[url=http://is.gd/6oLz4]A photo of the Cathedral before the earthquake is here[/url] (Hat tip: Brien).

Check out what remains from Mark Harris. Makes the heart sad–KSH.

A local family is still waiting for word on a Washougal man who has been missing since Tuesday’s earthquake devastated Haiti.

Walt Ratterman was visiting Haiti to check on a solar-power project when his family lost touch with him when the quake hit.

“We are pretty certain he was sending e-mails at the time, from the courtyard of Hotel Montana,” said Briana Ratterman, daughter of the missing man.

This is but one illustration of dramas playing out throughout the world this week. Read it all and please check out this blog entry also. If you have time check out the linked Facebook page–it makes for moving reading.

Pope Benedict XVI has called on Turkey to give legal recognition to the Roman Catholic Church in the Muslim-majority but politically secular nation, which has been criticized for its treatment of religious minorities as it seeks to join the European Union.

Receiving Kenan Gursoy, the new Turkish ambassador to the Vatican last week (Jan. 7), Benedict said Catholics appreciated the freedom of worship, “guaranteed by the constitution” in Turkey. However, he added that “civil juridical recognition” would help the church, “to enjoy full religious freedom and to make an even greater contribution to society.”

About 99 percent of Turkey’s 77-million people are Muslim. The Catholic Church there has about 32,000 members.

Read it all.

“Why are clergy the worst dressed people in church?” said a lay friend of mine the other day. “I know they shouldn’t try to be too transcendent, but do they have to dress aiming to look like hobos?” he said.

It got me thinking. I must say I think he’s onto something. Commonly, but not always I am pleased to say, in my experience the clergy dress worse than the lay people. Not as a question of casual versus formal. There is a way of dressing casual that looks really good. There is a way that looks positively daggy and scruffy.

I wonder why this is. I guess one of the reasons is that overall now we are a much more informal society and that means that a Sunday best really doesn’t exist. A good guide is to just look at television. The Sunday presenters are dressed more casually than the weekday ones, and that should be a model, of course, to the clergy if they are not wearing more formal robes. Although there is a way of dressing casually which looks quite smart, there is a way of dressing casually that looks like you just don’t care.

Read it all.

Listen to it all from the BBC (about 2 3/4 minutes).

Interviewed on the programme, Commander Ron Flanders of the US 4th Fleet, based in Florida, said that the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was acting as a sea-base from which the navy could deliver supplies to the island. “Our main goal,” he said, “is to ease suffering and prevent loss of life”.

Listen to it all (about 10 1/2 minutes).

Marketplace Minute 1/15 from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Only one minute long–wonderful stuff! (Hat tip: Elizabeth)

Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the LORD our God.

–Psalm 20: 7

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.

Read it all

And as the international community continues to respond, I do believe that America has a continued responsibility to act. Our nation has a unique capacity to reach out quickly and broadly and to deliver assistance that can save lives.

That responsibility obviously is magnified when the devastation that’s been suffered is so near to us. Haitians are our neighbors in the Americas, and for Americans they are family and friends. It’s characteristic of the American people to help others in time of such severe need. That’s the spirit that we will need to sustain this effort as it goes forward. There are going to be many difficult days ahead.

So, so many people are in need of assistance. The port continues to be closed, and the roads are damaged. Food is scarce and so is water. It will take time to establish distribution points so that we can ensure that resources are delivered safely and effectively and in an orderly fashion.

But I want the people of Haiti to know that we will do what it takes to save lives and to help them get back on their feet. In this effort I want to thank our people on the ground — our men and women in uniform, who have moved so swiftly; our civilians and embassy staff, many of whom suffered their own losses in this tragedy; and those members of search and rescue teams from Florida and California and Virginia who have left their homes and their families behind to help others. To all of them I want you to know that you demonstrate the courage and decency of the American people, and we are extraordinarily proud of you.

Read it all.

Efforts to deliver desperately needed food, water and medical help to victims of Haiti’s earthquake intensified on Friday even as the voices of survivors buried underneath mountains of rubble began to fall silent.

Cargo planes and military helicopters swooped in and out of the crowded airport in Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of American troops were arriving, with more on the way. Some 25 rescue teams fanned out to collapsed hotels, schools and homes, and aid groups said they had given food and blankets to thousands of people.

But 2 million to 3 million are still in dire need, and patience was wearing thin on the streets as Haiti went another day with no power and limited fresh water.

Read it all.

Up to 10,000 US troops will be on the ground or off the coast of Haiti by Monday to help deal with the earthquake aid effort, US defence officials say.

Aid distribution has begun, but logistics continue to be extremely difficult, UN officials say.

Tuesday’s earthquake has left as many as 50,000-100,000 people dead.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said more than 15,000 bodies had already been recovered and buried, French news agency AFP reported.

Read it all.

(ACNS) The Archbishop of Canterbury has given a message of support to the people of Haiti affected by the devastation caused by Tuesday’s earthquake.

