Today is a very historic day for the Catholics of Ireland.

Pope Benedict has written a pastoral letter to express his closeness to us at this challenging time. He says ”˜with words that come from my heart… I wish to speak to each of you individually and to all of you as brothers and sisters in the Lord’. He speaks of the wounds inflicted on Christ’s body by child sexual abuse and of the sometimes painful remedies needed to bind and heal them. He talks of the need for unity, charity and mutual support in the long-term process of restoration and renewal.

I welcome this letter. I am deeply grateful to the Holy Father for his profound kindness and concern.

It is evident from the Pastoral Letter that Pope Benedict is deeply dismayed by what he refers to as ”˜sinful and criminal acts and the way the Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them.”˜

He says the Church in Ireland must acknowledge before the Lord and others the serious sins committed against defenceless children.

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Pope Benedict XVI has apologised to victims of child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland.

In a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, he acknowledged the sense of betrayal in the Church felt by victims and their families.

The Pope said there had been “serious mistakes” among bishops in responding to allegations of paedophilia.

The pastoral letter is the first statement of its kind by the Vatican on the sexual abuse of children.

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Pope Benedict XVI rebuked Irish bishops Saturday for “grave errors of judgment” in handling clerical sex abuse and ordered a Vatican investigation into the Irish church to wipe out the scourge.

In a letter to the Irish faithful read across Europe amid a growing, multination abuse scandal, the pope did not mention any Vatican responsibility. And he doled out no specific punishments to bishops blamed by victims and Irish government-ordered investigations for having covered up years of abuse.

The letter directly addressed only Ireland but the Vatican said it could be read as applying to other countries. Hundreds of new allegations of abuse which have recently come to light across Europe, including in the pope’s native Germany.

“You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry,” Benedict said, addressing himself to the generations of Irish Catholics who suffered “sinful and criminal” abuse at the hands of priests, brothers and nuns.

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For my part, considering the gravity of these offences, and the often inadequate response to them on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in your country, I have decided to write this Pastoral Letter to express my closeness to you and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation.

It is true, as many in your country have pointed out, that the problem of child abuse is peculiar neither to Ireland nor to the Church. Nevertheless, the task you now face is to address the problem of abuse that has occurred within the Irish Catholic community, and to do so with courage and determination. No one imagines that this painful situation will be resolved swiftly. Real progress has been made, yet much more remains to be done. Perseverance and prayer are needed, with great trust in the healing power of God’s grace.

At the same time, I must also express my conviction that, in order to recover from this grievous wound, the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children. Such an acknowledgement, accompanied by sincere sorrow for the damage caused to these victims and their families, must lead to a concerted effort to ensure the protection of children from similar crimes in the future.

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A group with three churches in the Ottawa area has taken up the Vatican’s offer of a special legal structure enabling disillusioned Anglicans to return to Rome.

The Anglican Catholic Church of Canada — a denomination already closely aligned with Catholic precepts — is the first in Canada to approach the Vatican like this.

In November, the Holy See shocked the world by announcing it would allow Anglicans to become Catholic, yet keep their own liturgy, prayer books, and married clergy. It would form a separate set of rules for the group, much as it has done with Eastern Rite Catholics.

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From here:

It is with profound sorrow that we, the Communion Partner Bishops and Rectors, express our deepest regret to our brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion for the action of the majority of the diocesan bishops and standing committees of the dioceses of The Episcopal Church in voting to consent to the consecration as a bishop of a woman living in a sexual relationship outside Christian marriage. Unfortunately, where restraint was respectfully requested by the leadership of the Communion, it has been ignored. Where the General Convention has counseled study of the Anglican Covenant, this action has rendered that counsel moot.

Therefore, we disassociate ourselves from this action and grieve the state of separation that exists in The Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion. This separation is a witness to the need for the Anglican Covenant as the means through which dioceses and congregations in The Episcopal Church can affirm their commitment to the Anglican Communion.

From here:

This is a clear rejection of the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council.

We believe that it is vitally important for the Primates’ Meeting planned for January 2011 to go ahead, and that for this to happen the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church should not be invited to attend. Actions have consequences.

Caterpillar Inc. said the health-care overhaul legislation being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives would increase the company’s health-care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.

In a letter Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan “because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees.”

Caterpillar, the world’s largest construction machinery manufacturer by sales, said it’s particularly opposed to provisions in the bill that would expand Medicare taxes and mandate insurance coverage. The legislation would require nearly all companies to provide health insurance for their employees or face large fines.

