Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town proposes prayer for the 2010 FIFA World Cup

”˜Let us all pray that God will bless the World Cup!’ said Archbishop Thabo Makgoba on Monday as he launched a special prayer for the tournament.

”˜It is a short and simple prayer which is easy to learn, and I hope many people, of many backgrounds, will join me in praying it daily in the coming weeks’ added the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town. ”˜We are asking for the well-being of everyone who is in any way associated with the FIFA 2010 World Cup: players, spectators, South Africans as host nation, and everyone who travels here. Apart from the Olympics, this is the most widely supported sports event in the world ”“ countless millions, even billions, love “the beautiful game” and we want to share this love with one another, for the good of the world.’

Read it all.

We have for years in the Anglican Communion operated a tacit rule of agreeing to differ about many things but trying not to do or say things which will cause other Anglicans to stumble. The Lambeth Conference has been the main instrument of this process: broad agreement can be reached on major issues while the provinces retain autonomy in their own lives. Thus, for instance, the Lambeth Conference agreed that it was all right to admit children to Communion prior to Confirmation, which then opened up the question for any individual Province to discuss, as most now have. Our own General Synod repeated Lambeth’s point, so the issue was then passed down to dioceses. Our own Diocese in turn agreed, so the issue has now become a matter for individual parishes. That is a model of how you discern that something is adiaphora, and how you deal with the issue once that has been decided, respecting consciences all the way through. It highlights again this key point: the question of whether a particular issue is adiaphora or not cannot itself be adiaphora. It wouldn’t have done for the Parish of St-Muddy-by-the-Sea to decide independently that the question of unconfirmed children receiving Communion was adiaphora and then proceeding to take its own decision without reference to its diocese, its province, or the whole Communion.

This is the point which emerges with great clarity from St Paul. He is not at all advocating what we today call ”˜tolerance’ ”“ a loose, flabby laissez-faire approach which shrugs its shoulders and says ”˜just do your own thing’. His aim is not the creation of several different communities each going its own way, but of one single Body of Christ. In that single family, practices that would divide Christians from one another on ethnic grounds are to be treated as adiaphora, however vital and mandatory they may have been for the Jewish people ”“ not least Paul himself in his Pharisaic past! ”“ prior to the coming of the Messiah. At the same time, that same goal ”“ the creation and maintenance of the one Body of Christ ”“ demands new standards of life to which all must conform, in relation to which pagans in particular will experience a considerable moral challenge. These new standards, spelt out in letter after letter, are not adiaphora. They ”“ I am thinking of patience and practical love, of purity both in speech and in sexual behaviour ”“ may not be as central as the Trinity or the Atonement, but they remain mandatory.

Here then is the point, which meets us on page after page in Paul: the move from something being mandatory to that same thing being non-mandatory (e.g. circumcision), from something being prohibited to that same thing being permitted for those who wish (e.g. eating pork), from something being essential to something being trivial ”“ that move is not itself trivial. It is of the utmost importance. It is essential for Paul that the Jewish food-laws, like circumcision and Sabbath-keeping, are non-mandatory for those in Christ””or, to put it the other way round, that the Jewish prohibitions against eating pork and so on are now lifted. And he explains, again and again, why this particular shift has happened. It isn’t, despite centuries of misrepresentation, that Judaism was a religion of harsh and difficult laws and Christianity was all about getting rid of moral rules and regulations. It is, rather, that God has in Jesus Christ created a single family composed of people from every ethnic background. There are strict new rules for this family, because this family is the new humanity, the re-creation of the human race, the new Genesis; but one of those strict new rules is the complete relaxation of the regulations that would have kept Jews and Gentiles permanently separated. So, to repeat: the question of which things are adiaphora and which things are not, what is essential and what is trivial, is not itself a matter of indifference. It is vital; it is theologically rooted; it has nothing to do with an easy-going tolerance, let alone the assimilation of the church to its surrounding culture, and everything to do with the new humanity which has come into being in the Messiah, Jesus. This is the point we urgently need to grasp in relation to several pressing issues.

