[Bishop Don] Harvey said the Pope’s invitation was neither helpful nor welcome.

“This is not the way to foster good ecumenical dialogue,” he said in his charge.

Both Harvey and Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, have said they do not expect many to take up the Pope’s offer.

Despite Harvey’s misgivings, several lay members of the Network at the synod told the Star on Monday they took comfort from the invitation.

“I was absolutely elated,” Phillip Wiebe of Vancouver said Monday.

Wiebe saw the Pope’s move as evidence that the Network has support for its conservative interpretation of the Bible.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has pleaded with the Church of England’s Anglo-Catholics to resist the temptation to convert to Roman Catholicism over women bishops.

Dr Rowan Williams admitted that the future of the Anglican Communion looked “chaotic and uncertain”.

Preaching in london, he said: “God knows what the future holds.” But he insisted that it remained possible to be at once holy, Catholic and Anglican.

Dr Williams did not refer directly to the response from Pope Benedict XVI to requests from some Church of England bishops and traditional Anglicans around the world for a means of admission to the Catholic Church.

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He grew downward in humiliation before God, and he grew upward in his adoration of Christ.

Handley Moule captures the essence of Simeon’s secret of longevity in this sentence: “‘Before honor is humility,’ and he had been ‘growing downwards’ year by year under the stern discipline of difficulty met in the right way, the way of close and adoring communion with God” (Moule, 64). Those two things were the heartbeat of Simeon’s inner life: growing downward in humility and growing upward in adoring communion with God.

But the remarkable thing about humiliation and adoration in the heart of Charles Simeon is that they were inseparable. Simeon was utterly unlike most of us today who think that we should get rid once and for all of feelings of vileness and unworthiness as soon as we can. For him, adoration only grew in the freshly plowed soil of humiliation for sin. So he actually labored to know his true sinfulness and his remaining corruption as a Christian.

I have continually had such a sense of my sinfulness as would sink me into utter despair, if I had not an assured view of the sufficiency and willingness of Christ to save me to the uttermost. And at the same time I had such a sense of my acceptance through Christ as would overset my little bark, if I had not ballast at the bottom sufficient to sink a vessel of no ordinary size. (Moule 134f.)

He never lost sight of the need for the heavy ballast of his own humiliation. After he had been a Christian forty years he wrote,

With this sweet hope of ultimate acceptance with God, I have always enjoyed much cheerfulness before men; but I have at the same time laboured incessantly to cultivate the deepest humiliation before God. I have never thought that the circumstance of God’s having forgiven me was any reason why I should forgive myself; on the contrary, I have always judged it better to loathe myself the more, in proportion as I was assured that God was pacified towards me (Ezekiel 16:63). . . . There are but two objects that I have ever desired for these forty years to behold; the one is my own vileness; and the other is, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ: and I have always thought that they should be viewed together; just as Aaron confessed all the sins of all Israel whilst he put them on the head of the scapegoat. The disease did not keep him from applying to the remedy, nor did the remedy keep him from feeling the disease. By this I seek to be, not only humbled and thankful, but humbled in thankfulness, before my God and Saviour continually. (Carus, 518f.)

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Twenty-seven blissful years of Army life later, last Thursday Martin was at the Soldier Readiness Center getting his final check before deploying to Iraq. He says the first moment he knew something was wrong was when he felt a sudden sharp pain in his arm.

“Then when it hit in my arm, I grabbed my arm and I realized, I ain’t never been hit that hard,” he says. “I said, ‘Golly, this hurts.’

“And then I looked at my hand, my hand was just covered in blood, but I was laying on the floor, and the floor was covered with blood, and in mind, I said, ‘I got to get out of this building.”

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The Rev. Richard Rodgers of Blessed Sacrament Old Catholic Church in Racine, Wis., has presided over Masses since 1989. But Rodgers isn’t a typical priest ”” the 62-year-old pastor is married and has a son and grandchildren.

A former Episcopalian minister, Rodgers leads a seven-member congregation in the Chicago Diocese of the Old Catholic Church, a hybrid of Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions.

