(The hat tip on this goes to the BBC Radio Four Sunday Programme who mentioned this letter on this morning’s show–KSH).

In January 2007, the Johnses applied to Derby City Council to be respite carers for a single child aged five to 10 years old. However, in August 2007, their orthodox Christian views on the practice of homosexuality and their commitment to attending church with their children came to the notice of a social worker.

As a result, they were withdrawn from the process and deemed “unsuitable” to foster through the council.

The Johnses believe that the desperate shortage of foster carers, and the need for people like them to offer short-term respite care for parents in need of a rest, mean that denying Christians the opportunity to be carers will deeply affect children’s welfare.

Read it all and there is further material on this to be found there.

Common prayer helped us to face the challenges of the Catholic Church in the Middle East as well. One of these is communion within each sui iuris Church, as well as in the relationships between the various Catholic Churches of different traditions. As today’s Gospel reminded us (cf. Lk 18:9-14), we need humility, in order to recognize our limitations, our errors and omissions, in order to be able to truly be “united, heart and soul”. A fuller communion within the Catholic Church favours ecumenical dialogue with other Churches and ecclesial communities as well. The Catholic Church reiterated in this Synodal meeting its deep conviction to pursuing such dialogue as well, so that the prayer of the Lord Jesus might be completely fulfilled: “May they all be one” (Jn 17:21).

The words of the Lord Jesus may be applied to Christians in the Middle East: “There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32). Indeed, even if they are few, they are bearers of the Good News of the love of God for man, love which revealed itself in the Holy Land in the person of Jesus Christ. This Word of salvation, strengthened with the grace of the Sacraments, resounds with particular potency in the places in which, by Divine Providence, it was written, and it is the only Word which is able to break that vicious circle of vengeance, hate, and violence. From a purified heart, in peace with God and neighbour, may intentions and initiatives for peace at local, national, and international levels be born. In these actions, to whose accomplishment the whole international community is called, Christians as full-fledged citizens can and must do their part with the spirit of the Beatitudes, becoming builders of peace and apostles of reconciliation to the benefit of all society.

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The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, has just started blogging, and is the only diocesan bishop to do it: “The great opportunity is that actually we’re connecting with people that we would never connect with in other ways, so there are huge opportunities with people who would never go near a church service.

“Even though it’s very early, it’s very interesting to see that comments come from around the world, straight off. They come not necessarily from people who follow me on Facebook or Twitter. So the speed with which something goes round is something that, well, we’re not up to speed with!”

The Bishop of Buckingham, Dr Alan Wilson, and the Bishop of Croydon, the Rt Rev Nick Baines, are both popular blogging bishops, but they are exceptional. Bishop Butler reflects on whether bishops need to be encouraged to get more involved: “I think it would be good if more of us did, but there I think we need to co-ordinate a bit. Mine will particularly focus on issues around children and childhood, because of my brief as advocate for children. The reason I did something on the papal visit was I thought hang on, Alan and Nick weren’t there, and I thought one of us needs to do this. So what I think would be worth us exploring is bishops blogging around different areas, so we’re not repeating each other.”

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One of the two bombs mailed from Yemen and found on cargo jets in Dubai and Britain travelled on two passenger jets in the Middle East, according to a spokesman for Qatar Airways.

The airline spokesman said a package containing explosives hidden in a printer cartridge arrived in Qatar Airways’ hub in Doha, on one of the carrier’s flights from the Yemeni capital Sana’a.

It was then shipped on a separate Qatar Airways plane to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where it was discovered by authorities late early on Friday. A second, similar package turned up in England’s East Midlands Airport.

Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser said the parcel bombs had been made by the same person as the device worn by the so-called “underpants bomber” who botched an attack over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

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The latest twist involves the man who was pastor of St. John’s in the run-up to the schism.

[The] Rev. Daniel H. Martins, St. John’s pastor for 13 years, has become a bishop-elect in the Diocese of Springfield, Ill. – but in the original denomination.