The Peoria-based company said these provisions would increase its insurance costs by at least 20 percent, or more than $100 million, just in the first year of the health-care overhaul program.

“We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors,” said the letter signed by Gregory Folley, vice president and chief human resources officer of Caterpillar. “We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we’ve raised throughout the year.”

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Brian Stanley is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Edinburgh, and so is the most appropriate person to write The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910. It is a meticulous, accessible, and theologically insightful account. It is doubly worth reading since the centennial of the conference will see a gathering called Edinburgh 2010.

While all historical moments are fraught, some moments are more equal than others, and the participants traveling to Edinburgh by train and ship in 1910 had a strong sense that they were attending an event of decisive significance. It was seen as a summit of strategic consequence at a time when the triumph of Christian evangelism worldwide seemed a goal one could speak of. (Stanley is careful to note that it was, in fact, less than a truly “world missionary conference,” since Roman Catholics and Orthodox were not present, and Two-Thirds World Christians themselves were badly underrepresented).

John Mott, whose famous watchword was “The Evangelization of the World in This Generation,” led one of the conference’s commissions, and even Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the initially reluctant opening speaker, could allude to the consummation which that evangelization hastened. To be sure, the theological makeup of the conference was complex, with more scholarly and theologically liberal as well as evangelical voices represented, especially in the commission on relations to non-Christian religions.

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Here is the chart.

Men like [James] Naismith and [Luther ] Gulick sought to develop the whole person””mind, body and spirit””and the YMCA emblem, an inverted red triangle, symbolized their threefold purpose. As Gulick stated, “Christ’s kingdom should include the athletic world.” From their beginning in 1851, YMCAs on college and university campuses had tremendous participation nationwide. Close to 50,000 men were enrolled in YMCA college Bible studies by 1905. There were 1,000 men at Yale alone in 1909.

One notable characteristic that defined these college YMCAs””particularly those among the Ivy League schools””were their weekly “deputations,” or local mission trips. Groups of college students ministered to needy children in nearby urban neighborhoods and rural areas. These trips would last three or four days and included musical entertainment, sporting events and Christian instruction, both in the schools and from the pulpits of local churches. On a February 1911 trip to New Hampshire, 43 out of 70 boys enrolled at Kimbell Union Academy embraced the Christian faith. Weeks later at a church visit in London, N.H., the official deputation logs recorded an eyewitness account from Dartmouth student Cedric Francis (class of 1912): “One very touching case was where it was through the young boy of the family that the mother and father were led to Christ.”

This was the generation of the Student Volunteer Movement which sought to reach the world for Christ “in this generation.” Basketball served as an important evangelical tool for many during its first 50 years. In his 1941 book “Basketball: Its Origin and Development,” Naismith wrote, “Whenever I witness games in a church league, I feel that my vision, almost half a century ago, of the time when the Christian people would recognize the true value of athletics, has become a reality.”

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As Allan Fitzgerald explains in his excellent introduction the homilies are a unique artefact: “The first and only commentary dedicated to the Gospel of John in ancient Latin literature.” Even more importantly, they bring us as close as we’re ever going to get to the real, raw and clearly rattled Augustine.

As one scholar has written, they show us Augustine in the “unpredictable, popular setting of a diversified and boisterous Christian community”.

This volume contains the first 40 homilies (out of a total of 124). Donatism features heavily. The first 16 pieces are dripping with anti-Donatist contempt but there is much more on display here. Whether he is chastising people for their sins and their addiction to astrology or showing them how to appreciate Scripture and grow in their faith, Augustine is revealed as a passionate, winningly meandering pulpit-basher. Even those of us who have our doubts about Augustine’s theological trajectory would concede that crowding into the Basilica Pacis and hearing his fulminations, witticisms and memorable wordplay must have been a rare privilege.

Hill’s translation of the homilies isn’t stellar, but I’d still advise you to take a look. If you’d like to know how Augustine confronted the fractured world of fifth-century North African Christianity, if you’d like to hear him hold forth on why God created flies and fleas, and if you’ve any interest in seeing a brilliant, bewildered theologian groping towards his version of the truth, then this is the book for you. I couldn’t put it down. It reminded me that the history of North African Christianity deserves more of our attention and it proved that Augustine, love him or hate him, should be seen as more than a theological commodity to be used and abused by his acolytes and enemies. Once upon a time, he was just a befuddled bishop in a bewildering situation. He didn’t always makes things better, but even when he made things slightly worse he did so with a rhetorical flourish or two.

