The Archbishop of Canterbury met privately with the Pope today in an effort to ease tensions over the Vatican’s move to ‘poach’ Anglican clergy.

Dr Rowan Williams held talks with Benedict XVI, in Rome, in what the Vatican called, “cordial discussions” to consolidate relations between the two churches.

It it was the first time the two have met since the Pope approved an unprecedented decree to accept Anglicans into the Catholic fold.

After the 20-minute meeting the Vatican issued a brief statement saying that the two leaders “turned to the challenges facing all Christian communities; and the need to promote forms of collaboration and shared witness in facing these challenges.”

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The meeting between Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams had been billed as something of a showdown.

After all, it was the first since the Pope’s invitation to disgruntled Anglicans to convert to Catholicism.

Many Anglicans had spoken openly of their concern not only that the invitation was being made, but also about the way it was handled.

It came, earlier this month, just as the Church of England was trying to find ways of keeping those traditionalists on its Catholic wing inside the fold.

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Pope Benedict XVI will today greet Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, for the first time since the Vatican announced the creation of a canonical structure to receive groups of Anglican converts en masse.

The pair will hold a private meeting at the Vatican at a delicate time for relations between the churches. Last month, Pope Benedict unveiled a special structure to allow traditionalist Anglican ministers, including married ones, and lay people to join the Catholic Church. The decree, for the first time in history, allows the creation of “personal ordinariates” in which Anglo-Catholics can preserve their traditions but in communion with the Pope. Anglo-Catholic leaders have generally welcomed the move as an act of generosity. But it has caused unease within parts of the Church of England because some clergy fear it could further undermine the worldwide Anglican Communion.

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Somehow our son Nathaniel made the crew team at Boston University. The whole family has come to see his event this morning beginning at 8 a.m.–woo hoo! KSH.

The Rev. Michael Joseph Hanley was elected Nov. 20 to be the 10th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon, pending the required consents.

Hanley, 54, rector of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Roseville, Minnesota, was elected on the second ballot out of a field of three candidates. He received 146 votes of 198 cast in the lay order and 104 of 132 cast in the clergy order. An election on the second ballot required 100 in the lay order and 67 in the clergy order. The results of all the ballots are available here.

Hanley served churches in Oklahoma, Missouri and elsewhere in Minnesota before being calling to Roseville in 1998. He is a three-time alternate deputy to General Convention. Hanley holds a doctor of ministry degree from Virginia Theological Seminary and a master of divinity degree from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. He was ordained deacon in June 1981 and priest in April 1982. Hanley is married to Marla Martin Hanley, associate academic dean at St. Catherine University in the Twin Cities.

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The rift between the Churches is not as wide as the Vatican makes out, the Archbishop of Canterbury argued this week.

Dr Williams was speaking in Rome on Thursday, before a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. In a lecture at a symposium to honour Cardinal Willebrands, the first ever president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, he challenged the view that the ordination of women was the stumbling block is has been made out to be.

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[Rowan] Williams’ mood is unlikely to be as upbeat when he meets with Pope Benedict on Saturday, just a month after the Vatican’s surprise announcement outlining historic new procedures designed to help disaffected conservative Anglicans enter the Roman Catholic fold. Both Anglicans and Catholics are now awaiting the first details of exactly how the Vatican will bring in would-be Anglican converts, groups or parishes. “This announcement from Rome is incredibly messy,” says Rev. Jo Bailey Wells, who heads the Anglican Studies department at Duke University Divinity School. “It’s confused and confusing.”

Depending on who you ask, the two faiths are either closer than ever to bridging their differences or are renewing the kind of mistrust and incomprehension that has marked the relationship since the Anglican Church was formed after King Henry VIII’s split from Rome in the 16th century. For those in the 77-million-strong Anglican Church (which includes the Episcopal Church in the U.S.) who are angry at its policy of allowing women and gay priests and bishops, and perhaps attracted by the liturgical and historical links with Catholicism, Benedict’s official door-opening is an unexpected godsend that might just allow for the best of both worlds: hanging onto their Anglican culture and parish life while moving under the doctrinally rigid umbrella of Roman orthodoxy.

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The only Episcopal church in Galion closed last month, after being a place of worship for more than 130 years.

During the past decade, the congregation at 130 W. Walnut St., stayed at less than 10, mostly seniors citizens. The handful of members asked the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio to allow the parish to close.

The Rev. Brad Purdom said an Episcopal church is created or closed by a vote at the annual convention. At this year’s convention in Cleveland, the Diocese voted Saturday to allow Grace Episcopal to close.

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As the University of California’s Board of Regents met Thursday at U.C.L.A. and approved a plan to raise undergraduate fees ”” the equivalent of tuition ”” 32 percent next fall, hundreds of students from campuses across the state demonstrated outside, beating drums and chanting slogans against the increase….

After Thursday’s vote, as news trickled out to students rallying outside, the chants grew louder and students linked arms to block regents from leaving the building. The police intervened, and as one regent left, about 100 students clustered around him, yelling “Shame on you!”

Mark Yudof, the university president, said the state budget cuts had left the university no choice but to raise fees, and noted that the system received only half as much, per student, from the state as it did in 1990.

“My biggest fear,” Mr. Yudof said, “is an exodus of faculty.”

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A new study by Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School Leo Gottlieb professor of law, and Deborah Thorne, Ohio University associate professor of sociology, finds that personal bankruptcy has become a largely middle-class phenomenon led by filers who are college-educated and owners of homes. According to the study, “The Vulnerable Middle Class: Bankruptcy and Class Status,” the shift occurred even before the Great Recession.

More than 100,000 middle-class families filed for personal bankruptcy every month in 2007, says the report, which was provided to USA TODAY but will be released in a book next year. Those who filed in 2007 were in worse financial shape than those who had filed in 2001.

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An advertisement focusing on the welcoming nature of the Episcopal Church that ran in the Nov. 20 edition of USA Today is being made available to dioceses and congregations for local media use.

The church’s core beliefs and practices, including those related to Christ, the Bible, women’s ordination and relationships, are featured in the ad on page 9A of the newspaper and on the Episcopal Church’s website, Anne Rudig, director of communication, said in a Nov. 20 news release.

“We want to herald and share our welcoming message,” she said.

“In the past few weeks, news about various religions has focused more about who’s excluded from certain practices than who is included,” Rudig noted. “We follow Christ and believe that he’s very clear that all are welcome. We strive to ‘love our neighbors as ourselves.'”

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