Simply breathtaking.

There were about 30 people in the pews for the 10:15 a.m. service at St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Largo on May 2, most bunched along the center aisle, near the altar.

They were there to witness a rebirth of a congregation that has been in turmoil since last fall, when its former rector tried to lead them out of The Episcopal Church and affiliate with a conservative Anglican coalition based in Pennsylvania.

StDunstans-web“Even though this gathering today is made up of people who have been through pain, as well as people who are here to offer great loving support, God is with us,” Bishop Dabney Smith told those assembled.

The 13 Episcopalians who remain at St. Dunstan’s have decided to rebuild their congregation after spending months trying to work out a settlement with their former fellow parishioners. Bishop Smith has appointed the Rev. Norman Howard as their priest-in-charge.

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The Diocese of Southwest Florida has acted on its responsibilities by taking steps to better control the buildings, grounds and mission of one of its member congregations, St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Largo.

This is in response to a Sept. 13, 2009 decision by some members of the congregation, led by Ed Sellers, their former Episcopal priest, to sever their relationship with The Episcopal Church and affiliate with the Anglican Church in North America.

Since that decision, Sellers and his congregation have been allowed to continue to worship at St. Dunstan’s property, which is wholly owned by the Diocese of Southwest Florida, while Bishop Dabney Smith conferred with chancellors and the elected leadership of the diocese, including the Standing Committee and the Diocesan Council.

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Members of Utah’s Episcopal Diocese got acquainted Tuesday with a diverse group of candidates from which to select their next bishop, asking about everything from budgeting expertise to views on same-sex marriage and ordination.

The latter question is especially pertinent because one of the candidates ”” the Rev. Canon Michael Barlowe of California ”” married his longtime partner in 2008, before Proposition 8 banned gay marriage in that state.

Barlowe and three other finalists spoke during rotating question and answer sessions at St. Mark’s Cathedral Tuesday night. He and two of the three other candidates said they would support and allow the church’s blessing of same-sex unions and that they would ordain gay clergy in the Beehive State.

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Millions of Greek workers were expected to participate in the strike called by Greece’s two major umbrella unions, private-sector GSEE and public-sector Adedy, amid widespread discontent over the measures.

In a statement, GSEE President Yannis Panagopoulos called on workers, retirees and youth to vigorously resist the “harsh and antisocial measures.”

The strikes are a key test for Prime Minister George Papandreou as he tries to turn around his economically beleaguered country. Greece’s fiscal problems have forced Athens to pay six percentage points more than Germany to borrow money, and they have sparked fears of similar problems in other weak European economies.

Some political analysts said the strikes are unlikely to shake the government’s resolve to push through the cuts, at least for now.

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A breakaway parish that has fought a long-running legal battle to retain control of its seaside church is once again hoping to take its fight to the California Supreme Court.

St. James Anglican Church, a self-described “biblically orthodox” congregation that sought to distance itself from the national Episcopal Church due to disagreements over scriptural teachings and the ordination of a gay bishop, filed a petition to the California Supreme Court on Tuesday as part of an effort to be declared the owner of the church property.

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Attorneys for the Episcopal Church and for Diocese of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison argued before an ecclesiastical appeals court here May 4 about whether the bishop should have been tried and convicted on charges stemming from his response to his priest brother’s sexual misconduct some 35 years ago.

Among the issues facing the eight-bishop Court of Review for the Trial of a Bishop after three hours of oral arguments are questions of whether the evidence presented at Bennison’s trial supported his conviction, whether the canonical statute of limitations on those actions had run, and whether the trial court’s sentence of deposition would be unduly harsh because Bennison himself did not engage in the sexual abuse.

The hearing took place at Trinity Episcopal Church in Wilmington, Delaware. Bennison, the alleged victim and her mother were present for the hearing, along with nearly 45 other people, including officials from the Diocese of Pennsylvania.

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Increased hotel bookings, spending by foreign tourists and business recruitment deals are three indicators that South Carolina is pulling out of the long economic slump.

Gov. Mark Sanford got the good economic news Tuesday during a Cabinet meeting in which his agency directors told him that South Carolina is doing better in business recruitment and travel and tourism than neighboring states.

Chad Prosser, director of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, said the state’s recovery is more pronounced than in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, according to a benchmark that factors in hotel stays, available rooms and the price of the rooms.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

The two former Mexican seminarians had gone to the Vatican in 1998 to personally deliver a case recounting decades of sexual abuse by one of the most powerful priests in the Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado.

As they left, they ran into the man who would hold Father Maciel’s fate in his hands, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and kissed his ring. The encounter was no accident. Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to meet them, witnesses later said, and their case was soon accepted.

But in little more than a year, word emerged that Cardinal Ratzinger ”” the future Pope Benedict XVI ”” halted the inquiry. “It isn’t prudent,” he had told a Mexican bishop, according to two people who later talked to the bishop.

For five years, the case remained stalled, possibly a hostage to Father Maciel’s powerful protectors in the Curia, the Vatican’s governing apparatus, and his own deep influence at the Holy See.

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(Please note that the title above is the one in the print edition of the paper–KSH).

To the wide array of programs offered by evangelical megachurches like Westside, the group adds what Ms. Renaud says is something long overdue. While churches have addressed pornography use among the men in their congregations and among the clergy, a group for women who say they are addicted to pornography is new territory, she said.