All this means that this question, which differences make a difference and which don’t, cannot itself be decided locally.

Read it all.

Check it out.

The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents.

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to make such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said. Its goals are to build networks that could “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” Al Qaeda and other militant groups, as well as to “prepare the environment” for future attacks by American or local military forces, the document said. The order, however, does not appear to authorize offensive strikes in any specific countries.

Read it all.

When I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best ”” and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.

Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.

Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance ”” it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.

Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.

Read it all.

[SUSIE] GHARIB: Let me begin by just asking you what are the risks of all these events, that Spanish bailout, the debt crisis in Greece, the falling euro? What’s the intact and the risk of all of that to American businesses and our economy?

[MOHAMED] EL-ERIAN [CEO of PIMCO]: Susie, we went into the weekend knowing that Europe had a debt issue and Europe had a growth issue. And we come out of the weekend with the news that Europe may also have a banking system issue. The minute you bring in the banking system, it’s like an amplifier, something that we discovered in this country a couple of years ago. Banks have a way of amplifying shocks in the system because banks are like the oil in your car. They link up so many different parts. And the problem for the U.S. is that not only is it going to have to cope with a growth issue out of Europe. Europe is an important export market. We sell a lot to Europe. Europe is going to grow less, but now the strains in the banking system. And the minute you introduce strains in the banking system, there’s always a fear that governments will be behind the curve and that you can get contagion. You can get widespread disruptions. And that’s what we started to price in today.

GHARIB: In terms of American banks that have just been coming out of our own financial crisis, how exposed are U.S. banks to what’s going on in the European banking system?

EL-ERIAN: They are not as exposed to the European banks as they are to each other but we are all exposed to the global banking system. Banks are very inter-linked. And the minute you start having disruptions, the minute the flow through the pipes starts to be interrupted, then everybody suffers. And the concern is that Europe’s banking system may come under pressure.

Read it carefully and read it all.

[Bonnie] Carroll founded TAPS in 1994, after her husband Brigadier General Tom Carroll died in the crash of an Army C-12 plane, to help surviving families find a safe place to land. It offers peer mentoring, grief counseling and all kinds of social support, and for five days over Memorial Day weekend there’s a mass gathering in Washington that families like the Dosties attend. The kids go to a Good Grief camp, where they are matched with mentors, take tours, write journals, bond with other kids who have lost a parent. They lay wreaths made of their handprints, each with a message to their loved one, at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The adults attend workshops like Grief Support for Siblings, Dream Visits, Creating a Facebook Memorial, Coping with Suicide Loss. There is one conducted by military physicians called Did My Loved One Suffer? “It’s a very tough session but always the most packed,” says Carroll. “It’s an opportunity for families who don’t understand elements of a traumatic, horrific death to ask questions of absolute experts.”

Almost every weekend, somewhere in America there is a gathering of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of survivors looking to help one another cope ”” 30,000 families registered to date. It is a far cry from the days of early Vietnam when the Army was so overwhelmed with casualties that it enlisted cabdrivers to deliver the telegrams with news of a soldier’s death and when fierce opposition to the war sometimes translated to an inhuman lack of sympathy. “We’d hear things like ‘We’re glad he’s gone. He was a baby killer,'” recalls Kit Frazer, president of Gold Star Wives of America. “It was a very unhappy time. Now there’s an outpouring of love for widows and widowers and an attempt to help them.” Children get medical and dental benefits until they are 21, rather than just for three years after the death; the Army has a 24-hour call center for survivors with benefits questions, a new family center at Dover Air Force Base and Survivor Outreach Services to coordinate the efforts.

But there is also, sadly, a growing need, which private groups like TAPS are serving.

Fantastic stuff–read it all.

This spring’s college graduates face better job prospects than the dismal environment encountered by last year’s grads. But that doesn’t mean the job market is thriving.

