Diane Medved, a clinical psychologist and the wife of radio host Michael Medved, says that the time before Passover “used to be a black month” for her. There was so much work to be done””cleaning the house from top to bottom, getting rid of any “leavened food,” switching to a new set of dishes, cooking for a large extended family””that she began to dread the whole experience. But then, like her ancestors in Egypt who labored under the pharaoh, Ms. Medved jokes, she was “released from bondage.” Twenty-one years ago, Ms. Medved and her family started going to resorts for the entire eight days of Passover, and she has never looked back.

Kosher-for-Passover vacations have been around for more than a quarter-century, but in recent years they have become more popular and more elaborate. Raphi Bloom, the sales and marketing director of Totally Jewish Travel, a Web site advertising getaways for observant Jews, says that he has 120 hotels on five continents promoting vacations for the holiday this year, which runs for eight days starting at sundown on Monday. From cruises to South America to resorts in Hawaii to luxury hotels in Europe, these vacations can run more than $10,000 for a family of four (not including airfare).

Read it all.

I am having terrible connectivity issues. Robert Munday preached a lovely sermon at the Morning Eucharist. Bishop Lawrence is in the process of giving his address.

Update: The bishop is finished with his address which was quite comprehensive and full of quiet resolve. We are now voting.

Another Update: The convention will not adjourn but will recess until a time certain.

Read it all.

The Vatican has attacked the media over charges that the Pope failed to act against a US priest accused of abusing up to 200 deaf boys two decades ago.

A Vatican newspaper editorial said the claims were an “ignoble” attack on the Pope and that there was no “cover-up”.

Archbishops had complained about Fr Lawrence Murphy in 1996 to a Vatican office led by the future pope, but apparently received no response.

Read it all–this story was the top one on BBC World news this morning at 6:00 EST.

New Primate of the Anglican Church, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, has restated the position of the Anglican Communion in Nigeria against the practice of gay marriage in the church.

This followed a call by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan on religious leaders in the country to collaborate with the Federal Government in transforming the country.

Jonathan was the special guest at the formal handing over of the reign of office to Archbishop Okoh by outgoing Archbishop Peter Akinola, on Thursday at the Cathedral of the Advent Church in Abuja.

In his short speech, the Acting President called on the church to shun corruption and discourage social vices.

Read it all.

The document “Same-Sex Relationships in the Life of the Church” is now posted here. As the preface notes, “this project was commissioned in the spring of 2008 by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, to be overseen by the Theology Committee.” The postscript to the document written by the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops expresses gratitude for the work of the report, noting however that “their work is for study and reflection and does not constitute a position paper of the Theology Committee” (p.86).

The document contains statements by two parties or affinity groups offering two different interpretations of creedal faithfulness as the editor’s foreward notes (iv): the traditionalists write on Same-Sex Marriage and Anglican Theology while the liberals write on a Theology of Marriage Including Same-Sex Couples. Each affinity group then responds to the work of the other group and the editor offers an epilogue.

I rejoice that our work is now available for all to read.

When the document was presented to the House of Bishops on March 20, 2010, Willis Jenkins gave this introduction (posted here with his permission). Grant LeMarquand also gave an introduction. Willis Jenkins’ introduction helps to counter two blogosphere misperceptions to our work so far: nothing new and no points of agreement.

Read it all.

I have three comments. First, the concern about the plight of the Church which Canon Bird expressed during the Synod debate in February was fully justified. On 29 January the Church Times reported a further decline of two per cent in 2008 in average Sunday attendance. The average age of church members is 65.

Government forecasts are that people of 65 have an expectation of life of about 20 years, so that by 2030 roughly half of present church members will have died. Given an attendance of about one million a week, the target for recruitment, whether by Fresh Expressions or other means, must therefore be 25,000 new members a year for 20 years, just to stay where we are now.

Decline has been the unremitting state of the Church for 100 years; such a rate of recruitment therefore seems highly optimistic.

Second, outreach and mission are not the same thing. Outreach does what it says on the tin. Outreach feeds itself; it is like an octopus reaching out within the limited range of its tentacles to draw food into its mouth. Such is the nature of Fresh Expressions, whether by planting new churches or more innovative means.

Read it call from last week’s Church Times.

“Benefits provide security to our society’s most vulnerable people, and people who claim them are a part of our society ‘whanau’. Also, this government is working to overcome family violence, so the idea that John Key should want to give some of the most vulnerable in society a kick in the pants is both offensive and absurd. Kicking someone in the pants always does more harm than good,” says Dr Anthony Dancer, the Anglican Church’s Social Justice Commissioner.

“We need to be clear that with the number of redundancies and rise in unemployment, particularly prominent among Maori and Polynesian people, even the most highly qualified are finding it hard to find good jobs. Just because a solo parent’s kids go to school, it doesn’t necessarily mean a good job can simply be found at the drop of a hat. Or are beneficiaries supposed to do any work that is going? The kind of work the rest of society doesn’t want to do?”

