President Barack Obama forecast the biggest U.S. deficit since World War Two in a budget on Thursday that urges a costly overhaul of the healthcare system and would spend billions to arrest the economy’s freefall.
An eye-popping $1.75 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year is projected in Obama’s first budget. That is equal to 12.3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product — the largest share since 1945 when the country ran a shortfall of 21.5 percent of GDP.
A communications initiative to tell the Episcopal Church’s story was launched on Ash Wednesday at www.episcopalchurch.org where visitors will find a new interactive feature called “I Am Episcopalian.”
The so-called “microsite” contains short videos of people “sharing their deep, personal connections to the big, wide, vibrant church that we are,” said Anne Rudig, who joined the Episcopal Church Center in New York as communications director on January 5.
Not only will the videos illustrate the diversity of Episcopalians — “all ages, all walks of life, all ethnicities,” said Rudig — but the site also will let users upload their own videos.
Uploaded videos will be monitored before being posted and should be no longer then 90 seconds, said Rudig. “I am Episcopalian” will be the website homepage throughout Lent, with a link to the rest of the Episcopal Church’s web content.
In what can be described only as a somewhat terse performance by its collective justices, the California Supreme Court has corrected a rather glaring error in its prior opinion in The Episcopal Church Cases, 45 Cal.4th 467 (2009). It has published a short per curiam (meaning: unsigned) order, which it says does not affect its earlier judgment. But since the order has no byline, and carries no explanation, its significance is easy to miss.
Those to my left have, as usual, jumped to totally unwarranted conclusions. Out of the three sentences used by the Court to describe what it was doing, they select only this one: “The [local churches’] petition for rehearing is denied.” Then they trumpet headlines like “California breakaway churches lose in court again”. What they ignore are these words: “Request for modification granted. . . The opinion is modified.” (Emphasis added.) If I were to read things as one-sidedly as they do, I could have titled this post: “California orthodox churches win in Supreme Court”; or (only slightly less outrageous) “Supreme Court concedes mistake in prior ruling in favor of ECUSA”. I have decided instead to reach two birds with just one cast, and call what has happened in both the Supreme Court and on liberal blogs “rushing to judgment”.
Devoting nearly 20% of his speech to the topic, …[President Obama] acknowledged the public loathing of bank rescue efforts. He explained the role of credit in creating and preserving jobs. And he took some requisite, and wholly justified, swipes at executives for their outrageous pay and perks. But most important, he stated unequivocally what no one in the chamber wanted to hear and what he did not want to have to say ”” that even more money might be necessary to restore the banking system to its former self.
He was right on all scores. Nothing is more important to the livelihood of Americans than getting the credit spigot flowing again. Without it, all other efforts to revive the economy will fail.
And yet, if Congress were asked today for more funds for banks, the likeliest response would be a resounding no….
But there is no valid rationale for opposing a round three if it becomes necessary.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples;
but it is because the LORD loves you, and is keeping the oath which he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations….
–Deuteronomy 7:7-9
Kathrine Neubauer was declared dead several months ago.
She’s had nothing but trouble ever since….
Neubauer’s predicament became absurd — and expensive — when she recently went to apply for a loan at a bank she won’t name.
The bank processed her loan application, granting her the advertised interest rate. Then the loan officer discovered Neubauer was supposedly dead.
“After they found out I was deceased, they said they could get me the loan, but they’d charge me an interest rate that was 1 percent higher,” Neubauer said.
Neubauer said she’s consulted two attorneys for advice on how to get off the deceased list. Neither could help.
Needless to say, any nervousness that Woods had felt was not there for long. A majestic three-wood and a superb second shot to within five feet threw down an immediate marker and gave the impression that he had never been away. But he had been absent for almost nine months and had registered his first birdie within ten minutes of his return. Not only that, but he followed up with a “gimme” eagle at the next and was on his way. Two up after two holes. Not bad.
Some had argued that Woods had made a wise choice in picking a matchplay event for his comeback. He was bound to be rusty but could work on the principle that he could survive a few bad holes. Which is how it proved.
The man is a marvel–I just love to watch him play. Read it all.
The Denver prelate then provided his critique of President Obama.
