Almighty God, who hast enriched thy Church with the singular learning and holiness of thy servant Thomas Aquinas: Enlighten us more and more, we pray thee, by the disciplined thinking and teaching of Christian scholars, and deepen our devotion by the example of saintly lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

A Senior cleric in a northern diocese of England has taken Government minister Harriet Harman to task for her attack on the “traditional family”.

The broadside at the Minister for Women and Equality, who voiced the attack last year, is delivered by the Rector of St John the Baptist church, Chester, the Rev David Chesters.

In the January issue of Phoenix, his parish magazine, the married 64-year-old rector says: “As I write this…Harriet Harman is having a go at the ‘traditional family.’ ”

But it is “this type of family that has moulded a people and a faith over hundreds of years,” protests Fr Chesters who, ordained in 2004, has been at St John’s – Chester’s original cathedral – since 2006.

Read it all.

Every few weeks I see a new study showing a link between exercise and improved cognitive performance.

The most recent from an article in the New York Times showing how strength training improves the cognitive performance of older women.

A quick sampling of the studies like this, this and this are adding to the growing body of evidence that exercise has benefits beyond the heart and waist line.

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Abroad, America’s greatest source of strength has always been our ideals. The same is true at home. We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal, that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it; that if you adhere to our common values you should be treated no different than anyone else.

We must continually renew this promise. My Administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination. We finally strengthened our laws to protect against crimes driven by hate. This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. We are going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws ”“ so that women get equal pay for an equal day’s work. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system ”“ to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nations.

In the end, it is our ideals, our values, that built America ”“ values that allowed us to forge a nation made up of immigrants from every corner of the globe; values that drive our citizens still. Every day, Americans meet their responsibilities to their families and their employers. Time and again, they lend a hand to their neighbors and give back to their country. They take pride in their labor, and are generous in spirit. These aren’t Republican values or Democratic values they’re living by; business values or labor values. They are American values.

Unfortunately, too many of our citizens have lost faith that our biggest institutions ”“ our corporations, our media, and yes, our government ”“ still reflect these same values.

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As President Obama prepares to deliver his first State of the Union address and the future of health care reform hangs in the balance, nationally prominent religious leaders, including eight members of the White House Council for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, are encouraging him to exercise the full influence of his office to urge Congress to pass comprehensive health reform legislation.

Despite the last week’s political twists and turns on Capitol Hill, the reality for families suffering needlessly due to lack of access to affordable health care has not changed — and the faith community’s commitment to making quality health care affordable for all remains steadfast.

Read it all and check the list of signatories.

Three Year Spending Freeze

Will Say: “The budget oversight of the last ten years, followed by the Great Recession, followed by federal government’s swift and successful efforts to end the recession, have put America’s finances in a terrible hole. Our current deficit is necessary. But it is also gaping and unsustainable. There are many things we need to do to fix our national balance sheet, but the first step is to tie a belt around federal spending. That’s why I’m proposing a three-year freeze on all discretionary spending not directly related to our national security. It is not sufficient to solve our deficit crisis. But it is a necessary and important start. ”

Won’t Say: Obama knows that everybody is worried about the deficit — moderates, Republicans, bondholders. We can’t do anything non-gimmicky and substantive because Republicans won’t raise taxes and Democrats won’t cut services. So here’s something gimmicky and mostly without substance. We’re freezing less than 25% of the budget, which should save $15 billion in a year where the deficit is expected to pass $1.3 trillion.

Read it all.

Apple Inc. said it will sell the newly unveiled tablet-style iPad starting at $499, a price tag far below the $1,000 that some analysts were expecting.

The iPad, which is larger in size but similar in design to Apple’s popular iPhone, was billed by CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday as “so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone.”

The highly anticipated gadget has a 9.7-inch touch screen, is a half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds and comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage. The basic iPad models will cost $499, $599 and $699, depending on the storage size.

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You have noted the critical influence of social behavior clusters on sexual development. You also mentioned that, early on in your medical training, you knew there were certain things that would disqualify you from becoming a doctor, including poor grades, a criminal record or a failed marriage.

