For 2,000 years, Christian missionaries have traveled to foreign lands to spread the Gospel.

Today, there are thousands of missionaries preaching around the world without leaving home. Sometimes even while wearing pajamas.

Global Media Outreach, a branch of Campus Crusade for Christ, held a Webinar, or online seminar, this week to raise awareness and to motivate people to participate in online missions.

With tomorrow being designated Internet Evangelism Day (by the Internet Evangelism Coalition), Michelle Diedrich of GMO said she wants “to change the way we think” about the Internet.

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As Pope Benedict XVI has come under scrutiny for his handling of sexual abuse cases, both his supporters and his critics have paid fresh attention to the way he responded to a sexual abuse scandal in Austria in the 1990s, one of the most damaging to confront the church in Europe.

Defenders of Benedict cite his role in dealing with Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër of Vienna as evidence that he moved assertively, if quietly, against abusers. They point to the fact that Cardinal Groër left office six months after accusations against him of molesting boys first appeared in the Austrian news media in 1995. The future pope, they say, favored a full canonical investigation, only to be blocked by other ranking officials in the Vatican.

A detailed look at the rise and fall of the clergyman, who died in 2003, and the involvement of Benedict, a Bavarian theologian with many connections to German-speaking Austria, paints a more complex picture.

Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had the ear of Pope John Paul II and was able to block a favored candidate for archbishop of Vienna, clearing the way for Father Groër to assume the post in 1986, say senior church officials and priests with knowledge of the process. His critics question how this influence failed him nine years later in seeking a fuller investigation into the case.

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The British Foreign Office has apologized over a leaked memo which suggested Pope Benedict XVI bless a same-sex “marriage” or open an abortion clinic during an “ideal visit.” A Vatican spokesman said the incident would not affect the upcoming papal visit to England and Scotland.

The Sunday Telegraph obtained a copy of the memo, which said it should not be shared externally.

“The ‘ideal visit’ paper in particular was the product of a brainstorm session which took into account even the most far-fetched of ideas,” said the memo, which according to the BBC was authored by a junior civil servants.

Other passages of the memo suggested the Pope launch his own brand of condoms, start a helpline for abused children, sack “dodgy” bishops, apologize for the Spanish Armada and sing a song with the Queen.

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The British government was forced to publicly apologize to Pope Benedict XVI over a “foolish” internal memo that suggested, among other things, that the pope launch his own line of condoms during a September visit to Britain.

The document, described as a product of a “blue skies thinking” session at the Foreign Office, suggested among other ideas that the pope might use the tour to launch a line of “Benedict” condoms, bless a gay marriage and sing a duet with Queen Elizabeth II.

The band of government civil servants who authored the paper also suggested Benedict apologize for the 16th-century Spanish armada that fought the English navy, and that he reverse his ban on women priests.

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As a watching world wonders if Anglicanism is falling apart, major players in the Anglican Communion are assured of unity. But it is an assurance that is mingled with a deep sorrow.

These were recurrent themes in conversations The Christian Post had with most of the Global South archbishops and representatives. This paper had met them at a significant summit held last week at St. Andrew’s Cathedral.

For the Global South archbishops, there is no question about whether there will be a split in the largest Protestant communion.

“There is really only one Anglican Communion,” said the Most Revd. Henri Kahwa Isingoma of Congo. “It is the North American Churches that have gone far from the roots of our common faith.”

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Thanks to the spiritual leadership of Churches in the southern hemisphere and Asia, the Anglican Communion looks set for more change. The next major milestone for the Communion appears to be the Anglican Covenant, a document leaders hope would clearly articulate the Anglican faith, and a real system of authority.

In this exclusive survey of the views of Anglican Global South archbishops and representatives, The Christian Post learns of their concerns and hopes as they eagerly draw the curtains to their collective future.

The following are full-length transcripts of interviews conducted with most of the archbishops and their representatives gathered at a summit held last week at St. Andrew’s Cathedral.

Read it all (15 pages).

With that as the backdrop, it would amount to progress if both parties, via the debt commission, agreed that two big steps can’t be avoided:

”¢ The tax system has to be changed. The U.S. doesn’t have a system that can fund the government the country wants. The Tax Foundation says the levies paid by the top 1% of taxpayers now exceed those paid by all of those in the bottom 95%. And the Tax Policy Institute says almost half of all filers will pay no 2009 income taxes at all, because of various exclusions and credits””up, by some estimates, from a quarter in 1990.

This may be great for those who like soak-the-rich rhetoric, but it’s no way to finance a country. More than that, it’s a bit of a hoax on middle- and lower-middle-class Americans. They certainly pay payroll taxes, and the more they are excused from the income tax-system, the more likely it is that they will be hit with sneakier and less-progressive taxes. Tax reform””a flatter tax system, a value-added tax, something””is needed.