It is unclear if the Government thinks it will be easier for beneficiaries to find work because they should take whatever work they are offered, while the middle classes continue to make more discerning choices.

Read the whole thing.

As a young doctoral student in the 1960s, Francisco Ayala was surprised to learn that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution appeared to be less widely accepted in the United States than in his native Spain, then a profoundly conservative and religious country.

Ayala brought a unique sensibility to the topic, because he had been ordained as a Catholic priest before undertaking graduate studies in evolution and genetics. What he believed then, and has spent his career espousing, is that evolution is consistent with the Christian faith.

On Thursday, Ayala, an acclaimed researcher at UC Irvine, won the 2010 Templeton Prize, awarded annually in recognition of achievements in affirming spirituality. The prize is worth $1.6 million, which Ayala said he would give to charity.

In announcing the award, Dr. John M. Templeton Jr., president of the John Templeton Foundation, praised Ayala’s research, which has focused on evolutionary genetics, as well as his inquiries into fundamental questions of life. “Ayala’s clear voice in matters of science and faith echoes the foundation’s belief that evolution of the mind and truly open-minded inquiry can lead to real spiritual progress in the world,” Templeton said.

Read it all.

The net results of the credit bubble are as follows:

1) An enormous number of families living in homes they cannot afford.

2) Bank balance sheets laden with current bad loans and lots of potential future defaulting loans.

3) Real Estate Sales, despite being propped up with historic low mortgage rates and tax purchase credits, are continuing to slide.

4) A weak overall economy with a very slow, soft recovery.

Whether a function of populist politics or bad economics, the proposals so far appear to address items one and three. But upon closer examination, they do nothing of the kind. In fact, they are actually gaming the system to help issue two ”” the bad loans the banks are carrying.

Even worse, they are making issue #4 ”” the economy ”” increasingly problematic.

We should allow the real estate market to experience a healthy price normalization process. Even though home prices have fallen dramatically, they have yet to reach their historical means relative to income or the cost of renting. This is to say nothing of the usual careening past the median towards under-valuation that typically follows a massive mis-allocation of capital.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Allegations have surfaced in the US that Pope Benedict failed to take action before his election as pontiff in yet another serious case of clerical paedophilia which has just come to light, this time at a school for deaf children in the state of Wisconsin.

The case has been confirmed by the Vatican. The Pope’s spokesman, however, defended the pontiff’s silence on the grounds that the Vatican department responsible for disciplining errant priests, formerly headed by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had not been informed until 1996 – 20 years after the priest’s victims first informed the police.

Hardly a day goes by without new cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests somewhere in the world being reported in the media.

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ope Benedict XVI’s latest apology for the emerging global scandal of child abuse by predatory priests ”” an issue that the Roman Catholic Church should have engaged years ago ”” is strong on forgiveness but far short of the full accountability that Catholics need for repairing their damaged church.

With the scandal spreading across Europe, Benedict apologized to Irish Catholics last week for the “sinful and criminal” sexual abuse of thousands of children across decades. But he made no mention of the need to discipline diocesan leaders most responsible for shielding hundreds of priests from criminal penalties by moving them from parish to parish to continue their crimes.

The pope’s apology fell short not only for Catholics in Ireland, but for those in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, where hundreds of new allegations are emerging to be investigated by a Vatican office that has but 10 workers to do the job.

Read it all.

As a published author even before he graduated from Duke Divinity School in 2006, many might have expected Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove to move to a bigger city with brighter job prospects.

But instead, Wilson-Hartgrove and his wife, Leah, have dug their heels into the floorboards of a sagging 11/2-story bungalow in the Walltown neighborhood of Durham, where they have lived for the past seven years. The Wilson-Hartgroves have no plans to move, either.

In his new book, “The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture” (Paraclete Press), he explains why.

“We felt that by moving again and again we could get to a place where you dig 10 wells 3 feet deep and never strike water,” said Wilson-Hartgrove, 29.

The Wilson-Hartgroves see stability as a virtue. The couple consider themselves modern-day monks, devoted to a religious community of like-minded people who practice prayer, contemplation and works of justice.

Read it all.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

–2 Corinthians 4:1-2

O Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who art thyself the bread of life, and hast promised that he who comes to thee shall never hunger: Grant us faith truly to partake of thee through Word and Sacrament, that we may find refreshment of spirit and be strengthened for thy service; who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

If you ask doctors what they think the new health law means for them, the responses aren’t too cheery.

An online community for docs called Sermo and Athenahealth, a company that helps doctors’ offices electronically manage payments and records, ran a few questions by docs visiting Sermo’s site starting Wednesday night.

While the survey isn’t a scientific poll, the results are pretty clear. Docs aren’t wild about overhaul.

Read it all.

The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.

The problem, he said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax.

Analysts have long tried to predict the year when Social Security would pay out more than it took in because they view it as a tipping point ”” the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency, unless Congress strengthens the program’s finances.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s New York Times.