Yes, that’s right. Fundamentally, I expected that, if I did marry, I was supposed to make it a go.

Now, wouldn’t some argue that those were societal expectations which were imposed upon you and your generation?

Yes, and they were good ones ”” and biblically based, and part and parcel of my commitment to really what amounts to loving relationships. You see, what has happened with the permissive movement is that it has picked up the Freudian confusion of desire and love, making them the same. And with the implication, for example, that I must desire my mother. I don’t desire my mother. I love my mother. Now the fact is that in my marriage, of course, I desired this woman and I felt love for her. Now, 50 years into marriage with her, I still desire her, but now I love her. She’s irreplaceable. There is this thing that has come and it’s different. This person exists for me as irreplaceable. So, there is this confusion of desire and love. [Homosexuality] is erroneous desire.

Much of what you have said seems to underscore the pivotal role that the ecclesial and parish family plays as a behavioral cluster. What more influential environment might there be than the Church?

This is the point….

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On Tuesday (Jan. 26), a parliamentary commission delivered a long-awaited report recommending that women be barred from wearing the full veil in public institutions and on public transportation.

The bipartisan panel also recommended that foreigners who wear the full veil be denied French citizenship and residency. But in an indication of the issue’s sensitivity, the panel did not call for banning the garment from private buildings or public spaces such as streets.

“Scandalous practices are being hidden behind the full veil that go against our history,” said French Communist deputy Andre Gerin, the commission’s head, in broadcasted remarks. “… To say no to the full veil, we have decided to wage a political battle.”

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Because she attends Catholic mass every Sunday and observes all the religious holidays of her faith, Angela Bowman may well exemplify the Latin root of the word “religion,” which is “to bind.”

But the Chicagoan also meditates several times each day and practices yoga every other week. She knows Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism have contradictory elements but is unfazed by her multiple observances because, to her, “it’s all pretty much the same thing.”

“The biggest part of praying is opening yourself up to a connection with God, and I perceive clearing your mind in meditation as another form of receptivity,” says the 30-something textbook editor. Although she is a devoted Roman Catholic, she says she doesn’t “believe it’s the one true path and anything else is flirting with the devil.”

Ms. Bowman’s attitude tracks with those in a study released last month, which found that large numbers of America’s faithful do not neatly conform to the expectations or beliefs of their prescribed religions, but instead freely borrow principles of Eastern religions or endorse common supernatural beliefs.

Read the whole thing.

This month Manly Council erected a surfboard-shaped sign at its most famous beach to instruct board-riders how to behave in the surf. Two years ago the council installed a $26,000 safety fence at the notorious ”jump rock”, where the young and young-at-heart plunge into the ocean below. This year it pledged to have rangers patrol the area, intent on catching thrill-seekers in the act. But their efforts haven’t stopped the kids from jumping, and the fence has simply turned out to be an expensive ratepayer-funded diving platform.

That parents, teachers, doctors, priests, and other assorted experts claim to know best about the potential risks and dangers we face – both individually and as a community – is nothing new. But the expectation that government should legislate to protect us from these risks and dangers is.

This poses some fundamental questions about citizens’ relationship with government. Protecting our physical security – for example from threats of war, violence and other types of crime – is at the core of what governments do. But how far does the definition of security extend?

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1) Immediately vest the FDIC (or other regulator that has a strict consumer-protection mandate) with the authority to take receivership / conservatorship of distressed bank and non-bank financial institutions, including bank holding companies, in the event of insolvency….

2) Require a significant portion of the capital of bank and non-bank financial institutions to be in the form of convertible debt (contingent capital).

Read it all.

The pregnancy rate among teenage girls in the United States has jumped for the first time in more than a decade, raising alarm that the long campaign to reduce motherhood among adolescents is faltering, according to a report released Tuesday.

The pregnancy rate among 15-to-19-year-olds increased 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 — the first jump since 1990, according to an analysis of the most recent data collected by the federal government and the nation’s leading reproductive-health think tank.

