Tens of thousands of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa on Tuesday (June 1) continued demonstrations against Israel’s deadly interception of a flotilla of ships trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

Nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed on the passenger ferry Mavi Mamara when Israeli commandoes boarded the ship early Monday (May 31) morning. The Mavi Mamara was one of six Turkish ships trying to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Across the Arab world and in Israel””where Arabs comprise 20 percent of the population””angry protestors demanded an end to the blockade. Ishmael Haniyeh, the prime minister of Hamas, declared a day of mourning. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said the attack “indicates Israel is not ready for peace.”

In Rome, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told Agence France-Presse that the Holy See feels “deep sadness and concern” over the flotilla incident, which also injured several activists and seven Israeli commandoes.

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For the Martin family, the usual morning ritual of getting ready for school and onto the school bus, is a foreign concept.

They live as though school doesn’t exist. They’re at home all day, but they’re not being homeschooled. They’re being “unschooled.” There are no textbooks, no tests and no formal education at all in their world.

“Just picture life without school. So, maybe a weekend. We wake up, and we have breakfast, and we just start pursuing what we’re interested in doing,” said Dayna Martin, a mother of four in Madison, N.H.

I caught this yesterday on the late afternoon run–didn’t know anything about it. I highly recommend the video (just under 8 minutes) but if you cannot do that please read it all.

The U.S. aircraft carrier USS George Washington will participate in a joint naval exercise with South Korea next week in the Yellow Sea, the same waters west of the Korean peninsula where North Korea is accused of sinking a South Korean warship last March, ABC News has learned.

A U.S. official said the carrier, which operates from its home port in Japan, “will be sent to the waters off South Korea within coming days to participate in joint exercises” with the South Korean navy.

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Paul McCusker has spent the last 25 years working for Focus on the Family. A former Baptist-turned-Anglican-turned Catholic, McCusker has served as executive producer for the organization’s award-winning audio dramas, such as “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and the recent Audie Award-nominated “The Screwtape Letters,” as well as the children’s radio program “Adventures in Odyssey.” McCusker serves as director of creative content for Focus on the Family.

He spoke with Register senior writer Tim Drake about his life and work from his office in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Where did you grow up?
I was born in southwest Pennsylvania, in Uniontown, but I grew up in Bowie, Md., just east of Washington, D.C., and spent my formative years there.

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Anglican churches in Egypt have voiced their offence over recent statements by Coptic Pope Shenouda III, who, in his most recent sermon, declared that Anglicans did not adhere to Biblical teachings.

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Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we who keep the feast of the holy martyrs Blandina and her companions may be rooted and grounded in love of thee, and may endure the sufferings of this life for the glory that shall be revealed in us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Bless us, O God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with the vision of thy glory; that we may know thee as the Father who created us, rejoice in thee as the Son who redeemed us, and be strong in thee, the Holy Spirit who dost sanctify us; keep us steadfast in this faith, and bring us at the last into thine eternal kingdom, where thou art ever worshipped and glorified, one God, world without end.

Seminary campuses grew quiet this week with the 2009-10 academic year now ended, but that quiet belies vigorous — and by turns upbeat and cautious — discussions about the future of theological education.

As the year was beginning, a re-configured Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, had just sold its property to nearby Northwestern University, using the $13 million to pay off its debt and balance its budget.

While it ended its master of divinity degree the year before, Seabury this year began a joint doctor of ministry degree in congregational development with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific 2,100 miles away in Berkeley, California. It is an example, the school has said, of what it calls its new mission: to “embod[y] generous Christianity, grounded in the Baptismal Covenant and the Episcopal tradition, as we educate lay and ordained women and men for ministry, build faith communities, and enrich people in their faith.”

In deciding to sell property, Seabury took a further step on a path that Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Episcopal Divinity School went down in March 2008 when it sold some of its buildings to Lesley University for $33.5 million and entered into a partnership that includes academic program enhancements and shared facilities for uses such as library, student dining and services, and campus maintenance.

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BP officials were casting about for another way to slice through a leaking riser pipe located a mile underwater after a diamond-studded wire saw operated by a robot got stuck and was later found to be ineffective. The delay on Wednesday was one more bump in a frustrating obstacle course that BP has tried to run in dealing with a stricken oil well on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, 50 miles offshore and a mile below the surface. Since an explosion on April 20 that wrecked a drilling rig and killed 11 workers, the well has been spewing thousands of gallons of oil a day into the gulf, fouling beaches, shellfish and birds on the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

A technician involved in the effort said that the wire saw had cut less than halfway through the riser when it stopped being effective. The technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the work, said that it appeared that there was other material in the riser ”” including, perhaps, some of the objects pumped into the well during the failed “top kill” procedure last week ”” that was dulling the saw.