But Pimco’s Bond King and Barron’ s Roundtable member Bill Gross contends the relatively high yield on a 30-year bond (compared to a less than 1% on a two-year note) reflects the mounting unfunded obligations taken on by the U.S. government.

In his latest monthly missive, Gross notes the discounted present value of future social-insurance expenditures, mainly Social Security and Medicare, total $46 trillion. The passage of health-care reform will only add to that entitlement.

“No investment vigilante worth their salt or outrageous annual bonus would dare argue that current legislation is a deficit reducer as asserted by Democrats and in fact the Congressional Budget Office,” Gross writes. “Common sense alone would suggest that extending health-care benefits to 30 million people will cost a lot of money and that it is being ‘paid for’ in the current bill with standard smoke, and all-too-familiar mirros that have characterized such entitlement legislation for decades.”

In that regard, Gross cites an op-ed piece in Sunday’s New York Times by former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who wrote that rather than reducing the budget deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years, health-care reform will add $562 billion to the deficit over that span. “Long-term bondholders beware,” he warned.

—Buyer’s Remorse in Bond Market? in last night’s Barrons

Check it out.

Some very encouraging news indeed– Read it all.

Pray for the the worship, the bishop and the bishop’s address, the voting on the resolutions and other common activity as it arises.

As a reminder, you may find the proposed resolutions here–KSH.

When the common good takes a back seat to political and corporate interests, all, especially the vulnerable, are at risk. As the largest provider of non-governmental, non-profit health care in this country, the Catholic Church, and those who work as Catholic agencies and organizations, have a special obligation to vulnerable populations, such as the unborn, those with disabilities, and those at life’s end. These populations cannot be compromised in an effort to secure “the greater good.” This is utilitarianism, seeking the greatest good for the greatest number, and never equates to the common good.

It is undeniable that the enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes public funding of programs that provide abortion on demand. No accounting practices, or requiring enrollees or employees to write separate checks for abortion coverage, changes that fact. The plan would mandate that in each regional Exchange only one of the qualifying plans not include abortion. Furthermore, there is no restriction on coverage of assisted suicide costs. President Obama’s executive order cannot override federal law. In fact, his Order merely requires adherence to the Act. Specifically, it states: “This Executive Order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural , enforceable at law or in equity against the United States.” While he attempts to assure us that the seven billion new dollars for Community Health Centers will be applied consistent with the Hyde Amendment, the placement of that language within the Act does not make it subject to the cost-sharing provisions for abortion coverage. Most significantly, Beal v. Doe, 432 U.S. 438 (1977) dictates that, without statutory provisions for the Hyde amendment within each enacted law, “essential services” are to include abortion.

Both individuals and employers will be penalized for the absence of health care coverage. There is no evidence of conscience protections for individuals or employers, who may find themselves having to write separate checks for undesired abortion procedures that happen to be in the plan of choice. There is limited evidence of conscience protections for providers, and the legislation does not provide for protection against coercion of health care providers and employers related to contraceptives or abortifacients. Here we see, most significantly, that a house divided eventually will pay the price for taking compromising positions. Yet, unfortunately, in public opposition to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ call for rejection of this legislation as it was written, the Catholic Health Association and fifty-five women religious urged its passage.

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It is important that this is not simply a matter of disagreement about biblical interpretation and sexual ethics although these are central and important. It is now very clearly also a fundamental matter of truth-telling and trust. In September 2007, at the Primates’ request and after meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, TEC bishops confirmed they would “exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion”. They made clear that “non-celibate gay and lesbian persons” were among such candidates.

When asked recently how they could therefore now proceed to confirm Mary Glasspool in the light of that assurance, one TEC bishop said this simply expressed where the bishops were in 2007 and they may be somewhere different now. At least where they are now is crystal clear. Both moratoria have been rejected. In addition, TEC is pursuing legal actions, with widespread concern its leadership intends aggressive action against the diocese of South Carolina which upholds the Communion’s teaching….

….the situation is now such that it may be better for the Archbishop simply to state ”“ as one of the Instruments and a focus and means of unity – that TEC as a body has rejected the Communion’s repeated appeals for restraint, made false promises, and confirmed its direction is away from Communion teaching and accountability. It has thereby rendered itself incapable of covenanting with other churches and made it unclear what it means when it claims to be in communion with the see of Canterbury and a constituent member of the Anglican Communion.

Although decisive action is necessary, Archbishop Rowan’s limited powers within the Communion and his laudable desire to keep on going the extra mile to enable dialogue mean many think it unlikely. Some long ago gave up on him. Many, however, both within the Church of England and the wider Communion (particularly in the Global South which meets next month) have been patient and sought to work with him by supporting the Windsor and covenant processes. They need now to make clear that unless he gives a clear lead then all that he and others have worked for since the Windsor Report and all that is promised by the covenant is at risk because of the new situation in which TEC has placed us.

Read it carefully and read it all.