Average starting salaries are down, and employers plan to make only 5 percent more job offers to new graduates this spring compared to last spring, when job offers were down 20 percent from 2008 levels, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which tracks recruitment data.

Liam O’Reilly, who just graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor’s degree in history, said he had applied to 50 employers ”” to be a paralegal, a researcher for a policy organization, an administrative assistant ”” but he had gotten hardly any interviews. While continuing to search for something he truly wants, he has taken a minimum-wage job selling software that includes an occasional commission.

“Had I realized it would be this bad, I would have applied to grad school,” Mr. O’Reilly said.

Read the whole article.

Americans love their Bibles. So much so that they keep them in pristine, unopened condition. Or, as George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli said in a widely quoted survey finding, “Americans revere the Bible but, by and large, they don’t read it.”

Anecdotes abound. Time magazine observed in a 2007 cover story that only half of U.S. adults could name one of the four Gospels. Fewer than half could identify Genesis as the Bible’s first book. Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert have made sport of Americans’ inability to name the Ten Commandments””even among members of Congress who have pushed to have them posted publicly.

Perhaps the first step toward improved Bible literacy is admitting we have a problem. A 2005 study by the Barna Group asked American Christians to rate their spiritual maturity based on activities such as worship, service, and evangelism. Christians offered the harshest evaluation of their Bible knowledge, with 25 percent calling themselves not too mature or not at all mature.

Read it all.

Such is the fatigue over the Anglican-Episcopal splintering that two weekends ago, when the Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles consecrated the denomination’s second partnered gay bishop, the event didn’t make a blip on many evangelical news websites. Also largely unnoticed was the previous week’s press release from St. James Anglican Church in Newport Beach, California, stating that it would appeal the latest California Supreme Court ruling in its property dispute with the Episcopal Church. Christianity Today reported on St. James’s court case as recently as January, but for embattled congregations, months can feel like years.

St. James broke ties with the Episcopal Church and briefly joined the Anglican Diocese of Luwero, Uganda, in 2004 before becoming a member of the Anglican Church of North America last year. The court case is set to determine who gets its building and other assets.

Read it all.

The U.S. economy faces major problems while Europe’s is “teetering,” the head of General Electric Co (GE.N) told a class of graduating college students on Monday.

“We are at an unprecedented moment in the history of our country. There is economic and social anxiety,” said Jeff Immelt, chairman and chief executive of the largest U.S. conglomerate. “Europe appears to be teetering.”

Still, the risk that the Greek debt crisis could drag down other European economies does not appear to be enough to derail the world’s overall economic recovery, he told reporters after addressing Boston College’s commencement.

Read it all.

If the trouble starts — and it remains an “if” — the trigger may well be obscure to the concerns of most Americans: a missed budget projection by the Spanish government, the failure of Greece to hit a deficit-reduction target, a drop in Ireland’s economic output.

But the knife-edge psychology currently governing global markets has put the future of the U.S. economic recovery in the hands of politicians in an assortment of European capitals. If one or more fail to make the expected progress on cutting budgets, restructuring economies or boosting growth, it could drain confidence in a broad and unsettling way. Credit markets worldwide could lock up and throw the global economy back into recession.

For the average American, that seemingly distant sequence of events could translate into another hit on the 401(k) plan, a lost factory shift if exports to Europe decline and another shock to the banking system that might make it harder to borrow.

“If what happened in Greece were to happen in a large country, it could fundamentally mark our times,” Angelos Pangratis, head of the European Union delegation to the United States, said Friday after a panel discussion on the crisis in Greece sponsored by the Greater Washington Board of Trade.

Read it all.

Heavenly Father, who didst call thy servant Bede, while still a child, to devote his life to thy service in the disciplines of religion and scholarship: Grant that as he labored in the Spirit to bring the riches of thy truth to his generation, so we, in our various vocations, may strive to make thee known in all the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble with it.

