy who accepted canonical licenses from the Church of the Southern Cone. The inhibitions will automatically become depositions from the ordained ministry of The Episcopal Church in April if the inhibited clergy take no further action.

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In a room where farmers in camouflage baseball caps and John Deere jackets mix with women in head scarves, Larry Gardner is scolding himself for forgetting Ramadan last year.

After 30 years raising lambs, the Waverly farmer is learning something new about the business. There’s a growing demand in West Virginia for sheep and goats from Muslim residents tired of traveling hundreds of miles for meats prepared in accordance with their faith’s dietary requirements.

At the same time, West Virginia’s farmers are eager for new customers.

Putting these two constituencies in the same room at South Charleston’s Islamic Center was largely the work of Almeshia Brown, an agriculture and natural resources specialist at West Virginia State University Extension Service, who is also a Muslim.

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Calls for a return to basic banking and an economy propelled by values other than greed have been made in London, one of the world’s financial capitals, at a conference of Christian thinkers examining the current economic crisis.

“We face today a choice between a political economy based on greed and consumption and a way of life which is based on a sustainable and just relationship with our neighbor,” the Rev. Bob Fyffe, general secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, declared.

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Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, urged Obama to listen to all voices in America without “the arrogance of those who, being in power, believe they can decide of life and death.”

Fisichella said in an interview published Saturday in Corriere della Sera that “if this is one of President Obama’s first acts, I have to say, in all due respect, that we’re heading quickly toward disappointment.”

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From here:

Forward in Faith is appalled by TEC Primate Jefferts Schori’s intentional disinformation and abuse of Church Law in her attack upon Bishop William C. Wantland, a bishop of the Province of the Southern Cone, and Bishop Henry Scriven, a bishop of the Church of England. The actions of Jefferts Schori are an embarrassment to Christians and all of Anglicanism. Bishop Wantland specifically stated in his letter that he “did not renounce his orders.” Schori acknowledged in her letter that Bishop Wantland had transferred provinces, which clearly demonstrate her disregard for other provinces of the Anglican Communion and the canons of her own TEC denomination. Clearly her statements misrepresent Bishop Wantland’s letter. Bishop Wantland and Bishop Scriven have not renounced their orders, nor have they abandoned the Communion, but have affirmed their orders and the Communion.
FiF is appreciative of Bishop Wantland’s leadership and willingness to stand for biblical truth and the faith and order of the undivided Church as a member of FiF. FiF commends Bishop Scriven for his witness to biblical orthodoxy held by Anglicans throughout the world. We offer prayers of thanksgiving for Bishop Wantland and Bishop Scriven’s faithfulness and ask our Lord Jesus to continue to bless their ministries as bishops for the further spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

XJohn Fulham

Chairman
Forward in Faith International

Find them all here. Of special interest is this one:

R-4a: Blessedness of Covenanted Relationships
Adopted as amended.

Resolved, that the Diocese of Virginia recognizes our responsibility to respond to the pastoral needs of our faithful gay and lesbian members in a spirit of love, compassion and respect, and in so doing seek to fulfill our baptismal commitment to respect the dignity of every human being; and, be it further

Resolved, that accordingly the 214th Annual Council of the Diocese of Virginia affirms the inherent integrity and blessedness of committed Christian relationships between two adult persons, when those relationships are “characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God” (Resolution 2000-D039 of the 73rd General Convention of the Episcopal Church).

Submitted by:
The Rev. James A. Papile
The Rev. Jacqueline C. Thomson
The Rev. Denise A. Trogdon
The Rev. A. Patrick L. Prest
John Schwarz, Lay Delegate, St. Anne’s, Reston
Carol Grish, President, Region V
Thomas J. Smith, Lay Delegate, St. Anne’s, Reston
Charles Sowell, Lay Delegate, St. Anne’s, Reston
Martha Furniss, Lay Delegate, St. Anne’s, Reston
Terry Long, Lay Delegate, Holy Comforter, Richmond

Endorsed by:
Region V
The Vestry of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, Reston
The Vestry of the Church of the Holy Comforter, Richmond
The Vestry of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Richmond

Also, please see BabyBlue’s comments here.

Read it all (43 page pdf).

In this jurisdiction, last fall I accepted the recommendation given to me that I grant the status of postulancy for Holy Orders to a person who is in a committed same-sex relationship. That recommendation came to me from the respective local discernment committee, the Diocesan Committee on the Priesthood and the other evaluative processes we require. I accepted this recommendation in my personal conviction (echoed by several canon law and General Convention veterans across the country with whom I spoke) that this conforms both to the language and the intent of the Canons, guaranteeing equal accessto the processes of discernment for all ministries in the Church, whether lay or ordained.

