I will extol thee, my God and King, and bless thy name for ever and ever. Every day I will bless thee, and praise thy name for ever and ever. Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of thy majesty, and on thy wondrous works, I will meditate.
–Psalm 145:1-5
Via email from someone with the Archbishop at a meeting–KSH:
Archbishop Eliud Wabukala…would like to make… [the following] absolutely clear.
1. The news report about Abp Wabukala’s “break” from other Christian leaders on Kenya is not accurate
2. Abp Wabukala is unalterably opposed to abortion
3. The Anglican Church of Kenya will be meeting later this month to consult together to articulate their position on the new Constitution.
He is deeply concerned that the “experts” who drafted the constitution did not listen to the voice of the people of Kenya. Abp Wabukala believes that a Constitution is desperately needed in Kenya, but it must also be consistent with ethical and moral foundations of our faith.
Via email–KSH.
The Most Rev. Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury
Lambeth Palace
London
Your Grace,
Easter greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In February I read with great interest Bishop Mouneer Anis’ letter of resignation from the Joint Standing Committee. I am grateful for his clarity and honesty. He has verbalized very well what many of us have thought and felt, and inspired me to write, as well.
As you know from our private conversations, I have absented myself for principled reasons from all meetings of the Joint Standing Committee since our Primates meeting in Dar es Salaam in 2007.
The first meeting of the Joint Standing Committee was later that year in New Orleans. At our Primates meeting in February 2007, we made certain requests of the Episcopal Church. In our Dar es Salaam communiqué we did not envision interference in the American House of Bishops while they were considering our requests. For me to participate in a meeting in New Orleans before the 30th September deadline would have violated our hard-won agreement in Dar es Salaam and would have been another case of undermining our instruments of communion. My desire to uphold our Dar es Salaam communiqué was intended to strengthen our instruments of communion so we would be able to mature into an even more effective global communion of the Church of Jesus Christ than in the past.
Subsequent meetings of the Joint Standing Committee have included the Primate of the Episcopal Church (TEC) and other members of TEC, who are the very ones who have pushed the Anglican Communion into this sustained crisis. How can we expect the gross violators of Biblical Truth to sanction their own discipline when they believe they have done nothing wrong and further insist that their revisionist theology is actually the substance of Anglicanism?
We have only to note the recent election and confirmation of an active Lesbian as a Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles to realize that TEC has no interest in “gracious restraint,” let alone a moratorium on the things that have brought us to this point of collapse. It is now impossible to regard their earlier words of “regret” as a serious gesture of reconciliation with the rest of the Communion.
Together with Bishop Mouneer, I am equally concerned, as you know, about the shift in the balance of powers among the Instruments of Communion. It was the Primates in 2003 who requested the Lambeth Commission on Communion that ultimately produced the Windsor Report. It was the Primates who received the Windsor Report at our meeting in Dromantine in 2005. It was the Primates, through our Dromantine Communique, who presented the appropriate “hermeneutic” through which to read the Windsor Report. That “hermeneutic,” however, has been obscured by the leadership at St. Andrew’s House who somehow created something we never envisioned called the “Windsor Process.”
The Windsor Report was not a “process.” It was a Report, commissioned by the Primates and received by the Primates. The Primates made specific and clear requests of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. When TEC, particularly, did not clearly answer our questions, we gave them more time in 2007 to clarify their position.
Suddenly, though, after the 2007 Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam, the Primates no longer had a role to play in the very process they had begun. The process was mysteriously transferred to the Anglican Consultative Council and, more particularly, to the Joint Standing Committee. The Joint Standing Committee has now evolved into the “Standing Committee.” Some suggest that it is the Standing Committee “of the Anglican Communion.”
There is, however, no “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” The Standing Committee has never been approved in its present form by the Primates Meeting or the Lambeth Conference. Rather, it was adopted by itself, with your approval and the approval of the ACC. The fact that five Primates are included in no way represents our Anglican understanding of the role of Primates as metropolitan bishops of their provinces.
Anglicanism is a church of Bishops and, at its best, is conciliar in its governance. The grave crisis before us as a Communion is both a matter of faith as well as order. Matters of faith and order are the domain of Bishops. In a Communion the size of the Anglican Communion, it is unwieldy to think of gathering all the Bishops of the Communion together more frequently than the current pattern of every ten years. That is why the Lambeth Conference in 1998 resolved that the Primates Meeting should be able to “exercise an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters.” (Resolution III.6).
