Perhaps most important of all, he believes in a “living word of God,” one that ever reveals and expands, that comes from unexpected sources. “When I read the Bible,” he has written, “I do so with the belief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually open to new revelations whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed to abortion.”

These “new revelations” might come from a non-Christian religion as well, for Obama does not believe his Christianity is the final word. “I am rooted in the Christian tradition,” he has said. But “I believe there are many paths to the same place and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

Already in his first months in office, then, he has hosted a Jewish Seder, attended a Baptist church, and put a Pentecostal in charge of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and Neighborhood Partnerships. He invited a gay Episcopal bishop to speak at an inaugural event, but he also asked the most prominent American evangelical of our time to give an opening prayer. And when he spoke at the University of Notre Dame recently, he both honored the Catholic tradition and defied that faith’s stand against abortion rights, all the while saying we must carve out a new unity on the issue of abortion. And this is what we can expect a big tent faith-based presidency, rooted in a non-traditional approach to Christianity yet seeking to draw in nearly every religious tradition. For this, he understands, is how the majority of the people he serves would want it to be.

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I attended Pentecost Sunday services at New York’s Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the liturgy was, in general, lovely and uplifting. But the sermon, by the Very Rev. James Kowalski, was a case in point of why politics should be avoided in the pulpit….

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2. Night-Eating Syndrome
Similar to Binge-Eating Disorder, this malady is characterized by a compulsion to raid the fridge””but is distinguished by the time it takes place: well past midnight. It affects 1.1%”“1.5% of the general population, and people who suffer from it tend to eat at least a quarter of their daily calories in the middle of the night. Scientists believe Night-Eating Syndrome may be a pathway to obesity, partly because people who suffer from it tend to grab for calorie-laden comfort foods.

3. Internet Addiction
According to an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry, this is a disorder “that involves online and/or offline computer usage and consists of at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and email/text messaging.” It has several components, including excessive use, which is “often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives”; withdrawal, which leads to “feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible”; tolerance, meaning “the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use”; and negative repercussions, “including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue.”

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General Motors filed for bankruptcy on Monday morning, submitting its reorganization papers to a federal clerk in Lower Manhattan.

G.M. said it had $82.3 billion in assets and $172.8 billion in debts. Its largest creditors were the Wilmington Trust Company, representing a group of bondholders holding $22.8 billion in debts, and affiliates of the United Auto Workers union, representing nearly $20.6 billion in employee obligations.

The filing itself seemed anticlimatic. It was a simple procedure done thousands of times each day across the country, by individuals and business alike. But not usually, as in this case, by companies like G.M. that have woven themselves into the fabric of America culture.

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For all the drastic cuts and financial overhauls that are meant to secure a future for General Motors and Chrysler, their prospects in coming years will be determined more by the answer to a simple question: Can American drivers live without that new-car smell?

In recent years Americans appeared to be hooked on it and took advantage of home equity loans, easy credit and cheap short-term lease deals to send new-car sales to levels of more than 17 million a year.

Now the market has collapsed by 46 percent to below 10 million, as people are making do with the cars they have, leaving the industry to debate ”” and worry ”” about what the new normal will be once the recession ends.

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Few doubt that the graying of members, low birth rates and various controversies have contributed to the diminishing numbers of mainline Protestants found in the United Methodist Church, the Evan gelical Luth eran Church in America, the Pres byterian Church (U.S.A.), the Epis copal Church, the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ.

But has the slippage become precipitous, threatening to reduce mainline Protestants ever closer to remnant status? “A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States,” said Mark Silk, who helped design the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS).

That survey, which polled more than 54,000 adults, reported in March that the number of mainline Christians had slipped to 12.9 percent of adult Americans””down from 17.2 percent in 2001 and 18.7 percent in 1990””as evangelical numbers grew.

By contrast, the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Study, after polling 35,000 adults in 2007, reported last year that 18.1 percent of adults said they were affiliated with “mainline Protestant” churches.

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Still not convinced? Green shoots are sprouting into a jungle around the world. Consider a few of the economic indicators published in the past two weeks: British house prices have risen in two of the past three months. Japan has experienced its biggest monthly increase in industrial production since the Fifties. Consumer and business sentiment are rising strongly in the United States and Britain and are even showing some signs of life in Europe. In America, where all the trouble started, unemployment claims have fallen, durable goods orders and property sales have bounced back and house prices have stabilised, although not yet in the 20 boom-bust cities sampled by the Case-Shiller index, which the markets, in their wisdom, have chosen to emphasise.

The list of bullish statistics could go on, but it can be best be summarised in the market’s own judgment world share prices have enjoyed a three-month rally, led by commodities, retailers and financials, capital markets have re-opened, with record issuance of equities and corporate bonds, credit spreads have narrowed and government bond prices have fallen in exactly the way they did at the start of the recovery in 2003.

Yet most economic commentators have remained sceptical or even contemptuous of all this evidence….

