Once again, I am asking how far continuing disunion and non-recognition are justified, theologically justified in the context of the overall ecclesial vision, when there are signs that some degree of diversity in practice need not, after all, prescribe an indefinite separation. I do not pretend to be offering a new paradigm of ecumenical encounter, far from it. But the very quality of the theological convergence recorded, and very expertly and lucidly recorded, in Harvesting prompts the sort of question I have been raising. At what point do we have to recognise that surviving institutional and even canonical separations or incompatibilities are overtaken by the authoritative direction of genuinely theological consensus, so that they can survive only by appealing to the ghost of ecclesiological positivism? The three issues I have commented on may all seem, to the eyes of a non-Roman Catholic, to belong in a somewhat different frame of reference from the governing themes of the ecumenical ecclesiology expressed in the texts under review. If the non-Roman Catholic is wrong about this, we need to have spelled out exactly why; we need to understand either that there are issues about the filial/communal calling clearly at stake in surviving disagreements; or to be shown that another theological ”˜register’ is the right thing to use in certain areas, a different register which will qualify in some ways the language that has so far shaped ecumenical convergence.

Cardinal Willebrands would, I suspect, have been uncomfortable with the latter option and would have wanted (if he had agreed that these issues were critical, unresolved, and in need of resolution) to keep our attention fixed on the former, so that our language and thinking about the Church remained theological in a sense recognised by all involved in the discussion. To say this is not to foreclose consideration of these and other outstanding areas of diversity, let alone to say that they are ”˜political’ matters and that there is no point in approaching them theologically, or that they are ”˜second-order’ questions. But it is important to be clear about just how much convergence there is, as witnessed in the survey offered in Harvesting.

All I have been attempting to say here is that the ecumenical glass is genuinely half-full ”“ and then to ask about the character of the unfinished business between us. For many of us who are not Roman Catholics, the question we want to put, in a grateful and fraternal spirit, is whether this unfinished business is as fundamentally church-dividing as our Roman Catholic friends generally assume and maintain. And if it isn’t, can we all allow ourselves to be challenged to address the outstanding issues with the same methodological assumptions and the same overall spiritual and sacramental vision that has brought us thus far?

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In a speech at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Williams was gracious in referring to the Vatican’s new policy, which he called the “elephant in the room.” The policy was an “imaginative pastoral response” to requests by some Anglicans but broke no new doctrinal ground, Williams said.

He spent the bulk of his speech describing the progress that had been achieved so far in decades of Vatican-Anglican ecumenical talks and questioning whether the outstanding issues were really all that great.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has mounted a direct challenge to the Roman Catholic Church’s stance against the ordination of women priests.

In a speech in Rome today, he made clear there could be no turning back of the clock on women priests to appease the Pope, the Catholic Church or malcontents in the Church of England.

He dismissed the Pope’s plan to welcome disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church as little more than a “pastoral response” which broke little new ground in relations between the two churches.

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Dr Rowan Williams challenged Catholic doctrine by claiming that even the dispute over whether women can be priests should not be a serious dividing issue between the two major Christian denominations.

He held up the Anglican Communion, which has been driven to the brink of collapse over homosexuality in recent years, as an example of how a family of churches can remain connected despite the differences between them.

The archbishop made his provocative comments at the Gregorian University in Rome, at a meeting to celebrate the centenary of Cardinal Willebrands, a former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has arrived in Rome for a visit during which he will meet Pope Benedict XVI in their first meeting since the pontiff’s offer to allow Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining some of their own traditions.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday played down the possibility of using a stock trade tax to fund jobs legislation, saying it should only be done in conjunction with other countries.

“It would have to be an international rule,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at her weekly news conference. She said that she did not want to see trading action move to other countries to avoid such a tax.

She noted, “Other nations have proposed this, and we have been the ones who resisted.” But global consensus would be difficult, if not impossible, to reach by Dec. 18, when House leaders want to finish their job-creation bill.

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A: Yes. The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect affect on me. Lewis, of course, was a Catholic-Anglican rather than an evangelical, but he erected around me all the scaffolding of orthodox Christianity, in terms of which I was opened to the authentic Gospel. His writings still help me. He was certainly the 20th century’s No. 1 apologist. The older I get, the more I appreciate his real genius in Christian insight and communication. He was never my professor. He was a professor of English and the most popular lecturer at Oxford. He was, in fact, operating weekly as the anchor man in the Socratic Society. It was a club where inquirers, with an interest in Christianity, could hear the pros and the cons of the Christian faith.