What has emerged, however, is the Standing Committee being given “enhanced responsibility” and the Primates being given “diminished responsibility,” even in regard to a process begun by them. Indeed, this Standing Committee has granted itself supreme authority over Covenant discipline in the latest draft. Under these circumstances, it has not been possible for me to participate in meetings of the Joint Standing Committee that has taken upon itself authority it has not been given.
Accordingly, I stand with my brother Primate, Bishop Mouneer Anis, in his courageous decision to resign from the Standing Committee. Many of us are in a state of resignation as we see how the Communion is moving away further and further into darkness, especially since the Primates’ meeting in Dar es Salaam.
Your Grace, I have urged you in the past, and I will urge you again. There is an urgent need for a meeting of the Primates to continue sorting out the crisis that is before us, especially given the upcoming consecration of a Lesbian as Bishop in America. The Primates Meeting is the only Instrument that has been given authority to act, and it can act if you will call us together.
The agenda for that meeting should be set by the Primates themselves at the meeting, and not by any other staff in advance of the meeting. I reiterate this point because you will recall our cordial December 2008 meeting with you, Chris Smith, and the other GAFCON Primates in Canterbury where we discussed the agenda for the Primates meeting to take place in Alexandria the following month. None of our submissions were included in the agenda. Likewise, at the beginning of the January 2009 Primates meeting I was asked to present a position paper on the effect of the crisis in the Communion from our perspective, but I was not informed in advance, so I did not come prepared. Yet, other presenters, including TEC and Canada, were given prior information and came very prepared. I have never received a formal written apology about that incident, and it has caused me to wonder if there are two standards at work in how a Primate is treated.
Finally, the meeting should not include the Primates of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada who are proceeding with unbiblical practices that contradict the faith of Anglicanism. We cannot carry on with business as usual until order is brought out of this chaos.
Yours, in Christ,
–(The Most Rev. ) Henry Luke Orombi is Archbishop of Uganda
Contemporary Christians may hesitate to assign a direct connection between particular natural disasters and sins. Yet many still believe that the reason for the existence of natural disasters in general is punitive and a direct consequence of early human disobedience in the Garden.
As harsh as that may sound to some, the alternative seems bleaker from a religious perspective. If natural disasters are not anyone’s fault, human or divine, wouldn’t that mean these catastrophes are also without purpose, just another tragic event reflecting the fragility of our lives? If God isn’t using natural disasters to punish disobedient creatures, why does He allow them at all?
One historically significant answer finds divine purpose in natural horrors””without those horrors signifying punishment. This year marks the 300th anniversary of Gottfried Leibniz’s “Theodicy,” which remains one of the grandest attempts to prove the goodness and justice of a God who created an evil-soaked cosmos like ours. Most affecting was his claim that our world is, in fact, the best world that God could have made (so don’t complain!), which sounds either crudely optimistic or despairingly pessimistic.
The central Nigerian city of Jos is at the crossroads of the country’s Muslim-dominated north and the mainly Christian and animist south. In recent months, renewed clashes between Muslim and Christian communities there have left hundreds dead.
Nigerian authorities are under mounting pressure to prosecute those behind the unrest. Nighttime curfews and an increased military and police presence are maintaining order ”” for now.
But observers warn that while religion may be the fault line for a decade of periodic fighting, underlying grievances in Jos go much deeper. The area is plagued by poverty, joblessness and fierce competition over land and scarce resources.
After the announcement that the General Election will be held on 6 May, church leaders have urged ChrisÂtians to get involved in the political process.
The Bishop of Lincoln, Dr John Saxbee, said “representative demoÂcracy can only be effective when those in Government have a credÂible mandate,” and called on the electÂorate, particularly Christians, to vote in “a thoughtful and considered way”. “It is especially important for Christians to take this responsibility seriously at a time when representaÂtives of far-Right parties are standÂing for election, the policies of which need to be roundly resisted.”
Christians are being targeted by the British National Party (BNP). In a letter sent to the editor of the Church Times, a “believer in the Lord Jesus Christ who had always been opposed to the BNP” but has now joined the party said that it was “light years ahead” of the three mainstream parties in promoting Christian standÂards and morals. “It is possible to support the BNP and keep a clear conscience before God,” he wrote.
