The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have condemned the recent resurgence of police intimidation of Anglicans in Zimbabwe. Church goers, including clergy and local bishops, have been barred from entering their churches and threatened with arrest and violence.

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Christianity, the majority faith of Britain, is being systematically marginalised by combination of breath-taking political arrogance, and well- meaning political correctness.

In fact, at times it seems as though we nowadays resemble a cartoon character sawing away on a branch on which we are sitting only to find out too late that with the last push of the saw we will plunge to our ruin.

Make no mistake, our laws, literature and national character are hewn out of our national religion – Christianity.

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Watch for the answer to the question “what’s the greatest compliment you can receive?”

Take a look.

The minaret of the new Grand Mosque of Marseille, whose cornerstone will be laid here in April, will be silent ”” no muezzin, live or recorded, will disturb the neighborhood with the call to prayer. Instead, the minaret will flash a beam of light for a couple of minutes, five times a day.

Normally, the light would be green, for the color of Islam. But Marseille is a port, and green is reserved for signals to ships at sea. Red? No, the firefighters have reserved red.

Instead, said Noureddine Cheikh, the head of the Marseille Mosque Association, the light will almost surely be purple ”” a rather nightclubby look for such an elegant building.

So is this assimilation? Mr. Cheikh laughs. “I suppose it is,” he said. “It’s a good symbol of assimilation.”

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Given the sea of troubles with which we are faced ”“ at home and elsewhere ”“ what can we look forward to as we face 2010? First, we need to accept that the financial and political crises are not primarily about the failure of procedures and regulation. The angst about the war in Afghanistan, similarly, is not just about the sad loss of life. The broader problem is that there has been the loss of a common narrative, a story which underpins our national life. In the past, this was provided by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, derived from the Bible. This narrative has been at the root of those values which we regard as particularly British, whether to do with the dignity of the human person, with fundamental freedoms of belief, speech and assembly, or with equality ”“ which is not about “sameness”, but a recognition of the image of God in others.

This tradition has also provided us with the virtues for which we have looked in vain in our economic and political leaders. The best of British business and politics has been characterised by a sense ”“ largely derived from the Bible’s teachings ”“ of responsibility, of trust, justice, fairness and truth-telling. In recent years, these virtues have been jettisoned, so that we can be more “competitive” in a cut-throat world, or engage in a more adversarial form of politics. We, and the generations to follow, will have to live with the consequences of this dissolution of a moral and spiritual framework for our common life.

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Merciful Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that we, being illumined by the teaching of thine apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of thy truth, that we may at length attain to the fullness of life everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

If 2009 was all about recession, for Wall Street, 2010 will be all about recovery. One of the first signs of this will be seen in bankers’ pay packets. January will be the month when investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and the more diversified conglomerates such as Citigroup and Bank of America, release details of what they intend to pay the “masters of the universe”.

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An interesting set of reflections.

The explosive allegedly used in the failed bombing plot aboard a transatlantic jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day could have been detected by existing screening equipment, and the failure to do so reflects significant weaknesses in aviation security and intelligence, former U.S. government officials and international security experts said.

The compound that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly brought aboard Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam was PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, the same plastic explosive used almost exactly eight years ago by would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, the FBI said. The attack sped the launch of the Transportation Security Administration, which took over and expanded airport security screening.

But technology and methods that might have detected the explosive have been deployed in airports on a limited basis in the face of concerns about privacy, cost and the potential to slow airport security lines.

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Wonderful stuff–read it all.

Indeed, after fees are subtracted, inflation is accounted for and taxes are paid, many investors in C.D.’s, government bonds and savings and money market accounts are losing money. In fact, Northern Trust waived some $8 million in fees on money market accounts because they would have wiped out all interest, and then some.

“The unemployment situation and the general downturn in the economy had an impact, but what’s going to happen now as C.D.’s mature is that retirees and the elderly are going to take anywhere from a half to three-quarters of a percent cut in their incomes,” said Joe Parks, a retired accountant in Houston on the advisory board of Better Investing, an organization that works to help people become savvier investors. “It’s a real problem.”