”¢ Americans have to change how they think about retirement. When the economy recovers and costs for recession-related bailouts, stimulus spending and unemployment benefits are resolved, we’ll still be left unable to really afford our Social Security, Medicare and long-term-care commitments. When the easier stuff is done, this is the hard reality, requiring a new and nonpoliticized national discussion.

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A major motive for being a Christian and participating in its rituals and disciplines is about to collapse. This is going to make a lot of Christians panic, but I believe the recent development will be all to the good.

The development is the discovery that hallucinogenic drugs can give people an experience seemingly identical to powerful religious experiences. A recent New York Times article by John Tierney describes the experience of retired clinical psychologist Clark Martin. Martin had been treated for depression for years, but counseling and antidepressants did nothing to help. At age 65, he enrolled in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school that gave people psilocybin, a psychoactive ingredient found in some mushrooms.

When Martin was administered the drug, he says, “All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating ”¦ . Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone….”

His experience, writes Tierney, is not all that unusual, and he says, “Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who meditate.”

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The Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright, has announced that he will be retiring from the See of Durham on August 31.

Dr Wright, who will be 62 this autumn, is returning to the academic world, in which he spent the first twenty years of his career, and will take up a new appointment as Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

Announcing his move, Bishop Tom said, ”˜This has been the hardest decision of my life. It has been an indescribable privilege to be Bishop of the ancient Diocese of Durham, to work with a superb team of colleagues, to take part in the work of God’s kingdom here in the north-east, and to represent the region and its churches in the House of Lords and in General Synod. I have loved the people, the place, the heritage and the work. But my continuing vocation to be a writer, teacher and broadcaster, for the benefit (I hope) of the wider world and church, has been increasingly difficult to combine with the complex demands and duties of a diocesan bishop. I am very sad about this, but the choice has become increasingly clear.’

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We need leaders who know God’s word, not guessing what God might be doing, offering opinions on this or that gospel truth, but going deep into God’s word as a means of grace to shape how we enter the mind of Christ. The crisis we face as a Communion is theological at heart, and needs to be addressed with theological depth.

This is the painful lesson in New Zealand: how damaging it is when the theological education of men and women in ministry brings doubt and confusion, especially in matters where the word of Scripture is clear. And the impact on our churches after more than a generation of such theological education has been devastating.

I read the report to the House Of Bishops in TEC regarding questions of same sex relationships and sexual expression. To be perfectly honest, and speaking personally from an academic perspective, the case put forward to justify same sex blessings and marriage is extraordinary in its treatment of various scriptures. Passages that are actually quite clear are made to say the opposite of their plain meaning. The logic and reasoning is strained and at key points quite incoherent.

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I thought this was a nice photo.

The drama class had just gotten out, and everybody was standing around talking when Jessica noticed her 9-year-old, Isabelle, making her way over to an elderly woman Jessica had never seen. The woman was neatly dressed, most likely just a well-meaning suburban grandmother who had come to retrieve a grandchild on behalf of an over-extended parent, most likely a perfectly harmless person.

Isabelle, as she usually did, exchanged hellos and struck up a conversation. It was the usual post-drama-class conversation until about two minutes in. Then Isabelle dropped the bomb.

“Will you take me? Can I go home with you?” Jessica heard Isabelle plead.

Jessica’s daughter, Isabelle, has Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder with a number of symptoms. Children with Williams are often physically small and frequently have developmental delays. But also, kids and adults with Williams love people, and they are literally pathologically trusting. They have no social fear. Researchers theorize that this is probably because of a problem in their limbic system, the part of the brain that regulates emotion. There appears to be a disregulation in one of the chemicals (oxytocin) that signals when to trust and when to distrust.

This means that it is essentially biologically impossible for kids like Isabelle to distrust.

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Pope Benedict XVI isn’t the world’s most prolific celebrity blogger. In fact, he’s not on Twitter and his Facebook profile is more empty than St. Peter’s Basilica on a Monday. But His Holiness isn’t as out of the Internet loop as you might think (The Vatican does have its own YouTube channel). On Saturday, the Pope took to the airwaves to discuss the spiritual advantages (and shortcomings) of the Internet, and to inspire Internet users to be more conscious of how we connect.

It’s our responsibility to preserve the “quality of human contact, guaranteeing attention to people,” Pope Benedict said at “Digital Witness,” a panel organized by the Italian Episcopal Community.

“The dangers of homologation and control, of intellectual and moral relativism are also increasing, as already recognizable in the decline of critical spirit, in truth reduced to a game of opinions, in the many forms of degradation and humiliation of the intimacy of the person.”

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Bishop Gumbs called on the members to be responsible for turning the crime corners in Road Town upside down just by their presence.

“Take the name of Jesus with you there and pray about the situation in those areas, and you will find after a time with you calling on the name of God there, whatever may be in that place is goning to move”, Bishop Gumbs explained.

“When we leave here, we have to go out to do ministry”, he said.

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For we know, brethren beloved by God, that he has chosen you; for our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

–1 Thessalonians 1:4,5a

O Lord, who by triumphing over the power of darkness, didst Prepare our place in the New Jerusalem: Grant us, who have today given thanks for thy resurrection, to praise thee in that city whereof thou art the light; where with the Father and the Holy Spirit thou livest and reignest, world without end.

We haven’t formally disaffiliated from the Episcopal Church. We added the other affiliation in order to obtain godly episcopal care. The opposition wants the court to order our Anglican bishops to not set foot in our building without their permission. The judge refused.

Also, 35-40 (not 25) of us attended court. At the most recent hearing, Father David Cannon – so-called “priest in charge” – had nobody with him except attorneys, because there are no dissenters in the parish.

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We are encouraged by and welcome the Communique from the Fourth Anglican Global South to South Encounter in Singapore, with its positive emphasis on mission. We particularly endorse….

2. Their agreement that the future of the Communion lies in winning the next generation for Christ and therefore their call to each region to adopt initiatives to better understand the needs and characteristics of this new generation so that we might better communicate the Gospel and Christian values to them. [12]

3. Their statement of ”˜the absolute necessity and priority for the Church to disciple her members under the authority of the inspired Scriptures so that they may transform their societies and reach the nations with the Gospel’. [13]

4. Their recognition that TEC and ACC’s ”˜continued refusal to honor the many requests made of them by the various meetings of the Primates throughout the Windsor Process have brought discredit to our witness’; the urging of the Archbishop of Canterbury to implement the recommended actions’; and their encouragement to Provinces ”˜to reconsider their communion relationships with The Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada until it becomes clear that there is genuine repentance’. [18 and 19]

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From here:

One of the newest medical ethics dilemmas is the collision between the Internet and the traditionally strict boundaries between patients and doctors. Caregivers, especially psychiatrists and therapists, have historically disclosed personal information only when it might benefit a patient ”” as when a patient is struggling with the loss of a child and the therapist discloses that he, too, has experienced such a loss.

Likewise, patients have typically disclosed personal details in their own time, as therapy continues and trust develops. The Web challenges that model head-on.

Facebook, founded in February 2004, now has more than 400 million active users. MySpace, founded a month earlier, has 100 million. Google.com, the search engine founded in 1998, currently handles 100 billion searches per day.

There’s no question that Internet searches can be an important tool for healthcare consumers. “Patients should Google their doctors, to check on credentials, training, scholarly articles and the like,” says Dr. Daniel Sands, the senior medical director of clinical informatics for the Internet Business Solutions Group at networking giant Cisco Systems.

But what about the reverse ”” doctors searching patients? “Why would they ever want to?” asks Sands, also a physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

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The one thing we know about the financial “reform” now moving toward what looks like eventual congressional approval is that it will be oversold, says economist Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation. We will be told that it will forever prevent a repetition of the recent financial crisis; that it will root out corruption on Wall Street; that it will eliminate “bailouts”; that it will protect consumers against greedy lenders. In the present anti-Wall Street mood, no one wants to be accused of coddling America’s money merchants.

What can we really expect?

History counsels caution. Every financial reform, even if mostly successful, ultimately gives way to another because there are unintended consequences or unforeseen problems. Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., has noted that the reforms of the early 1990s, which curbed risk-taking within the banking system, perversely shifted lending to the largely unregulated “shadow banking system” — mortgage brokers, specialized lenders and “securitization.” The central aim of today’s reform is to avert another financial panic. A panic is not a bubble or just big losses. These are inevitable and, in part, desirable: Without losses, investors would become reckless. A panic is a stampede of selling and hoarding, driven by fear, that threatens the financial system and, through it, production and jobs. A panic occurred in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers failed. Distrusting most financial institutions, investors and money managers fled to safety (a.k.a. Treasury bills).

By its nature, a panic is unanticipated. Reform may resemble generals fighting the last war….

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The Catholic Church in Scotland last night accused the Foreign Office of a lack of respect and Vatican sources warned the papal visit to the UK could be cancelled after the publication of an internal memo mocking Pope Benedict.

The Foreign Office was forced to issue a public apology to the Vatican while Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent under-secretary, contacted Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, to apologise personally for any offence caused by the document.

The memo joked the Holy Father could open an abortion clinic, launch a range of condoms or sing a charity duet with the Queen. The document also suggested Benedict XVI could show his hard line on the sensitive issue of child abuse allegations against Roman Catholic priests by “sacking dodgy bishops” and launching a helpline for abused children.

And last night a senior Vatican source said the incident could threaten the papal visit in September, saying: “It’s possible the trip could be cancelled as this matter is hugely offensive.”

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