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Suspended Episcopal Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. will get his last chance to make a case for reinstatement as head of the Diocese of Pennsylvania when he goes before a church appeals court in May.

In September 2008, a lower church court found Bennison guilty on two counts of failing to respond adequately when, as a new rector decades ago, he learned that his younger brother was having sexual relations with a minor.

John Bennison had been youth minister at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Upland, Calif. The abuse began when the girl, a member of the parish, was 14.

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True, Obama’s approval ratings had dropped faster during his first year in office than any recent rookie president. They had hovered around the 50% level the last couple of months.

But in recent days Gallup found Americans suddenly souring even more until more disapprove than approve.

The only possible reason to explain this drop is the public does not like the president’s NCAA tournament picks. Or maybe the fact that the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan has stimulated unemployment up to 9.7%.

Unless this dramatic poll drop perhaps has a little something to do with Obama’s determined drive to….

…push through/down/up/over/into the $940 billion healthcare legislation that seems to have dominated virtually every moment of his public thought and talk for months.

A congressional showdown appears set now for Sunday using a series of controversial parliamentary maneuvers because the leadership of the overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses either don’t have the votes to pass the measure as usual and/or they don’t want to force colleagues to take a recorded stand on the measure with crucial midterm elections coming in November.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Bishops in the House of Lords have been urged to become involved with the reform of the upper chamber. Reports this week said that the Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, would propose replacing the Lords with a wholly elected 300-seat senate.

The think tank Ekklesia and the democracy campaign Power2010 said last week that reform was inevitable. In an email campaign that targeted the 26 bishops who sit in the Lords, the two groups had forwarded 59,681 messages by Wednesday calling on them for “clear and principled leader­ship to take this forward” .

The emails asked the bishops to sup­port “core principles” that both Chris­tian and non-Christian demo­crats could share, which included the requirement that people of faith should face election with no special privileges and no reserved places.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury’s office yesterday described the election of an openly lesbian bishop in the United States as “regrettable” and warned that it could further threaten the unity of the Anglican Communion.

The London office of Dr Rowan Williams responded to the election of Canon Mary Glasspool to a suffragan see in Los Angeles by warning of “important implications”. The statement from Lambeth Palace said that further consultations would now take place and regretted that calls for restraint had not been heeded.

The Episcopal News Service reported that Canon Glasspool, who held from the start that her sexuality was not an issue, had received the necessary consents from bishops and standing committees in the US for her consecration by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to go ahead in May.

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“Technology has rendered the conventional definition of personally identifiable information obsolete,” said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy division. “You can find out who an individual is without it.”

In a class project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that received some attention last year, Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree analyzed more than 4,000 Facebook profiles of students, including links to friends who said they were gay. The pair was able to predict, with 78 percent accuracy, whether a profile belonged to a gay male.

So far, this type of powerful data mining, which relies on sophisticated statistical correlations, is mostly in the realm of university researchers, not identity thieves and marketers.

But the F.T.C. is worried that rules to protect privacy have not kept up with technology. The agency is convening on Wednesday the third of three workshops on the issue.

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Nickels, dimes and quarters added up quickly last Christmas despite the economic slump as Americans donated a record $139 million to the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign.

“America is an incredibly generous nation and philanthropy is alive and well, despite the current economic conditions impacting so many,” said Commissioner Israel L. Gaither, national commander of the Salvation Army.

“We are grateful for every donor, volunteer and corporate partner for supporting the Salvation Army’s mission by giving more than ever during a time when some have so little to give.”

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When Osama bin Laden declared war on the West in 1996, he cited the Quran’s command to “strike off” the heads of unbelievers. More recently, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan lectured his colleagues about jihad, or “holy war,” and the Quran’s exhortation to fight unbelievers and bring them low. Hasan is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last year.

Given this violent legacy, religion historian Philip Jenkins decided to compare the brutality quotient of the Quran and the Bible.

“Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible,” Jenkins says.

Jenkins is a professor at Penn State University and author of two books dealing with the issue: the recently published Jesus Wars, and Dark Passages , which has not been published but is already drawing controversy.

Violence in the Quran, he and others say, is largely a defense against attack.

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Roman Catholic opposition to the health care overhaul package is crumbling, with some church officials and lawmakers concluding that their long-sought goal of health care overhaul trumps the desire to adopt the severest restrictions on abortion funding.

A coalition of 59,000 nuns released a letter yesterday calling on Congress to approve the overhaul, defying the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposes the measure. The Catholic Health Association, which represents 1,200 Catholic hospitals, has endorsed the package, as have Catholics United and Catholic groups promoting social justice.

