THE first Australian priest to be sacked from his parish for being “not in communion” with Rome has defied the Catholic hierarchy by promising to conduct Mass as usual this weekend.

In a decision that is likely to reverberate throughout the Catholic community, the Archbishop of Brisbane yesterday fired Father Peter Kennedy for unorthodox practices.

Father Kennedy, of St Mary’s in South Brisbane, allows women to preach, blesses gay couples, denies the Virgin birth and claims the Church is dysfunctional.

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Facebook Inc.’s latest capitulation to offended users offered another reminder of the social network’s power for self-criticism.

The Palo Alto company rescinded a controversial change to its terms of use late Tuesday after thousands of members protested that Facebook was claiming ownership of all photos and other material posted to the site.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said that wasn’t the intention. But Facebook reverted to a previous version of its legal user guidelines that didn’t include the disputed clause. Zuckerberg said the company would work to revise the policies, which Facebook calls its “governing document,” with feedback from its 175 million users.

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As a follow up on the aspirations and desire of the Bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference “to develop a worldwide vision and strategy of church planting, growth and mission”,[1] taken forward by the Joint Standing Committee of the ACC and the Primates,[2] the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, The Revd Canon Kenneth Kearon, invited a small but diverse group of people involved in evangelistic and church growth ministry, from around the Communion to a consultation to take forward the recommendation of setting up an Evangelism and Church Growth Network.

The group met at St Andrew’s House (London) on 10-11 February 2009, and began their meeting with sharing their personal experiences of the ways in which they have been involved in the ministry of evangelism and Church growth.

By the end of a two-day engaging meeting the group had a common mind on the following…

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Watch it all.

You really need to see this, it is simply spectacular. Watch it all.

On behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, The Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester and Chair of the Council of Christians and Jews, hosted a reception at Lambeth Palace on 17 February 2009 for the participants in the first Inter Parliamentary Conference on anti-Semitism.

The Conference which is the first of a series, follows the work of the ‘All Party Parliamentary Committee on anti-Semitism’ which produced a major report in 2007 and is chaired by Mr John Mann MP. Since then, the Committee has engaged with Parliamentarians concerned with anti-Semitism around the world to create a network and now an agreement to hold regular conferences under the auspices of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition on Combating anti-Semitism.

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The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan offered a grim view Wednesday of military efforts in southern Afghanistan, warning that 17,000 new troops will take on emboldened Taliban insurgents who have “stalemated” U.S. and allied forces.

Army Gen. David McKiernan also predicted that the bolstered numbers of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan – about 55,000 in all – will remain near those levels for up to five years.

Still, McKiernan said, that is only about two-thirds of the number of troops he has requested to secure the war-torn nation.

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Saying that all property held by or for a diocese can only be used for the mission of that diocese and the Episcopal Church, the church has asked a Pennsylvania court to allow it to join an ongoing case concerning the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

In papers filed February 13 with the Court of Common Pleas in Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, the Episcopal Church also asked the court to declare:

”¢ that the members of the diocesan leadership now recognized by the Episcopal Church are “the proper authorities entitled to the use and control of the real and personal property” of the diocese,

Ӣ that the property may be used only for the mission of the diocese and the wider church,

Ӣ that deposed Bishop Robert Duncan and the leaders of the group of Episcopalians that left the diocese on October 4, 2008 must provide an accounting of that property, and

Ӣ that Duncan and the breakaway leaders must vacate the diocesan offices and turn over control of the property to the current leadership.

The petition to intervene in the case is available here. It was signed by retired Diocese of West Missouri Bishop John C. Buchanan, who is the parliamentarian for the House of Bishops and is described in the petition as trustee ad litem (Pennsylvania law requires unincorporated associations, like the Episcopal Church, to sue in the name of one of its members as trustee ad litem).

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Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us. But we must do more- and we in this room bear a special responsibility. Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must – and will – lead the nation to the “new birth of freedom” so long ago promised by our greatest President. This is our duty and our solemn obligation.

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Maryland is considered the cradle of Roman Catholic education in America, but if that heritage is to endure, decisive action must be taken soon to address falling enrollment at Baltimore’s parochial schools, the archbishop said.