Unemployment today doesn’t look like any unemployment in the recent American experience. We have the astonishing and dispiriting new reality that the “long-term jobless”””people out of work more than six months (27 weeks)””was about 44% of all people unemployed in February. A year ago that number was 24.6%.
This is not normal joblessness. As The Wall Street Journal reported in January, even when the recovery comes, some jobs will never return.
But the aspect of this mess I find more disturbing is the numbers around what economists call “youth unemployment.” The U.S. unemployment rate for workers under 25 years old is about 20%.
“Youth unemployment” isn’t just a descriptor used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s virtually an entire field of study in the economics profession. That’s because in Europe, “youth unemployment” has become part of the permanent landscape, something that somehow never goes away.
While conscience continues to be formed by the Judaeo-Christian moral tradition, it is being undermined by several forces. Peter highlights the corrosive effects of the two world wars and the disillusion that they have brought. But he is also conscious of the deliberate way in which Marxists and neo-Marxists have sought to undermine “bourgeois morality” as preparation for the revolution. Whatever advanced its arrival was good. Today’s radical secularists may have lost the thirst for revolution but the social agenda of neo-Marxism has become an end in itself. There remain strong connections, however, between the New Atheism and the Old: restricting the freedom of speech in promoting a politically-correct utopia; interfering with the right of free association; extending the role of the State; and schemes to “protect” children from the religious influence of their parents are some of the areas which are seen by Peter as points of attachment to the old way of doing things.
The New Atheists confuse fundamental human rights with the right to instant self-gratification and self-indulgence, which not only weaken society from the inside but also render it less able to counter any threats to it from outside.
He gives is a good account of the substitutes for true religion, such as the post-war cult of Winston Churchill, or national or local observances, such as Remembrance Day ceremonies. There is a great deal of criticism of a kind of hyper-patriotism founded on a false religiosity. But what is the basis for a critical but real patriotism? Must it not be in the defence of a shared story that is not so much about race or place as about the transformed understanding of persons and of society brought by the story of the Bible? Hitchens says of the terrorists that they “know how to die” because they have a shared story, even if it is a false one. Can our soldiers make sense of their situation in the context of a shared story? If their sacrifices are to mean anything, we must provide such a story that is worth defending and even dying for.
If China’s shift is a real one, there appear to be three possible sources of change:
1) Domestic factors and actors convinced China’s leadership that diminishing marginal returns for keeping the yuan fixed and masively undervalued had kicked in;
2) China responded to mounting multilateral pressure and feared being isolated at the upcoming G-20 meetings.
3) China responded to threats of unilateral U.S. action, such as being named as a currency manipulator, and/or calls for a trade war….
The remarkable remains of two ancient human-like creatures (hominids) have been found in South Africa.
The fossils of a female adult and a juvenile male – perhaps mother and son – are just under two million years old.
They were uncovered in cave deposits at Malapa not far from Johannesburg.
The ritual of washing feet has a deep-seated tie to Holy Week, a symbol of the humility Jesus showed in performing the act for his disciples the day before his death.
Craig Taffaro, president of St. Bernard Parish, La., took that custom into the workplace Thursday (April 1), going around the government complex throughout the day to wash the feet of willing employees.
“As the chief executive officer of St. Bernard Parish Government, I thought it was an appropriate gesture to show that I am as humbled as any other sinner in the world, so much so that I would offer to wash the feet of the employees,” Taffaro said.
Taffaro did not publicize his actions. A reporter was alerted to the matter by several phone calls from people who had heard from government employees whose feet were washed.
The historic appointment of Mexican-born Archbishop Jose Gomez recognizes the dominant position in the L.A. archdiocese of its roughly 3.5 million Latino Catholics. But it is also a statement by Pope Benedict XVI on the direction he wants the American church, with its 68 million members, to take.
During the last quarter-century under Cardinal Roger Mahony, the L.A. church has become not only the country’s largest archdiocese with 5 million members but also the undisputed seat of American Catholicism’s liberal faction. And Mahony himself has become, arguably, the church’s most polarizing figure.
Under Mahony, the L.A. church has emphasized Catholic teachings on social justice. It has also given considerable prominence to the role of laity in its ministries, allowing members to play significant roles in worship and in governance. As a result of its liturgical style, some more traditional church members have felt that local Masses — while still majestic and moving — are less influenced by Rome than by Hollywood.