Q: You’re such a prolific writer yourself, but you’re probably best known for one book, “Knowing God,” first published in 1973. Why do you think that particular book has been such a big seller?

A: It rang a bell because it covered ground and did a job that many people felt needed to be done, but which nobody was attempting at that stage. What was happening was that in evangelical circles, all the emphasis was being laid on personal experience and devotion in the sense in which husbands and wives are devoted to each other. There was not a great deal of intellectual effort going along with it. What I did in “Knowing God” is to write a series of practical articles intended to lead the reader to faith.

I was starting with the very basics that Christians believe about God and working through the aspects of God and the Trinity. I went on with the Gospel and to a series of chapters in the book that were called “Behold Your God.” They were all about living by faith … as the true focus of real life (so that) you are more alive, you see more, you understand more, and you live in a deeper level than anyone can do otherwise. Well, it rang a bell. So the book has sold well and continues to sell well, something like 30,000 copies a year. It’s found a niche.

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The Archbishop of Westminster has blamed Church of England bishops for keeping their leader in the dark about the Pope’s attempts to entice Anglicans to Rome.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury prepared to visit Pope Benedict XVI for the first time since plans to admit Anglican opponents of women priests into the Catholic faith were published, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, deepened the row.

Archbishop Nicholls said that it had been the “duty” of the Anglicans involved in the talks to keep their primate informed about the Pope’s plans.

Read it all and there is much more on Ruth’s blog there (follow the links).

In reality, the three areas…[of the economy, health care and U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan] are simply part of the chaos that engulfs contemporary Western society. Other manifestations of that chaos include the widespread breakdown of authority and personal responsibility, the increase in violence, the loss of respect for others and of a personal sense of decency and restraint, the political hysteria in radio and TV talk shows from both the right and the left ”“ and on the list could go.

Twenty years ago, I wrote that Western society at that time exhibited characteristics commonly associated with insanity, including obliviousness to reality, absorption in a self-contained world of one’s own invention, obsession with trivia and domination by paranoia. It was motivated by the contradictory drives of self-love and self-hatred and driven impulsively toward self-destruction. In other words, society, I said, was clinically insane. I see no reason to modify that observation today.

From a biblical perspective, we have been handed over to what English versions of the New Testament translate as “the wrath of God.” For the apostle Paul, however, the wrath of God is not God’s angry attack upon the world, but is God’s withdrawal from the world, God’s handing the world over to its own desires.

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Kimberly Martinez has a history of finding success in disaster. After she lost her job in 2002, she and her sister-in-law capitalized on the post-9/11 security craze to launch a business called Bonitas International, which sells ID badge jewelry. People snapped up the fancy BooJeeBeads lanyards, and revenue rose fast, hitting $2 million in 2008. Headcount reached 13 people.

Then the recent recession hit hard. In late 2008, Martinez realized that ”” amid widespread layoffs and reduced hours ”” she was providing the lone full-time paycheck in 70% of her Ohio-based employees’ homes. That would be OK if business were thriving, but in January 2009, orders sank 50% from the year before.

Faced with such a crisis, many people would have cut staff. But not Martinez. She doubled down. She hired someone to track cash flow. She hired a marketing team to find new outlets for her wares. Now, thanks to their efforts, business is on track to grow in 2010 and, thanks to her decision, five more Americans have jobs. “Creating a job feels like winning,” she says.

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It should be no surprise that the language of same-sex marriage is just as controversial as the arguments for it. The rhetorical choices of same-sex marriage proponents””especially their use of rights language””have been effective in winning over the minds of many young people. While rhetoric is unavoidable and hardly a malum in se, it can diminish understanding when it is used to make, rather than merely buttress, an argument. In a recent article, New York Times legal correspondent Adam Liptak used the phrase “opposite-sex marriage” to refer to unions between heterosexuals. It appears to be the Times’ first revival of the term since the spring of 2004, when same-sex marriages began in Massachusetts. Writing on the details of a court battle in San Francisco, Liptak asserted that the lawyer involved was advocating not, well, marriage, but “opposite-sex marriage.” (Liptak also said the lawyer’s arguments “seemed to fall of their own weight,” in case you’re wondering about his own view).

This kind of language is an anguish, no doubt, to those unrequited Times letter-writers who will soon lose sleep over the new, unwelcome adjective for their marriages. Who was it who said that same-sex marriage wouldn’t change anything but for gays? If we have begun to call marriage by a different name, something significant is afoot.