“President Obama is a man of intelligence and some remarkable gifts. He has a great ability to inspire, as we saw from his very popular visit to Canada just this past week. But whatever his strengths, there’s no way to reinvent his record on abortion and related issues with rosy marketing about unity, hope and change. Of course, that can change. Some things really do change when a person reaches the White House. Power ennobles some men. It diminishes others. Bad policy ideas can be improved. Good policy ideas can find a way to flourish. But as Catholics, we at least need to be honest with ourselves and each other about the political facts we start with.”
Yet this will be “very hard for Catholics in the United States,” [Charles] Chaput warned.
According to the archbishop, the political situation for Catholics is difficult to discern because a “spirit of adulation bordering on servility already exists among some of the same Democratic-friendly Catholic writers, scholars, editors and activists who once accused pro-lifers of being too cozy with Republicans. It turns out that Caesar is an equal opportunity employer.”
SEOUL: It is very useful to come to Asia to be reminded about America’s standing in the world these days. For all the talk in recent years about America’s inevitable decline, all eyes are not now on Tokyo, Beijing, Brussels or Moscow – nor on any other pretenders to the world heavyweight crown. All eyes are on Washington to pull the world out of its economic tailspin.
At no time in the last 50 years have we ever felt weaker, and at no time in the last 50 years has the world ever seen us as more important.
While it is true that since the end of the Cold War global leaders and intellectuals often complained about a world of too much American power, one doesn’t hear much of that grumbling today when most people recognize that only an economically revitalized America has the power to prevent the world economy from going into a global depression. It was always easy to complain about a world of too much American power as long as you didn’t have to live in a world of too little American power. And right now, that is the danger: a world of too little American power.
Somewhere in the back of their minds, a lot of people seem to be realizing that the alternative to a U.S.-dominated world is not a world dominated by someone else or someone better.
It is a leaderless world….
President Barack Obama will propose further tax increases on the affluent to help pay for his promise to make health care more accessible and affordable, calling for stricter limits on the benefits of itemized deductions taken by the wealthiest households, administration officials said Wednesday.
The tax proposal, coming after recent years in which wealth has become more concentrated at the top of the income scale, introduces a politically volatile edge to the congressional debate over Obama’s domestic priorities.
The president will also propose, in the 10-year budget he is to release Thursday, to use revenues from the centerpiece of his environmental policy a plan under which companies must buy permits to exceed pollution emission caps to pay for an extension of a two-year tax credit that benefits low-wage and middle-income people.
The combined effect of the two revenue-raising proposals, on top of Obama’s existing plan to roll back the Bush-era income tax reductions on households with income exceeding $250,000 a year, would be a pronounced move to redistribute wealth by reimposing a larger share of the tax burden on corporations and the most affluent taxpayers.
I have become more and more suspicious of the concept of the nominal Christian. Our parish churches are supposed to be full of nominal Christians who are just going through the motions, of half-believers who are relying on their good works and who have not really surrendered to Christ and accepted the Gospel. In any parish church there are a few real apostates, and a few real scoffers and perhaps a few who genuinely hate God. Their numbers are routinely exaggerated. Most of the people who come to the church Sunday by Sunday know they are dying and are placing their hope in Christ. It may be an inarticulate hope, it may be a confused hope. Often there are huge brambles of misunderstanding that must be cleared away before the whole power of the good news can come in upon them. Often there is real darkness into which the light of Christ has not yet come and which cries out for a light-bearer. Yet, they come. When Jesus saw such as these gathered in their multitudes on the hill side, the sight provoked in him not contempt for the nominal but compassion, “for they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, when many people tend to respond by boycotting candy, soda and other guilty pleasures until Easter. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right?
Not quite.
“The idea of giving something up is to create a feeling of emptiness in yourself and open yourself to God’s presence,” said the Rev. Mike Duda of the First Church in Wenham.
It’s also a time of deep personal reflection, said the Rev. Manny Faria of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Beverly. “It’s taking stock of our own lives, and seeing where we fall short and what we need to work on.”
But the message can often get lost.