–Proverbs 15:16

O Almighty God, who on the day of Pentecost didst send the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to abide in thy Church unto the end: Bestow upon us, and upon all thy faithful people, his manifold gifts of grace; that with minds enlightened by his truth and hearts purified by his presence, we may day by day be strengthened with power in the inward man; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who, with thee and the same Spirit, liveth and reigneth one God world without end.

–Scottish Prayer Book

When President O’Donnell asked me to give this address, I expressed one concern: “Will there be a protest? And will you prosecute the protestors? Or at least 88 of them?” He made no commitment. I accepted anyway.

So what can I tell you? This is a time of crises. The economy is a mess, the culture is a mess, the government is out of control. And, in the last three years, Notre Dame lost 21 football games. But this is a great time for us to be here, especially you graduates of this superbly Catholic college. This is so because the remedy for the general meltdown today is found only in Christ and in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Let’s talk bluntly about our situation and what you can do about it.

Read it all but please note: I would be grateful to readers if there could be no comments about the historical reference to Germany but instead to the larger argument–thank you; KSH.

The United States suggested Europe’s debt crisis would have minimal impact on global growth, but China took a more pessimistic view, warning it would impact demand for its exports and other regions would suffer too….

“The euro zone problems haven’t been cleaned up yet,” said Nagayuki Yamagishi, a strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo. “And even though the global economy is definitely showing more signs of recovery than it did 6 months ago, worry continues that the euro zone’s woes will put a brake on this growth.”

Read it all.

In England (and to a certain extent in Wales) the Conservatives were the obvious vehicle for voters wanting to express their dissatisfaction with the government. But in Scotland, where the SNP is in government and Labour the main opposition, the Tories made almost no progress at all. There the party that showed the biggest improvement in its vote share from 2005 was Labour. It’s true that the swing from SNP to Labour was negligible (around 0.1 per cent), but the mere fact that Labour was putting on votes in Scotland while shedding them by the bucketload elsewhere in the United Kingdom shows that there were two different elections being fought at the same time. Indeed, it’s just possible that there were three. The other place in the UK where the Labour vote held up much better than expected was London, and London is another place where Labour can claim to be in opposition, to Boris Johnson’s do-nothing, know-nothing mayoral administration. I wouldn’t want to make too many claims for the contribution this role reversal might have made to the final outcome. But it is clear that the public mood made this a difficult election for any government to fight. And Scotland and London are two places where Labour could pretend not to be in government at all.

This is a consequence of devolution, and seen from one perspective, devolution has now made the United Kingdom more or less ungovernable. It is very hard to imagine how a Conservative administration in Westminster, even with the support of the Liberal Democrats, will be able to impose painful spending cuts on Scotland and expect to survive there as a political force. Alex Salmond, the SNP first minister, is already cranking up the moral outrage at the mere thought of it. The Liberal Democrats do give the new government the ballast of some Scottish MPs (11 in all), but in reality it was the Lib Dems who suffered most in Scotland at the election ”“ it was the only major party that saw its share of the vote drop significantly. Even its traditional gripes about proportional representation don’t hold in Scotland ”“ there they get exactly what they deserve (just under 19 per cent of the votes, just under 19 per cent of the seats). However you juggle the numbers, in Scottish terms this new Westminster government really is a coalition of losers. But in the end it was even harder to see how that other possible coalition of losers ”“ a Labour/ Lib Dem alliance ”“ could have forced through tax rises in England, where the Tories have a clear majority of seats and had a margin of victory over Labour in the popular vote of more than 11 per cent. Politics in the UK is now comprehensively out of sync. If the public finances were in better shape, this might not matter so much. But with horribly difficult choices to be made by whoever is in power, the pressures are bound to build.