Teen pregnancy has long been one of the most pressing social issues and has triggered intense political debate over sex education, particularly whether the federal government should fund programs that encourage abstinence until marriage or focus on birth control.

“The decline in teen pregnancy has stopped — and in fact has turned around,” said Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in New York that conducted the analysis. “These data are certainly cause for concern.”

Read the whole article.

Read it all (30 page pdf).

In an age of complexity and crisis when the identity of Christendom seems to be under threat, an age when the flames seem to be burning fast and the landmarks are no longer stable, how very tempting it is to take refuge in the complicated, to build with greater and greater elaboration the walls of self-defence: and how very difficult it is to be simple. The Church of Mary Ward’s day didn’t really know what to do with her. It preferred the complications of what people already understood about discipleship and the religious life and particularly the religious life for women. But Mary Ward raised up in the Church of her day a sign of eucharistic simplicity: verity, sincerity, transparency.

In a time of crisis and uncertainty what we need is simple transparency to the contemporary Jesus. Transparency: it reminds me of the one piece of actual connection between Mary Ward and the archbishopric of Canterbury (in case you were wondering). The archbishop of the day had made some quite pointed remarks about how dangerous a woman she was. (There was indeed you might say, a level of ecumenical consensus about what a problem she was in her time!) But being the holy person she was, she was not going to be intimidated by an archbishop of Canterbury any more than by a pope. She decided she would visit Lambeth Palace with some of her sisters. She did so, and the Archbishop was out. But she left her mark. She scratched her name on a windowpane. Whatever else that story says, it says something about holiness and simplicity; about the saints as those whose names are simply scratched on a windowpane against the overwhelming light of the living Jesus. We cannot look at them and read their names without seeing that light. And that light comes to us through the saints, illuminating those names, those faces, those histories.

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Last year, in the homily of the Mass celebrated in the presence of members of the International Theological Commission, the Pope explained that a true theologian is not one who attempts to measure the mystery of God with his own intelligence, but one who is conscious of his own limitations. On that occasion the Pope indicated humility as the way to arrive at truth, voicing a word of caution about expert theologians who behave like the ancient scribes. Do you think the Pope is referring to a marked tendency in our days?

Archbishop Forte: I believe this is an essential point that distinguishes Christian theology from any form of gnosis. The essential difference is that in theology everything stems from hearing, hence, from auditus Verbi, whereas in gnosis everything is the intellectual self-production of the individual. This is the real reason why the only authentically Christian heresy is gnosis: the pretension of a self-redemption of man who does not need the intervention of the Other, of [One] on High, that is, the intervention of God. A theology that is based, as is its nature, on Revelation, cannot but be first of all listening, hence humilitas: an attitude of profound willingness and docility before God’s action, who enters history in a surprising way and at the same time confirms it in its dignity, opening it to the novum adveniens of his promise.

It is a topic that Ratzinger, as theologian, has stressed repeatedly, and which comes from his knowledge of Augustine, who is the genius of the intellectus fidei lived in listening, in the use of intelligence at the service of Franciscan-listening that predominates in Joseph Ratzinger’s theological formation, which in his teaching as Pope reappears in his intense call to humilitas and to auditus. I would add that this topic is very important today in a society that has known the inebriation of reason and, hence, the gnostic temptation in the different faces of modern ideology, and that today, in the uneasiness of post-modernity, if it does not open itself to listening and to humilitas runs the risk of the great temptation of nihilism, that is, of meaninglessness.

Read it all and Part 2 is there

The search and nomination process for the diocese’s eighth bishop began more than a year ago after Bishop Ted Gulick announced in October 2008 his retirement plans. Between Sept. 15 and Dec. 1, the 21-member committee screened 78 applicants from 27 states and the District of Columbia. After choosing the final group of 10 candidates, the committee then visited and had multiple interviews in their home dioceses as well as commissioned background checks and conducted additional reference interviews and intensive interviews with the candidates in Louisville.