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The cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday morning presents the pro-life movement in America with a crucial moral test — will we condemn this murder in unqualified terms?

I sincerely hope so. It takes a bad situation and makes it even worse. Read it all.

Update: The National Right to Life statement is here:

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nation’s largest pro-life group, today condemned the killing of Dr. George Tiller. The following statement may be attributed to NRLC Executive Director, David N. O’Steen, Ph.D.:

National Right to Life extends its sympathies to Dr. Tiller’s family over this loss of life.

Further, the National Right to Life Committee unequivocally condemns any such acts of violence regardless of motivation. The pro-life movement works to protect the right to life and increase respect for human life. The unlawful use of violence is directly contrary to that goal.

The National Right to Life Committee has always been involved in peaceful, legal activities to protect human lives threatened by abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. We always have and will continue to oppose any form of violence to fight the violence of abortion. NRLC has had a policy of forbidding violence or illegal activity by its staff, directors, officers, affiliated state organizations and chapters. NRLC’s sole purpose is to protect innocent human life.

NRLC will continue to work through educational and legislative activities to ensure the right to life for unborn children, people with disabilities and older people. NRLC will continue to work for peaceful solutions to aid pregnant women and their unborn children. These solutions involve helping women and their children and do not involve violence against anyone.

What punctured this rose-tinted illusion of mine was the knowledge that these diminutive figures giggling and sitting Indian-style on the carpet before me might also be viewed as incubating adolescents. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’d swear the world knows not an eviler soul than an angry, angst-ridden, hormonally intoxicated teen. And if this little pigtailed girl is anything like the rest of her gender, in just a few years’ time she will unfortunately morph into an eye-rolling, gossiping, ostracizing, sarcastic, dismissive, cliquish ninth-grader, embroiled in the classic cafeteria style…[verbal aggression] of adolescent female social politics.

If that strikes you as misogynistic, rest assured it’s merely an empirical statement. (Rest assured, also, that I’m afraid I have much in common with this tactical style, and I have great respect for more refined Machiavellians, so I’m not casting stones here.) In fact, over the past few decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines””including developmental psychology, evolutionary biology and cultural anthropology””have noted a striking difference in the standard patterns of aggression between reproductive-aged males and females. While teenage boys and young male adults are more prone to engage in direct aggression, which includes physical acts of violence such as hitting, punching and kicking, females, in comparison, exhibit pronounced social aggression, which includes such obnoxious things as mentioned in the various acts of…[verbal aggression] listed above.

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On Thursday, Mr. Cutié mercifully brought it to a close. By joining the Episcopal Church and announcing plans to marry the woman to whom he has been romantically linked, the 40-year-old former Roman Catholic priest made a decision that should put an end to the story. It was, in retrospect, where the story has been heading all along. As long as Mr. Cutié refused to renounce his temporal love, he could not continue on the same spiritual path.

The Catholic Archdiocese took his action to mean that he had ex-communicated himself. It’s a shame that Mr. Cutie did not reach out to the Catholic bishop to announce his intention to join the Episcopal Church. Still, his decision should bring the affair to a tidy end.

Now the archdiocese can concentrate on its more fundamental and worrisome problems — finding a way to keep struggling parishes and charities alive in a time of shrinking collections.

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On his return to the pulpit Sunday, Rev. Alberto Cutié tried to say hello to his new congregation.

He couldn’t.

First came the standing ovation. Then, cheering. And the cameras, held high in the air, as though at a rock concert, capturing every moment. Inside the tiny Episcopal Church of the Resurrection of Biscayne Park, more than 300 people — more than three times the normal attendance — turned out to greet him for Sunday morning service.

Cutié looked out at the crowd and said, “I am humbled by your presence here.”

The priest nicknamed ”Father Oprah” gave his first sermon since famously leaving the Roman Catholic Church after published photographs showed him nuzzling a woman on a Florida beach. Unlike in Catholicism, Episcopal priests can marry.

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Pity the poor exorcist, caught between evil spirits eager to inhabit human bodies and a skeptical society loath to believe demons exist outside of movie theaters.

Even church leaders and clergy look askance at exorcists as peddlers of a practice best left in the Middle Ages. Most American exorcists, particularly those appointed by the Catholic Church, keep a low-profile, hesitating to open themselves””and their church– to ridicule and quacks.

But not the Rev. Gary Thomas. The loquacious, 55-year-old Silicon Valley priest is eager to dish about exorcism, the “apocalyptic times” we live in, and even to accuse Catholics who deny demonic possession””including bishops””of renouncing fundamental Christian dogma.

Thomas is pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Saratoga, Calif.””and the official exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose.

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The Bishop of Rome suggested that “there is still a tendency to unilaterally identify the Church with the hierarchy, forgetting the common responsibility, the common mission” of all the baptized.

“Up to what point is the pastoral responsibility of everyone, especially the laity, recognized and encouraged,” he asked.