Experts say risk-averse investors are effectively financing a second bailout of financial institutions, many of which have also raised fees and interest rates on credit cards.

“What the average citizen doesn’t explicitly understand is that a significant part of the government’s plan to repair the financial system and the economy is to pay savers nothing and allow damaged financial institutions to earn a nice, guaranteed spread,” said William H. Gross, co-chief investment officer of the Pacific Investment Management Company, or Pimco. “It’s capitalism, I guess, but it’s not to be applauded.”

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MR. GREGORY: Well, let, let’s talk about the status quo, Mayor Bloomberg. Something you’ve thought a lot about is how much do we spend on individuals in this country for health care, and what’s the result on the other side? What’s life expectancy? And let’s just put these numbers up here, because they’re pretty striking. The United States spends more than most other countries, by a whole lot, $7200-plus per individual. And yet, the life expectancy is 78, far younger than countries that spend far less per person.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (I): Well, we’re unwilling to ask the question, what we’re getting for our money? And I think both sides of that graph you just showed really talk about it. We are spending more than we can afford. We will go bankrupt if we keep increasing medical costs at the rate we’ve been doing it. And life expectancy, arguably the primary purpose of government is to increase life expectancy, and we are not doing that. Instead, we talk about other things, some laudable, some desperately that we have to do. And I will say, I’ve given the president a lot of credit for taking on the issue; but it’s Congress that’s writing this legislation, and they are not willing to go near the things that will contain costs, which is immigration reform, tort reform, asking the question of whether or not we can afford certain tests and whether they really are cost beneficial. And we are not willing to work on the preventive things, fighting obesity, smoking, those kinds of things, or crime in the streets, which is another big influence on our life expectancy. But we’re just not willing to talk those tough issues.

Read it all (start toward the bottom of the page).

When reviewing the major religion news stories in the Fort Worth area over the past year, one subject kept rising to the top ”” the Episcopalian split.

Two groups of Episcopalians ”” the breakaway group led by Bishop Jack Iker and the other that voted to stay in the national Episcopal Church ”” went separate ways, each claiming the title Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

Members of Iker’s group voted to leave the Episcopal Church, saying it has strayed from biblical principles in many ways, including ordaining an openly gay man, Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Area Episcopalians who stayed in the national church reorganized the Fort Worth diocese, naming a provisional bishop, now the Right Rev. C. Wallis Ohl, to replace Iker. Also, they, along with the national church, filed suit in Tarrant County’s 141st District Court, seeking that Iker’s group give up all church property in the 24-county diocese.

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Although public-opinion fundamentals didn’t change in 2009; the politics of gay marriage did. Here are the ways the year marked a shift to what a storyteller might call the “long middle.”

The preemptive strikes on both sides have failed. Early on, conservatives feared that courts would impose same-sex marriage nationally by fiat. They responded with an attempt to ban gay marriage nationally by constitutional amendment. But the federal courts kept their distance, and the amendment was rebuffed.

As the year ends, it is clear that neither side can knock the other off the field. Gay marriage is firmly established in five states (with the District of Columbia’s likely to follow suit), but it is banned, often by constitutional amendment, in most of the others. Unless the Supreme Court shocks the country and itself by declaring gay marriage a constitutional right, the issue will take years, perhaps decades, to resolve. All-or-nothing activists will be disappointed, but the country will get the time it needs to make up its mind.

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American presidents, it is often said, have about a year to make their mark ”“ enact a major piece of legislation that then shapes and defines the rest of their term in office. Failure to choose the right weapons, or the right turf, can be fatal.

Barack Obama has at times struggled to find a cause he can truly make his own. He seemed to take on too many issues at once, from Middle Eastern peace to climate change, without demonstrating that he had a clear strategy to carry them through. With the Senate’s passage of his bitterly contested healthcare bill, the clouds have lifted a little. Just in time for the Christmas break, the President can afford to wipe the sweat from his brow and contemplate his holiday with some satisfaction.

