One of West Virginia’s best-known ministers — an activist against the Iraq war and longtime leader of other public causes — has been stripped of his license by the state’s Episcopal bishop.

The Rev. Jim Lewis says his Episcopal credentials were revoked on grounds that he performed too many rites for his former parishioners at St. John’s Church in Charleston.

However, he says, nearly nine years have elapsed since he returned to Charleston in retirement, and his involvement with long-ago church members never caused a problem until now.

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The tattoo on Christian Berrios’ right forearm says “Knowledge is Power.” For a high school dropout in a city with shuttered textile plants and 18% unemployment, he needs all the knowledge he can get.

Berrios will graduate in June from YouthBuild, one of many national service programs that got an infusion of federal aid under last year’s economic stimulus law. He’ll get his high school equivalency degree as well as “green” construction skills to help him navigate a difficult job market.

“It’s tough out there,” says Berrios, 22, who wants a college degree in psychology. “I feel we got a better chance at scoring a better job.”

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THE Church of England has paved the way for ordination of its first women bishops with new legislation that it hopes will prevent Anglicans splitting over the issue.

A draft law released yesterday, which has taken nearly two years to complete, could lead to the first women bishops being ordained in 2014, 20 years after female priests were first welcomed into the church.

It would bring the Church of England into line with Anglicans in America, Canada and Australia, while simultaneously widening the gulf with Catholics in Rome.

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“Punitive, controlling and completely un-Anglican” ”“ that’s how Dr Tony Fitchett sees Section 4 of the proposed Covenant.

But even if General Synod were of a mind to toss that section out, holus bolus, now is not the time to do that, he suggested.

While there’s a feeling that the Covenant has been “done to death” and General Synod had the power, making that decision was important enough to warrant using the same mechanisms used for changing the constitution, for example.

He said there’d long been pressure for an instant decision.

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The suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing appears to have been acting out of anger toward the United States that had accumulated over multiple trips to his native Pakistan, culminating in a lengthy recent stay in which he committed to the bombing plot while undergoing training with elements of the Pakistani Taliban, U.S. officials said Thursday.

U.S. officials said Faisal Shahzad’s radicalization was cumulative and largely self-contained — meaning that it did not involve typical catalysts such as direct contact with a radical cleric, a visible conversion to militant Islam or a significant setback in life.

U.S. officials said they are assembling a portrait of Shahzad — based in part on the account he has given interrogators — that may help explain why he attracted scant scrutiny during his transition from student and young father in the Connecticut suburbs to the man accused of parking a vehicle packed with explosives in Times Square.

Shahzad’s transition “was a gradual thing that started years ago,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official with access to interrogation reports from the probe. “It wasn’t suddenly, ‘I found God, and this is the right path.’ There is a combination of religion and anger.”

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After a decade-long clergy shortage in America’s pulpits, Christian denominations are now experiencing a clergy glut — with some denominations reporting two ministers for every vacant pulpit.

“We have a serious surplus of ministers and candidates seeking calls,” said Marcia Myers, director of the vocation office for the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has four ministers for every opening.

The cause of the sudden turnaround: blame the bad economy.

According to PC(USA) data, there are 532 vacancies for 2,271 ministers seeking positions. The Assemblies of God, United Methodist Church, Church of the Nazarene and other Protestant denominations also report significant surpluses.

Cash-strapped parishioners — who were already aging and shrinking in number — have given less to their churches, resulting in staff cuts. Meanwhile, older clergy who saw their retirement funds evaporate are delaying retirement, leaving fewer positions available to younger ministers.

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Even more alarming is the exposure of other EU banks to Greek debt, which totals $193 billion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Factor in the risk of copycat crises in Portugal and Spain, and you begin to see the outlines of a disastrous Europewide banking crisis. The only way out of that will be further compromises by the ECB about the paper it accepts as collateral. Already last week it waived its rules, continuing to hold Greek bonds, despite their junk status. If this continues, there is only one way for the euro to go, and that’s down.