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The work given to the Episcopal Church by the July meeting of General Convention in Anaheim, California, has begun.

Nearly 270 volunteer members of 24 of the Episcopal Church’s so-called interim bodies, the Committees, Commissions, Agencies and Boards (commonly know as CCABs) are having their first meetings here Nov. 17-20. The meeting included an orientation session the morning of Nov. 18.

Each CCAB will also have 18 hours meeting together here. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson commissioned the members during a Eucharist at the end of the orientation session.

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David Irving, currently the executive archdeacon of the diocese of Kootenay, has been elected the new bishop of the diocese of Saskatoon. Bishop-elect Irving will replace Bishop Rodney Andrews , who is retiring on Feb. 28.

“I am absolutely delighted,” Bishop-elect Irving said.

Although Bishop-elect Irving has spent most of his career in British Columbia, his work in the church began on the prairies. After completing his theological studies in England at two Oxford colleges, he was ordained a deacon in Edmonton in 1986 and then spent three years serving as the incumbent for the St. Thomas parish in Wainwright, Alta. “We had a wonderful time when we were in Alberta,” he said. “Prairie folks are special folks and we are certainly looking forward to being back there.”

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The future of the Anglican Communion depends upon young people such as Rachel and myself being able, and not just willing, to remain Anglican. Rachel was raised in the Episcopal Church; I began attending the Episcopal student center at the very end of my senior year at the University of Florida, and was confirmed a year and a half later. The process leading up to confirmation was, in many ways, a difficult one. My parents are ex-Catholics and I was raised in a fundamentalist, charismatic church, but at the age of sixteen I began attending, with the rest of my family, a rather unhealthy Calvinist church. Those were very difficult years for me, and my choice to leave evangelicalism at the age of 21 was preceded (and followed, as it turned out) by years of study, struggle, and tears far removed from merely youthful angst. My choice to seek out a different church was met with considerable hostility by some of my family members, but by that point in my life, I knew enough theology to recognize that liturgy, the sacraments, the creeds, and apostolic succession were necessary and essential features of historic Christianity. At the invitation of a friend, I attended the Episcopal student center in late December 2003. The moment I walked through the doors of the chapel, I experienced for the first time what I have never experienced since: I knew that I was home. Reflecting upon this moistens my eyes; the gratuitous plenitude of that life-changing moment exceeds my command of language. I know what it means to be suddenly and miraculously converted only because of that event.

There were several Anglican doctors whose writings gave theological substance to my prior ecstasy ”“ Rowan Williams among the living, and Michael Ramsey and Lancelot Andrewes among those who now sleep. In the years since, I have been shaped by the metaphysical vision of Richard Hooker and the creative rigor Austin Farrer; I have been nourished by the poetic meditations of Divine Herbert and R. S. Thomas; I have been inspired by saints such as Trevor Huddleston and the recent martyrs of Melanesia. In the last year and a half, I have been amazed to learn of the once-central cult of monarchy, complete with miracles, relics, and liturgical commemorations, which suffused Anglican devotion and self-understanding for hundreds of years. And, I remain fully committed to the conciliar ecclesiology that has increasingly defined Anglicanism beginning with the first Lambeth Conference in 1867. I want to pass on this heritage to my children. How do I do so, when I cannot be certain that I will have a church to raise them in ”“ let alone a church for myself and my girlfriend?

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Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid presented an $848 billion health-care overhaul package on Wednesday that would extend coverage to 31 million Americans and reform insurance practices while adding an array of tax increases, including a rise in payroll taxes for high earners.

Democratic leaders were jubilant that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined that the Senate bill would cut federal deficits by $130 billion over the next decade. That projection, released shortly before midnight Wednesday, represents the biggest cost savings of any legislation to come before the House or Senate this year, but the measure’s effective date also was pushed back by one year, to 2014. Democrats said the savings could prove more significant in the long run, though the CBO said they “would probably be small,” amounting to around 0.25 percent of the overall economy, or no more than $650 billion between 2019 and 2029.

Those projected reductions could prove critical in winning the support of three wavering moderate Democrats whose votes Reid (D-Nev.) must secure to bring the legislation to the floor before the Senate breaks for Thanksgiving. But Reid also stacked the bill with provisions sought by liberals, including a public insurance option, albeit a version with an opt-out clause for states.