“It was cutting at a rate far less than it should have,” he said.

Read it all.

There’s some news in the ongoing infighting among American Anglicans.

Next week will mark a turning point in a three-year-old court battle over church property in Virginia when the state Supreme Court weighs in. The case is being watched by Anglicans around the country – and other faith groups facing bitter, potentially litigious divisions.

Tens of millions of dollars have been spent and friends and families divided over the question of who owns a dozen churches – including some large, prestigious properties in Northern Virginia that belonged for centuries to the Episcopal Church. But at the end of 2006 majorities of members of the churches, including Truro Church and The Falls Church, voted to leave the Episcopal Church and join other, more conservative overseas branches of the larger Anglican Communion. Disagreements range from the ordination of women to the status of gay men and women to what the Bible says about salvation.

The breakaway conservatives have won almost all the court rulings so far, but the case is complex and involves both state and federal constitutional issues.

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A pastoral letter to The Episcopal Church

Pentecost continues!

Pentecost is most fundamentally a continuing gift of the Spirit, rather than a limitation or quenching of that Spirit.

The recent statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the struggles within the Anglican Communion seems to equate Pentecost with a single understanding of gospel realities. Those who received the gift of the Spirit on that day all heard good news. The crowd reported, “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:11).

The Spirit does seem to be saying to many within The Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God’s good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones. The Spirit also seems to be saying the same thing in other parts of the Anglican Communion, and among some of our Christian partners, including Lutheran churches in North America and Europe, the Old Catholic churches of Europe, and a number of others.
That growing awareness does not deny the reality that many Anglicans and not a few Episcopalians still fervently hold traditional views about human sexuality. This Episcopal Church is a broad and inclusive enough tent to hold that variety. The willingness to live in tension is a hallmark of Anglicanism, beginning from its roots in Celtic Christianity pushing up against Roman Christianity in the centuries of the first millennium. That diversity in community was solidified in the Elizabethan Settlement, which really marks the beginning of Anglican Christianity as a distinct movement. Above all, it recognizes that the Spirit may be speaking to all of us, in ways that do not at present seem to cohere or agree. It also recognizes what Jesus says about the Spirit to his followers, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:12-13).

The Episcopal Church has spent nearly 50 years listening to and for the Spirit in these matters. While it is clear that not all within this Church have heard the same message, the current developments do represent a widening understanding. Our canons reflected this shift as long ago as 1985, when sexual orientation was first protected from discrimination in access to the ordination process. At the request of other bodies in the Anglican Communion, this Church held an effective moratorium on the election and consecration of a partnered gay or lesbian priest as bishop from 2003 to 2010. When a diocese elected such a person in late 2009, the ensuing consent process indicated that a majority of the laity, clergy, and bishops responsible for validating that election agreed that there was no substantive bar to the consecration.

The Episcopal Church recognizes that these decisions are problematic to a number of other Anglicans. We have not made these decisions lightly. We recognize that the Spirit has not been widely heard in the same way in other parts of the Communion. In all humility, we recognize that we may be wrong, yet we have proceeded in the belief that the Spirit permeates our decisions.

We also recognize that the attempts to impose a singular understanding in such matters represent the same kind of cultural excesses practiced by many of our colonial forebears in their missionizing activity. Native Hawaiians were forced to abandon their traditional dress in favor of missionaries’ standards of modesty. Native Americans were forced to abandon many of their cultural practices, even though they were fully congruent with orthodox Christianity, because the missionaries did not understand or consider those practices exemplary of the Spirit. The uniformity imposed at the Synod of Whitby did similar violence to a developing, contextual Christianity in the British Isles. In their search for uniformity, our forebears in the faith have repeatedly done much spiritual violence in the name of Christianity.

We do not seek to impose our understanding on others. We do earnestly hope for continued dialogue with those who disagree, for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding.

We live in great concern that colonial attitudes continue, particularly in attempts to impose a single understanding across widely varying contexts and cultures. We note that the cultural contexts in which The Episcopal Church’s decisions have generated the greatest objection and reaction are also often the same contexts where women are barred from full ordained leadership, including the Church of England.