“I left the Episcopal Church because it was slowly descending into chaos,” Rodgers said, referring to his opposition to the church’s acceptance of openly gay clergy, blessing over same-sex unions and allowance of female priests and bishops.

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See how many you have seen. I am also interested in what you make of their top 5 and if you disagree, then which films would you include that they do not? KSH.

A radical preacher who allegedly inspired the Fort Hood gunman has a large following in Britain and counts prominent mainstream Muslims among his supporters.

The FBI is investigating communications between Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at the Texas army base last week, and Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric now based in Yemen. Mr al-Awlaki, 38, who described Major Hasan on his blog as “a hero”, has been a regular visitor to Britain and delivers frequent lectures to British audiences by video or via the internet.

Counter-terrorism sources said yesterday that Mr al-Awlaki was barred from entering Britain on security grounds while the anti-extremist Quilliam Foundation said he was “perhaps the most influential pro-jihadist ideologue preaching in English today”

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O loving God, who orderest all things by thine unerring wisdom and unbounded love: Grant us in all things to see thy hand; that, following the example and teaching of thy servant Charles Simeon, we may walk with Christ in all simplicity, and serve thee with a quiet and contented mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

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The Episcopal Church loses about 19,000 members a year because more of them die than are baptized into the church, Jefferts Schori said. The average Episcopalian is about 57 years old. The average age American is 37, she said.

“Fifty-seven-year-olds don’t produce a lot of children,” Jefferts Schori said. “But, there are lots and lots of communities and populations among us that are growing.”

Younger generations don’t know what the church has to offer, she said, adding that it’s going to take Episcopalians to become more passionate about ministry to attract new people.

“How are they going to find out if we don’t tell them?” she asked.

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As Mr. Obama nears the end of his review of American strategy in Afghanistan, the issue of how he will prod, cajole or bully Mr. Karzai into taking action on matters he has avoided for the past five years has been catapulted to the center of the discussion.

Administration officials and America’s European allies say that rampant corruption and the illegal drug trade in Afghanistan have fueled the resurgence of the Taliban, and that unless Mr. Karzai moves forcefully to tackle those issues, no amount of additional American troops will be able to turn the country around.

Yet many of Mr. Obama’s advisers said they had seen no evidence that Mr. Karzai would follow through on promises to crack down on corruption or the drug trade. Mr. Obama, who met with his advisers again on Wednesday, is said to be particularly skeptical of Mr. Karzai’s resolve.

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It initially seemed to be a perfect fit. They were, after all, two United Methodist congregations dedicated to sharing the Gospel and working for social justice, so sharing the same church building seemed to make sense.

And so when members of the primarily Spanish-speaking Via Abundante ”” or Abundant Life ”” United Methodist Church moved from their old church building on Cranston Street three years ago, joining with the newly formed Open Table of Christ United Methodist Church in having services at the former Washington Park Methodist Church on 1520 Broad St., both had reason to rejoice: it was a visible symbol of churches working together….

Neither had realized it at the time, but their shared fellowship was about to be tested. In much the same way a number of mainline denominations across the United States have had to wrestle with divisions in their ranks over issues involving homosexuality, the two congregations were about to discover that what was perfectly acceptable to most members of one was not acceptable to the other.

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What happens now? Democratic supporters of abortion rights need to accept that their House majority depends on a large cadre of antiabortion colleagues. They can denounce that reality or they can learn to live with it.

There is also a challenge for abortion’s foes, above all the Catholic bishops who have a long history of supporting universal coverage but devoted most of their recent energy to the abortion battle. How much muscle will the bishops put behind the broader effort to pass health-care reform? Their credibility as advocates for social justice hangs in the balance.

And if the Senate forces a change in the Stupak language, one obvious approach would involve a ban on abortion in the public plan — if such an option survives — and the application of Ellsworth’s rules to the private policies sold in the insurance exchange. The alternative would be Stupak’s original compromise offer to Pelosi. There are not many other options.

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The threats hanging over the central bank could compromise its independence, warn Fed watchers. Several crucial decisions are approaching, including how to continue phasing out its emergency efforts to support the economy. The Fed has already said it will wind down the purchases of mortgage securities in March after buying about $1.25 trillion worth. In the more distant future, to avoid the risk of inflation, the central bank will need to raise its target interest rate above the current level near zero.