For a decade, leaders have prayed the situation would turn around, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien said. But this academic year, enrollment at archdiocese schools is down 5%, or approximately 1,200 students, according to the archdiocese. That’s the equivalent of four full schools and twice the average decline of the previous five years.

“To punt any further would be to lose the school system completely,” O’Brien said. “It’s obvious that some action has to be taken.”

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For homeowners there are two key paragraphs: first the lender is responsible for bringing the mortgage payment (sounds like P&I) down to 38% of the borrowers monthly gross income. Then the lender and the government will share the burden of bringing the payment down to 31% of the monthly income. Also the homeowner will receive a $1,000 principal reduction each year for five years if they make their payments on time.

This is not so good. The Obama administration doesn’t understand that there were two types of speculators during the housing bubble: flippers (they are excluded), and buyers who used excessive leverage hoping for further price appreciation. Back in April 2005 I wrote: Housing: Speculation is the Key

[S]omething akin to speculation is more widespread ”“ homeowners using substantial leverage with escalating financing such as ARMs or interest only loans.

This plan rewards those homebuyers who speculated with excessive leverage. I think this is a mistake.

Another problem with Part 2 is that this lowers the interest rate for borrowers far underwater, but other than the $1,000 per year principal reduction and normal amortization, there is no reduction in the principal. This probably leaves the homeowner far underwater (owing more than their home is worth). When these homeowners eventually try to sell, they will probably still face foreclosure – prolonging the housing slump. These are really not homeowners, they are debtowners / renters.

Read it carefully and read it all.

This morning I read the obituary of an English writer I’d never heard of named Edward Upward, who died last Friday at the age of 105. (In fact, he outlived his obituarist, Alan Walker, who died in 2004.)

Ed went to Cambridge and was a friend of W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood and his career seems to have wilted in the heat of their brilliance. They became famous and he got a job teaching school.

And then he joined the Communist Party, which is a heavy load of bricks to carry, and he married a hard-line Communist named Hilda, and he wrote an essay announcing that good writing could only be produced by Marxists, whereupon he suffered writer’s block for 20 years. (Talk about poetic justice.)

“The middle decades were bleak for Upward,” wrote Walker. “During a sabbatical year designed to give Upward the chance to write, he suffered a nervous breakdown.” And then when he did publish again, he had become an antique. His autobiographical trilogy, “The Spiral Ascent,” was received by critics like you’d receive a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman.

And then there was the problem of walking around with the name Edward Upward.

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“You can’t understand Africa without understanding religion,” said Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest from Uganda. As he led a tour of Kampala, Uganda’s capital, it was soon clear what he meant. Slogans such as “Jesus cares” and “Try Jesus” adorn taxicabs. Ads for a Catholic bank named Centenary print the letter T as a cross. Businesses have such names as “Holy Light Clinic,” “Born Again Bankers” and “Holy Hair Care.” “There is no Western-style division between secular and sacred or public and private here,” Katongole said.

But the infusion of religion into everyday life has not made Uganda a peaceful land. “We have a culture in Uganda of taking power by the point of a gun,” said Archbishop John Baptist Odama. The archbishop’s see, based in the town of Gulu in the north of the country, has been the scene of a vicious civil war for the past 22 years. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, has waged an antigovernment insurgency, savagely attacking rural villages and abducting children, who are turned into soldiers or sex slaves. An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 children have been kidnapped over the years.

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The historically more conscientious, deliberative Senate must rescue consumers from a flimsy payday lending bill hastily passed by the House that would solidify payday lenders’ grip on our state.

The House bill would do nothing to stop payday lenders from making repeated loans to borrowers at triple-digit interest rates. It’s up to senators to push for strong protections that help keep consumers from drowning in a long-term cycle of debt.

The best remedy is to ban payday lending, but many lawmakers oppose that. Fine: Then regulate the industry tightly so it does what it continually alleges is its aim ”” to provide short-term, emergency loans. That shouldn’t be hard for the Senate. It passed strong legislation last session to do just that, only to have Speaker Bobby Harrell, who authored the industry-friendly legislation the House passed last week, sabotage it.
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The House’s payday lender-friendly bill would limit the number of loans a consumer can get to one at a time and require a database be used to enforce the limit. But it also would double the maximum amount of a loan, from $300 to $600.