The Conservative Party, in theory, remains fully committed to the Union. David Cameron repeatedly and pointedly talks about having come into politics to serve ”˜our country’, and by that he doesn’t mean England ”“ he means the UK. Yet this election was meant to be the occasion when the Tories re-established themselves as a political presence in Scotland: the expectation among Scottish Tories until very recently was that they would win at least five seats and perhaps more. But they remain stuck on one. This may now be as good as it gets….

Read it all.

The effort to stanch the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was mired by setbacks on Monday as state and federal officials feuded with BP over its failure to meet deadlines and its refusal to stop spraying a chemical dispersant.

The oil company had indicated that it could stem the flow of oil on Tuesday by trying a procedure known as a top kill, in which heavy fluid would be pumped into the well. But on Monday morning the company’s chief operating officer said the procedure would be delayed until Wednesday. At the same time, BP was locked in a tense standoff with the Environmental Protection Agency, which had ordered the company to stop using a chemical dispersant called Corexit by Sunday. But BP continued spraying the chemical on Monday despite the E.P.A.’s demand that it use a less toxic dispersant to break up the oil. The company told the agency that no better alternative was available.

At a news conference Monday in Louisiana, state and federal officials continued to hammer BP over its response to the spill.

“BP in my mind no longer stands for British Petroleum ”” it stands for Beyond Patience,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “People have been waiting 34 days for British Petroleum to cap this well and stop the damage that’s happening across the Gulf of Mexico.”

Read it all.

From the second to last pew at All Souls’ Episcopal Church in Harlem on a recent Sunday morning, Sylvia Lynch, 80, lifted a hand toward the rafters and sang praises through a haze of burnt incense.

Her voice was steady and strong, as was her grip on the cane she leaned on as she stood and sang and peered over the sparsely populated pews, peppered mostly with older women with fancy hats and hair as gray as her own.

“I came up through Sunday school, and I’m still here,” Ms. Lynch said, taking a step into an aisle at the 104-year-old church after the last hymn. “Back then, it was packed. You couldn’t get a seat.”

All Souls’ Church, on St. Nicholas Avenue, and any number of the traditional neighborhood churches in Harlem that had for generations boasted strong memberships ”” built on and sustained by familial loyalty and neighborhood ties ”” are now struggling to hold on to their congregations.

Read it all.

America has a complex and enduring commitment to pluralism. We want people to be free to act ”” and believe ”” as they please. But we must all play in the same sandbox, so we are attentive to the idiosyncrasies of our playmates, especially when they don’t make sense to us.

Few idiosyncrasies are more perplexing than the ways people connect science and religion. Widespread rejection of evolution, to take a familiar example, has created a crisis in education, and it now appears that biology texts might be altered to satisfy anti-evolutionary activists in Texas. Many on the textbook commission believe their religion is incompatible with scientific explanations of origins ”” evolution and the Big Bang ”” so they want textbooks with more accommodating theories and different facts.

Read it all.

The difficulty is that the two opposing viewpoints are based on non-compatible reference systems: one is based on human reasoning and feelings, the other on the revealed Word of God. One is right, the other is not, and you can’t compromise and cut the baby in half, so that each belief system has half of what they wanted. The consecration of Mary Glasspool is representative of the determination of TEC to do as it pleases with regard to the faith and morals of the church, and coupled with prior statements by many of the leading bishops of TEC disputing the claims of Jesus to be the only way to the Father, and disputing the claims of authority for Holy Scripture, it is a reconfiguration of what it means to be Christian in the Western world, and an opportunity for an aggressive evangelism of this new gospel to all parts of the world, but especially targeting Africa.

Read it all.

Being in the Episcopal Church these days means entering a vertiginous journey into the corruption of language. You see language which used to mean x, and in one Episcopal Church setting it is used to mean y, and then in another the same words mean z. One thinks immediately of the scene in Alice Wonderland (written as I hope you know by an Anglican deacon):

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

For a recent example of this manipulation of language to mean what it does not mean consider a piece on chastity by Richard Helmer .