Referring to laypeople committed in the service of the Church, the Pope said there should not be “a lessening of the awareness that they are ‘Church,’ because Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, convokes them and makes them his People.”

Benedict XVI thus asked priests to transmit to laypeople a “sense of belonging to the parish community” and the importance of unity. He further encouraged that laypeople draw close to sacred Scripture, through means such as lectio divina, and carry out missionary activity, in first place through living out charity.

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Elizabeth and Selimah (just home from school) and I went to the new Pixar movie last evening. Fantastic.

Benedict XVI expressed his desire that everyone should enjoy religious freedom in a message written for the new ambassador from India, where Christians were the object of a wave of violence last year in the eastern state of Orissa.

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Now, dear brothers and sisters, in today’s solemnity Scripture tells us how the community must be, how we must be to receive the Holy Spirit. In his account of Pentecost the sacred author says that the disciples “were together in the same place.” This “place” is the Cenacle, the “upper room,” where Jesus held the Last Supper with his disciples, where he appeared to them after his resurrection; that room that had become the “seat,” so to speak, of the nascent Church (cf. Acts 1:13). Nevertheless, the intention in the Acts of the Apostles is more to indicate the interior attitude of the disciples than to insist on a physical place: “They all persevered in concord and prayer” (Acts 1:14). So, the concord of the disciples is the condition for the coming of the Holy Spirit; and prayer is the presupposition of concord.

This is also true for the Church today, dear brothers and sisters. It is true for us who are gathered together here. If we do not want Pentecost to be reduced to a mere ritual or to a suggestive commemoration, but that it be a real event of salvation, through a humble and silent listening to God’s Word we must predispose ourselves to God’s gift in religious openness. So that Pentecost renew itself in our time, perhaps there is need — without taking anything away from God’s freedom [to do as he pleases] — for the Church to be less “preoccupied” with activities and more dedicated to prayer. Mary Most Holy, the Mother of the Church and Bride of the Holy Spirit, teaches us this. This year Pentecost occurs on the last day of May, when the Feast of the Visitation is customarily celebrated. This event was also a little “Pentecost,” bringing forth joy and praise from the hearts of Elizabeth and Mary — the one barren and the other a virgin — who both became mothers by an extraordinary divine intervention (cf. Luke 1:41-45).

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The ecclesiastical Court for the Trial of a Bishop has issued a temporary gag order prohibiting the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr., Bishop of Pennsylvania, from making public more than 200 letters that Bishop Bennison claims would exonerate him of charges that he failed to report sexual misconduct committed by his brother, John.

The misconduct occurred while John Bennison was serving on the staff of a California church where Bishop Bennison was rector in the 1970s. John Bennison previously admitted to sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl who was a member of the church youth group. He was deposed from the ordained ministry of The Episcopal Church in 2006.

Bishop Bennison maintains that he did not know about his brother’s misconduct until many years later, but in 2008, the court found Bishop Bennison guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy and recommended that he be deposed. He remains under inhibition pending appeal.

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Mr Berlusconi’s private life is, of course, private. But as President Clinton found, scandal does not become high office. To his critics, Mr Berlusconi retorts that he still commands high popularity ratings, is very much in control of his Government and will not be intimidated by what he calls opposition attempts to smear him. Many may also say that Italy is not America: that the puritan ethic framing standards in the US has never dominated Italian public life, and that few Italians are shocked by womanising. This is patronising nonsense. Italians understand just as well as Americans what is and what is not acceptable. And like Americans, they regard a cover-up as contemptible.

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The Catholic faith has always taught that sexual relations between two consenting married heterosexual adult human beings not related already by blood are not just good but, among the baptized, sacramental.

The West got rid of the Catholic faith and assumed that its moral norms would just continue by inertia. The trouble is: In this world, inertia always encounters friction….

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Two weeks ago, the U.S. Treasury released additional details (link opens .pdf) about the homeowner bailout, or in Washington-speak the “Making Home Affordable” program. Part of those details included some new ways for homeowners to avoid foreclosure. I thought the far more fascinating part, however, was the so-called “Home Price Decline Protection Incentives” (HPDP). It’s the most interesting part of the homeowner bailout that you probably haven’t heard about. I have been fascinated with the HPDP since the bailout was announced in February, and now we finally have some detail to dig into.

For some strange reason, virtually no one is talking about the HPDP. I haven’t seen a single article on it. Here’s how the new fact sheet describes it:

This initiative provides lenders additional incentives for modifications where home price declines have been most severe and lenders fear these declines may persist. These incentives will encourage servicers to undertake more modifications by assuring that incremental investor losses will be partially offset.

All of the initiatives within the homeowner bailout have attempted to stabilize the housing market. But this is the only one that provides a sort of insurance to investors if home prices continue to decline. In February I remarked that it seemed like the housing bailout included everything but the kitchen sink. I was wrong: this is the kitchen sink.

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