Keep this in perspective. When the euro was launched back in January 1999, it was worth less than $1.20, and for most of its first three years it was down below parity with the dollar. So its recent slide from close to $1.60 before the global financial crisis to $1.27 last week is far from unprecedented. But the way this crisis is unfolding, further declines seem likely. It will surely be at least a year before investors wake up to the fact that the fiscal predicament of the United States is actually worse than that of the euro zone.

The difference is, of course, that the United States has a federal system, while the euro zone does not. In America, Texas automatically bails out Michigan via the redistribution of income and corporation tax receipts. What the Greek crisis has belatedly revealed is that such fiscal centralization is the necessary corollary of a monetary union.

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Spiraling debt is Uncle Sam’s shock collar, and its jolt may await like an invisible pet fence.

“Nobody knows when you bump up against the limit, but you know when it happens it will really hurt,” said fiscal watchdog Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The great uncertainty about how much debt is too much has tended to make fiscal discipline seem less urgent, rather than more. There is no obvious threshold beyond which investors will demand higher real yields for holding U.S. debt. Vague warnings from ratings agencies about the loss of America’s ‘AAA’ status haven’t added much clarity ”” until recently.

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European policy makers unveiled an unprecedented loan package worth almost $1 trillion and a program of bond purchases to stop a sovereign-debt crisis that threatened to shatter confidence in the euro. Stocks surged around the world, the euro strengthened and commodities rallied.

Jolted by last week’s slide in the currency and soaring bond yields in Portugal and Spain, European Union finance chiefs met in a 14-hour session in Brussels overnight. The 16 euro nations agreed in a statement to offer as much as 750 billion euros ($962 billion), including International Monetary Fund backing, to countries facing instability and the European Central Bank said it will buy government and private debt.

The rescue package for Europe’s sovereign debtors comes little more than a year after the waning of the last crisis, caused by the U.S. mortgage-market collapse, which wreaked $1.8 trillion of global credit losses and writedowns. Under U.S. and Asian pressure to stabilize markets, Europe’s governments bet their show of force would prevent a sovereign-debt collapse and muffle speculation the 11-year-old euro might break apart.

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Nearly 50 miles offshore at the big oil rig floating on a glassy-calm sea, a helicopter landed early on the morning of April 20, carrying four executives from BP, the oil company. The men were visiting the Deepwater Horizon to help honor the crew for its standout safety record.

The rig workers were buzzing for another reason. They were nearly done with the latest job. It had been a little tricky, but it was nothing they could not handle.

As night fell, Micah Joseph Sandell, 40, was in the small cab of his crane, three stories above the bustling deck. Two floors down from the helipad, men in red coveralls waited for dinner in a hall lined with gold safety plaques. Eugene Dewayne Moss, a 37-year-old crane operator, realized he needed to tear himself away from a movie to get ready for his overnight shift.

“I thought, Oh man, I’ve got to go,” Mr. Moss recalled. “I got up, turned my TV off.”

Seconds later, a thundering explosion rocked the rig, the beginning of a terrifying night for the men who would survive one of the most harrowing disasters in the history of the oil business.

All over the ship, men snapped into action. Sleeping workers leapt from their beds. Then came a second explosion, even louder than the first….

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President Obama will nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan as the nation’s 112th justice, choosing his own chief advocate before the Supreme Court to join it in ruling on cases critical to his view of the country’s future, Democrats close to the White House said Sunday.

After a monthlong search, Mr. Obama informed Ms. Kagan and his advisers on Sunday of his choice to succeed the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. He plans to announce the nomination at 10 a.m. Monday in the East Room of the White House with Ms. Kagan by his side, said the Democrats, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the decision before it was formally made public.