Delegates to a special convention of the Diocese of Northern Michigan held February 21 at St. Stephen’s Church, Escanaba, elected a new bishop and created a support team that will share in episcopal oversight, something unique in the Episcopal Church.
The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, who was announced in January as the single candidate for bishop, was elected on the first ballot. In Northern Michigan voting is not carried out by lay and clergy orders, but rather by individual delegate votes and a congregational vote that represents the combined majority vote of a congregation’s delegates. Thew Forrester received 67 of 76 total delegate votes cast. Of the 23 congregations represented, 21 voted for Thew Forrester.
Former federal officials have dubbed Citigroup the “Death Star,” comparing the bank’s threat to the financial system with the planet-destroying super weapon in the “Star Wars” movies. Privately, in the words of one official, they regard the banking giant as “unmanageable.”
Toward the end of Monday’s meetings on fiscal responsibility at the White House, Senator Kent Conrad stood up and produced a little bolt of honesty. “Revenue is the thing almost nobody wants to talk about,” said Mr. Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “But I think if we’re going to be honest with each other, we’ve got to recognize that is part of a solution as well.”
Mr. Conrad’s frankness was delivered in the cryptic language of budget experts, and many people might have missed the point. So allow me to translate:
Your taxes are going up.
Some of the things that stood out to me:
A majority (62%) of Episcopal parishes and missions report that more than half of their members are age 50+.
Episcopalians tend to be older than the general population. Overall, 27% of Episcopal members are age 65+, as compared to only 13% of the U.S. population in 2008. The Episcopal Church has proportionately fewer children, youth and younger adults.
The Anglican Communion’s first Anglican-Buddhist Bishop was elected this week at a special convention of the Diocese of Northern Michigan. The sole candidate on the ballot, the Rev Kevin Thew Forrester received the support of 88 per cent of the delegates and 91 per cent of congregations, according to a diocesan news release.
The nomination of Fr Forrester sparked controversy last month, when the diocese announced that he was the sole candidate for election. Critics charged it was unseemly that a single candidate was chosen by the search committee — which included Fr Forrester among its members — to stand for election. Concerns were also raised about the suitability of a professed Buddhist who said he had received Buddhist “lay ordination” and was “walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together” being consecrated a bishop.
Known also by his Buddhist name, “Genpo” which means “Way of Universal Wisdom”, Fr Forrester holds progressive views on a number of traditional Christian doctrines. Writing in the diocese’s news letter he stated: “Sin has little, if anything, to do with being bad. It has everything to do, as far as I can tell, with being blind to our own goodness.”
Twenty-five years ago, people involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa would say wistfully: “Look at Zimbabwe. It’s come through a bitter war of liberation without wrecking its social cohesion, it’s developed a proper democratic culture and it’s feeding itself.”
Granted, this was, even then, a slightly too rosy picture, but it wasn’t nonsense. It represented a conviction that Zimbabwe was showing what was possible to its neighbours and indeed to the whole continent.
And this means that one of the worst of the countless casualties inflicted by Robert Mugabe on his wretched country is the destruction of many people’s hopes, both in Zimbabwe itself and throughout Africa. The continent can’t afford more failed states, mass hunger, contempt for the rule of law. And how much more painful it is when a country has been held up as a sign of promise.
“Confess your faults one to another” (Jas. 5:16). He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. This pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. so we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!
But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone. “My son, give me thine heart” (Prov. 23:26). God has come to you to save the sinner. Be glad! This message is liberation through truth. You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him. He wants to see you as you are, He wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to on lying to yourself and your brothers, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner. Thank God for that; He loves the sinner but He hates sin.
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Smoke weed — help the state?
Marijuana would be sold and taxed openly in California to adults 21 and older if legislation proposed this week is signed into law.
California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, said his bill could generate big bucks for a cash-starved state while freeing law enforcement agencies to focus on worse crimes.
“I think there’s a mentality throughout the state and the country that this isn’t the highest priority — and that maybe we should start to reassess,” he said.
Facing an economic crisis, a banking crisis, a housing crisis and an auto industry crisis, President Obama used the opportunity of his address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night to load his plate with even more. Mr. Obama said he would press ahead with plans to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, bolster education and lead the transition to new forms of energy — all while curing cancer and getting the deficit under control.