Just as pointedly, that very same canon clearly states that no “right” to ordination is established by that provision. Accordingly, I informed everyone concerned that as things stand now in the House of Bishops and in our discussions throughout the Communion, I do not feel free at this time to ordain persons who are in same-sex relationships. In the interests of disclosure and clarity, personally I hold this necessity rather uncomfortably. However, significant parts of our larger Church, both left and right, are not ministering through these issues with much charity or restraint, and so I think it is extremely important for the bishops to respect what is in place right now (this includes my continuing support for the Windsor Report and its resulting processes). It is my hope that from this position we will be better able to take a responsible lead and continue to make progress in building up the common life of the whole Church. Nonetheless, I support discernment on anyone’s part as to just how the Holy Spirit is moving in their lives””no exceptions. This postulant has my personal commitment to do all I can to support that discernment.

Some of that landscape changed, however, when only recently I received and read the report from our Windsor Continuation Commission. That group, with Bishop Lee’s approval and direction, has established a formalized listening process as a pilot project to aid the whole of our diocese in discernment through the issues of human sexuality and the witness of the Church.

Given this, I have decided not to move forward with this postulant in the ordination process until this diocesan effort is conducted and the results are collected and given to me so as to become part of my own eventual discernment as bishop. I do remind you, however, that such results are not “binding” on the diocesan bishop, and so this process is not some sort of vote that will decide the matter in one way or another.

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A major obligation of leadership is to recognize changed circumstances and to respond imaginatively and realistically to those circumstances. All of us recognize that we live at a time of economic recession. That reality is reflected in the significant number of congregations in our diocese that have reduced their pledge to what we do together in the diocesan budget. As diocesan bishop, it is my responsibility to face those changed circumstances and to respond accordingly. The position I hold is a significant part of our budget. I have decided, therefore, to resign as Diocesan Bishop effective October 1, 2009. That means that my absence for the last quarter of this calendar year will provide a 25% reduction in the cost of the position of diocesan bishop and will bring some relief to the stress on our budget. My resignation will occur several months earlier than I had originally anticipated but I believe it is an appropriate and necessary response to the realities we face. I am exploring the possibility of ministry in some other form after I leave Virginia as I begin my transition towards retirement.

While Bishop Johnston will become the Diocesan Bishop on October 1, 2009, his liturgical investiture as the 13th diocesan bishop will occur at the 215th Annual Council at the end of January 2010, when the Presiding Bishop will be present.

I cannot refer to these plans to leave the Diocese of Virginia without placing them in the context of thanksgiving for you, the clergy and the lay leadership of the Diocese of Virginia. I thank God daily for you and I am grateful for the privilege of serving among you.

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In a display of now unparalleled and unprecedented lawlessness for an ordained bishop, the Primate of All the Episcopal Church (USA) has thrown down the gauntlet to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion as a whole. She has declared that on the basis of a letter written to her by the Rt. Rev. Henry Scriven, the former Assistant Bishop of Pittsburgh, on October 16, 2008, she has “accepted [his] renunciation of the Ordained Ministry of this Church . . . [and that he] is, therefore, removed from the Ordained Ministry of this Church and released from the obligations of all Ministerial offices, and is deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority as a Minister of God’s Word and Sacraments conferred on him in Ordinations.”

What makes this move on the Primate’s part so outlandish is that Bishop Scriven has not been canonically resident in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in the Episcopal Church (USA) since October 4, 2008, when the Diocese voted by a sizeable majority to withdraw from ECUSA and affiliate temporarily with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. Details are not clear at this writing, but if events happened as they should have, Bishop Scriven would have received at that point a license from the Most Reverend Gregory Venables. (It is not known whether Bishop Duncan gave Letters Dimissory to Bishop Scriven before the former’s “deposition” by the ECUSA House of Bishops on September 18, 2008.) At any rate, Bishop Scriven became for the time being a member of the House of Bishops of the Province of the Southern Cone, and in that capacity continued to assist in the Diocese of Pittsburgh through December 2008. He conducted, for example, an ordination of the Rev. Aaron Carpenter at St. Philip’s Church in Moon Township, Pittsburgh, on December 9.

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The Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, who has been bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia for 24 years, announced yesterday that he will step down Oct. 1 to make way for a successor who was named in 2007.

The diocese, which covers northern and eastern Virginia and includes 80,000 members, is one of the largest in the Episcopal Church, the U.S.-based branch of the global Anglican Communion.

Starting this fall the diocese will be overseen by the Rt. Rev. Shannon Johnston, 50, an Alabama native who has worked in dioceses in the South and is known for his work in prison, music and HIV/AIDS ministries.

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The world economy is deteriorating more quickly than leading economists predicted only weeks ago, with Britain yesterday becoming the latest nation to surprise analysts with the depth of its economic pain.

