The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.

The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.

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Calls are growing louder for Gov. Mark Sanford to resign over his extramarital affair and questionable travel on commercial, state and private planes.

Those who were on the fence are now calling for his resignation, and those who were demanding his resignation now say he should be impeached.

Even a leader of Sanford’s own Republican Party said the governor may soon find himself alone in thinking he should stay in office.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been lobbying for three decades for the federal government to provide universal health insurance, especially for the poor. Now, as President Obama tries to rally Roman Catholics and other religious voters around his proposals to do just that, a growing number of bishops are speaking out against it.

As recently as July, the bishops’ conference had largely embraced the president’s goals, although with the caveat that any health care overhaul avoid new federal financing of abortions. But in the last two weeks some leaders of the conference, like Cardinal Justin Rigali, have concluded that Democrats’ efforts to carve out abortion coverage are so inadequate that lawmakers should block the entire effort.

Others, echoing the popular alarms about “rationing,” contend that the proposals could put a premium on efficacy that could penalize the chronically ill.

“No health care reform is better than the wrong sort of health care reform,” Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, declared in a recent pastoral letter, urging the faithful to call their members of Congress.

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Shuler: The things I’d really like to see, and I think this is kind of throughout the U.S., are accessibility, quality of care and affordability. One of the things I would really like to ensure is that people aren’t dropped from the system, or a pre-existing condition doesn’t (exclude them from) coverage.

I think that a bill, whether it’s crafted by our office or a working relationship with other members of Congress, what I’d really like to see is for it to implement the Asheville Project that’s been so successful.

(In 1997, the city of Asheville implemented the Asheville Project, a wellness program that encourages employees to regularly visit a doctor and emphasizes disease prevention. The program, Shuler said, resulted in a 50 percent decrease in absenteeism while saving participants $600-800 a year and the city $1,200 per person per year.)….

AC-T: You basically want to go back to scratch and start over (with reform)?

Shuler: I’ve spoken to House leadership, and I feel that’s the best way for us to proceed forward. I do believe that we need to be sure that we get people access to quality health care, affordability and a quality outcome. The way we have to do that is starting over.

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The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean-manufactured munitions, detonators, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades bound for Iran in violation of United Nations sanctions, diplomats said.

The UAE two weeks ago notified the UN Security Council of the seizure, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition they aren’t named because the communication hasn’t been made public. They said the ship, owned by an Australian subsidiary of a French company and sailing under a Bahamian flag, was carrying 10 containers of arms disguised as oil equipment.

The council committee that monitors enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea wrote letters to Iran and the government in Pyongyang asking for explanations of the violation, and one to the UAE expressing appreciation for the cooperation, the envoys said. No response has been received and the UAE has unloaded the cargo, they said.

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[Liam] Collins is a native of Ireland. He was ordained as priest June 12, 1971, at St. Patrick’s College in County Tipperary. He earned both bachelor of philosophy and master of divinity degrees from St. Patrick’s College, and a master of family studies degree from Mercer University in Macon.

He has served churches in metropolitan and rural locations in South Georgia for 38 years. Most recently, his notable work has included initiating an outreach ministry to students and faculty at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

“The primary focus of my ministry has always been seeking to awaken all to the bonds of love and respect that unite us, as God’s people,” Collins said. “The church, in structure and service, is called to act when the most vulnerable and needy among us reach out for hope and healing. We are God’s very heart, hands and feet in this wounded, broken world.”

Collins has been married to his wife, Mary, for 15 years.

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See how many you can guess before you look.

Jan Hilton starts most days sitting in a living room chair, facing an iconic image of Jesus created 1,400 years ago in a Middle Eastern monastery.

Before she prays and meditates there for 20 minutes, she looks into the eyes of the picture.

“It creates the right frame of mind,” she said. “It’s just remembering that in awareness of the quiet is the divine.”

A spiritual director at an Episcopal church in Corpus Christi, Hilton said that same feeling of connection to God is one that has been enriched by her interest in mysticism. She has enrolled in a class about modern mystics that will begin next month in San Antonio.

Called “Christian Mysticism: History, Wisdom and Insights,” the course will include scholars talking about mystics from various Christian faith traditions, organizers said. In addition to talks about mystics, time is set aside in class for participants to practice prayer and meditation.

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After the 2006 vote, Archbishop Makgoba — then the Bishop of Grahamstown — urged all sides to continue talking. “We agree that we have to dialogue, and listen to the experiences of all people around this issue, so that when the conclusion is arrived at, all of us understand and appreciate the challenges that all people feel,” he said.