Chastity, technically, is the refraining from sexual activity outside its proper context. For Christians, this has meant abstinence for those who are single and faithfulness for a wife or a husband who is married. This has been the standard for Christians throughout church history and still is for Christians worldwide today. None of this is to suggest that Christians have not struggled with sexuality, or that the understanding of sexuality and its proper use has not gone through interesting developments in the church’s life. It is also not to suggest that a very small minority of contemporary mostly Western Christians have not sought to challenge this standard. The leadership of TEC of course is part of this very small minority.

Richard Helmer is certainly correct to observe that “chastity deserves a thorough study by everyone presently involved in the tired crisis of the Anglican Communion.” It is just my hope that in doing so words are allowed to mean what the words mean and not what we want them to mean, whether in fact they mean what we say they mean or not.

One of the things you will hear in some circles of TEC is “sexuality is a sacrament.” This was actually explicitly said in a national church resource a while back.

It isn’t true, but like a lot of TEC leadership assertions these days, it contains partial truth. You may know that heresy is part of the truth masquerading as the whole truth–which is therefore actually an untruth. This statement about sexuality being “a sacrament” is an example of such a definition of heresy.

The truth is sexuality is like a sacrament and has sacramental dimensions, and it is from this vantage point that an important response to Richard Helmer can emerge.

You may know that in sacramental theology there is sometimes a distinction made between sacramental matter and sacramental form. The matter is the “stuff” or physical material involved in the sacrament, and the form is the words said and (sometimes) the sayer of such words, etc. Thus in baptism the matter is water, and the form is God’s threefold name (it can be by an authorized minister, but it actually doesn’t have to be).

We do not need to veer way off into sacramental theology at this time, the point is that in sacramental theology there is involved a what, as well as a who and how. This is not dissimilar to Thomistic ethical considerations, which tell us that any act’s moral determination comes from considering the act, the intention and the circumstance.

When these kinds of dimensions are considered, and one realizes that sexuality has many sacrament-like qualities, one can argue that sexuality is best understood by considering all its aspects, the what and the who and the how.

Now consider Father Helmer’s essay. Already one grows uneasy when one watches the essay begin without entering into the long stream of christian history in this area. What, one wants to ask, have all the Christians who have gone before us on whose shoulders we now stand, understood by this term chastity? One might have liked some Scriptural study and work as well. Instead we get a reference to chastity which has to do with “fidelity” and then a working definition as follows:

Chastity means setting aside dominance and control and seeking instead a new way to relate to the world and to God. He then goes on, quite revealingly, to say he is concerned about “a failure of chastity” which he then clarifies this way: “…I don’t mean sex outside the marriage. By chastity in marriage I mean the challenge of setting aside the stubborn drive to control or change person we most cherish.”

Now please understand that there is much in this discussion with which I would wholeheartedly agree. My concern here, though, is what this definition of chastity represents. It typifies the gnosticism present is all too much Episcopal Church thinking these days, where the how takes all precedence over the what, where form triumphs over substance. We hear talk of mutuality and faithfulness and encouragement and life enhancement and on and on and on. These are good things. But we cannot allow the how to bypass the what. We cannot allow intention and circumstance to dominate, and not ask about the act itself.

Alas, we are in a church which claims to be sacramental, but which is too often reductionistic.

Look at this paragraph from Father Helmer and see how it is all about the adjectives, is is all a world where how triumphs over what:

Chaste behavior has been in the quiet but transformative story-telling and building up of authentic relationships across the divides of gender, class, race, culture, sexuality, and ideology all across the Communion recently. Chastity allows us to be ourselves by allowing others to be themselves. Chastity makes it known when we are encountering oppression and articulates our needs as they arise. Chastity seeks honest accountability. Chastity sets aside the weapons and metaphors of war for an honest, authentic justice. Chastity endeavors to shed the harbored resentments and unmet wants of our brief lives and move forward in renewed relationship.