“I am profoundly shocked and concerned to hear about the devastating earthquake in Haiti. As the news comes through, we are learning more about the tragic loss of life, injury suffered and terrible damage to the country. We stand alongside all the people in Haiti affected by this terrible disaster in prayer, thought and action as the situation unfolds. We pray for the rescue of those still trapped and look towards the rebuilding of lives and communities.

I commend the swift action of the Department for International Development and the relief agencies and churches in mobilising an emergency response. In this time of catastrophic loss and destruction, I urge the public to hold the people of Haiti in their prayers, and to give generously and urgently to funding appeals set up for relief work.”

Watch it all.

American families were squeezed last year as their inflation-adjusted weekly wages fell 1.6 percent — the sharpest drop since 1990 — well below the 2.7 percent consumer inflation rate.

Consumers’ spending power sank in the face of falling wages, job losses and higher prices for energy, medical care and education. Slack pay and scarce job creation are slowing consumer spending, hindering the economy’s ability to mount a strong recovery.

Read it all.

Mary Daly, a retired professor at Boston College who was probably the most outré of all the dissident theologians who came to the fore of Catholic intellectual life in the years right after the Second Vatican Council, died on Jan. 3 at age 81. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, which might be called the golden age of Catholic dissidence, theologians who took positions challenging traditional church teachings””ranging from the authority of the pope to bans on birth control, premarital sex, and women’s ordination””dominated Catholic intellectual life in America and Europe. They seemed to represent a tide that would overwhelm the old restrictions and their hidebound adherents.

Now, 45 years after Vatican II concluded in 1965, most of those bright lights of dissident Catholicism””from the theologian Hans Küng of the University of Tübingen to Charles Curran, the priest dismissed from the Catholic University of America’s theology faculty in 1987 for his advocacy of contraception and acceptance of homosexual relationships””seem dimmed with advanced age, if not extinguished. They have left no coherent second generation of dissident Catholic intellectuals to follow them.

Read the whole column.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak traveled to Saudi Arabia, of all places, within 24 hours of his administration’s threat to use draconian measures to quell religious violence. His absence during a crisis is a mistake, as is his government’s approach to it so far.

The “Allah” scandal is the most serious domestic challenge the Najib government has yet faced in its nine months in office. Since a High Court ruling two weeks ago allowed Christians to use the word “Allah” in their Malay-language publications, radical Islamists have capitalized on the fraught climate to intimidate Malaysians and push their agenda. Yesterday saw the 11th in a spate of incidents, with Molotov cocktails, bricks and stones hurled against churches, a convent school, and even a Sikh temple. Lawyers representing Christian plaintiffs have found their offices ransacked. No perpetrators have yet been caught.

So far, the ruling United Malays National Organization is trying to tramp down the violence in any way it can””except the right way, which is to abandon the hardline Islamism that has traditionally appealed to its political base….

Read it all.

A national survey of 1,002 Protestant pastors in November by Nashville-based LifeWay Research found:

Ӣ28% reported raising less money than in 2008.

Ӣ57% said the poor economy was hurting their church.

Ӣ70% reported increased requests from people outside their congregation for assistance.

Ӣ43% budgeted more money to help more needy people.

Ӣ3% were considering closing down their churches.

“Churches have not yet entered the recovery,” says LifeWay director Ed Stetzer. “Historically, they tend to recover financially when unemployment decreases, usually after the economy as a whole” recovers.

Read it all.

As the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision nears, anti-abortion activists prepare for the annual March for Life and their counterparts plan religious services to pray for the safety of abortion providers.

But, 37 years after the contentious Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, is there any hope for common ground?

Experts say it will be difficult — especially in light of recent health care battles — but not impossible.

Laurie Zoloth, professor of bioethics and religion at Northwestern University, said there are some projects — such as giving incentives to teen girls to avoid a second pregnancy — that can bring feuding factions together.

Read it all.

THE draft legislation on women bishops will not be coming before the General Synod for debate next month as scheduled. Instead, the revision committee is expected still to be working on it after Easter. It will not now be debated till July.

In February last year, the Synod asked the revision committee to consider the arrangements, embodied in a statutory code of practice, for those opposed in conscience to women bishops.

At its October 2009 meeting, however, it appeared to move away from the code of practice, and voted for “the vesting by statute of certain functions in bishops with a special responsibility for those with con­scientious difficulties”. The options of an alternative diocese or a regis­tered society for objectors were ruled out, but it appears there was no vote on the adoption of the simplest form of legislation without a statutory code of practice.

Read it all.

American Catholics will receive an insert in their church bulletins at this weekend’s Masses asking them to lobby Congress on abortion restrictions in the pending health care bill.

Sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, inserts in English and Spanish have been mailed out to nearly 19,000 churches reaching the nation’s 67 million Catholics.

They ask adherents to e-mail, phone or fax their members of Congress asking them not to make taxpayers pay for abortions directly or indirectly, to include conscience protections for health care workers, and to keep health care “accessible and affordable.”