As Episcopalians, we note the troubling push toward centralized authority exemplified in many of the statements of the recent Pentecost letter. Anglicanism as a body began in the repudiation of the control of the Bishop of Rome within an otherwise sovereign nation. Similar concerns over self-determination in the face of colonial control led the Church of Scotland to consecrate Samuel Seabury for The Episcopal Church in the nascent United States ”“ and so began the Anglican Communion.

We have been repeatedly assured that the Anglican Covenant is not an instrument of control, yet we note that the fourth section seems to be just that to Anglicans in many parts of the Communion. So much so, that there are voices calling for stronger sanctions in that fourth section, as well as voices repudiating it as un-Anglican in nature. Unitary control does not characterize Anglicanism; rather, diversity in fellowship and communion does.

We are distressed at the apparent imposition of sanctions on some parts of the Communion. We note that these seem to be limited to those which “have formally, through their Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion.” We are further distressed that such sanctions do not, apparently, apply to those parts of the Communion that continue to hold one view in public and exhibit other behaviors in private. Why is there no sanction on those who continue with a double standard? In our context bowing to anxiety by ignoring that sort of double-mindedness is usually termed a “failure of nerve.” Through many decades of wrestling with our own discomfort about recognizing the full humanity of persons who seem to differ from us, we continue to work at open and transparent communication as well as congruence between word and behavior. We openly admit our failure to achieve perfection!

The baptismal covenant prayed in this Church for more than 30 years calls us to respect the dignity of all other persons and charges us with ongoing labor toward a holy society of justice and peace. That fundamental understanding of Christian vocation underlies our hearing of the Spirit in this context and around these issues of human sexuality. That same understanding of Christian vocation encourages us to hold our convictions with sufficient humility that we can affirm the image of God in the person who disagrees with us. We believe that the Body of Christ is only found when such diversity is welcomed with abundant and radical hospitality.

As a Church of many nations, languages, and peoples, we will continue to seek every opportunity to increase our partnership in God’s mission for a healed creation and holy community. We look forward to the ongoing growth in partnership possible in the Listening Process, Continuing Indaba, Bible in the Life of the Church, Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, and the myriad of less formal and more local partnerships across the Communion ”“ efforts in mission and ministry that inform and transform individuals and communities toward the vision of the Gospel ”“ a healed world, loving God and neighbor, in the love and friendship shown us in God Incarnate.

May God’s peace dwell in your hearts,

(The Most Rev.) Katharine Jefferts Schori is Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church

As a long-standing critic of the idea of a European single currency, I have not rejoiced at the current problems in the euro zone because their consequences could be serious for all of us in Europe””for members and non-members of the euro zone, for its supporters and opponents. Even the enthusiastic propagandists of the euro suddenly speak about the potential collapse of the whole project now, and it is us critics who say we have to look at it in a more structured way.

The term “collapse” has at least two meanings. The first is that the euro-zone project has not succeeded in delivering the positive effects that had been rightly or wrongly expected from it. It was mistakenly and irresponsibly presented as an indisputable economic benefit to all the countries willing to give up their own long-treasured currencies….

The second meaning of the term collapse is the possible collapse of the euro zone as an institution, the demise of the euro. To that question, my answer is no, it will not collapse. So much political capital had been invested in its existence and in its role as a “cement” that binds the EU on its way to supra-nationality that in the foreseeable future the euro will surely not be abandoned.

It will continue, but at a very high price””low economic growth. It will bring economic losses even to non-members of the euro zone, like the Czech Republic.

Read it all.

The proposal, if accepted in the Communion, would be the first time such sanctions would be imposed on dissident national churches. Unlike Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism is a federation of churches whose head has no direct power over all members.

A group campaigning for homosexual rights in the Communion said the threatened discipline caused it little worry because the committees the dissenters could not work on were “trivial.”

“These are delaying tactics, sops to the conservatives, which in reality gives them nothing,” Colin Coward, director of Changing Attitude, UK, told Reuters.

The Episcopal bishop of California accused Williams of “creating a different kind of Anglicanism, more like the centralized, doctrinalised polity of the Roman Catholic Church.”

“When an empire and its exponents can no longer exercise control by might, an option is to feint, double-talk and manipulate,” Bishop Marc Andrus wrote on his blog.

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Archbishop Rowan’s Pentecost letter shows him to be continuing on a course that is creating a different kind of Anglicanism, more like the centralized, doctrinalized polity of the Roman Catholic Church. Added to this, the exercise of control by the Archbishop lacks the straightforwardness of the Roman polity.

