The Revd Richard Carew, currently curate at Beverley Minster, has been appointed Domestic Chaplain to the Archbishop of York.

He will begin his new ministry at Bishopthorpe at the end of June. The Domestic Chaplain supports the Archbishop in all aspects of his ministry within the Archdiocese of York.

Richard grew up in Zimbabwe with both parents active Christians. He went to York University to study history and has been in the Diocese ever since, with St Michael le Belfrey being his home church for 13 years. On leaving university he went into teaching, before following a call to ordination. He has served a curacy at Beverley Minster.

Read the rest there.

The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina is seeking to establish a missional partnership with the Church of Ireland Diocese of Kilmore Elphin and Ardagh.

Who: Our team consists of 14 teens and 3 adults that represent 8 churches as well as Porter Gaud (Episcopal) School.

What: As ambassadors, we will seek to build relationships with and serve alongside local teens to reach out to others in their communities. Our team will begin by joining the youth of their diocese in attending a large youth event, then travel to two communities where we will engage with young people. Our aim will be to share our faith with others and encourage the youth of the Church of Ireland while getting to know one another’s cultures. Then in the summer of 2011, we will host a group from their diocese here in South Carolina to continue developing the partnership.

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Greece outlined deep spending cuts and tax increases Sunday to free up a multi-billion-euro rescue by the International Monetary Fund and European Union, the first bailout for one of the 16 countries using the euro.

The measures, which include tax increases and salary and pension cuts for civil servants, aim to reduce the budget deficit to below 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2014, from the current 13.6 per cent of GDP, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said.

“We are called on today to make a basic choice. The choice is between collapse or salvation,” he said.

The full amount of the three-year IMF/euro-zone package will be announced in Brussels after an emergency euro-zone finance ministers’ meeting, where Mr. Papaconstantinou was heading after his Athens news conference. He said the amount would be “close to” widely reported figures. French and other officials have said it would be 120 billion euros.

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A T-shirt vendor saw something suspicious in New York’s Times Square Saturday evening — smoke coming from an unoccupied SUV on 45th Street near 7th Avenue — so he alerted police.

The tip led to what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called an “amateurish”-looking car bomb and what Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told ABC News’ “This Week” today might have been part of a “one-off” attack.

The 6:30 p.m. scare prompted police to evacuate thousands of people from the heart of the Big Apple during one of its busiest times — a warm Saturday night when it was packed with theatergoers and tourists.

“We are very lucky,” Bloomberg said. “Thanks to alert New Yorkers and professional police officers, we avoided what could [have been] a very deadly event.”

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Also, an AP video report which I appreciated may be found here.

A local Episcopal church announced Sunday that it has indefinitely suspended all worship services and day-to-day operations due to financial problems attributed in part to declining numbers.

St. Paul’s Church at 903 Main St. will no longer hold Sunday services or Sunday school. The church’s officials and congregation are currently in talks with the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts to determine what to do next.

“St. Paul’s is facing some financial challenges as well as congregational challenges,” said Tracey Sukraw, director of communication for the diocese. “So worship services as well as day-to-day operations have been suspended.”

Sukraw said one problem is that congregants are divided over how to solve the financial problems.

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With just a dozen regular Sunday worshippers, the people of Holy Apostles Episcopal Church in Perry were in no position to afford a full-time priest.

But they didn’t intend to shut down their 170-year-old rural parish, either.

So the congregation looked within its own pews and found a willing candidate for the priesthood.

And he comes cheap, too.

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Until this downturn, the number of people expecting things to get better for themselves had always exceeded the number expecting lower incomes. But at the low point in this cycle, in February and March of last year when the financial system seemed most vulnerable, fewer than 8 percent of respondents expected their income to get better, while almost a quarter thought their incomes were set to decline.

The chart shows the difference between those two groups, ignoring the percentage, always large, that expects things to stay about the same.

The pessimism shown by those responses has declined since then, but not gone away. In April, the Conference Board reported this week, about one person in 10 expected his or her family’s income to improve, while about one in six expected family income to go down.

As can be seen from the chart, good times in recent years have produced less net optimism than in previous cycles, while bad times have brought more pessimism.

Read it all and the chart to which he refers is there.

(Some earlier information on this may be found here).

The Archbishop used last night’s talk to highlight what the rural Church represents in today’s modern society.

He said: “The rural Church is a reminder of what the human experience is like in this place, in this time.

“The community is not just the people who are there at any given moment. Who you are is bound up by far more than you can see and even imagine. History, death, belonging; great truths of humanity which are encoded in this building.”

The Archbishop also took a swipe at the modern preoccupation with online social networking sites like Facebook.

He said: “There are people who believe their real person is what they concentrate on creating on the internet. There are some really central questions there that we are not considering enough.”

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Watch it all (a little over 5 minutes). Always nice to hear an Episcopal Bishop encourage people to memorize Scripture–KSH.