We understand the president’s instinct not to let short-term demands obscure the need to meet the country’s long-term challenges. His priorities for fundamental reform, the causes that animated his campaign, are admirable ones. Yet we cannot help wondering: Isn’t the most critical task to ensure a swift and effective response to the stomach-churning downturn? Does a new, understaffed administration have the capacity to try so much so fast? And does the political system have the bandwidth to accommodate all that Mr. Obama is asking from it?
[Houston] Mayor Bill White yanked a controversial plan Tuesday that called for the city to use taxpayer funds to pay off some personal debts for first-time homebuyers, following a flood of outrage and criticism from across the city and beyond.
“I don’t think we ought to be in the business of paying off someone’s debt so they can buy a house,” White conceded during an impassioned City Council meeting. “Paying off people’s credit cards is ridiculous.”
Many council members expressed “embarrassment” over the idea, which received national media attention after the Chronicle wrote about it in Tuesday’s editions. The story appeared to strike a nerve among taxpayers already angry over the recession, the housing meltdown, and federal bailouts of banks and automobile companies.
“Everybody’s outraged about this,” said Councilman Ron Greene, adding that a constituent e-mailed him a copy of a bill and asked him to pay it. “This was not well reasoned.”
On August 3, 1965, just before the end of the council, at the age of twenty-eight, I was received into the Roman Catholic Church in St. Patrick’s, Soho Square. Would it have happened if there had never been a Pope John or a Vatican II? Humanly speaking, the answer must be no.
So what am I to feel now when Pope Benedict XVI unconditionally lifts the excommunications of the four bishops ordained illicitly by Archbishop Lefebvre? Lefebvre held that after fighting the principles of the French Revolution tooth and nail, the church had succumbed to liberalism and modernism at Vatican II and had let all these enemies in: liberty (religious freedom), equality (collegiality of pope and bishops, and the church as the people of God), and fraternity (ecumenism). Such a marriage with the French Revolution was an “adulterous union,” he declared, from which could only come “bastards” such as the new rite of the Mass.
The pope has asserted that the Lefebvrist bishops, who remain suspended from celebrating the sacraments licitly, must now show true acceptance of Vatican II. But how could they ever do that? The only practical possibility would be an ambiguous formula that would allow them to sign while continuing in the same belief and practice as before. It would not matter so much if this brought these bishops back within the embrace of the church universal. It would matter a great deal if it brought the church universal closer to them.
Were those like me deceived when we saw a vision of what the church truly was at Vatican II and followed it? Was the council a flash in the pan, a hiccup in the church’s life, as it were, before the Catholic organism, challenged, closed back in on itself? I could never believe that. The currents of renewal have affected the river of Catholic belief too deeply and strongly to be denied. But what has happened to the wholehearted affirmation of the council that Joseph Ratzinger memorably expressed in his brilliant little book Theological Highlights of Vatican II, published in 1966 just after the bishops had finished their work?
I do not want to feel an orphan. And there are so many like me.
I think about Greensburg, Kansas, a town that was completely destroyed by a tornado, but is being rebuilt by its residents as a global example of how clean energy can power an entire community ”“ how it can bring jobs and businesses to a place where piles of bricks and rubble once lay. “The tragedy was terrible,” said one of the men who helped them rebuild. “But the folks here know that it also provided an incredible opportunity.”
And I think about Ty’Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina -”“ a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom. She has been told that her school is hopeless, but the other day after class she went to the public library and typed up a letter to the people sitting in this room. She even asked her principal for the money to buy a stamp. The letter asks us for help, and says, “We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South Carolina but also the world. We are not quitters.” We are not quitters.
These words and these stories tell us something about the spirit of the people who sent us here. They tell us that even in the most trying times, amid the most difficult circumstances, there is a generosity, a resilience, a decency, and a determination that perseveres; a willingness to take responsibility for our future and for posterity.
Their resolve must be our inspiration. Their concerns must be our cause. And we must show them and all our people that we are equal to the task before us.
I know that we haven’t agreed on every issue thus far, and there are surely times in the future when we will part ways. But I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed.