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O give thanks to the LORD, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples! Sing to him, sing praises to him, tell of all his wonderful works! Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice! Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his presence continually!

–Psalm 105:1-4

Almighty God, by whose grace thy servant Elizabeth of Hungary recognized and honored Jesus in the poor of this world: Grant that we, following her example, may with love and gladness serve those in any need or trouble, in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

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Despite the brutality of the attack, Mr Boxall, a vicar at the Open Gateway Community Church in Thamesmead, south London, said he and his family were praying for the assailants. “We want them to know we forgive them. That does not mean that what they did ‘doesn’t matter’. Of course it does,” he said.

“Forgiveness means that we refuse to be shackled by bitterness and our prayer is that forgiveness will allow the girls to be released from the burden of what they have done.”

Miss Boxall was adopted by Mr Boxall and his wife after being abandoned as a baby by her alcoholic mother.

The couple, who have four natural sons, were working in Rio de Janeiro as missionaries at the time.

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The pope has ordained that Anglo-Catholics can become part of the Roman Catholic Church while retaining their liturgies and other aspects of their Anglican heritage. [Taylor] Marshall emphasized to his audience that they must not listen to theories made up by other people simply because they have a biased view on either one of the faiths. “Theories mentioned such as, ‘The pope doesn’t have priests so he will steal priests from the Anglicans,’ are not theories to be listened to,” he said. “Instead, when one of these theories is heard, correct the person and try to explain.” This new ordinance will be very difficult for those who are already bishops in the Anglican Church. These bishops depend solely on the church, and when they leave, they will lose everything that they have.

“This is something that will make a radical difference,” Marshall said. “Pensions will be lost, insurance will be removed and many will even be attacked by others.” The people who realize that they want to join the Catholic faith will have to give up many of their dreams and material belongings. This will only continue to get worse as people begin to lose jobs, but even with this radical movement, the Catholic faith will continue to help those in need. Even though this may seem like a small movement ordained by the pope, Marshall mentioned that the pope is “mirroring the sacred heart of Jesus.”

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The split over gay clergy within the country’s largest Lutheran denomination has prompted a conservative faction to begin forming a new Lutheran church body separate from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Leaders of Lutheran CORE said Wednesday that a working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the denomination, with hopes to have it off the ground by next August.

“There are many people within the ELCA who are very unhappy with what has happened,” said the Rev. Paull Spring, chairman of Lutheran CORE and a retired ELCA bishop from State College, Pa.

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California government is again beset with red ink, facing a nearly $21-billion deficit over the next year and half, according to a report released today by the state’s chief budget analyst.

Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor projected state spending severely out of line with tax collections not just amid the current recession but for years to come. Solving the fiscal mess will require “painful choices” in both cutting services and raising revenue, Taylor warned.

The gloomy forecast, which comes after Sacramento officials have already raised taxes and slashed programs this year, portends a fierce budget battle again in 2010.

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Resolution C056, entitled Liturgies for Blessings, calls on the Church to gather theological and liturgical resources to help explore how we might serve and support the growing numbers of partnered same-sex couples in our congregations and communities. To meet that call I will appoint a task force to gather such resources from our congregations, clergy, and communicants, in order that the Diocese of Ohio might play a constructive and leadership role in the larger Church’s carrying out of this endeavor. So now, I ask you and your prayer partner each in turn to pray aloud for The Episcopal Church and its leadership, for our commitment and witness to the
Anglican Communion, and for fidelity to our vocation to serve and be served by all of God’s beloved. Ask God to lead us into new ways that offer the world models of living together with difference. Ask God to bring our church growth in mission and lead us into all truth.

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Every Christian must have a prayer discipline. Every Christian can give time to God every day. We need to teach one another and be clear about this as the bottom line. It’s the only way to stay sane in an insane consumer culture. I keep saying that we will not legislate our way through our disagreements in The Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion, but we might pray our way to the place where Christ is, which is Holy Communion.

I am determined that our work in 2010 and beyond is to be about reconciliation. I have been talking with a group in 2009 to create A Center For Reconciliation because as Christians our calling is to be reconciled. We believe the waters of baptism are deeper than any division””any division. My intention is to establish a framework and then invite parishes to use it to create conversations across all kinds of divides: race, sexual orientation, class, ideology, gender, faiths, economics, geography and so on. I want to get bring together groups like: Developers and Organic Farmers; or African Americans, Whites and Latinos; or Sheriffs and men and women who do not have green cards, or Jews, Muslims, and Christians; yellow dog Democrats with die hard Republicans; gays and lesbians with those who are opposed to the consecration of gay bishops. I want us to have honest and loving conversations so we can go deeper than our divisions and be a sign to a broken world. The Church is the only safe container for everyone to have a voice. The Church is where we go to the Center and invite everyone there. And it’s about salvation.