In settling on Ms. Kagan, the president chose a well-regarded 50-year-old lawyer who served as a staff member in all three branches of government and was the first woman to be dean of Harvard Law School. If confirmed, she would be the youngest member and the third woman on the current court, but the first justice in nearly four decades without any prior judicial experience.

That lack of time on the bench may both help and hurt her confirmation prospects, allowing critics to question whether she is truly qualified while denying them a lengthy judicial paper trail filled with ammunition for attacks….

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Forget about the Midwest, Kansas City. You’re now part of the “New Heartland.”

So are you Charleston, S.C, even with all your Spanish moss and Southern charm, and Portland Ore., way out there on the Pacific Coast.

These three metropolitan areas couldn’t be further apart geographically.

Demographically, however, they might have more in common with each other than they do with some of their regional neighbors, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

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The head of the Austrian Church has launched an attack of one of the most senior cardinals in the Vatican, saying that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, “deeply wronged” the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy when he dismissed media reports of the scandal. In a meeting with editors of the main Austrian daily newspapers last week, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, also said the Roman Curia was “urgently in need of reform”, and that lasting gay relationships deserved respect. He reiterated his view that the Church needs to reconsider its position on re-married divorcees.

On Easter Day, Cardinal Sodano called the mounting reports of clerical sex abuse “petty gossip”. This had “deeply wronged the victims”, Cardinal Schönborn said, and he recalled that it was Cardinal Sodano who had prevented Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal, from investigating allegations of abuse made against Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, the previous Archbishop of Vienna, who resigned in disgrace in 1995.

Cardinal Schönborn said that Pope Benedict was “gently” working on reforming the Curia but he had the whole world on his desk, as the cardinal put it, and his way of working and his style of communication did not make it easy to advise him quickly from outside.

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Saying they obtained new evidence, senior White House officials said Sunday that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the failed Times Square bombing.

The attempt marks the first time the group has been able to launch an attack on U.S. soil. And while U.S. officials have downplayed the threat ”” citing the bomb’s lack of sophistication ”” the incident in Times Square and Christmas Day airline bomber indicate growing strength by overseas terrorist groups linked to al-Qaida even as the CIA says their operations are seriously degraded.

The finding also raises new questions about the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, which is widely known to have al-Qaida and other terrorist groups operating within its borders.

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Here is one:

So what is the take-home lesson from the decimation of scripture classes by the ethics-course trial that Anglicans had predicted?

It’s not a judgment on the quality of SRE classes, because it was parents who made the choice, without attending SRE classes or the trial classes. It’s not a judgment on the quality of SRE teachers, because the ethics course teachers are simply civic-hearted volunteers like those SRE teachers who do not have theological or teaching qualifications (as many do). And it’s not a judgment on the relative value of religion or ethics.

The take-home lesson is that the implementation of the ethics course created an ethical dilemma, which was the need to choose between ethics and religion when that choice should not have been necessary. The timetable slot is for SRE.

If the ethics course is not SRE, it should not be scheduled then and parents would not be forced to choose between a (heavily promoted) ethics course and religious education.

Claire Smith Roseville

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Like many scientists and humanists, I have long been fascinated by the capacities and inclinations of babies and children. The mental life of young humans not only is an interesting topic in its own right; it also raises ”” and can help answer ”” fundamental questions of philosophy and psychology, including how biological evolution and cultural experience conspire to shape human nature. In graduate school, I studied early language development and later moved on to fairly traditional topics in cognitive development, like how we come to understand the minds of other people ”” what they know, want and experience.

But the current work I’m involved in, on baby morality, might seem like a perverse and misguided next step. Why would anyone even entertain the thought of babies as moral beings? From Sigmund Freud to Jean Piaget to Lawrence Kohlberg, psychologists have long argued that we begin life as amoral animals. One important task of society, particularly of parents, is to turn babies into civilized beings ”” social creatures who can experience empathy, guilt and shame; who can override selfish impulses in the name of higher principles; and who will respond with outrage to unfairness and injustice. Many parents and educators would endorse a view of infants and toddlers close to that of a recent Onion headline: “New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths.” If children enter the world already equipped with moral notions, why is it that we have to work so hard to humanize them?