Britain posted its worst quarterly contraction since 1980 on the heels of sharper than expected slowdowns reported from Germany to China to South Korea. The grim data, analysts said, underscores how the burst of the biggest credit bubble in history is seeping into the real economies around the world, silencing construction cranes, bankrupting businesses and throwing millions of people out of work.

“In just the past few days, we’ve had a big downward revision, we’re seeing that an even bigger deceleration is on the way than we thought,” said Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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The Obama administration plans to move quickly to tighten the nation’s financial regulatory system.

Officials say they will make wide-ranging changes, including stricter federal rules for hedge funds, credit rating agencies and mortgage brokers, and greater oversight of the complex financial instruments that contributed to the economic crisis.

Broad new outlines of the administration’s agenda have begun to emerge in recent interviews with officials, in confirmation proceedings of senior appointees and in a recent report by an international committee led by Paul A. Volcker, a senior member of President Obama’s economic team.

A theme of that report, that many major companies and financial instruments now mostly unsupervised must be swept back under a larger regulatory umbrella, has been embraced as a guiding principle by the administration, officials said.

Some of these actions will require legislation, while others should be achievable through regulations adopted by several federal agencies.

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America’s newly inaugurated president was told this week that the Catholic Church will fight his plans to make abortion more readily available, and will oppose any easing of current regulations restricting embryonic stem cell research.

The warning was contained in two letters from US bishops delivered to Barack Obama, the first dated 13 January and released on 15 January, and the second, more strongly worded, dated 16 January and released on 19 January, the eve of Mr Obama’s swearing-in. The bishops said they wanted to work constructively with the new administration, but issued a tough challenge on life issues.

“We will work to protect the lives of the most vulnerable and voiceless members of the human family, especially unborn children and those who are disabled or terminally ill,” the bishops said in the first letter signed by the president of the bishops’ conference, Cardinal Francis George, the Archbishop of Chicago.

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Not such a long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, specifically in the downtown Manhattan of 1980 with its punk clubs and squeegee men and loose-joint dealers and $150-a-month sublets, a moment of literary and journalistic kismet was occurring in a factory loft halfway between the East Village and Chelsea.

The loft held the mismatched desks, layout tables and glaring overhead lights that constituted the office of New Jewish Times, a new and precarious monthly magazine. As for the staff, it was a miscellany of gifted malcontents and sundry outsiders ”” Soviet émigrés, children of survivors, yeshiva rebels, CBGB regulars, “a bunch of slobs with overheated opinions,” in the recollection of one alumnus.

With their very first issue, those opinionated slobs declared their independence from the norms of Jewish journalism, whether sober journals like Commentary and Dissent or the boosterish newspapers sponsored by local Jewish federations. The entire cover consisted of an illustration of a mushroom cloud with the deadpan headline asking, “Next Year in Jerusalem?”

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He was railing about Sam Adams, who three weeks ago became Portland’s first openly gay mayor, thanks, in part, to people like Mr. Wood, a 46-year-old environmental lawyer who voted for Mr. Adams last year.

In a city that likes to be liberal, Mr. Adams’s homosexuality was rarely an issue in his campaign for mayor. (One city commissioner said it was more of an asset than a liability.) Mr. Adams, who won 59 percent of the vote, has been admired for his youthful energy and plans to expand and promote Portland’s progressive and green identity.

Now, however, Mr. Wood is among a loud new constituency saying that the mayor’s tenure should end immediately. A state investigation is pending. Newspapers and the local police union have called for him to step down, while some elected officials and other community leaders have urged him to stay in office. Debate has erupted in the city’s gay population.

Mr. Adams, 45, has considered resigning, even though supporters who have spoken with him recently say they believe he will decide to keep his office.

The developments stem from the mayor’s admission this week that in 2005, when he was a city commissioner, he had a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old male intern at the State Legislature and that he had lied repeatedly about the relationship when he ran for mayor. His admission followed new scrutiny of the relationship by an alternative newspaper, Willamette Week. The mayor has not returned to City Hall since the admission, on Tuesday.

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

Benjamin Busch is a man with many dimensions ”” and multiple resumes. One charts his service in the U.S. Marine Corps, from Infantry Officers School in Quantico in 1993, to commander of Delta Company, serving in Iraq, and his promotion to lieutenant colonel in 2007.

Then, there’s his other resume ”” as a technical adviser, director and actor, from Party of Five to The Wire to the new TV show The Beast, which stars Patrick Swayze.

He’ll need to start a third resume soon, for his writing. He’s a contributor to Harper’s magazine. The February issue includes his essay “Bearing Arms: The Serious Boy at War.”

Listen to it all.