Rate increases are always unpopular, particularly when the unemployment rate is still high. But the political environment could make the decision even tougher.

“The current unpopularity of the Fed will make it more difficult for them to raise interest rates when the economy recovers,” said Karen Dynan, a former senior Fed economist who now heads the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution. “With the Fed under such close scrutiny, any move to raise interest rates will be challenged even more strongly than in the past.”

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The fiscal 2009 budget deficit, triple that of 2008, was 10 percent of GDP. Lawrence Lindsey says probable policies will produce deficits of 7 percent of GDP for a decade. Ronald Reagan’s worst deficit was 6 percent of GDP and for only one year.

Lindsey — a former member of the Federal Reserve board of governors and director of George W. Bush’s National Economic Council (2001-02) — says Americans’ net worth has dropped at least $13 trillion since the recession began in December 2007. What is to be done?
Americans could suddenly begin saving substantially more, but this would deepen and prolong the recession. Alternatively, America could reflate the value of its assets by printing money. Lindsey says it is already doing that — printing bonds promiscuously and lending money to banks at negligible rates, money that banks can use to buy the bonds. This sharply increases the money supply, which sets the stage either for inflation — too much money chasing too few goods — or for recovery-snuffing higher interest rates to try to prevent inflation. Or for something like Japan’s lost decade — banks pouring money into government bonds rather than the real economy.

America, says Lindsey, will not be Weimar Germany, where hyperinflation caused people to rush to stores with satchels of rapidly depreciating currency. But, he adds, no country has successfully behaved the way the United States is behaving.

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Although later perceived as a “church in socialism”, it was a Church in opposition which understood itself as a fellowship of the Crucified, thus echoing Bonhoeffer’s words in The Cost of Discipleship: “Every call of Christ leads to death.” A key text for them was Bonhoeffer’s influential book Life Together, first published in 1939 and greatly influenced by his time at the Anglican Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield in West Yorkshire.

What the Church achieved in East Germany before 1989 cannot be underestimated. Great sacrifices had to be made. There was no room for cheap grace; it was sacrifice lived as well as believed in. It was their network of contacts, which enabled them as a minority church to survive against a background of discrimination that was not always subtle. The University Church in Leipzig, for instance, had been pulled down by the communists and a bust of Karl Marx placed where the altar was.

However, during the 40 years of the German Democratic Republic the churches provided the forum where people could speak freely and democracy be exercised. Their strong pacifist emphasis was particularly inspired by the vision of Isaiah of turning swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.

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White House budget director Peter Orszag has his hands full these days trying to wrangle down a deficit that has ballooned to an estimated $1.4 trillion. Part of that borrowing was necessitated by the recession, while part of it was designed to shorten the economic crisis.

Orszag says the federal deficit needs to be cut to about 3 percent of economic growth in the coming years to reduce the sea of debt. At the same time, the U.S. has to guard against sending the economy into a tailspin by pulling back too soon on stimulus programs.

Striking a balance is “extraordinarily challenging,” Orszag tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep….

Orszag makes no apologies for not projecting a balanced budget anytime in the near-term: “You have to remember the situation that we inherited.”

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Speaking in support of new initiatives on Tuesday, Steven Berg of the National Alliance to End Homelessness said the problem shouldn’t be viewed as inevitable.

“We know a great deal about the pathways into homelessness,” he said in testimony to Congress, and also about “the interventions and program models which are effective in offering reconnection to community, and stable housing.”

Prevention efforts may be especially important for Americans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, experts say, because the likelihood of vets being homeless is greatest about seven years after they leave military service.

Bills under review in Congress include a range of measures, such as 60,000 new housing vouchers from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), targeted at the number of vets estimated to be chronically homeless due to problems such as mental illness. Other provisions would target new money toward community or faith-based groups to provide support for homeless vets. One bill focuses especially on support for vets who are single parents.