At times, the cardinal has seemed at odds with Rome. During last month’s annual Religious Education Congress, for example, he was asked if he thought church teaching would ever permit the ordination of female priests. “I really don’t know the future of that issue,” he replied. The sentiment is a far cry from Rome’s 1975 pronouncement — asserted repeatedly since — that “the church does not consider [itself] authorized” to admit women to the “long black line.”
The Federal Home Loan Banks are a frequently overlooked band of government-chartered cooperatives whose name screams systemic risk with every word. Federal means Uncle Sam. Homes are a declining asset. A loan is money out the door. And banks are the things that get taxpayer bailouts when they’re too big to fail and enough of their loans go bad….
Last week, the FHLBs, which is pronounced “flubs,” published their combined audited financial statements for 2009. And at first glance, it might seem like they had a profitable year. Net income was about $1.9 billion, the banks said, up 54 percent from the year before.
The most striking part about that dollar figure was what it didn’t include: About $8.8 billion of paper losses from their portfolios of mortgage-backed securities. By the banks’ own description, these losses were “other than temporary,” meaning the values of the investments aren’t expected to recover soon.
The reason those losses weren’t included in earnings? The Financial Accounting Standards Board rewrote its rules a year ago so they wouldn’t have to count, following an intense campaign by the banking industry and its friends in Congress….
There is a facet of the character of Jesus of Nazareth we can probably all agree on and like. The Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild of our Sunday School days. The Boy who questioned His elders in the temple. The Man who gave value to tiny children at a time when they were insignificant and ignored. The Preacher who extolled the value of the poor and persecuted, the Teacher who declared your soul more important than the world. Charismatic, kind, courageous. With an instinct for the oppressed yet able to hold his own with the highest.
But there was another side to this calm Carpenter, equally well attested but not so obviously attractive or universally popular. A man who threw over tables in a fury and hurled other people’s property round a place of worship. Who called respectable people whitewashed tombs, and preferred to party with crooks and sex workers. Who threatened Hell and damnation and advocated plucking out an eye or cutting off a hand if they make us want to do wrong.
President Obama yesterday released the names of ten individuals whom he intends to appoint to the recently created Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. The ten will join the previously named chair and vice chair””Princeton University President Amy Gutmann and Emory University President James Wagner””in exploring bioethical issues anticipated to emerge from advances in biomedicine and related areas of science and technology. In a statement released with the names of the new Commissioners, the President said; “I am grateful that these impressive individuals have decided to dedicate their talent and experience to this important Commission. I look forward to their recommendations in the coming months and years.”
The new Commission differs in several ways from bioethics commissions created by previous Administrations. First, according to the terms of Executive Order (pdf) that created the new Commission, it is limited to a maximum of 13 people (with a total of 12 now named, President Obama has the option of appointing one more at a later date). That’s a smaller number than previous commissions, in part to keep the group nimble and facilitate discussion and consensus building.
How can we learn to say no?
The federal government is now starting to build the institutions that will try to reduce the soaring growth of health care costs. There will be a group to compare the effectiveness of different treatments, a so-called Medicare innovation center and a Medicare oversight board that can set payment rates.
But all these groups will face the same basic problem. Deep down, Americans tend to believe that more care is better care. We recoil from efforts to restrict care….
As interest rates on Greek debt spiral upward again, the question facing Europe is no longer whether Athens has the political will to cut spending and raise taxes to curb its gaping budget deficit, but whether Greece will run out of money before it gets the chance to do so.
With the rate on 10-year Greek bonds reaching as high as 7.5 percent on Thursday, up from 6.5 just three days ago, the cost of insuring against a Greek default hit a record high.
The message from the market could not be clearer: artfully worded communiqués from Brussels will no longer suffice. To avoid bankruptcy, analysts said, Greece needs a bailout from Europe, and fast.
“This is no longer about liquidity ”” it’s a solvency issue,” said Stephen Jen, a former economist at the International Monetary Fund who is now a strategist at BlueGold Capital Management in London.
Christian unity is strengthened when worshipers across the world use the same versions of prayers and hear the same readings on Sunday, says the Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers.
Meyers is the Hodges-Haynes professor of liturgics at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif., and leads the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, which prepares liturgical revisions for the Episcopal Church.