The then Archbishop of Cape Town Njogonkulu Ndungane welcomed the expansion of civil rights for gay couples, but stated the “Anglican Church’s position is clear. We have repeatedly affirmed that we do not regard partnership between two persons of the same sex as a marriage in the eyes of God.”

However, Dean [Rowan] Smith said after the vote in Parliament that he hoped the new law would prompt the Anglican Church to allow congregations a local option whether or not to bless same-sex couples. The Province presently allows gay clergy to serve in the ministry but requires that they be celibate, and requires all clergy to abstain from sexual relations outside of marriage.

After the vote, Archbishop Makgoba said the resolution was “an important first step to saying: ‘Lord, how do we do ministry in this context?’” of changing sexual mores.

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St. John’s, founded in 1843, is a church bristling with new life. Earlier this year, the 150-member parish in Rosebank installed a new rector, the Rev. Roy Cole, after many years of working with a long-term supply priest and a dedicated vestry and wardens. The congregation is proud of its determination, its prayerful willingness to grow, and its diversity.

The parish has the vibrancy of a mosaic, with parishioners who trace their roots to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and Central America. It is a place where bright pieces of culture, language, dress, customs and history wash up against each other and meld into one distinctive whole.

Father Cole made a point of honoring that diversity at his institution in February. He insisted that the event should not be catered but that parishioners should bring dishes that represented their ethnic background.

“I wanted the people to be authentically included with offerings of their culture and one of the best ways to do that is through food,” Father Cole said.

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The Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, located AT 542 Potters Avenue, began as a mission parish in 1868. The mission church had once claimed 700 parishioners but has seen its membership decline in recent decades.

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“Providing a reality check, Radical Women spokeswoman Alison Thorne told the Melbourne rally that marriage was an oppressive institution designed to condemn women to lives of slavery, but same-sex couples should nevertheless be equally entitled to it. She then led the crowd in a chant: ”˜Kevin Rudd, ALP, we demand equality’.”

Wow, what a great quote. I am sure many fellow homosexuals wished she had simply shut up. And many may be kicking themselves for allowing the MSM to pick up on this juicy quote. Of course it says nothing new. Those of us who are not reliant on a censorious MSM know full well that many, if not most, homosexuals are not even interested in marriage.

Indeed, there has been a longstanding debate amongst homosexuals over the question of homosexual marriage. Some are in favour, some are opposed, and there are many options in between. As one example, one Victorian leader put it this way: “Obviously while there is a lack of unanimity about gay marriage, our human rights must be the same as everyone else’s. If someone wants to get married or doesn’t want to get married, it’s their choice.”

One Australian homosexual lobby group has actually split over this issue. Two committee members have resigned from the New South Wales Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, claiming it has not pushed hard enough for marriage rights. But the Lobby said that marriage reform was “not a priority”.

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At one extreme of Corporate America is a cadre of companies and banks, mostly big, united by an enviable access to credit. At the other end are firms, chiefly small, with slumping sales that can’t borrow or are facing stiff terms to do so.

On Main Street, there are consumers with rock-solid jobs — but also legions of debt-strapped individuals struggling to keep their noses above water.

This split helps explain the patchiness of the recovery that appears to be taking hold after the worst recession in a half-century.

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“The dominant public policy imperative motivating reform is to address the moral hazard risk created by what we did, what we had to do in the crisis to save the economy,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an interview.

The worry for consumers is that the bailouts skewed the financial industry in favor of the big and powerful. Fresh data from the FDIC show that big banks have the ability to borrow more cheaply than their peers because creditors assume these large companies are not at risk of failing. That imbalance could eventually squeeze out smaller competitors. Already, consumers are seeing fewer choices and higher prices for financial services, some senior government officials warn.

Those mergers were largely the government’s making. Regulators pushed failing mortgage lenders and Wall Street firms into the arms of even bigger banks and handed out billions of dollars to ensure that the deals would go through. They say they reluctantly arranged the marriages. Their aim was to dull the shock caused by collapses and prevent confidence in the U.S. financial system from crumbling.

Officials waived long-standing regulations to make the deals work. J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were each allowed to hold more than 10 percent of the nation’s deposits despite a rule barring such a practice. In several metropolitan regions, these banks were permitted to take market share beyond what the Department of Justice’s antitrust guidelines typically allow, Federal Reserve documents show.

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See what you make of it.