The nominees will visit the diocese May 13-16 for what is known as “walkabouts,” a series of three forums held in various locations in the diocese to give the clergy and laity who will be participating in the special electing convention an opportunity to meet and question all of the candidates to be presented for election. The election will be held on June 5 at Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville.

The consecration of the eighth bishop of Kentucky is expected to take place on Sept. 25 at the Galt House in Louisville.

Read it all.

The college basketball world, and possibly even the President of the United States, was atuned to the new No. 1 team in the nation.

The story line got turned over, however, by No. 2: Devan Downey.

In an incredible performance, Downey led South Carolina to its first victory against a top-ranked team.

South Carolina stunned Kentucky 68-62 before a frenzied crowd and behind its diminutive star.

What a great picture–read it all.

The omega to the college hockey season came Saturday night when Travis Roy entered Metcalf Hall, on the second floor of George Sherman Union on Commonwealth Avenue, and sat beneath the huge flags of the schools of Boston University to exchange banter with his teammates. It was a week short of six months since the Terriers had raised the 1995 NCAA championship banner at Walter Brown Arena.

The banner marks the spot of tragedy now. It was a week short of six months since four players – Roy, Dan Ronan, Michel Laroque and Scott King – had walked out of their brownstone dormitory that overlooks Fenway Park and gone to the rink to play their first college hockey game. Three walked back, empty after an 8-5 victory.

It was a week short of six months since Roy had accomplished the goal he stated to Lee and Brenda Roy when he was a tow-headed 14-year-old in Maine: to be a Division I hockey player. His career lasted 11 seconds.

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Watch the whole video.

Obama’s economic team could have raised the limits on how much mortgage securities Fannie and Freddie can buy, allowing those firms to replace the Fed’s purchasing program. But Barr said the administration thinks the mortgage business will stand on its own without such special assistance, similar to the way the nation’s biggest banks weaned themselves off federal bailout funds by raising private capital.

“The basic goal is to implement a gradual process where the government’s role in the economy goes down,” Barr said. “It has to be consistent with the basic goal of stability, but it is appropriate.”

Administration and Fed officials expressed confidence that rates will rise only modestly — perhaps a quarter of a percentage point. They attribute their optimism to the lengthy notice they have given the market. The markets already should have anticipated the government’s exit by adjusting interest rates higher. Yet mortgage rates have been falling slightly the past few weeks.

The optimism at the White House and the Fed, however, is not shared across the government. A few senior policymakers at the central bank view the economic recovery as still too fragile, suggesting that purchases perhaps should expand further. These dissenters also warn that mortgage rates could shoot up, perhaps to 6 percent or higher, because private investors buying securities would demand a greater rate of return than the Fed. To reach it, lenders may have to raise rates for consumers.

“Presumably, there is pent-up demand from the private sector, but the question is: At what rate are they going to be interested?” said Eric S. Rosengren, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, who has indicated that he supports expanding the Fed’s mortgage securities purchase program.

Read it all.

Filled with thy Holy Spirit, gracious God, thine earliest disciples served thee with the gifts each had been given: Lydia in business and stewardship, Dorcas in a life of charity and Phoebe as a deacon who served many. Inspire us today to build up thy Church with our gifts in hospitality, charity and bold witness to the Gospel of Christ; who livest and reignest with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Church of England has lost £40m after a New York apartment complex deal it had invested in turned sour.

In June 2007, when the property market was at its peak and the credit crunch was yet to arrive, the Church made investments in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two Manhattan housing estates situated along the New York’s East River. But the projects incurred huge debts and collapsed when the US property bubble burst next year.

Read the whole thing.

One of the reasons why there seems such a public willingness to accept Mrs Inglis’s actions as not only justifiable, but actually heroic, is that it is widely assumed that a dependent life is a pointless life. In the vast majority of cases, that is not the view of those in such a vulnerable position. The Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in Putney, south-west London, is perhaps the world’s leading centre in this field. One of its senior consultants told me that he has carried out psychological tests measuring self-assessed happiness among his severely disabled patients (most often the victims of traffic accidents): “Where zero is the middle of the happiness-unhappiness scale, minus five the most depressed and plus five the most euphoric, most of my patients indicate ”“ when they are able to ”“ that they are between plus three and plus four.”