Addressing a nation on an economic precipice, President Barack Obama plans to ask worried Americans to pull together Tuesday night and declare reassuringly that the U.S. “will emerge stronger than before.”
Mr. Obama aims to balance candor with can-do in his first address to a joint session of Congress.
“The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation,” Mr. Obama plans to say. “Tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
The comments were included in excerpts from the speech that were released early by the White House.
Dear Friends in Christ,
It’s been said that like stars in constellation around the nearer planets are the lesser figures around the central characters in the Baroque paintings of Peter Paul Ruben. One of his finer works, Samson and Delilah, hangs in the British Museum of Art. Behind the young, beautiful and voluptuous Delilah lurks a wizened old lady who holds a candle brightening the central action, where a young man cuts the locks of Samson’s luxurious hair, while the biblical hero sleeps, his head upon Delilah’s lap, her breasts exposed, her body and clothes looking recently ravished. Samson’s shaded muscular torso shows the influence of Michelangelo upon the painter’s portrayal of human form. Further back in the darkness, behind Samson’s extended massive body, the Philistine soldiers are just entering the door, their dark shadows have preceded them into the room.
Ruben’s painting vividly portrays the scene of Samson’s life just before the moment when the biblical Book of Judges says, “And he awoke from his sleep, and said, ”˜I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free.’ And he did not know that the Lord had left him.” (Judges 16:20) Samson’s career as a spiritually anointed deliverer of Israel is a particularly instructive example for our era. He lived in an age of economical, political, and moral upheaval. Many of the older models of leadership and social order were faltering or seemed inadequate in the present environment. Although he was raised from birth for his leadership role, he had lost connection with the formative discipline chosen for him as his birthright. His failure cannot be attributed to any inadequacy in his experience of God or to a lack of the Spirit’s presence in his life. The breakdown and consequent vulnerability which led to his personal failure, depicted so graphically in Ruben’s painting, was the result of his poor understanding and subsequent neglect of the spiritual discipline that was designed by God to channel the anointing that God’s presence brought. He lived too much in the moment, which was the curse of his age and ours as well””in the doctrine of instant gratification. In such an era it is not enough to have a personal experience of God. We must also learn and embrace the disciplines of the spiritual life if we expect to replace old destructive habits with the new life-giving behavior of faith. Enter then Lent.
I noticed it while thumbing through my appointment book the other day””Ash Wednesday and Lent. When I was a busy parish priest it at times struck dread in my heart. Yet occasionally it brought a calmness to my soul, not unlike reading a book on the spiritual life by Evelyn Underhill; or spying a bud opening on the Elberta Peach tree in the backyard; or maybe glancing around a corner at a long missed friend just dropping into town with some time to spare and an inclination to get caught up on one another’s life. I remember one week just before Lent when a parishioner dropped a note in my mail slot. “Fr. Mark, when you get the time give me a call. I need an appointment. Time for a spiritual checkup.” The handwriting didn’t look frazzled. No trace of dreadfulness in the phrasing. If any mood came from the note it was anticipation””more akin to a visit with one’s travel agent than to the dentist.
Time for a spiritual checkup; that’s what Ash Wednesday is. Samson could’ve used it. And Lent, well among other things, it’s a spiritual shape-up for one’s Christian life; a godly housecleaning before a welcomed visitor; a spring spading and planting of the garden; even a long intimate walk with Christ. Repentance after all, once you commit yourself to it, usually ends in joy. I know the downside of the season as well as anyone. There are a lot of Lenten hymns I don’t care for. Some are dirge-like, others drab””(incidentally, Fr. Michael Wright has written a fine one and is willing to share it); the Kyrie can’t compare with the Gloria (surely there’s a good one out there, I’m just wanting to find it); and mea culpas just don’t yield themselves to full-throated praise from the heart as do Alleluias! Still, I have to admit when the pall of purple finally does give way on Easter morning, it’s like the end and the beginning of all things: the packed car starting out on vacation; the tied-fly cast lightly on the water; the closing of a good book: the opening of a better one.
May a rejuvenating Lent come your way!
Blessings in Christ our Savior and Lord,
–(The Rt. Rev.) Mark Lawrence is Bishop of South Carolina