Meanwhile, back in Anaheim, the power of personal story ”“ its ability to transform abstract concepts like gender identity and expression into concrete human reality ”“ seemed to win over hearts and minds.

“What blew me away,” said the Reverend Cameron Partridge, a transgender priest and TransEpiscopal leader, “was how many people came out of the woodwork. More people are connected to the transgender community than one might imagine.”

As Partridge, originally from the Bay Area, now serving as vicar of a Boston parish, explained further, “When we brought up the [resolutions] people stepped forward to say, ‘My neighbor is trans, or my son or daughter is.’ In other cases, and random places, people came forward and told me, ‘I am so glad that you testified at that committee hearing. I would never have thought about [transgender concerns] before.'”

In sum, Cameron, another among the party of eight, added, “People were amazing.”

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Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

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All this online social networking was supposed to make us closer. And in some ways it has. Thanks to the Internet, many of us have gotten back in touch with friends from high school and college, shared old and new photos, and become better acquainted with some people we might never have grown close to offline.

Last year, when a friend of mine was hit by a car and went into a coma, his friends and family were able to easily and instantly share news of his medical progress””and send well wishes and support””thanks to a Web page his mom created for him.

But there’s a danger here, too. If we’re not careful, our online interactions can hurt our real-life relationships.

Like many people, I’m experiencing Facebook Fatigue. I’m tired of loved ones””you know who you are””who claim they are too busy to pick up the phone, or even write a decent email, yet spend hours on social-media sites, uploading photos of their children or parties, forwarding inane quizzes, posting quirky, sometimes nonsensical one-liners or tweeting their latest whereabouts. (“Anyone know a good restaurant in Berlin?”)

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LEADERS in the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church have backed the Scottish govern­ment’s decision to release the Locker­bie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, from prison last week on the grounds of ill health. He has advanced prostate cancer.

In the United States, anger was expressed at the decision taken by the Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill. The US President, Barack Obama, called the release a “mistake”. The director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, said that it gave “comfort to terrorists”.

But the Primus of the Scottish Epis­copal Church, the Most Revd David Chillingworth, said that the decision sent the world “an important and positive message about our values”, and was “a brave political choice taken in the face of strong pressure from outside Scotland.

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A recent study issued by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University identifies a broad cultural shift away from religion and social traditionalism and toward a belief in personal independence and tolerance for diverse life styles – otherwise known as “secular individualism.” The same report also indicates that “more children each year are not living in families that include their married, biological parents, which by all available empirical evidence is the gold standard for insuring optimal outcomes in a child’s development.”

One expression of this cultural shift toward “secular individualism” is the recent authorization of “marriage” between individuals of the same sex in a few states and the call for passage of a same sex “marriage” law in New Jersey.

As Catholics, we must not stand by in silence in the face of the many challenges that threaten marriage and, in turn, children and the public good. We must not shirk from our responsibility.

We must protect and promote marriage. We must not abandon the teaching of the Catholic Church on marriage and the complementarity of the sexes – a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by the major cultures of the world. We must pledge our support to all family members, including those who choose to remain single. We must help those entering marriage to prepare for the challenges, sacrifices and joys to come. We must reach out with the special compassion of Christ to those married couples and families experiencing difficulties, anxiety, and illness.

In these troubled times, we, the Catholic Bishops of New Jersey, offer here some basic truths to assist people in understanding Catholic teaching about marriage and to enable them to promote and support marriage and families.

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The Catholic bishops of New Jersey have distributed a letter explaining Church teaching on marriage and refuting the errors of same-sex “marriage” proponents. Urging the faithful to “protect and promote” marriage, they discussed the God-given natural complementarity of the union of man and woman.

“As Catholics, we must not stand by in silence in the face of the many challenges that threaten marriage and, in turn, children and the public good. We must not shirk from our responsibility,” the bishops’ message begins.

New Jersey state legislators may vote on recognizing same-sex “marriage” sometime after the November election. Parish priests throughout the state were directed to distribute the bishops’ letter, titled “The Call to Marriage is Woven Deeply into the Human Spirit,” in parish bulletins last Sunday, The Newark Star-Ledger reported.

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This memo is to announce a new development in the litigation brought against our diocese and to call all of you to a time of prayer and fasting in this matter.