Read it all (pdf).

How much good will can an apology ”” and half a billion dollars ”” buy? Goldman Sachs is hoping it will be a lot.

After first staunchly defending its outsize profits and pay, and then bristling at calls for restraint in these tough economic times, Goldman is trying a new tack: It is apologizing for past mistakes that led to the financial crisis ”” and sharing at least some of its riches, The New York Times’s Graham Bowley writes.

A little more than a week after Goldman’s chairman and chief executive drew fire for saying the Wall Street giant was “doing God’s work,” the bank said Tuesday that it would spend $500 million ”” or about 3 percent of the $16.7 billion it has so far set aside to pay its employees this year ”” to help thousands of small businesses recover from the recession.

At the same time, the executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, also showed a bit of humility, acknowledging at a conference in New York that Goldman had made mistakes, and that it was sorry. “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” he said. “We apologize.”

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Christopher Hall stepped tentatively through the entranceway of City Hall Courtroom 676 and took his place among dozens of others confronting foreclosure purgatory. His hopes all but extinguished, he fully expected the morning to end with a final indignity: He would sign over the deed to his house ”” his grandfather’s two-story row house; the only house in which he had ever lived; the house where he had raised three children.

“This is devastating,” he said last month as he sat in the gallery awaiting his hearing. “This is my childhood home. I grew up there. My mother passed away there. My grandfather passed away there. All of my memories are there.”

A union roofer, Mr. Hall, 42, had not worked since August 2008, when the contractor that employed him as a foreman went broke and laid off more than 40 people. He had not made a mortgage payment in more than a year, and his lender, Bank of America, was threatening to auction off his house through the sheriff’s office.

In most American cities, that probably would have been the end of the story: another home turned into distressed bank inventory by the national foreclosure crisis. But in Philadelphia, under a program begun last year to try to keep people in their homes, Mr. Hall entered the courtroom with a reasonable chance of hanging on.

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Now that the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth (Southern Cone) are separate entities, they are both reporting unanimous decisions by their respective legislative bodies. The decisions move the dioceses away from one another and toward their respective theological commitments.

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Dr Rowan Williams said that taxation should not be seen as a way of stifling business or redistributing wealth but helping to make the world a better place in which to live.

He called for new levies to be introduced on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and an end to the idea that unlimited economic growth is desirable.

Ugh. Why am I not surprised that Dr. Williams, who is frustratingly unreliable in the area of moral theology, comes out for the very dumb transaction tax? Read it all.

“Thank goodness this is out there, clearly stated, with ample documentation and very reasonably put forward,” said Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien of Baltimore, which is hosting the fall general assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week. “I think it’s going to be a very positive document.”

While “Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan” does not represent new Catholic teaching, bishops said the pastoral letter would address a need for an authoritative source to which church leaders may refer as they campaign against divorce, unmarried couples living together and same-sex unions. The bishops, meeting through Thursday at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, are scheduled to hear details of that campaign on Wednesday.

“We have the need to defend marriage within our culture,” said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, a member of the committee that wrote the document. “This pastoral letter will also serve as a foundational document as we seek a direction and a strategy to defend marriage over these coming years.”

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The leader of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States on Monday launched a new effort to rein in Catholic debates and dissidents and to remind the flock that the bishops will be the arbiters of what it means to be a Catholic.

In remarks at the opening of the hierarchy’s annual meeting in Baltimore, Chicago Cardinal Francis George made it clear that after years of repeated questions about the bishops’ credibility, it was time for the bishops to clarify just who can and cannot speak for the church. He also confirmed that he had set up three committees of bishops to develop guidelines for determining what will be considered legitimate Catholic entities.

“Since everything and everyone in Catholic communion is truly inter-related, and the visible nexus of these relations is the bishop, an insistence on complete independence from the bishop renders a person or institution sectarian, less than fully Catholic,” George, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told some 300 of his fellow bishops. “The purpose of our reflections, therefore, is to clarify questions of truth of faith and of accountability or community among all those who claim to be part of the Catholic communion.”

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