And what is the Alice in Wonderland outcome of such reductionism? Helmer asserts:

“Chastity has long been in evidence by those courageous, oft-threatened “firsts” of our faith who inhabit dangerous positions not for power or the quixotic pursuit of perfection, but simply by being who they are and following God’s call as best they can. The consecrations in the Diocese of Los Angeles are some of the most recent examples of this form of chastity.”

The problem here is that a woman in a same sex partnership by definition cannot be chaste, and would never have been considered chaste by our forbears. It flunks the test based on the what, no matter how much Father Helmer wants us to focus on the how. It is not just about the “form” of chastity, to have chastity one needs both form and substance.

In the world where words mean what they were given to mean, this isn’t chaste at all.

One more observation, as a kind of final irony. Even if I were to grant that it is all about form (and I don’t), this flunks the chastity test. Chastity is about “setting aside dominance and control” says Father Helmer. So many see in TEC’s actions exactly those two things, they see American unilateralism writ large.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Sometime in the next few weeks, Facebook will officially log its 500 millionth active citizen. If the website were granted terra firma, it would be the world’s third largest country by population, two-thirds bigger than the U.S. More than 1 in 4 people who browse the Internet not only have a Facebook account but have returned to the site within the past 30 days.

Just six years after Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg helped found Facebook in his dorm room as a way for Ivy League students to keep tabs on one another, the company has joined the ranks of the Web’s great superpowers. Microsoft made computers easy for everyone to use. Google helps us search out data. YouTube keeps us entertained. But Facebook has a huge advantage over those other sites: the emotional investment of its users. Facebook makes us smile, shudder, squeeze into photographs so we can see ourselves online later, fret when no one responds to our witty remarks, snicker over who got fat after high school, pause during weddings to update our relationship status to Married or codify a breakup by setting our status back to Single. (I’m glad we can still be friends, Elise.)

Getting to the point where so many of us are comfortable living so much of our life on Facebook represents a tremendous cultural shift, particularly since 28% of the site’s users are older than 34, Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic. Facebook has changed our social DNA, making us more accustomed to openness. But the site is premised on a contradiction: Facebook is rich in intimate opportunities ”” you can celebrate your niece’s first steps there and mourn the death of a close friend ”” but the company is making money because you are, on some level, broadcasting those moments online. The feelings you experience on Facebook are heartfelt; the data you’re providing feeds a bottom line.

Read it all.

It is past time to end the conspiracy of silence about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored companies that buy and sell mortgages and related securities. Both were taken over by the Treasury Department in 2008. So far Washington has shelled out $140 billion to keep them afloat. A Congressional Budget Office study says their losses could reach $400 billion. Other estimates put them at $500 billion.

In contrast, the net cost to date of TARP, after loan repayments and other government income, is $172.5 billion, nearly half of which is owed by the auto industry.

While optimists foresee the repayment of most TARP funds, the same cannot be said of Fannie and Freddie, which own well over a trillion dollars in risky mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.

Unlike TARP funds, the subsidies to Fannie and Freddie do not show up in the government’s budget. If they did, it would be even further out of balance.

Read it all.

More than 4,000 Christians put denominational differences aside and united as one for a special event to praise God and the city of Oxford today.

Christians from dozens of different nationalities cancelled their usual Sunday worship to join together for a mass prayer in South Park in which they were told Christianity is more relevant than ever in today’s world.

Congregations from an estimated 40 Oxford churches including Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal, Russian Orthodox, and the Chinese fellowship were blessed with fine weather as they sang hymns under one marquee roof.

Read it all.

More than two thousand Christians from throughout Merseyside and region gathered at Liverpool’s two Cathedrals on the Feast of Pentecost in a visible celebration of their unity. They were joined on their ecumenical journey between the two Cathedrals along Hope Street by Cardinal Walter Kasper, the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who had travelled from Rome for the occasion.