“If we cannot pray together, how effectively can we witness together?” she asked in a lecture in Virginia Theological Seminary’s Prayer Book at 30 series. “Common texts are a tool to help us worship together.”
Anglican Diocese of eastern Zambia Bishop William Mchombo has challenged those in leadership to do away with corrupt activities as well as abuse of power.
In an interview, Bishop Mchombo said the resurrection of Jesus Christ challenged all Christians to live the Jesus’ way of renewed hope in spite of the many challenges they faced.
“We are all called to humble service, especially those of us in leadership. We are further challenged to do away with corrupt activities as well as abuse of power. A life of compromise for political expedience or for purely selfish motives is not a Jesus’ way,” Bishop Mchombo said in his Easter message to the country. “The power of the resurrection leads us to renewal and gives us a desire of wishing each other peace. It challenges us to be concerned with any dehumanising conditions such as poverty in the face of abundant wealth in form of natural resources in the country. We are challenged to take care of each other.”
Having united the world, however, the Internet is rapidly becoming a place of global competition. Internet experts are waiting to see whether it will survive as an international commons or fall victim to global rivalries, espionage and cyberwarfare.
The addressing system that makes Internet traffic possible is overseen by a nongovernmental organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. It is arguably the only body that oversees the global operation of the Internet. Its mission, though technical, is critical to the survival of the Internet as an open network accessible everywhere.
“I believe in world unity,” says Rod Beckstrom, who is ICANN’s president. “And I believe that the Internet is an incredible platform for world unity and enhancing relationships, and integrating commerce and societies.”
A majority of Americans (82 per cent) feel their local economy will stay the same or weaken within the next six months, according to inaugural survey findings from the RBC Consumer Outlook Index, the new monthly survey of U.S. consumers released today by RBC. However, there are signs of growing confidence, with just over half of Americans (51 per cent) now feeling optimistic about their personal financial situations.
The RBC Consumer Outlook Index provides the most comprehensive, forward-looking analysis of consumers’ national and local perceptions of the economy and their personal financial situation based on a representative nationwide sample of 1,007 U.S. adults polled from April 1-5, 2010, by research company Ipsos. Going forward, RBC will publish the Index on a monthly basis. Future reports will include comparisons and analysis regarding significant shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviours, as well as regional breakouts.
“We strongly believe this first look at what consumers are thinking now will be of tremendous value to those looking for insightful and predictive market analysis,” said Marc Harris, Co-Head of Global Research at RBC Capital Markets. “We think that investors will tune in for the data, talk about it and trade on it.”
This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. Because the fact is, despite all the problems, America’s future is exceedingly bright.
Over the next 40 years, demographers estimate that the U.S. population will surge by an additional 100 million people, to 400 million over all. The population will be enterprising and relatively young. In 2050, only a quarter will be over 60, compared with 31 percent in China and 41 percent in Japan.
In his book, “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050,” über-geographer Joel Kotkin sketches out how this growth will change the national landscape. Extrapolating from current trends, he describes an archipelago of vibrant suburban town centers, villages and urban cores.
Motorists across America saw a strange sight this past Sunday morning if they stopped at a traffic signal near an Eastern Orthodox sanctuary and then, shortly thereafter, passed a Catholic parish.
What they saw was worshippers singing hymns and waving palm fronds as they marched in Palm Sunday processions at these churches. Similar sights will be common during Holy Week rites this week and then on Easter Sunday.
There is nothing unusual about various churches celebrating these holy days in their own ways. What is rare is for the churches of the East and West to be celebrating Easter (“Pascha” in the East) on the same day. This will happen again next year, as well as in 2014 and 2017.
This remains one of the most painful symbols of division in global Christianity….
The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to take the case of a Muslim defendant in Colorado whose lawyer was barred from questioning a prospective juror who, during jury selection, expressed concern that he might be biased against Muslims.
The trial judge refused to allow the defense lawyer to closely question the prospective juror about his possible anti-Muslim prejudice. The judge also refused a request that the individual be excluded from the jury.
Instead, the man became one of 12 jurors who heard evidence in a trial infused with anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim themes and comments, according to court documents.
The defendant, Homaidan Al-Turki, was convicted of having unlawful sexual contact with a live-in housekeeper, of failing to pay her for all her work, and for keeping her in slave-like conditions. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
The Vatican has posted online 142 years of documents, from Pope Pius IX to Benedict XVI, including unofficial texts relating to the period during the Second World War.