Read it all.

In the parlance of the health care industry, Ms. [Alanna] Boyd, whose case remains unresolved, is among the “young invincibles” ”” people in their 20s who shun insurance either because their age makes them feel invulnerable or because expensive policies are out of reach. Young adults are the nation’s largest group of uninsured ”” there were 13.2 million of them nationally in 2007, or 29 percent, according to the latest figures from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group in New York.

Gov. David A. Paterson of New York has proposed allowing parents to claim these young adults as dependents for insurance purposes up to age 29, as more than two dozen other states have done in the past decade. Community Catalyst, a Boston-based health care consumer advocacy group, released a report this month urging states to ease eligibility requirements to allow adult children access to their parents’ coverage.

“There’s a big sense of urgency,” said Susan Sherry, the deputy director of Community Catalyst. She described uninsured young adults as especially vulnerable. “People are losing their jobs, and a lot of jobs don’t carry health insurance. They’re new to the work force, they’ve been covered under their parents or school plans, and then they drop off the cliff.”

If Governor Paterson’s proposal is approved, an estimated 80,000 of the 775,000 uninsured young adults across New York State would be covered under their parents’ insurance plans. That would leave hundreds of thousands to continue relying on a scattershot network of improvised and often haphazard health care remedies.

In dozens of interviews around the city, these so-called young invincibles described the challenge of living in a high-priced city on low-paying jobs, where staying healthy is one part scavenger hunt and one part balancing act, with high stakes and no safety net.

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If suicide-murder is deemed legitimate by a community when attacking its “enemies” abroad, it will eventually be used as a tactic against “enemies” at home, and that is exactly what has happened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The only effective way to stop this trend is for “the village” ”” the Muslim community itself ”” to say “no more.” When a culture and a faith community delegitimizes this kind of behavior, openly, loudly and consistently, it is more important than metal detectors or extra police. Religion and culture are the most important sources of restraint in a society.

That’s why India’s Muslims, who are the second-largest Muslim community in the world after Indonesia’s, and the one with the deepest democratic tradition, do a great service to Islam by delegitimizing suicide-murderers by refusing to bury their bodies. It won’t stop this trend overnight, but it can help over time.

“The Muslims of Bombay deserve to be congratulated in taking this important decision,” Raashid Alvi, a Muslim member of India’s Parliament from the Congress Party, said to me. “Islam says that if you commit suicide, then even after death you will be punished.”

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Members of the six Anglican Communion provinces in the Americas will gather February 22-27 in San José, Costa Rica, for the Conference of the Anglican Churches in the Americas in Mutual Responsibility and Mission.

The February meeting will allow participants to tell their colleagues about their mission and ministry along with training opportunities. In addition, conference participants will spend Ash Wednesday working at various ministry sites with Costa Rican Anglicans.

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Five years after fire destroyed its main place of worship, the Bishop Gravatt Center celebrated the consecration of its new chapel Monday.

In December 2003, fire destroyed the chapel and meeting hall at the Episcopal camp and conference center. Short on funding, a decision had to be made about what would be erected in its place.

“We wanted to make a statement about who we were, so that’s why we built a chapel,” said Lauri Yeargin, executive director of the Bishop Gravatt Center.

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Capitol Hill may not be embracing bipartisanship, but some in America’s faith community are making strides in that direction. Christians from the right and the left have begun bridging political and religious differences to seek solutions to one of the nation’s most persistent problems: poverty.

On Tuesday, a new bipartisan group called the Poverty Forum released a series of specific proposals aimed at reducing domestic poverty and keeping Americans hit by the economic crisis from joining the ranks of the poor. The group of 18 leaders ”“ headed by the Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, and Michael Gerson, President Bush’s former speechwriter and policy adviser ”“ has worked since November to develop concrete antipoverty policies they hope will gain widespread support.

“We wanted to transcend political differences and find ‘what’s right and what works,’ as opposed to what’s left or right, or what’s liberal or conservative,” says Mr. Wallis, a progressive Evangelical.