He preached at the Two Cathedrals service which began at the Anglican Cathedral and following the procession along Hope Street, concluded at the Metropolitan cathedral. It was at Pentecost in 1982 that Pope John Paul II visited Liverpool and processed along Hope Street between the two Cathedrals and celebrated Mass, and since that time, the Two Cathedrals Service has regularly taken place on Pentecost Sunday, with thousands of pilgrims celebrating unity by walking along Hope Street.

Another significant landmark was the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Covenant of Unity, signed by Merseyside’s church leaders in the Anglican Cathedral in May, 1985.

Cardinal Kasper referred the challenges of ecumenism and the importance of walking in unity ‘on the road of hope’ in his sermon, before joining in the walk along Hope Street.

Read it all.

From here:

“Pentecost Sunday – visit of Cardinal Kasper: On future visits to Liverpool you will see the “stele”, the Gates, to North, South, East and West, designed by Raphael Seitz. They are something of a crowning glory to the long labours, which began with the decision to repair the Cathedral roof, and went onwards to a total regeneration of the whole site. The artist is a friend of Cardinal Kasper, and Tony O’Brien gladly accepted Raphael’s suggestion that we invite the Cardinal to dedicate the work of art. The Cardinal’s only free date was Pentecost and that has proved to be so appropriate: Pentecost is the anniversary feast of the Cathedral’s dedication and of the visit of Pope John Paul II. The Cardinal will celebrate the Mass at 11.00 and celebrate the sacrament of confirmation. At the end of the Mass he will dedicate the new works. And it is very fitting that the Cardinal as President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity will be with us for the two Cathedrals’ walk, held every other year; this year it begins at the Anglican Cathedral at 3.00pm and it is there that the Cardinal will give the sermon. On Monday morning the Cardinal will celebrate the 7.00am Mass at Bishop Eton before going to Hope for breakfast prior to a lecture about Jewish-Christian relations. Do encourage and facilitate participation in the two Cathedrals’’ walk. There is a welcome for all at the 11.00am Mass, and I recommend that anyone wishing to attend the lecture on Monday contact Hope University.”

Update: There is also a little more here.

The account of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles — we listened to it in the first reading (Acts 2:1-11) — presents the “new course” of the work that God began with Christ’s resurrection, a work that involves man, history and the cosmos. The Son of God, dead and risen and returned to the Father, now breathes with untold energy the divine breath upon humanity, the Holy Spirit. And what does this new and powerful self-communication of God produce? Where there are divisions and estrangement he creates unity and understanding. The Spirit triggers a process of reunification of the divided and dispersed parts of the human family; persons, often reduced to individuals in competition or in conflict with each other, reached by the Spirit of Christ, open themselves to the experience of communion, can involve them to such an extent as to make of them a new organism, a new subject: the Church. This is the effect of God’s work: unity; thus unity is the sign of recognition, the “business card” of the Church in the course of her universal history. From the very beginning, from the day of Pentecost, she speaks all languages. The universal Church precedes the particular Churches, and the latter must always conform to the former according to a criterion of unity and universality. The Church never remains a prisoner within political, racial and cultural confines; she cannot be confused with states not with federations of states, because her unity is of a different type and aspires to transcend every human frontier.

From this, dear brothers, there derives a practical criterion of discernment for Christian life: When a person or a community, limits itself to its own way of thinking and acting, it is a sign that it has distanced itself from the Holy Spirit.

Read it all.

Expectations are growing that France is set to remove the right to retire at 60, as it embarks on a contentious reform of its debt-laden pension system and brings public finances back into line.

Christian Estrosi, industry minister, said on Sunday the government was “leaning towards an increase in the [retirement] age” in its talks with unions and employers’ federations, despite denials from cabinet ministers over the weekend of a decision being taken.

Although there has been much speculation that France’s legal retirement age of 60 ”“ one of the lowest in Europe ”“ would be abandoned, Mr Estrosi’s comments on national radio are the clearest statement yet of government intentions.

Read it all (requires subscription).