The official site of the Holy See (http://www.vatican.va) is offering access to the documents from the resource library, including papers of popes and of the Roman Curia, from 1865 until 2007.
Beginning with Pius IX, who served for almost 32 years in the 19th century, the official Vatican documents had been published on what are known as “Acta Sanctae Sedis” (Acts of the Holy See).
A half-dozen health insurers…[Monday] filed a lawsuit against the state seeking to reverse last week’s decision by the insurance commissioner to block double-digit premium increases ”” a ruling they say could leave them with hundreds of millions in losses this year.
The proposed rate hikes would have taken effect April 1 for plans covering thousands of small businesses and individuals. Insurers wanted to raise base rates an average of 8 percent to 32 percent; tacked on to that are often additional costs calculated according to factors such as the size and age of the workforce.
Yesterday’s legal action sets the stage for a showdown between state regulators and the health insurance industry.
Governor Deval Patrick has made reining in runaway health care costs a centerpiece of his administration and his campaign for reelection ”” contending they are stifling the capacity of small businesses to create jobs. At the same time, health insurers argue that government is forcing them to sell policies at a loss that is unsustainable as the costs of medical services climb.
I want to defend the proposition that, in its own way, the Tiger Woods scandal is as important as Kandahar and the Catholic Church. Leaving aside the question of whether we should shower condemnation on Woods ”” a hard question that I don’t purport to have a compelling answer to ”” one thing I feel sure of is that this Tiger Woods thing matters.
Why? Because it embodies some other things that matter. For example:
1) Monogamous marriage matters….
2) Monogamous marriage matters especially in parts of society where it is weakest….
3) Role models matter….
4) Role models matter for adults, kind of….
5) Moral sanction matters….
Read it carefully and read it all.
I have scrupulously avoided this topic because it sickens me, among many other reasons. But it does matter. Comments on this thread will be carefully watched, however. This is not an opportunity to get off topic, please. This is a chance to interact with a column and its specific arguments–KSH.
In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.
Tax cuts enacted in the past decade have been generous to wealthy taxpayers, too, making them a target for President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. Less noticed were tax cuts for low- and middle-income families, which were expanded when Obama signed the massive economic recovery package last year.
The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners — households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 — paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.
…memories are not enough to sustain a faith. It was in my teenage years that believing finally became impossible; after I’d learnt a little science, the meaning of creation in six days and conception by means of the Holy Ghost had to be understood metaphorically rather than literally, and once that was done, there was only God himself left. Although I carried on a fairly anguished one-sided conversation with Him for some time, the silence on His part was complete.
Nowadays, I’m as sure as I can be that there is nothing there. I think that matter is quite extraordinary and wonderful and mysterious enough, without adding something called spirit to it; in fact, any talk about the spiritual makes me feel a little uneasy. When I hear such utterances as ”˜I’m spiritual but not religious’, or ”˜So-and-so is a deeply spiritual person’, or even phrases of a thoroughly respectable Platonic kind such as ”˜The eternal reality of a supreme goodness’, I pull back almost physically. I feel not so much puzzlement as vertigo, as if I’m leaning out over a void. There is just nothing there.
Consequently, the immense and complicated structures of Christian theology seem to me like the epicycles of Ptolemaic astronomy ”“ preposterously elaborated methods of explaining away a mistake. When it was realised that the planets went around the sun, not the Earth, the glorious simplicity of the idea blew away the epicycles like so many cobwebs: everything worked perfectly without them.
And as soon as you realise that God doesn’t exist, the same sort of thing happens to all those doctrines such as atonement, the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, original sin, the Trinity, justification by faith, redemption and so on. Cobwebs, dusty bits of rag, frail scraps of faded cloth: they hide nothing, they decorate nothing and now they mean nothing.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has issued a written apology to the churches involved in residential schools after the commission’s research director accused them of being unco-operative.
Mr. Justice Murray Sinclair, the chair of the commission, has sent a letter of apology to representatives of the Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and United churches to distance the commission from John Milloy’s comments, which first appeared in a Trent university newspaper.
“It was, in fact, Professor Milloy himself who brought the matter to my attention, with his assurance that he profoundly regrets the tone, language, and assumptions cast within his statements,” states the letter. “The Trent article, I am assured, is an example of one’s impatience winning over one’s passion to ”˜get the job done.’”