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The average age at first marriage is now almost 26 for women and 28 for men. And a growing percentage of Americans aren’t marrying at all: Provisional federal statistics released Tuesday report 7.1 marriages per 1,000 people in 2008, down from 10 per 1,000 in 1986.

Faced with such numbers, the federal government is funding a $5 million national media campaign that launches this month, extolling the virtues of marriage for those ages 18 to 30.

“We’re not telling people ‘Get married’ but ‘Don’t underestimate the benefits of marriage,’ ” says Paul Amato, a Pennsylvania State University sociologist and adviser to the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, which is spearheading the campaign.

The resource center, a federally funded virtual clearinghouse, works under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families.

Read the whole article.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican Wednesday morning, but may not have had a meeting of the minds if the two statements from their offices are any indication.

No journalists were at the 15-minute encounter and the Vatican and the speaker’s offices have not released any photos. However, according to their statements it appears the pope and the politician attended two different get-togethers.

“His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoins all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development,” the Vatican wrote, having released the statement moments before the two met.

Several hours later, Pelosi’s office gave her take on the tete-a-tete.

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A warning from a major credit rating agency Tuesday sent European stocks and the euro tumbling, serving as a stark reminder to investors that the financial situation in Central and Eastern Europe was deteriorating and that the region faced a protracted slump.

Moody’s Investors Service, in a report highlighting the dangers of West European ownership of East European banks, warned of “hard landings” for most countries in the region and negative rating pressure on banks operating there. Those with the highest vulnerability are the Baltic countries, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria, Moody’s said.

European shares fell to their lowest close in three weeks, with declines led by the already battered shares of financial institutions from Vienna to Wall Street.

The euro fell to $1.2589 in late trading in London, from $1.2801 late Monday.

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As I watch the sad saga of our bishops’ legalistic and punitive response to “traditionalist” bishops, dioceses, and parishes who are attempting to leave the Episcopal Church in order to form a new North American Anglican province, I am reminded of the defensive and dismissive response of the Church of England bishops to the Methodist Movement in the eighteenth century. The result of course was the founding and development of a separate Methodist Church, which is now much larger than the “Anglican” Church (at least as we are now constituted) on this continent. Imagine the strength and witness of Anglicanism today if the Methodists were welcomed as a preaching order within the Church of England. Surely, they would be more “orthodox” and we would be more “vibrant,” and together we would be much larger and much more effective for the Gospel in the world than we are divided. This, by the way, is exactly what Innocent III achieved when he embraced St. Francis and welcomed his friars into the ministry of the Catholic Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century, despite the fact that they were preaching such a dangerous “new” doctrine.

Now what I wonder is this: what would happen if the Presiding Bishop with the support of the House of Bishops were to welcome the formation of a new province for “traditionalists” within the Episcopal Church, allowing every diocese, parish, and church institution to join this province with a two-thirds vote by the appropriate parish meeting, convention, or governing body? She could even stipulate an acceptable window of a year during which this vote would be required to happen.

In this way, both “sides” of our church could continue in dialogue from protected positions of mutual respect without the present feelings of distrust and fear. Both would also be encouraged to grow by teaching the doctrines and practicing the liturgies they believe in, which they could proceed to do with conviction and enthusiasm. We could, for instance, continue to share the Church Pension Fund and Episcopal Relief and Development, and our primates and bishops could continue to meet on an annual basis to look for areas of agreement, common witness, shared costs and joint projects, but in a way which is more representative, more conducive to collegiality, and more focused on results than our present General Convention. I also wonder if it would not be appropriate for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Consul to ask us to do this in one final attempt at unity and civility before they are forced by our actions to actively establish or passively recognize a permanent state of schism between us.

I would hope that the traditionalists would find such an arrangement better than what is now proposed as it would allow clergy, parishes and dioceses to reorganize without the loss of their properties and the cost of legal action. The risk for the Presiding Bishop, of course, is that too many will want to leave, but at least they will not be completely leaving and no one will remain because they have been bullied and threatened into submission. There is also the obvious advantage pointed out by others who have written to this magazine before me that such an action on her part and on the part of the rest of the House of Bishops would show true Christian humility and a more genuine openness to the power of the Holy Spirit to build the Church and thus to lead the Church in His, if not necessarily our own, direction.