The able-bodied seem to find this hard to believe. This lack of empathy masquerading as the opposite can be very dangerous. The wholesale extermination of the handicapped which took place in Germany in the late 1930s is often seen as a purely Nazi phenomenon. Yet that policy could not have been enacted if the German people had not already indicated their acceptance of the idea of “lives unworthy of life”. For example, even before this became official policy, the propagandistic film Ich Klage an! (I accuse!) had been a great hit at the German box office: it described how a court is persuaded to acquit a doctor who had administered a fatal injection to a woman with multiple sclerosis. The jury is persuaded by the doctor asking them: “Would you, if you were a cripple, want to vegetate forever?”

Fortunately, the jury at Mrs Inglis’s trial at the Old Bailey last week were not convinced that such arguments should be a mother’s licence to kill.

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And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

–Hebrews 9:27-28

O Lord, thy holy Word is before us; open to us its sacred truths, and enable us to receive it, not as the word of men, but as the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever. Be thou, O blessed Spirit, our teacher. Enlighten our minds and prepare our hearts. Bring home some portion to our souls, and thus make us wise unto salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

On Tuesday, the federal government formally barred truckers and bus drivers from sending text messages while behind the wheel, putting its imprimatur on a prohibition embraced by many large trucking and transportation companies.

“We want the drivers of big rigs and buses and those who share the roads with them to be safe,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “This is an important safety step, and we will be taking more to eliminate the threat of distracted driving.”

LaHood has made the effort to curtail driver distractions a centerpiece of his tenure as the nation’s top transportation official. Some saw his announcement as a step that might ultimately fuel a push to ban cellphone use by all drivers.

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CBS is set to air an anti-abortion ad featuring Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam. The two will discuss Mrs. Tebow’s decision against an abortion after she became ill while pregnant with Tim.

The network has received complaints, most notably from women’s advocacy groups, and the prominent National Organization of Women. Tuesday the network responded.

“We have for some time moderated our approach to advocacy submissions after it became apparent that our stance did not reflect public sentiment or industry norms,” CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said in a statement. ”In fact, most media outlets have accepted advocacy ads for some time.”

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AIG and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have become targets of an investigation into whether the overseer had instructed the troubled insurer not to disclose certain key information to the public.

Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the $700 billion bailout, is set to tell the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday that he has initiated an investigation into whether the New York Fed instructed AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) not to disclose more than a dozen controversial counterparty transactions to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Read the whole article.

The Rt. Rev Kenneth L. Price, Jr.

Dear Bishop Price,

We were gratified to read, in your letter of January 20, that you were writing in a conciliatory spirit. As you know, a number of us in the Diocese have been working diligently with those in your fold to find helpful ways of moving forward in this difficult season. As the Standing Committee of the Diocese, we heartily endorse your desire for conversation with us, especially if it leads to concrete ways in which we might work through our mutual misunderstandings and divisions. For our part, we in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh continue to be eager to welcome back those parishes and clergy who have left our diocese. As you know, we continue to recognize the orders of those clergy who have left the diocese and make no claim on the property of parishes who are in your fold, making any transition back to us a simple transaction.

To this end, we would be grateful if a few of us, clergy and lay leaders in the diocese, could meet with you at your earliest convenience to see how we might together forge a better way forward, particularly concerning the litigation that is currently before the courts.

It would be most helpful to all if we could discuss our mutual hopes, desires and concerns for the future in a way that created space for reconciliation in the truth of the Gospel and mission in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

In Christ,

The Standing Committee, The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh

The Rev. Karen Stevenson, President
Mrs. Gladys Hunt-Mason
The Rev. Geoffrey Chapman
Mr. Kenneth Herbst
The Rev. Jonathan Millard
Mr. William Roemer
The Rev. Daniel Crawford
Mr. Stuart Simpson