That split mirrors a division among some antiabortion US representatives. In preparing to cast perhaps one of the most important votes on a domestic issue in their careers, they are wrestling with questions that strike at the core of their beliefs and that threaten to embolden voters in November.

Ardently antiabortion Representative Dale Kildee, a Michigan Democrat who once studied in a Catholic seminary, said yesterday he will vote for the package despite language that some believe is not strict enough in ensuring that no federal funds are used for abortions.

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O God, who from the family of thy servant David didst raise up Joseph to be the guardian of thy incarnate Son and the spouse of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to thy commands; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” And suddenly looking around they no longer saw any one with them but Jesus only.

–Mark 9:7-8

Grant us, O Lord, to rejoice in beholding the bliss of the heavenly Jerusalem; that as she is the home and mother of the multitude of the saints, we also may be counted worthy to have our portion within her; through thine only begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Many House Democrats strongly disliked the Senate’s proposed excise tax on high-cost, employer-sponsored insurance policies. In the Senate-passed bill, that provision would have raised $150 billion over 10 years. Mr. Obama and White House officials reached a deal with organized labor groups to delay the implementation and limit the impact of that tax. As a result, the excise tax will raise only $32 billion over 10 years, according to the budget office.

Of course, that meant coming up with another $118 billion elsewhere to plug the hole. Not a problem: the final legislation imposes a 3.8 percent tax on “unearned income” such as dividends and interest, or on regular income above $200,000 a year for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

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Read it all and follow the links as you are inclined.

I don’t often do this, but it would mean a lot to me if you would not simply read, but read, think and pray about this entry.

“I’ve always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.” ~On the English people

Of course, said Gandalf. And why should not they prove true? Surely you do not disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!
–(J.R.R. Tolkien’s character) Gandalf

The Lord of the Rings is about how men, including the humblest of men, choose to act in the face of moral urgency and engulfing peril. It is about the power of humility, the wisdom of mercy, the glory of self-sacrificial valor, the false glamour of evil, the workings of grace, and above all, the necessity of faith. Put more plainly, LOTR screenwriter Phillippa Boyans says it’s about goodness — an idea that leaves many moderns skeptical and confused. “We come from a generation that has never had that question put to us,” she said in an interview. “It was put to the generation of World War I. It was put to the generation of World War II. ‘What are you prepared to do?’ ‘Are you going to hold on?’ ‘Are you going to keep going?’ ‘Do you have to live?’ ‘Is this a world worth fighting for?’ All of this is in there.”
–Rod Dreher

I will take comments, but only ones that wrestle with the content here and its call for courage, faith and hope. Many thanks–KSH

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Attackers killed 12 people Wednesday morning in a small Christian village in central Nigeria, officials said, cutting out most of the victims’ tongues in the latest violence in a region where religious fighting already has killed hundreds this year.

The attack almost mirrored the tactics used by those who carried out similar massacres in Christian villages last week when more than 200 people were slaughtered.

Under the cover of darkness and a driving rain, raiders with machetes entered the village of Byie early Wednesday, setting fire to homes and firing gunshots into the air to drive frightened villagers into the night, witness Linus Vwi said.

“It was raining. They took that advantage,” Vwi said.

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The Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka Thursday met a group of religious leaders and exchanged views on the draft constitution and other national matters.

The leaders included Bishop Philip Sulumeti, Vice Chair of the Kenya Episcopal Conference of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Head of Anglican Churches of Kenya, Rev. Canon Peter Karanja, Secretary General, NCCK, Rt. Rev. David Gathanju, the P.C.E.A. Moderator and the Head of Methodist Church, Bishop Stephen Kanyaru among others.

They church leaders reiterated their position on abortion and emphasized that life begins at conception and any contrary position in the draft should be amended before being taken to referendum.

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Last night it was confirmed that the Rev Mary Glasspool, who has been with her partner, Becki Sander, for 22 years, had received the required number of votes from bishops and standing committees. Her consecration will take place on 15 Mayin Los Angeles.

Glasspool, from Baltimore, welcomed the news but admitted that not everybody would share in her happiness.

“Not everyone rejoices in this election and consent, and [I] will work, pray, and continue to extend my own hands and heart to bridge those gaps, and strengthen the bonds of affection among all people.”

The archbishop of Sydney said the US church had “committed itself to a life contrary to scripture” and that the communion had reached “another decisive moment”.

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