–The Revd. Dr. D. Stuart Dunnan is Headmaster of Saint James School in Maryland; this article appears as a Guest Column in the February 8, 2009 Living Church on page 10 and is used with the author’s kind permission

But, of course, many young people today use several ways of communication, through the Internet, ipods or mobile phones, etc. And there are full tendencies and great development in this field. We must be able to tap them and find them in these new ways of communication, offering them signs of our presence and answers to their questions or needs. This year’s message for the World Day of Social Communications is a strong encouragement in this direction. I will not pause too long on it, because it will be the topic of another of your sessions, however, I will present two observations.

The first: at times the speed of this evolution can make us fearful, we fear to lose contact with history, but we have with us many capable young people, who can help us: we must encourage them to live their time with confidence and we must listen to their proposals. I believe that in this way it is possible to move without agitation and with creativity in the world of the new media. In my case, the new media — for example, starting the regular use of “podcasting,” the production of “videonews” and its publication on YouTube — have always come to me through my collaborators, and not from myself or my superiors. Also the good flowering of the widespread presence of the Italian Church on the Net certainly comes from the creativity of the grass roots, encouraged and coordinated with suitable initiatives, more than by a strategy imposed from above.

The second observation: Personally, I try very hard to keep a continuity of evolution in communication and to give an image of integration of its services: from the most traditional media to the newest, but also from the newest to the most traditional. From the news of RV (Vatican Radio) and of the CTV (Vatican Television Center) we have tried to amplify our presence by using YouTube, but in the home page of the Vatican’s channel on YouTube we have presented a link system that links the visitors in such a way that they have possibilities for more profound information, offered by the traditional media and their Web: more ample and complete news on the life of the Church and on the present times, full texts of the Pope’s addresses and documents, accessing the official Web Site of the Vatican’s documentation, and coordination between the media and the Holy See. Next time I will let you know if we have been able to obtain better results.

Read it all.

The US government may have to nationalise some banks on a temporary basis to fix the financial system and restore the flow of credit, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has told the Financial Times.

In an interview, Mr Greenspan, who for decades was regarded as the high priest of laisser-faire capitalism, said nationalisation could be the least bad option left for policymakers.

”It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring,” he said. “I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do.”

Read it all in the FT (subscription required).

Gov. Martin O’Malley said Monday his effort to get the votes to repeal capital punishment in Maryland “is not done,” and he asked the religious community to help by petitioning lawmakers facing a difficult decision.

“I need your help, I really and truly do on this death penalty legislation,” O’Malley told about 300 people attending the African Methodist Episcopal Church Legislative Day. “It is not done.”

The governor also urged repeal supporters not to take any votes for granted on the issue.

“I need your help writing letters. I need your help persuading. I need your help even talking to delegates and senators that you may think are probably already with us,” O’Malley said. “You never really know.”

Read it all.

Markets around the world plunged Tuesday as evidence mounted that the global economic crisis is worsening.

Japan is suffering its worst downturn in 35 years. The British economy is facing its sharpest decline in almost 30 years. Germany is slumping at its worst pace in nearly 20 years. Meanwhile, the job market in the United States, at the epicenter of the global downturn, is the worst in decades. And emerging economies are contracting at a pace few had predicted just months ago. Even China, whose economy still is growing at a 6.8 percent annual pace, is grappling with vast numbers of the unemployed, raising fears of unrest.

The sharpness of the global slowdown has alarmed economists, who see no obvious engine for recovery.

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The price tag for bailing out General Motors and Chrysler jumped by another $14 billion Tuesday, to $39 billion, with the two automakers saying they would need additional aid from the U.S. government to remain solvent.

In return, the two companies also promised to make further drastic cuts to all parts of their operations, in the hope to eventually strike a balance between their cost structures and a dismal market for new car sales.

GM, for example, said it would cut 47,000 more of its 244,000 workers worldwide; close five more plants in North America, leaving it with 33; and cut its lineup of brands in half, to just four: Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick.

Read it all. I bet your reaction to this was similar to mine–more money? They want more money? Something about this picture is all wrong. Read it all–KSH.

GLORY be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

As a personal challenge to my readers, when and where you get a chance today consider printing this and reading it out loud–KSH.