Along with the inserts, priests are being asked to read aloud two statements — one this weekend and the other on the Jan. 23-24 weekend — giving instructions on how to access a USCCB Web site that would allow them to send automated messages to their members of Congress as well as House and Senate majority leaders.

Read the whole article.

The draconian penalties in Uganda’s proposed ”˜Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ have come under sharp criticism from the Christian Churches of Uganda.

In its December 17 Christmas message, the Uganda Joint Christian Council, a coalition of the country’s Anglican, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, said that while its individual member churches had not yet issued formal statements on the proposed bill, all were opposed to the harsh penalties proposed for the suppression of vice.

On 14 Oct MP David Bahati of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) tabled a private-members bill before parliament entitled the ”˜Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ that would stiffen Uganda’s sodomy laws. The proposed law has come in part in response to concerns over growing child-sex tourism in East Africa and the highly publicized arrests of two NGO workers, as well as with the perception that Uganda’s culture is under siege by the West.

Read it all.

The monthly meditation had a playful air about it.

“A crone is an old woman. A crone is a witch. A crone is a wise woman. Which one will you be, my friend? Which one I?”

Wrapped around a rite for “croning”, the meditation embraced a history of mystical women and offered prayers to “Mothering God” and “Eternal Wisdom.” But the article was not in a new age publication or Wiccan blog: it was on the pages of the September newsletter of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

Entitled “Crone Power”, the meditation innocuously sat opposite a story about choosing a children’s Bible and next to a column on St. Jerome. The newsletter quickly drew the attention of Anglican bloggers, many of whom found the placement of what appeared to be a Wiccan ritual to be jarring in an official church publication. But intentionally or not, the publication and placement of the rite were reflective of a new reality: one in which practices drawn from or inspired by pagan belief, including witchcraft, are increasingly finding acceptance within the ranks of the Episcopal Church.

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Fr. Sexton cited an idea from Diana Butler Bass that worshipers are less interested in a church with answers than in one that accepts them as they ask questions.

“I think there is much truth to her statements, and my biggest fear for our church is and has been that we will allow it to remain in its complacency and continue to be distracted (sex) and insulated (who’s in, who’s out),” he wrote. “I believe we do need to become passionate, imaginative, open, justice seeking, inclusive, and loving communities of faith that actually live as if we believed our baptismal promises were important. ”¦ We need to once again be motivated by the fire of the Holy Spirit.”

Ms. Watson expressed delight that the diocese placed such an emphasis on the question of evangelism.

“I know that the only reason that my family and I enjoy the abundance of life we do today is because of the transformative power of Christ’s love as we have experienced it through the Episcopal Church,” she wrote.

Read the whole thing.

Check them out.

“People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. “College students scratch their heads at what their high school siblings are doing, and they scratch their heads at their younger siblings. It has sped up generational differences.”

One obvious result is that younger generations are going to have some very peculiar and unique expectations about the world. My friend’s 3-year-old, for example, has become so accustomed to her father’s multitouch iPhone screen that she approaches laptops by swiping her fingers across the screen, expecting a reaction.

And after my 4-year-old niece received the very hot Zhou-Zhou pet hamster for Christmas, I pointed out that the toy was essentially a robot, with some basic obstacle avoidance skills. She replied matter-of-factly: “It’s not a robot. It’s a pet.”

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The Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Revd Tom Butler, vice chair of the Archbishops’ Council’s Mission and Public Affairs Council, said: “I welcome the Dying Matters initiative as an important contribution to the debate about dying and death. The advances in palliative and end of life care have been helpful in improving the quality of life of those who are dying and their families, and I hope that this new coalition will bring help and information to many people.”

Hilary Fisher, Director of the Dying Matters Coalition, said: “We are delighted that the Church of England has joined the Dying Matters coalition. For too long, issues of death and bereavement have been perceived as too big or scary to talk about; the ensuing silence has resulted in isolation and confusion among dying people and their families. Openness, conversation and communication are vital in addressing this.

Read it all.

Thou dost show me the path of life;
in thy presence there is fulness of joy,
in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.

–Psalm 16:11

Geithner defended the fee against criticism from some bank officials, who say it is about politics and not economics. Those critics note that some institutions that paid back Troubled Asset Relief Program money ”” or never took any ”” will be taxed along with other banks.

“We’re doing what is fair, and what is just, and what is economically sensible and what we have a legal obligation to do, which is to make sure that we hold the American people harmless from the cost of the financial crisis and that we collect back from the financial industry that benefited from the financial rescue the ultimate costs of what it took to solve this crisis,” Geithner says. “That’s the sensible, fair thing to do.”

Geithner says the program was designed to apply to the largest financial institutions that benefited the most from the rescue.

Read or listen to it all.

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, said the country must never again repeat the multicultural experiment of recent decades.

He also called for an end to the segregation of Muslims in British cities, which he warned provides a breeding ground for extremists.

The bishop made his strongly-worded comments after Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, backed a campaign by the cross-party Balanced Immigration Group to stop Britain’s population reaching 70 million.

Read it all.