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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano insisted Sunday that there was no “specific and credible” information to put the alleged attempted bomber of Northwest Flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on the federal “no fly” list.

Yet for the second time in a month, the Obama administration finds itself defending its lack of action against a suspect whose tendencies toward radical Islam had been reported to authorities.

The cases are, of course, different.

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The words:

O magnum mysterium, et admirable sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentum in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum. Alleluia!

O great mystery, and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in their manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia!

This is sung by the University of Santo Tomas Alumni Singers directed by Allan Diona Sims. My understanding is that this performance is in 2006 at the Hollywood Choir Festival, at the Hollywood United Methodist Church across from the Kodak Theater.

Here is a truly human family: Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus. Here is a loving, committed couple, sharing side by side both adversity and joy. This is the first source of happiness: faithful, persevering love which bears its fruit through self-sacrifice.

Then there is the child. He is at the heart of this revelation, at the heart of happiness, for in his every word and action he will disclose the truth, not only of God but also of our own humanity. He is the one at the centre of these celebrations, whose birth we celebrate and whose message we again proclaim.

But there is something to be understood about this child which alone unlocks the door to our true happiness. It is this. He is, in his person, both truly God and truly man. This is the key. Without a firm grasp of this truth we will lose this greatest of all gifts, we will misunderstand the real significance of his message.

If Jesus is indeed God yet not fully man, but simply God in disguise, then his message of God’s loving forgiveness is charming indeed but still out of our reach. If he is not truly human, it does not find a home in our flesh.

If Jesus is indeed truly one of us, truly man, but not true God, then his message of peace and forgiveness may well be humanly inspiring but it lacks the power to change us. For only God can do that.

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From beginning to end this was a work of love, by the God whose very being is love, who created us in love for himself, and who in love stoops down to the very lowest part of our need. As another poet, Christopher Smart, puts it:

God all bounteous, all creative,
Whom no ills from good dissuade,
Is incarnate, and a native,
Of the very world he made!

The God whom we know and worship and adore is not a distant God, not a God of ideas and abstractions, but a God who comes to us as one of us, who comes among us in the fragility of an unborn life, beginning as we begin as those formed in the hiddenness of our mother’s wombs ”“ which is why Christians can never be casual about caring for that unborn life, can never treat abortion as no more than a matter of choice. God identifies with us from the very beginning, going, as Bishop Lancelot Andrewes once said, ”˜to the very ground-sill of our nature.’ St Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth of how for Christians the power of God was know most paradoxically in the weakness of the cross, the crucified God was the one who saved ”“ yet that foolishness of God, that weakness of God, is already there at Bethlehem in the child laid in the pricking straw of the manger, which devout Christians saw as foreshadowing the sharpness of the crown of thorns of the crucified.

Christmas speaks to us of a God who is love totally and completely, a God who loves us so recklessly and in so overwhelming a fashion, that he comes down to the lowest part of our need. He speaks to us as one of us, as our flesh and blood, which is why St John sums up the mystery of the incarnation as ”˜the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’. And St John goes on to say that in that total self-giving of love, ”˜we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.’ No wonder the shepherds on the cold hills outside Bethlehem were startled by the angelic armies of heaven singing ”˜Glory to God in the highest, and one earth peace goodwill towards men!’ If that is indeed the truth of the God who made the vastness of the universe, and the richness of creation, and who also made you and me, every human being, in the image and likeness of his love, then to live by and from that love and grace which came to us at Bethlehem to take us by the hand, is to live by that which alone can sustain us and transform us, and transform the whole world, into that new creation which is our end, our purpose, and our very being. This is indeed our story and our song; this is our life and our mission to the world; this is the love we are called to live; and this is the eternal life which here and now we are given, as the Child of Bethlehem feeds us with his own life in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. ”˜O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!’

It is in that faith and love that I wish you the true and joy and blessing of Christmas.

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The mystery of the humanity of Christ, that He sunk Himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.

–Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,
Make thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
My heart for very joy doth leap,
My lips no more can silence keep,
I too must sing, with joyful tongue,
That sweetest ancient cradle song,
Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given
While angels sing with pious mirth.
A glad new year to all the earth.

–Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

–Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

Merciful and most loving God, by whose will and bountiful gift Jesus Christ our Lord humbled himself that he might exalt mankind; and became flesh that he might restore in us the most celestial image; and was born of the Virgin that he might uplift the lowly: Grant unto us the inheritance of the meek, perfect us in thy likeness, and bring us at last to rejoice in beholding thy beauty, and with all thy saints to glorify thy grace; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Almighty God, as we keep the festival of the divine humility of thy Son Jesus Christ, we beseech thee to bestow upon us such love and charity as were his, to whom it was more blessed to give than to receive, and who came not to be ministered unto but to minister; that in his name we may consecrate ourselves to the service of all who are in need; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

O Father, who hast declared thy love to men by the birth of the Holy Child at Bethlehem: Help us to welcome him with gladness and to make room for him in our common days; so that we may live at peace with one another and in goodwill with all thy family; through the same thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Check it out.

Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)
I see a glory in the stable grow
Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length
Give me an ox’s strength.

Among the asses (stubborn I as they)
I see my Savior where I looked for hay;
So may my beastlike folly learn at least
The patience of a beast.

Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
Some woolly innocence.

–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

The Christmas story is certainly filled with feeling and emotion””Mary, Joseph and the Child in the stable setting; with joy””angels singing as they announce the birth to the shepherds; and generous gift giving””the Magi visiting and presenting their gold, frankincense and myrrh.

However, there is another element in the story that the Gospels of Luke and Matthew present: it is the element of fear. The angel Gabriel tells Mary when she hears the news of God’s invitation to her, “Do not be afraid Mary;” Joseph is told in a dream “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife;” the shepherds are told by the angel “Do not be afraid; we bring you tidings of great joy.”

We might ask, “Is there something that we should be afraid of?” Is it the child? Is it the miraculous power of God? Is it the presence of the Holy Spirit? Or perhaps, is it a combination of all these things and the challenges that this magnificent event of history will present to us?
I tend to believe that there is a certain anxiety in responding to the great challenges that the Christmas story offers us. Just think of it: God chooses to become a human being so that we might be able to come freely to the realization of God’s love and presence in our own lives and in our world. God chooses to become a human being so that we might experience more fully the bond between the human and divine.

In so choosing, Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, experiences all that we do: birth, joy and happiness, suffering, pain and death, all because God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son. And this God, through the life and teaching of Jesus, tells us that we should love one another as He loves us! We should be willing to give ourselves away for the sake of others as Jesus gives himself away for the life of the world.

I can understand being somewhat fearful of all the implications of this wonderful and sacred event. The sweet, gentle baby born in the humblest of circumstances will grow up to present a challenge to us to participate fully in the building up of the Kingdom of God by being people who will sacrifice much to achieve this end.

There is a Christmas carol that asks the question: “Mary did you know that this child you would deliver will soon deliver you? Did you know that He would save our sons and daughters? Did you know that your baby boy will give sight to the blind? The dumb will speak, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again. Mary did you know?” Did anyone know?

But they all knew that somehow God was breaking into our world and the angels proclaimed that there was nothing to be fearful of; we should rejoice and be glad as we sing God’s praises and realize that human life would never again be the same. He shows us that vulnerability and human weakness is to be embraced with trust and confidence that God is indeed with us””Emmanuel.

The Child encourages us to trust Him; to acknowledge our own weakness; and to recognize that without His help we cannot survive and that joined to Him, love and peace will be given a chance. This Christmas, may we all be blessed with the faith that will recognize Him in the poverty of our own lives as Mary and Joseph, the angels, shepherds and the wise men recognized Him in the poverty of Bethlehem. And may we too heed the words of the angels: do not be afraid; this day we bring you tidings of great joy.

Merry Christmas and the choicest of God’s blessings in 2010!

–(The Most Rev.) Robert E. Guglielmone is Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina