(Please take the time to read it thoroughly before any response–KSH).

Renewal in the Spirit

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pentecost letter to the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion

1.

”˜They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak’ (Acts 2.4). At Pentecost, we celebrate the gift God gives us of being able to communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ in the various languages of the whole human world. The Gospel is not the property of any one group, any one culture or history, but is what God intends for the salvation of all who will listen and respond.

St Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is also what God gives us so that we can call God ”˜Abba, Father’ (Rom. 8.15, Gal. 4.6). The Spirit is given not only so that we can speak to the world about God but so that we can speak to God in the words of his own beloved Son. The Good News we share is not just a story about Jesus but the possibility of living in and through the life of Jesus and praying his prayer to the Father.

And so the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of ”˜communion’ or fellowship (II Cor. 13.13). The Spirit allows us to recognise each other as part of the Body of Christ because we can hear in each other the voice of Jesus praying to the Father. We know, in the Spirit, that we who are baptised into Jesus Christ share one life; so that all the diversity of gifting and service in the Church can be seen as the work of one Spirit (I Cor. 12.4). In the Holy Eucharist, this unity in and through the self-offering of Jesus is reaffirmed and renewed as we pray for the Spirit to transform both the bread and wine and ”˜ourselves, our souls and bodies’.

When the Church is living by the Spirit, what the world will see is a community of people who joyfully and gratefully hear the prayer of Jesus being offered in each other’s words and lives, and are able to recognise the one Christ working through human diversity. And if the world sees this, the Church is a true sign of hope in a world of bitter conflict and rivalry.
2.

From the very first, as the New Testament makes plain, the Church has experienced division and internal hostilities. From the very first, the Church has had to repent of its failure to live fully in the light and truth of the Spirit. Jesus tells us in St John’s gospel that the Spirit of truth will ”˜prove the world wrong’ in respect of sin and righteousness and judgement (Jn 16.8). But if the Spirit is leading us all further into the truth, the Spirit will convict the Church too of its wrongness and lead it into repentance. And if the Church is a community where we serve each other in the name of Christ, it is a community where we can and should call each other to repentance in the name of Christ and his Spirit ”“ not to make the other feel inferior (because we all need to be called to repentance) but to remind them of the glory of Christ’s gift and the promise that we lose sight of when we fail in our common life as a Church.

Our Anglican fellowship continues to experience painful division, and the events of recent months have not brought us nearer to full reconciliation. There are still things being done that the representative bodies of the Communion have repeatedly pleaded should not be done; and this leads to recrimination, confusion and bitterness all round. It is clear that the official bodies of The Episcopal Church have felt in conscience that they cannot go along with what has been asked of them by others, and the consecration of Canon Mary Glasspool on May 15 has been a clear sign of this. And despite attempts to clarify the situation, activity across provincial boundaries still continues ”“ equally dictated by what people have felt they must in conscience do. Some provinces have within them dioceses that are committed to policies that neither the province as a whole nor the Communion has sanctioned. In several places, not only in North America, Anglicans have not hesitated to involve the law courts in settling disputes, often at great expense and at the cost of the Church’s good name.

All are agreed that the disputes arising around these matters threaten to distract us from our main calling as Christ’s Church. The recent Global South encounter in Singapore articulated a strong and welcome plea for the priority of mission in the Communion; and in my own message to that meeting I prayed for a ”˜new Pentecost’ for all of us. This is a good season of the year to pray earnestly for renewal in the Spirit, so that we may indeed do what God asks of us and let all people know that new and forgiven life in Christ is possible and that created men and women may by the Spirit’s power be given the amazing liberty to call God ”˜Abba, Father!’

It is my own passionate hope that our discussion of the Anglican Covenant in its entirety will help us focus on that priority; the Covenant is nothing if not a tool for mission. I want to stress yet again that the Covenant is not envisaged as an instrument of control. And this is perhaps a good place to clarify that the place given in the final text to the Standing Committee of the Communion introduces no novelty: the Committee is identical to the former Joint Standing Committee, fully answerable in all matters to the ACC and the Primates; nor is there any intention to prevent the Primates in the group from meeting separately. The reference to the Standing Committee reflected widespread unease about leaving certain processes only to the ACC or only to the Primates.

But we are constantly reminded that the priorities of mission are experienced differently in different places, and that trying to communicate the Gospel in the diverse tongues of human beings can itself lead to misunderstandings and failures of communication between Christians. The sobering truth is that often our attempts to share the Gospel effectively in our own setting can create problems for those in other settings.

3.

We are at a point in our common life where broken communications and fragile relationships have created a very mistrustful climate. This is not news. But many have a sense that the current risks are greater than ever. Although attitudes to human sexuality have been the presenting cause, I want to underline the fact that what has precipitated the current problem is not simply this issue but the widespread bewilderment and often hurt in different quarters that we have no way of making decisions together so that we are not compromised or undermined by what others are doing. We have not, in other words, found a way of shaping our consciences and convictions as a worldwide body. We have not fully received the Pentecostal gift of mutual understanding for common mission.

It may be said ”“ quite understandably, in one way ”“ that our societies and their assumptions are so diverse that we shall never be able to do this. Yet we are called to seek for mutual harmony and common purpose, and not to lose heart. If the truth of Christ is indeed ultimately one as we all believe, there should be a path of mutual respect and thankfulness that will hold us in union and help us grow in that truth.

Yet at the moment we face a dilemma. To maintain outward unity at a formal level while we are convinced that the divisions are not only deep but damaging to our local mission is not a good thing. Neither is it a good thing to break away from each other so dramatically that we no longer see Christ in each other and risk trying to create a church of the ”˜perfect’ ”“ people like us. It is significant that there are still very many in The Episcopal Church, bishops, clergy and faithful, who want to be aligned with the Communion’s general commitments and directions, such as those who identify as ”˜Communion Partners’, who disagree strongly with recent decisions, yet want to remain in visible fellowship within TEC so far as they can. And, as has often been pointed out, there are things that Anglicans across the world need and want to do together for the care of God’s poor and vulnerable that can and do go on even when division over doctrine or discipline is sharp.

4.

More and more, Anglicans are aware of living through a time of substantial transition, a time when the structures that have served us need reviewing and refreshing, perhaps radical changing, when the voice and witness in the Communion of Christians from the developing world is more articulate and creative than ever, and when the rapidity of social change in ”˜developed’ nations leaves even some of the most faithful and traditional Christian communities uncertain where to draw the boundaries in controversial matters ”“ not only sexuality but issues of bioethics, for example, or the complexities of morality in the financial world.

A time of transition, by definition, does not allow quick solutions to such questions, and it is a time when, ideally, we need more than ever to stay in conversation. As I have said many times before, whatever happens to our structures, we still need to preserve both working relationships and places for exchange and discussion. New vehicles for conversations across these boundaries are being developed with much energy.

But some decisions cannot be avoided. We began by thinking about Pentecost and the diverse peoples of the earth finding a common voice, recognising that each was speaking a truth recognised by all. However, when some part of that fellowship speaks in ways that others find hard to recognise, and that point in a significantly different direction from what others are saying, we cannot pretend there is no problem.

And when a province through its formal decision-making bodies or its House of Bishops as a body declines to accept requests or advice from the consultative organs of the Communion, it is very hard (as noted in my letter to the Communion last year after the General Convention of TEC) to see how members of that province can be placed in positions where they are required to represent the Communion as a whole. This affects both our ecumenical dialogues, where our partners (as they often say to us) need to know who it is they are talking to, and our internal faith-and-order related groups.

I am therefore proposing that, while these tensions remain unresolved, members of such provinces ”“ provinces that have formally, through their Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion and recently reaffirmed by the Standing Committee and the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) ”“ should not be participants in the ecumenical dialogues in which the Communion is formally engaged. I am further proposing that members of such provinces serving on IASCUFO should for the time being have the status only of consultants rather than full members. This is simply to confirm what the Communion as a whole has come to regard as the acceptable limits of diversity in its practice. It does not alter what has been said earlier by the Primates’ Meeting about the nature of the moratoria: the request for restraint does not necessarily imply that the issues involved are of equal weight but recognises that they are ”˜central factors placing strains on our common life’, in the words of the Primates in 2007. Particular provinces will be contacted about the outworking of this in the near future.

I am aware that other bodies have responsibilities in questions concerned with faith and order, notably the Primates’ Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Standing Committee. The latter two are governed by constitutional provisions which cannot be overturned by any one person’s decision alone, and there will have to be further consultation as to how they are affected. I shall be inviting the views of all members of the Primates’ Meeting on the handling of these matters with a view to the agenda of the next scheduled meeting in January 2011.

5.

In our dealings with other Christian communions, we do not seek to deny our diversity; but there is an obvious problem in putting forward representatives of the Communion who are consciously at odds with what the Communion has formally requested or stipulated. This does not seem fair to them or to our partners. In our dealings with each other, we need to be clear that conscientious decisions may be taken in good faith, even for what are held to be good theological or missional reasons, and yet have a cost when they move away from what is recognisable and acceptable within the Communion. Thus ”“ to take a very different kind of example ”“ there have been and there are Anglicans who have a strong conscientious objection to infant baptism. Their views deserve attention, respect and careful study, they should be engaged in serious dialogue ”“ but it would be eccentric to place such people in a position where their view was implicitly acknowledged as one of a range of equally acceptable convictions, all of which could be taken as representatively Anglican.

Yet no-one should be celebrating such public recognition of divisions and everyone should be reflecting on how to rebuild relations and to move towards a more coherent Anglican identity (which does not mean an Anglican identity with no diversity, a point once again well made by the statement from the Singapore meeting). Some complain that we are condemned to endless meetings that achieve nothing. I believe that in fact we have too few meetings that allow proper mutual exploration. It may well be that such encounters need to take place in a completely different atmosphere from the official meetings of the Communion’s representative bodies, and this needs some imaginative thought and planning. Much work is already going into making this more possible.

But if we do conclude that some public marks of ”˜distance’, as the Windsor Continuation Group put it, are unavoidable if our Communion bodies are not to be stripped of credibility and effectiveness, the least Christian thing we can do is to think that this absolves us from prayer and care for each other, or continuing efforts to make sense of each other.

We are praying for a new Pentecost for our Communion. That means above all a vast deepening of our capacity to receive the gift of being adopted sons and daughters of the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It means a deepened capacity to speak of Jesus Christ in the language of our context so that we are heard and the Gospel is made compelling and credible. And it also means a deepened capacity to love and nourish each other within Christ’s Body ”“ especially to love and nourish, as well as to challenge, those whom Christ has given us as neighbours with whom we are in deep and painful dispute.

One remarkable symbol of promise for our Communion is the generous gift received by the Diocese of Jerusalem from His Majesty the King of Jordan, who has provided a site on the banks of the Jordan River, at the traditional site of Our Lord’s Baptism, for the construction of an Anglican church. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of blessing the foundation stone of this church and viewing the plans for its design. It will be a worthy witness at this historic site to the Anglican tradition, a sign of real hope for the long-suffering Christians of the region, and something around which the Communion should gather as a focus of common commitment in Christ and his Spirit. I hope that many in the Communion will give generous support to the project.

”˜We have the mind of Christ’ says St Paul (I Cor. 2.16); and, as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has recently written, this means that we must have a ”˜kenotic’, a self-emptying approach to each other in the Church. May the Spirit create this in us daily and lead us into that wholeness of truth which is only to be found in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.

I wish you all God’s richest blessing at this season.

+Rowan Cantuar:
Lambeth Palace
Pentecost 2010

They were warned that the issue of women bishops would dominate their forthcoming meeting in York; but General Synod members might not have realised the extent to which they would be eating, sleep­ing, and drinking the subject at the beginning of July.

The timetable of the York sessions was published this week. Between 3.45 p.m. on Friday 9 July and 1 p.m. on Tuesday 13 July (and not counting the separate meetings of the Houses of Clergy and of Laity), the Synod members could spend 17 hours in debate on the subject.

The heaviest days will be Saturday and Monday, on each of which the Synod will begin debating the issue at 9.30 a.m. and finish at 6.15 p.m. The last morning is also given over completely to the subject.

The reason for the amount of time given is that the issue has reached the revision stage. The draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure can be amended clause by clause by the whole Synod, and amendments are expected which would reintroduce all the permutations that have been considered (and rejected) in previous debates….

Read it all.

It’s easy to lose your temper on the Internet. Anyone who reads ”” or writes ”” comments on blogs and news sites knows that the conversation can quickly stray from civil discourse to scathing personal attacks. For years, many websites just let users go at it, and free speech reigned. But now editors are rethinking just how open their sites should be.

Many people who want to participate in online discussions are quickly turned off by the nastiness. Miki Hsu Leavey, a resident of Napa, Calif., wrote a heartfelt, thankful letter to her local paper, The Napa Valley Register, after the health care bill passed. In the letter, she described her own struggle with lupus, her son’s difficulties getting insurance owing to his pre-existing heart condition, and her husband’s liver cancer diagnosis.

“My thank you note was really about the relief I had mentally,” says Leavey.

When Leavey looked at the site the morning her letter was published, she was shocked at many of the comments.

Read or listen to it all and, yes, let it serve as a salutary reminder about the comments here–KSH.

We know, at least intellectually, that that oil is a limited resource, yet we continue to extract and use it at increasing rates and with apparently decreasing care. The great scandal of this disaster is the one related to all kinds of “commons,” resources held by the whole community. Like tropical forests in Madagascar and Brazil, and the gold and silver deposits of the American West, “commons” have in human history too often been greedily exploited by a few, with the aftermath left for others to deal with, or suffer with.

Yet the reality is that this disaster just may show us as a nation how interconnected we really are. The waste of this oil — both its unusability and the mess it is making — will be visited on all of us, for years and even generations to come. The hydrocarbons in those coastal marshes and at the base of the food chain leading to marketable seafood resources will taint us all, eventually. That oil is already frightening away vacationers who form the economic base for countless coastal communities, whose livelihoods have something to do with the economic health of this nation. The workers in those communities, even when they have employment, are some of the poorest among us. That oil will move beyond the immediate environs of a broken wellhead, spreading around the coasts of Florida and northward along the east coast of the U.S. That oil will foul the coastal marshes that also constitute a major nursery for coastal fauna, again a vital part of the food chain. That oil will further stress and poison the coral reefs of Florida, already much endangered from warming and ocean acidification. Those reefs have historically provided significant storm protection to the coastal communities behind them.

Read it all.

In its August 2009 Churchwide Assembly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church decided formally to leave the Great Tradition of orthodox Christianity for a declining and desiccated liberal Protestantism. The decisions it made””accepting a weak and confused social statement on sexuality, allowing blessings of gay unions, ordaining gays and lesbians in partnered relationships, and requiring Lutherans to respect each other’s “bound conscience” on these issues””crossed the “line in the sand” that separates revisionist Christians from orthodox.

That result was a foregone conclusion for critical observers who had been watching the ELCA carefully since its inception in the late eighties. (Among them, of course, was Richard John Neuhaus, who saw clearly the trajectory yet to unfold.) What had been the promise of a renewed and robust Lutheranism in the merger of the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America was aborted before its birth, in 1988….

In the absence of a genuine confessional teaching authority, the ELCA has followed liberal Protestantism in adopting a working theology sharply different from its classical confessions. It has substituted the “Gospel of inclusion” for the classic “Gospel of redemption” that emphasizes repentance, forgiveness, and amendment of life. The former diminishes the importance of the Law as the source of both repentance and guidance for Christians. The god of self-esteem promises everyone acceptance just the way they are.

But the ELCA is far more interested in pressing forward the liberationist themes issuing from feminism, multiculturalism, anti-imperialism, and environmentalism. These themes constitute the non-negotiables in ELCA church life. The ELCA bishops recently participated in a workshop that featured a presentation titled “Power, Privilege, and Difference.” Being therefore educated about their propensities to be oppressive, the worthy bishops resolved to have “observers” at all their meetings to monitor for “PP&D” thinking. One might note that they employed no monitors for confessional theology, perhaps because there was nothing of significance to monitor.

Read it all.

My fear is that Bill Maher’s religious-like crusade to wipe out religion is going to wipe out the Bill Maher I’ve grown to enjoy and respect.

His seething intolerance and disrespect for people with religious faith are becoming as offensive as the racial and sexual-orientation bigotry Maher delights in railing against.

Last Friday on his HBO program, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” he engaged his political panel in a 14-minute discussion that focused on his belief that religious people are “deluded.” His panelists, including an author who is an atheist, disagreed with Maher, which served to frustrate him.

Maher’s flippant, dismissive and condescending attitude frustrated me, one of his biggest fans. I know the benefits of faith in a higher power. That Maher does not saddens me. But it does not make me think he’s delusional.

This ran a little while ago in the Kansas City Star but I missed it; our local paper ran it on the op-ed page yesterday. Read it all–KSH.

In a May 21 ruling, U.S. District Judge William Shubb stated that “plaintiffs have alleged sufficient facts which, if accepted as true, `leave open the possibility’ that … Section 107 goes too far in aiding and subsidizing religion by providing ministers and churches with tangible financial benefits not allowed secular employers and employees.”

Read it all.

The questions on the ads aren’t subtle: Leaving Islam? Fatwa on your head? Is your family threatening you?

A conservative activist and the organizations she leads have paid several thousand dollars for the ads to run on at least 30 city buses for a month. The ads point to a website called RefugefromIslam.com, which offers information to those wishing to leave Islam, but some Muslims are calling the ads a smoke screen for an anti-Muslim agenda.

Pamela Geller, who leads an organization called Stop Islamization of America, said the ads were meant to help provide resources for Muslims who are fearful of leaving the faith.

“It’s not offensive to Muslims, it’s religious freedom,” she said. “It’s not targeted at practicing Muslims. It doesn’t say ‘leave,’ it says ‘leaving’ with a question mark.”

Read it all.

But I trust in thee, O LORD, I say, “Thou art my God.” My times are in thy hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors! 16 Let thy face shine on thy servant; save me in thy steadfast love!

–Psalm 31:14-16

O Jesus Christ, who art the same yesterday, today and forever: Pour thy Spirit upon the Church that it may preach thee anew to each succeeding generation. Grant that it may interpret the eternal gospel in terms relevant to the life of each new age, and as the fulfillment of the highest hopes and the deepest needs of every nation; so that at all times and in all places men may see in thee their Lord and Saviour.

–George Appleton

While a restructuring may not take place for another year or two, it’s a move that Greece may be unable to avoid, many say, despite assurances to the contrary from officials at the EU and IMF.

Restructuring is essentially a default, under which Greece would renegotiate its debt with bondholders, either lengthening its maturities or reducing the amount it owes, causing bondholders to take a loss.

“At this point, it is very clear that restructuring is the only option,” says Lena Komileva of Tullett Prebon in London.

Josef Ackermann, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, said earlier this month he thought it “doubtful” that Greece would be able to repay all its borrowings.

Read it all.

The fear of losing benefits ”” of not being able to scramble back on to the lifeboat if you fall off ”” is a huge disincentive to change your circumstances, let alone report them. One in seven working-age households is dependent on benefits for more than half its income. More than half of all lone parents depend on the State for at least half their income. William Beveridge would be horrified to discover that the safety net he designed has become a trap, creating generations of worklessness and dwindling self-esteem. It is also creating a glut of unemployed, unwanted, unmarriageable men.

These men were overlooked during a decade of prosperity that did nothing to change their lives. At the beginning of that decade, 5.4 million working-age adults were claiming out-of-work benefits. The same number were still claiming just before the recession struck. Almost a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds were not in education, employment or training in 1997. The number was identical in 2006. These people stayed put in the Welsh valleys, in Liverpool, in Glasgow, while Eastern Europeans travelled a thousand miles to pick up work on construction sites in London. Immigration reduced the opportunities available to white British men whose poor education made them less attractive candidates, while the benefits system undermined their motivation.

The problem affects the whole of society because of the striking correlation between male joblessness and single motherhood, particularly in the old industrial cities.

Read it all.

Hezbollah is running weapons, including surface-to-surface missiles, from secret arms depots in Syria to its bases in Lebanon, according to security sources.

The Times has been shown satellite images of one of the sites, a compound near the town of Adra, northeast of Damascus, where militants have their own living quarters, an arms storage site and a fleet of lorries reportedly used to ferry weapons into Lebanon.

The military hardware is either of Syrian origin or sent from Iran by sea, via Mediterranean ports, or by air, via Damascus airport. The arms are stored at the Hezbollah depot and then trucked into Lebanon.

Read it all.

BP had to halt its ambitious effort to plug its stricken oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday afternoon when engineers saw that too much of the drilling fluid they were injecting into the well was escaping along with the leaking crude oil.

A technician at the BP command center said that pumping of the fluid had to be stopped temporarily while engineers were revising their plans, and that the company hoped to resume pumping by midnight, if federal officials approved.

The technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said the problem was not seen as serious. “We’re still quite optimistic,” he said, but cautioned: “It is not assured and its not a done deal yet. All of this will require some time.”

Read it all.

The “top kill” on the leaking gulf oil well remained a brute-force battle Thursday afternoon between drilling mud and high-pressure oil and gas surging from deep below the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Success remains uncertain, a BP executive said, and it could be another 24 to 48 hours before the outcome is known.

“Success has been in the ability to pump against the well. Next step is to get more fluid flowing down the well. Until the well is stopped and cemented, it will not be killed,” BP managing director Bob Dudley stated in a company press release Thursday afternoon.

Earlier in the day, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the federal government, said in media interviews that the top kill was working as planned and that oil and gas were no longer leaking.

“They’ve been able to stabilize the wellhead,” he told a New Orleans radio station. “They’ve stopped the hydrocarbons from coming up.”

Read it all.

A new version of the Gospel of Mark in the Plains Cree language is the first step in a new project to provide an up-to-date translation of the New Testament.

The new translation, sponsored by the Canadian Bible Society and Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada, was launched here May 19.

The publication of Mark’s Gospel is part of the larger Western Cree Bible Translation Project, which aims to publish the entire New Testament and about 40 per cent of the Old Testament into the Plains Cree “Y” dialect, said project coordinator Ruth Heeg.

The translation was completed by the Rev. Stan Cuthand, an Anglican priest from Saskatoon, with Cree readers continuing the long, ongoing process of reviewing the translation, she said.

Read it all.

Nine years ago Clancy Wolliver called for the vestry and search committee to invite me to be your rector. It was a dream come true, and Ellen, our children and I all felt it was God’s calling. Ministering among you at Christ Church has been the most spiritually demanding and fulfilling years of my 29 years as an Episcopal priest. Thank you for your amazing and generous support when my family and I needed you, for your patience when I failed you, and for your steadfast commitment to God and his Word. It has been an honor to serve one of the really great congregations in The Episcopal Church. For my failures and successes, I have loved you, the people of Christ Church.

I’m sure it will not surprise anyone that my decision to take early retirement is because of a crisis of conscience. Even though I was born and raised in The Episcopal Church, it has moved further and further away from the Gospel to which I committed my life and I have concluded that there is no future for me in this spiritual environment.

Read it all.

Josep Antoni Duran y Lleida, who leads the Convergence and Union coalition, said he abstained and saved the government only out of a sense of duty to Spain.

“I don’t want Spain to be helped out like Greece,” Duran y Lleida said. But he added that Zapatero’s time was running out and joined the Popular Party in calling for early elections before those scheduled in 2012.

The emergency measures cut public sector wages an average of 5 percent beginning in June, froze the wages and then froze most retirement pensions in 2011.

On Wednesday, Zapatero said Spain would also introduce a new tax for the country’s highest-income earners, trying to stave off criticism that only low-income workers were being targeted by the cutbacks.

Earlier this week, lawmakers in both chambers cut their base salaries by 10 percent while municipal governments announced pay cuts up to 15 percent for mayors and other local officials.

Talk about a slim vote margin–read it all.

The European financial crisis may look and smell rather different to the American banking crisis of a couple of years ago, but strip away the details ”“ the breakdown of the euro, the crumbling of the Spanish banking system to take just two ”“ and what you are left with is the next leg of a global financial crisis. Politicians temporarily “solved” the sub-prime crisis of 2007 and 2008 by nationalising billions of pounds’ worth of bank debt. While this helped reinject a little confidence into markets, the real upshot was merely to transfer that debt on to public-sector balance sheets.

This kind of card-shuffle trick has a long-established pedigree: after the dotcom bust, Alan Greenspan slashed US interest rates to (then) unprecedented lows, which helped dull the pain, but only at the cost of generating the housing bubble that fed sub-prime. It is not so different to the Ponzi scheme carried out by Bernard Madoff, except that unlike his hedge fund fraud, this one is being carried out in full public view.

The problem is that this has to stop somewhere, and that gasping noise over the past couple of weeks is the sound of millions of investors realising, all at once, that the music might have stopped.

Read it all.

Are you worried that we are passing our debt on to future generations? Well, you need not worry.

Before this recession it appeared that absent action, the government’s long-term commitments would become a problem in a few decades. I believe the government response to the recession has created budgetary stress sufficient to bring about the crisis much sooner. Our generation ”” not our grandchildren’s ”” will have to deal with the consequences….

The question we need to ask is this: If we don’t change direction, how long can we travel down this path without having a crisis? The answer lies in two critical issues. First, how long will the capital markets continue to finance government borrowings that may be refinanced but never repaid on reasonable terms? And second, to what extent can obligations that are not financed through traditional fiscal means be satisfied through central bank monetization of debts ”” that is, by the printing of money?

Read it all.

The M3 figures – which include broad range of bank accounts and are tracked by British and European monetarists for warning signals about the direction of the US economy a year or so in advance – began shrinking last summer. The pace has since quickened.

The stock of money fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc. The assets of insitutional money market funds fell at a 37pc rate, the sharpest drop ever.

“It’s frightening,” said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. “The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly,” he said.

Read it all.

One definition of “tweak” is “small adjustment.” One example of vast understatement is Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl’s assessment that “tweaks” are all that is needed to guarantee Social Security’s fiscal sustainability. He offered that absurd assurance last week on a projected $5.3 trillion shortfall in the system over the next 75 years.

As chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Sen. Kohl should take special care to be more candid about what it will take to save Social Security. And we all should be especially wary about extremely long-range social spending forecasts, which have an expensive tendency to underestimate eventual costs.

Yet citing research by panel staff, Sen. Kohl told The Associated Press, “Modest changes can be made over time that will keep the program in surplus. They are not draconian, as the report points out, and they can be done and will be done.”

“Modest changes”?

Read it all.

Mr Ambassador, I take this occasion to assure you of the desire of Mongolia’s Catholic citizens to contribute to the common good by sharing fully in the life of the nation. The Church’s primary mission is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fidelity to the liberating message of the Gospel, she seeks also to contribute to the advancement of the entire community. It is this that inspires the efforts of the Catholic community to cooperate with the Government and with people of good will by working to overcome all kinds of social problems. The Church is also concerned to play her proper part in the work of intellectual and human formation, above all by educating the young in the values of respect, solidarity and concern for the less fortunate. In this way, she strives to serve her Lord by showing charitable concern for the needy and for the good of the whole human family.

Read it all.

(Please note that this is in reference to a sermon from earlier in May that was finally posted here yesterday).

There was an intake of breath among the congregation, yet I wondered if I’d misheard the Archbishop. I hadn’t, for the text is on Rowan Williams’s website: “If Henry VIII is saved (an open question, perhaps) it will be at the prayers of John Houghton.”

John Houghton was the Prior of the Charterhouse in London, where Dr Williams was preaching, on the 475th anniversary of the martyrdom of him and 15 other monks at the instigation of Henry VIII. Prior Houghton was declared a saint by the Pope in 1970.

Read it all.

Fischer’s dense analysis of social change is brought to life by the stories of ordinary people, extracted from historical documents quoted in academic papers, books and studies. Indentured maids are no longer sent to the workhouse, as in Philadelphia in 1786. Young boys of 10 or 11 years old are no longer treated like Chauncey Jerome, a clockmaker whose father’s death in 1804 led to him being sent away to work.

But the fascination of this book lies in seeing how much has indeed remained the same. Fischer points out that the idea of Americans as addicted to credit and living beyond their means is not as new as we might think. Paul Dudley, attorney general of the colony of Massachusetts, lamented in the early 18th century, “that people … are fallen beyond their Circumstances, in their Purchases, Buildings, Expenses, Apparel, and generally whole way of Living”.

More positively, Americans have continued to display an enthusiasm for joining groups ”“ from their churches to the Elks fraternity, and more recently to book groups and internet discussions ”“ a tendency that struck Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker, when he toured America in the 1830s.

This, says Fischer, points not to the John Wayne-like individualism popularly seen as an all-American attribute, but to the very American characteristic of voluntarism.

Read it all from the Financial Times (subscription needed).

When once a sort of official, legal, or nominal Unselfishness has been established as a rule””a rule for the keeping of which their emotional resources have died away and their spiritual resources have not yet grown””the most delightful results follow. In discussing any joint action, it becomes obligatory that A should argue in favour of B’s supposed wishes and against his own, while B does the opposite. It is often impossible to find out either party’s real wishes; with luck, they end by doing something that neither wants, while each feels a glow of self-righteousness and harbours a secret claim to preferential treatment for the unselfishness shown and a secret grudge against the other for the ease with which the sacrifice has been accepted. Later on you can venture on what may be called the Generous Conflict Illusion. This game is best played with more than two players, in a family with grown-up children for example. Something quite trivial, like having tea in the garden, is proposed. One member takes care to make it quite clear (though not in so many words) that he would rather not but is, of course, prepared to do so out of “Unselfishness”. The others instantly withdraw their proposal, ostensibly through their “Unselfishness”, but really because they don’t want to be used as a sort of lay figure on which the first speaker practices petty altruisms. But he is not going to be done out of his debauch of Unselfishness either. He insists on doing “what the others want”. They insist on doing what he wants. Passions are roused. Soon someone is saying “Very well then, I won’t have any tea at all!”, and a real quarrel ensues with bitter resentment on both sides. You see how it is done? If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side’s battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official “Unselfishness” of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it. Each side is, indeed, quite alive to the cheap quality of the adversary’s Unselfishness and of the false position into which he is trying to force them; but each manages to feel blameless and ill-used itself, with no more dishonesty than comes natural to a human.

—The Screwtape Letters, Letter XXVI (emphasis mine), perhaps relevant to any of us planning family trips or vacations this summer

Although most U. S. churchmen have long agreed that in decency’s name the U. S. cinema should be regulated, some liberals have squirmed because the strict regulation which now exists was devised by Roman Catholics, is now in the Catholic hands of Motion Picture Production Code Administrator Joseph I. (“Joe”) Breen. Last week was announced a step, obviously the work of astute Will H. Hays, Presbyterian Elder, which may make U. S. Protestants feel better about the part their churches play in purifying the nation’s pictures. The most potent executive of the Y. M. C. A., General Secretary Francis Stuart Harmon, 41, turned in his resignation, made ready to sit on the board of the Will Hays organization, the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America.

—Time Magazine, November 2, 1936 and the person mentioned, Francis Stuart Harmon, is my father’s father

Please note that the headline above is from the print edition–KSH.

Vending machines in neon-splashed Tokyo have electronic eyes that evaluate customers’ skin and wrinkles to determine whether they are old enough to buy tobacco. In bathrooms at upscale Canadian bars, vending machines with flat irons enable women to defrizz their locks. In Abu Dhabi, the lobby of a luxury hotel has a vending machine that dispenses gold bars and coins at more than $1,000 an ounce.

A new breed of vending machine is proliferating around the world ”” and while the United States is coming late to the party, Dr Pepper and Baby Ruth are already feeling sidelined.

Flashy and futuristic, souped-up machines are popping up everywhere, be it the Mondrian hotel in Miami or at Macy’s in Minneapolis. They have touch screens instead of buttons, facades that glow and pulse, and technology intended to blunt vending machine rage ”” sensors that ensure that a customer’s credit card is not charged unless the chosen item has dropped. These machines are not for quarters: purchases are measured in dollar amounts that typically start at two figures and go up.

Changing consumer preferences about shopping and the high cost of operating brick-and-mortar stores are inspiring premium brands to rethink how they sell their wares. As Gower Smith, whose company, ZoomSystems, has created about 1,000 automated kiosks called ZoomShops, put it, “A ZoomShop costs less than an employee.”

Read it all.

…the greatest challenge to religious belief today is atheism based on neo-Darwinism. Hence the conclusion: if you are a consistent neo-Darwinian atheist you will wish there to be as few people as possible who share your beliefs.

This sounds like an intellectual joke, and so it is. If atheists can make fun of believers, why should not believers return the compliment? At its heart, though, is a serious proposition. Albert Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, said that the single most fundamental question we can ask is: “Why should I not commit suicide?” I think he was wrong. Spinoza was right: we have a natural instinct to survive. Instead, the most fundamental question we can ask is: “Why should I have a child?”

In terms of self-interest it makes no sense. Having children carries with it a high price in terms of money, energy, attention and time. Ethically too it is fraught with unanswerable questions. What right have we to confer life (and thus eventually death) on someone without their consent? What entitles us to expose a child to the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to? Did not Solomon in his wisdom say that “the dead who have already died are happier than the living who are still alive, but better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun?” Rationally, having a child makes no sense at all.

Read it all

The first tranche of the “Non Conformist Registers” has been put online detailing the hundreds of thousands of people who shook up the established order with alternative ideas over the past 225 years.

The database, which goes live on Wednesday, discloses those who refused to conform to the doctrine of the established Anglican Church including Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers.

The Quakers were the first religious group to denounce slavery while Methodists were great advocates of women’s rights.

More than 224,000 names are included in the register, which dates from the late 17th century, which also detail baptisms, marriages and burial inscriptions.

Read it all.