A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone. Which is not to say that parents are wrong to concern themselves with moral development or that their interactions with their children are a waste of time. Socialization is critically important. But this is not because babies and young children lack a sense of right and wrong; it’s because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be.

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Over the past week various people from around the archdiocese have asked for help in reflecting on Arizona’s new immigration law. As readers will know, I’ve used this space many times in the past to urge sensible, national immigration reform. Citizens of this country have a right to their safety and the solvency of their public institutions. But we undermine those very goals if we ignore the basic human rights of immigrant workers and their families.

In the case of Arizona state law, Catholics should listen first to the leaders of the Arizona Catholic community, for obvious reasons. They know the situation there best. Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson and Bishop James Wall of Gallup, N.M. (whose diocese includes portions of Arizona) are all excellent pastors. Their leadership in the coming weeks and months should set the tone for our own response.

Having said that, it’s worth making a few simple observations:

First, illegal immigration is wrong and dangerous for everyone involved….

Second, the new Arizona law, despite its flaws, does unintentionally accomplish one good thing. Thanks to Arizona, the urgency of immigration reform and the human issues that underlie it””deported breadwinners; divided families; the anxiety of children who grew up here but do not have citizenship””once again have moved to the front burner of our national discussions. Our current immigration system is now obviously broken. Congress needs to act….

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In a move set to engulf the Church in a bitter row over the historic reform, legislation was published yesterday which will allow women clergy to enter the top ranks while giving almost no concessions to opponents.

While groups campaigning for female clerics to be treated equally expressed joy at the new plans, leading traditionalists reacted angrily to the development.

They claimed that the proposals were designed to “wipe out” those on the Anglo-Catholic and evangelical wings of the Church who do not believe it is in accordance with biblical teaching for women to be bishops.

The legislation, which would go before parliament if approved by the General Synod, could trigger a much larger defection of clergy to Rome than previously predicted. It follows a secret meeting held between the Vatican and three Anglican bishops last month.

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As they contemplate high unemployment, foreclosed homes, shrivelled house prices and the arrogant follies of their investment bankers, Americans may cast envious glances across their northern border. Despite its umbilical links with America, Canada’s economy suffered only a mild recession and is now well into a solid recovery. The Canadian dollar, having dipped sharply, is back up to rough parity with the greenback. The Bank of Canada has signalled that it may soon raise interest rates. When Stephen Harper, the prime minister, hosts the get-togethers of the G8 and G20 countries next month he will be able to boast to his visitors that his country’s economy is set to perform better than that of any other rich country this year.

How has Canada avoided the plagues that are afflicting everyone else? The short answer is a mixture of good policies and good luck …. The main reason for the country’s economic resilience is that neither its financial system nor its housing market magnified the recession. The banks remained in profit. House prices held up fairly well and are now rising. And for that regulators deserve a chunk of the credit.

Canada’s banks face high capital requirements and a cap on their leverage, such that their assets cannot exceed 20 times their capital (a lot less than the corresponding figure for many Wall Street firms and European banks). Canadians who take out mortgages worth more than 80% of the value of the property must also take out insurance against default from a federal agency, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

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Anglicans meeting in Gisborne have been told to be ambassadors of hope on issues including proposed mining and to help bring solutions to concerns including alcohol abuse. Archbishop David Moxon told delegates to the Anglican General Synod that there is a need for the Church to take a stand on issues and act on beliefs. To be people with a mission, which is a mission of hope.

“There is a need to look in our country for that which is the common good, said Archbishop David Moxon. “Otherwise there is the chance that hope can be lost, and this can result in a kind of coma where huge opportunities and challenges in our society and environment go either unnoticed, or ignored,” said Archbishop Moxon.

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