On Wednesday, September 9, 2009, at 8:30 a.m., two motions filed by the Diocese and the Trustees of the Diocesan Corporation will be heard by the 141st District Court in Tarrant County. The first motion challenges the authority of the attorneys who have brought suit against the Diocese and the Trustees of the Diocesan Corporation to prove that they were hired by individuals who had the authority to hire them. The second motion is one brought by die Diocese asking the court for permission to bring into the suit those individuals who hired the attorneys who have brought the suit against us and our trustees. Those individuals claim to hold offices in the Diocese to which they have never been legally elected.

Read it all and follow the links to the key legal documents at the bottom.

Of mainline Protestants surveyed by the Pew Forum for its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 56 percent said homosexuality should be accepted by society. Thirty-four percent of those Protestants said it should be discouraged. In all, the Pew Forum surveyed more than 35,000 adults of all faiths.

Others say the growing acceptance of homosexuality in churches is unique to North American liberal Protestantism.

Christianity is growing fastest in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, and those believers are much more conservative on sexuality, said Bishop Callon W. Holloway Jr. of the Southern Ohio Synod of the ELCA. He opposed the changes at last week’s Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis.

Now, Holloway is trying to hold his synod together. He’s heard from between 200 and 300 people who say they intend to leave the denomination, he said.

Such departures could have devastating consequences for congregations that rely on members financially, he said.

The Rev. Paul Ulring, pastor of the 5,000-member Upper Arlington Lutheran Church, said his congregation is likely to leave the ELCA.

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State insurance fraud agents Tuesday raided the health care business of an Episcopal priest under investigation by the Bethlehem diocese because of his reportedly extravagant Manhattan clubbing activities.

Agents removed filing cabinets and other records from the private business of the Rev. Gregory Malia — NewLife Home Care Inc. in Pittston, Luzerne County.

The agents were with the attorney general’s Insurance Fraud Division, spokesman Kevin Harley said Wednesday. Harley would not provide specifics about the raid or the investigation into Malia’s business activities. Harley said sealed search warrants were executed as part of an ongoing investigation and no arrests have been made.

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

When 10 Episcopal nuns in Catonsville join the Roman Catholic Church in September, they hope to form the first “diocesan institute” in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

“A diocesan institute is an institute of religious men or women who take vows and live in community and they are overseen directly by the diocesan bishop,” said Dr. Diane Barr, chancellor for the Archdiocese of Baltimore. “They have a special relationship with the bishop.”

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After seven years of prayer and discernment, a community of Episcopal nuns and their chaplain will be received into the Roman Catholic Church during a Sept. 3 Mass celebrated by Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien.

The archbishop will welcome 10 sisters from the Society of All Saints’ Sisters of the Poor when he administers the sacrament of confirmation and the sisters renew their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in the chapel of their Catonsville convent.

Episcopal Father Warren Tanghe will also be received into the church and is discerning the possibility of becoming a Catholic priest.

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Traditional Anglicans have criticised the UK’s major Christian arts festival for inviting a gay American Bishop to speak.

Among those addressing the Greenbelt festival this year is the Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, a gay man whose ordination by the Episcopalian Church was greeted with both outrage and celebration in various parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Many people did not welcome his elevation, and the issue of gay clergy has become so contentious that it threatens to divide global Anglicans – some say it has already begun.

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After a farewell service on Sunday, St. George’s Episcopal Church will close its doors just short of its 100th anniversary ”” the latest parish to disintegrate in part because of the ordination of gay and lesbian priests.

The Episcopal Diocese of Colorado will officially deconsecrate the Englewood church, more recently called Holy Apostles, after its short-lived merger with another struggling congregation failed to save it.

“St. George’s has been a church in turmoil for decades,” said Rosamond Long, a 35-year member of the church. “We managed to get it back on its feet every time. This time, we’re not going to be able to do it.”

The remaining 30 or so congregants will scatter among other churches.

Even though these traditional, loyal and older Episcopalians did not object to the church’s growing acceptance of openly gay clergy, they say, their former priest did.

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In my opening address at General Convention, I spoke about the “great Western heresy” of individualism (see the full text here). There have been varied reactions from people who weren’t there, who heard or read an isolated comment without the context. Apparently I wasn’t clear!

Individualism (the understanding that the interests and independence of the individual necessarily trump the interests of others as well as principles of interdependence) is basically unbiblical and unchristian.

The spiritual journey, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is about holy living in community. When Jesus was asked to summarize the Torah, he said, “love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” That means our task is to be in relationship with God and with our neighbors. If salvation is understood only as “getting right with God” without considering “getting right with (all) our neighbors,” then we’ve got a heresy (an unorthodox belief) on our hands.

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