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We ask for blessings on all those who have served their country in the armed forces.
We ask for healing for the veterans who have been wounded, in body and soul, in conflicts around the globe.
We pray especially for the young men and women, in the thousands, who are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with injured bodies and traumatized spirits.
Bring solace to them, O Lord; may we pray for them when they cannot pray.
We ask, echoing John Paul II, for an end to wars and the dawning of a new era of peace,
As a way to honor all the veterans of past wars.

Have mercy on all our veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan
Bring peace to their hearts and peace to the regions they fought in.
Bless all the soldiers who served in non-combative posts;
May their calling to service continue in their lives in many positive ways.

Give us all the creative vision to see a world which, grown weary with fighting,
Moves to affirming the life of every human being and so moves beyond war.
Hear our prayer, O Prince of Peace, hear our prayer.

(Thanks to the Springfield Franciscans)

Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy, the charismatic military chaplain universally known as ‘Woodbine Willie’, was one of those who tried to make sense of this. What he wrote can still shock and challenge in deep ways. One of his meditations on ‘God and Prayer’ begins by evoking a scene in the trenches: ‘I wish that chap would chuck his praying. It turns me sick. I’d much rather he swore like the sergeant.’ So is prayer useless? Is God truly absent and powerless? Studdert-Kennedy simply answers that prayer won’t save us from suffering any more than it saved Christ from his cross. But it is the only thing that makes us able to fight against evil in the only way that will actually transform the situation as Christ did ”“ by selfless compassion, with all the risk that carries.

In all his work, in his sermons, his meditations, his astonishing poems, so many of them cast in the voice of the ordinary soldier in the trenches, full of protest and apparent blasphemy, Studdert-Kennedy argues against the bland problem-solving God. His commitment is to the God who is discovered in the heart of your own endurance and pain ”“ not a solution, not a Father Christmas or a fairy godmother, but simply the one who holds your deepest self and makes it possible for you to look out on the world without loathing and despair.

Shocking and stark as it was, the way Studdert-Kennedy talked and wrote was pretty well the only religious response that was at all credible to those who were living through the daily nightmare.

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A handful of students in Rochester, New York, may well be prototypical of one way the church will train Episcopalians for ministry in the future. “We’re going to have to have some alternative delivery systems,” said Diocese of Atlanta Bishop Neil Alexander, who heads the House of Bishops Task Force on Theological Education.

Given changing enrollments and challenged finances, alternatives already in place involve distance learning and partnerships among the 11 Episcopal Church-affiliated seminaries and with other theological institutions.

For instance, four people ”“ and a few others “who are dipping their toes into the water” ”“ are enrolled in the new Certificate of Anglican Studies Program at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (CRDS), said the Rev. Denise Yarborough, program director. They eventually will receive master of divinity degrees from the school, but their certificates in Anglican studies will come from the program run jointly with General Theological Seminary (GTS), the Episcopal Church-affiliated seminary downstate, and the Diocese of Rochester. Funding for the program comes largely from the diocese, which saw the need for continued access to local theological education when Bexley Hall, another Episcopal Church-affiliated seminary, decided in March 2008 to close its satellite campus in Rochester.

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Anthony T. Kronman, former dean of the Law School at Yale, makes a laudable attempt to revive this Great Conversation approach in Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. Kronman’s focus is on the humanities, and his appraisal is blunt: humanities professors in our finest colleges and universities have collectively blown it, cowering in the face of the German “research ideal”:

This damage was not the result of an attack from without. It was not caused by barbarians crashing the gates. It was a self-destructive response to the crisis of authority that teachers of the humanities brought down on their own heads when they embraced the research ideal and the values associated with it.

According to Kronman, the Academy is a mess, elevating what Max Weber dubbed the “Vocation of Scholarship” as the measure of all things. From graduate interns through veteran professors, specialized research has long since eclipsed the importance of teaching. Tenure and rank promotion are tied closely to peer-refereed publications in discipline-specific fields. While Kronman acknowledges great gains in the hard sciences, and much new knowledge in the humanities as well, he contends that the perennial questions of the human condition are relegated to the periphery in the university today. He supports this indictment with twenty pages of anecdotes.

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Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

“The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration,” said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology ”” the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

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Update: More here.