“In the Christian culture, women are supposed to be the nonsexual ones,” said Ms. Renaud, who also runs an Internet site called Dirty Girls Ministries, choosing the name to attract people searching for pornography. “It’s an injustice that the church is not more open about physical sexuality. God created sex. But the enemy has twisted it.”

Ms. Renaud, who is taking a DVD course in sexual addiction counseling from the American Association of Christian Counselors, said she started the group and the Web site based on her own experiences. She became interested in pornography at age 10 after finding a magazine in her brother’s bathroom. After that, she said, “I wasn’t able to get enough of it.”

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For years it has been a weapon of choice in hot spots across the globe, from Iraq to Sri Lanka to Colombia: Cars or trucks loaded with explosives, detonated in busy markets, public squares and government buildings.

Since 9/11, both law enforcement officials and typical New Yorkers have worried and wondered ”” why not here? They were simpler propositions than hijacked planes, and they could, as a result, have an even more destabilizing effect on the city and its residents.

Saturday night, however crudely imagined and ultimately botched, the threat of a car bomb hit New York ”” brought home on a busy street off Times Square in the form of a smoking Nissan Pathfinder loaded with propane, gasoline, fireworks and bags of what the authorities described as nonexplosive fertilizer.

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And the LORD said to Moses, “Say to all the congregation of the people of Israel, You shall be holy; for I the LORD your God am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods: I am the LORD your God.

–Leviticus 19:1-4

O Lord Jesus Christ, who art shepherd of thy people, so that they shall not want: We want thee to lead us peacefully to the green pastures and beside the still waters; to restore our souls when we wander from thee; and evermore to guide us in the paths of righteousness, for thy name’s sake.

We often say that investors can be bullish, bearish, or not enough of either. “Our debt is clean, we will not have to ask for help,” said Elena Salgado, Spain’s finance minister, on April 30th, appealing to the bulls. That is, if there are any bulls left in sovereign debt.

Currently, there is no shortage of bearish sentiment regarding global sovereign debt issues. In recent weeks, Greece, Portugal, and Spain have all had their credit ratings downgraded, with Greece taking on junk status. Yet despite this flurry of negative news, I would submit that investors are still not bearish enough, particularly on Spain.

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A Department OF Human Services caseworker pressured a pregnant Mayfair teenager to undergo a late-term abortion by threatening to take away either her toddler or her unborn baby if she had the child, according to the teen’s foster mother.

The alleged strong-arm tactic happened one day after DHS learned of the pregnancy, when the girl was about 22 weeks pregnant, according to her foster mother and the girl’s social worker, Marisol Rivera.

The foster mother did not want to be identified in order to protect the girl’s identity.

The Daily News also learned that:

* DHS got a Family Court judge’s order allowing it to take the girl for an abortion, after the girl’s birth mother refused to approve the procedure.

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Charlottesville Police charged fourth-year College student George Huguely with first-degree murder yesterday in connection with the death of fourth-year College student Yeardley Love, who passed away early Monday morning.

Both Huguely and Love, members of the men’s and women’s lacrosse teams, respectively, were set to graduate May 23.

Charlottesville police officers were called to apartment 9 in the Camden Courtyard complex on 14th Street at 2:15 a.m. Monday to respond to a case of possible alcohol poisoning. Love was found unresponsive and appeared to have undergone serious physical trauma. Officials attempted to revive her, but those efforts were unsuccessful. Love was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police officials, who have yet to determine the cause of death, declined to discuss the nature of Love’s injuries but are treating the case as a homicide investigation.

I would be grateful if you could spare a prayer for the campus community of U.Va. today. Read it all–KSH.

A panel of Episcopal bishops has heard arguments in the final appeal of a Pennsylvania bishop defrocked for covering up his brother’s child sexual abuse more than 30 years ago.

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As President Obama considers nominees to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a debate bubbles as to whether religion should play a role in his choice.

This is a no-brainer. The religious views of the next justice of the high court must absolutely be a decisive factor.

Though the court without Stevens will be left with six Catholics and two Jews, the open seat should not go to either domination. Nor should it go to a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Muslim or even a Zoroastrian. If it did, that would make nine people who all have one religious principle in common: a belief in religion.

Clearly, the next person to take the bench should be an atheist.

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The suspect in a failed attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square has implicated himself and is cooperating with authorities in an investigation that is spreading overseas as investigators look for links to the plot in the would-be bomber’s native Pakistan, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old immigrant from Pakistan who became a naturalized U.S. citizen last year, was arrested late Monday at John F. Kennedy International Airport while attempting to flee the countryAttorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said.

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On most days, Lance Horton and Duane M. Jackson blend into the cacophony of New York’s Times Square, hawking T-shirts and cheap watches to tourists from Buffalo to Buenos Aires. Last weekend, the men stood out for their alert reaction to a sight that seemed odd even in this most unusual of American playgrounds.

Mr. Horton and Mr. Jackson are the vendors and disabled Vietnam veterans who tipped off Police Officer Wayne Rhatigan Saturday evening to a smoldering Nissan Pathfinder that had been left parked and running on a side street just off Broadway. The vehicle contained propane, gasoline, firecrackers and homemade detonating devices. The materials miraculously did not fully ignite, averting an explosion that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said would have caused death, injuries and significant property damage….

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