For example, the Lambeth Conference was explicitly advertised as a non-legislative meeting; indeed we voted on nothing. However, lo and behold, through a non-transparent “consensus building” process, the bishops present (and so, in Archbishop Rowan’s thinking, the Communion) have affirmed the three moratoria put forward by the Windsor Report.

Here it is also important to note that the Windsor Report itself has been reified and given the status of a central Anglican document of faith and order, not by the test of time and use, but by the Archbishop and those who agree with him saying so.

When an Empire and its exponents can no longer exercise control by might, an option is to feint, double-talk, and manipulate. Such tactics have been in the fore with Archbishop Rowan since the confirmation of Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003….

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Vicars in parts of rural Wales face being forced to cover more than a dozen parishes because of a recruitment crisis.

The Diocese of St Davids, which covers much of West Wales, currently has just three vicars to cover 27 parish churches.

But when the Reverend John Powell of St Mary’s in Cardigan retires in August, it will mean just two vicars to cover all the parishes.

The diocese is not alone in facing a recruitment crisis ”“ according to Church in Wales figures a quarter of current serving clergy are due to retire within the next decade and less than 10% of Wales’ vicars are under 40.

Read the whole thing.

The new Bishop of Stafford was named today as the Vicar of Southampton, the Rev Canon Geoffrey Annas.

He was today visiting the County Showground at Stafford after the Queen approved his nomination.

Mr Annas, aged 56, succeeds the Rt Rev Gordon Mursell, who retires on June 25 on health grounds after a series of operations on his vocal cords.

He studied for the ministry at Sarum and Wells Theological College and served his first curacy at Southwark Holy Trinity with St Matthew in Southwark diocese from 1983 to 1987.

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The recent Labor cabinet decision to suspend the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan for three and six months respectively has prompted the Anglican Primate of Australia, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall to write to the Federal Labor government.

Dr Aspinall, the Archbishop of Brisbane, questioned how such a decision could be made when the United Nations Refugee Agency, which has been conducting a review, had not yet reported its findings. The UN, at this time, did not support a suspension of applications from those countries.

“The Australian Government says asylum seekers should only be granted the right to live in Australia if they are genuinely in need of protection,” he said. “I agree that this is a complex issue, but genuine asylum seekers are deeply distressed when forced to flee their homeland. They should be treated with compassion and dignity.”

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Take a careful look at this meeting which occurs beginning this week.

Update: You may find a list of proposed resolutions here.

An increasing number of commercial property owners are finding themselves in a hopeless situation, facing declining rents, increasing vacancies and a loan coming due.

The daunting situation of being caught between a demanding lender and a business with numbers that just do not work any more is expected to become far more common in this market in coming years, local real estate experts say.

And most lenders will be far less open than they were on residential mortgages to negotiating a short sale to help commercial owners deal with their upside-down loans.

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Those are his words, not mine–see what you think; KSH.

After the Easter season, which concluded last Sunday with Pentecost, the liturgy returned to Ordinary Time. That does not mean that the commitment of Christians must diminish, rather, having entered into the divine life through the sacraments, we are called daily to be open to the action of grace, to progress in the love of God and our neighbor. This Sunday, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, recapitulates, in a sense, God’s revelation in the paschal mysteries: Christ’s death and resurrection, his ascension to the right hand of the Father and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The human mind and language are inadequate for explaining the relationship that exists between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and nevertheless the Fathers of the Church tried to illustrate the mystery of the One and Triune God, living it in their existence with profound faith.

The divine Trinity, in fact, comes to dwell in us on the day of baptism: “I baptize you,” the minister says, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We recall the name of God in which we were baptized every time that we make the sign of the cross. In regard to the sign of the cross the theologian Romano Guardini observes: “We do it before prayer so that ”¦ we put ourselves spiritually in order; it focuses our thoughts, heart and will on God. We do it after prayer, so that what God has granted us remains in us ”¦ It embraces all our being, body and soul, ”¦ and every becomes consecrated in the name of the one and triune God” (“Lo spirito della liturgia. I santi segni,” Brescia 2000, 125-126).

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They called it the Green Zone because within its fortified blast walls lay a sanctuary for Americans, a place so secure that weapons could safely be left unloaded ”” or green, in military parlance.

Outside was the Red Zone, the rest of Iraq, where bombs exploded, bullets flew, ordinary Iraqis lived and endured and no American soldier or official was permitted to venture without a heavily armored convoy.

But the Green Zone now is American no longer. On Tuesday, Iraq took full control of the 4-square-mile enclave in the heart of Baghdad that, to many Iraqis, symbolized so much of what went wrong with the U.S. military presence in Iraq….

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Yesterday was my 58th birthday. If I were a Greek worker I could retire. Although pension payments in Greece normally start around 61, special provisions allow anyone to retire at 58 if they have been in employment for 35 years. That, as it happens, is how long I have been at work. My index-linked pensions from the Greek Government would be worth 75 to 90 per cent of the average salary in the country, guaranteed for the rest of my life by the State.

If you want to know why Greece is going bankrupt and why the euro seems to be on the verge of disintegration, look no farther. The best argument I have ever heard for a break-up of the euro was this observation in a German newspaper: “The Greeks go on to the streets to protest against an increase of the pension age from 61 to 63. Does this mean that Germans should extend the working age from 67 to 69, so Greeks can enjoy their retirement?”

This, however, is not another article about self-indulgent Greeks and self-righteous Germans. The battle over bailouts in Europe is only a sideshow compared with the great social conflict that lies ahead all over the world in the next 20 years. This will not be a struggle between nations or social classes, but between generations ”” and it is a conflict that, in Britain, begins in earnest this year. The end of the Second World War in May 1945 marked the start of the baby boom, which lasted until the mid-1960s. Now, 65 years later, the corresponding retirement revolution is about to shake up our society, economy and political institutions.

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In retrospect, the pattern seems clear. Years before the Deepwater Horizon rig blew, BP was developing a reputation as an oil company that took safety risks to save money. An explosion at a Texas refinery killed 15 workers in 2005, and federal regulators and a panel led by James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, said that cost cutting was partly to blame. The next year, a corroded pipeline in Alaska poured oil into Prudhoe Bay. None other than Joe Barton, a Republican congressman from Texas and a global-warming skeptic, upbraided BP managers for their “seeming indifference to safety and environmental issues.”

Much of this indifference stemmed from an obsession with profits, come what may. But there also appears to have been another factor, one more universally human, at work. The people running BP did a dreadful job of estimating the true chances of events that seemed unlikely ”” and may even have been unlikely ”” but that would bring enormous costs….

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A federal judge ruled May 31 that a Connecticut school district’s plan to hold graduation ceremonies in a mega-church violates the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state and ordered school officials to find a secular alternative site.

U.S. District Judge Janet Hall handed down a preliminary injunction blocking Enfield Public Schools from holding graduations for two high schools scheduled June 23-24 at The First Cathedral, a 120,000 square-foot facility that is home to an 11,000-member Christian church.

The judge said two seniors at Enfield High School and three parents proved “a likelihood of irreparable harm” if the court did not intervene and “a substantial likelihood of success” in their lawsuit alleging that holding the graduation at the church instead of a neutral site violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“The court’s ruling will ensure that no student or parent has to choose between missing their own graduation and being subjected to a religious environment of a faith to which they do not subscribe, said Alex Luchenitser, senior litigation counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “It is unconstitutional and wrong for a school district to subject students and families to religious messages as the price of attending graduation.”

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God, who didst find thy martyr Justin wandering from teacher to teacher, seeking the true God, and didst reveal to him the sublime wisdom of thine eternal Word: Grant that all who seek thee, or a deeper knowledge of thee, may find and be found by thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

What has a man from all the toil and strain with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of pain, and his work is a vexation; even in the night his mind does not rest. This also is vanity. There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

–Ecclesiastes 2: 22-25

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

–Galatian 2:20

Almighty God, most blessed and most holy, before the brightness of whose presence the angels veil their faces: With lowly reverence and adoring love we acknowledge thine infinite glory, and worship thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternal Trinity. Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto our God, for ever and ever.

–Book of Common Order

Afghanistan’s much-delayed peace jirga, or assembly, gets under way in Kabul on Wednesday. Under a large tent at Kabul Polytechnic University, 1,600 delegates ”” one-fifth of them women ”” will try to come up with ways to persuade the Taliban and other insurgents to lay down their weapons and reconcile with their countrymen.

But many war-weary Afghans aren’t optimistic the conference will produce meaningful results.

The highly touted peace jirga seems anything but organized. On Tuesday the event’s planners were still trying to come up with a schedule, and hundreds of delegates had yet to arrive.

And Afghan President Hamid Karzai has not laid out exactly how he plans to reconcile with insurgents.

Read or listen to it all.