The denomination St. John’s decided to leave while Martins led it.

Some Episcopalians feel betrayed.

“I’m very surprised that he’s turned around and has decided to go back to the Episcopal Church,” said Al Lingo, “because he was a very, very avid opponent, and he led St. John’s parishioners away from the Episcopal Church. And I’m sure it’s a great, great surprise to the people of St. John’s.”

The original Diocese of San Joaquin has taken the unusual step of informing Springfield that Martins is a schismatic in sheep’s clothing and should not be bishop….

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For the Rev. Jed Roseberry, leading a church is more than a calling; it’s a family tradition.

Roseberry “planted” Restoration Anglican Church last year in Addison, a town where he said he felt called to develop friendships and minister. It’s the same call that his father, the Rev. David Roseberry, answered 25 years ago when he, too, planted a church, Christ Church Plano.

Restoration Anglican Church recently celebrated its one-year anniversary.

“For me, it’s a perfect scenario. It’s something that was dear to my heart,” David Roseberry said. “I’m absolutely delighted with the father-son duo. Since I was a church planter 25 years ago, it gives me a lot of joy to see him follow in that.”

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Bishops must guide their faithful to use their vote to oppose efforts to legalize abortion and euthanasia, Pope Benedict XVI told bishops from Brazil.

“Dear brother bishops, to defend life we must not fear hostility or unpopularity, and we must refuse any compromise or ambiguity which might conform us to the world’s way of thinking,” the pope said Oct. 28 during a meeting with bishops from northeast Brazil.

The bishops were making their “ad limina” visits to report on the status of their dioceses.

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O God, the Father of lights, who by the entrance of thy Word giveth light unto the soul: Grant to us the spirit of wisdom and understanding; that, being taught of thee in holy Scripture, we may receive with faith the words of eternal life, and be made wise unto salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Book of Common Order

God of grace and glory, we give You thanks for the comfort of the Gospel restored to Your Church on earth through the work of Martin Luther and other faithful pastors and leaders during the Reformation era. We praise You that by Your rich grace we have come to the sure knowledge that we stand justified before You, not by what we have done, but rather by faith in what Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord has done on our behalf. We ask that You would defend Your Church from all enemies of Your saving Word. Cause the good news of the Gospel to be proclaimed in this time to every nation and tribe and language and people on earth, and graciously preserve the fruits of the Gospel for generations to come. This we pray in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The earth is the LORD’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein; for he has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers.

–Psalm 24:1

Extraordinarily, the King James Bible was written by committee. Its 54 translators were inspired to their task. Using the Bishops’ Bible of 1568 and consulting too William Tyndale’s New Testament of 1525, they fashioned cadences that have saturated English literature from John Bunyan to D. H. Lawrence. The anniversary of their work provides opportunity for historical reflection, but also for restoring it to the nation’s public life.

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FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Just weeks before upcoming statewide elections, Minnesota’s Catholic bishops, spearheaded by John Nienstedt of Minneapolis-St Paul, sent this DVD to every Catholic household in the state””400,000 in all at a cost of one million dollars, funded by an anonymous donation.

DVD: “At best, so-called ”˜same-sex marriage’ is an untested social experiment, and at worst, it poses a dangerous risk with potentially far-reaching consequences.”

DE SAM LAZARO: Critics of Archbishop Nienstedt take issue with many of his assertions in the DVD, but they also question the timing of the DVD campaign, coming as it does just prior to the elections.

Read or watch it all.

The progress made in scientific knowledge in the twentieth century, in all its various disciplines, has led to a greatly improved awareness of the place that man and this planet occupy in the universe. In all sciences, the common denominator continues to be the notion of experimentation as an organized method for observing nature. In the last century, man certainly made more progress ”“ if not always in his knowledge of himself and of God, then certainly in his knowledge of the macro- and microcosms ”“ than in the entire previous history of humanity. Our meeting here today, dear friends, is a proof of the Church’s esteem for ongoing scientific research and of her gratitude for scientific endeavour, which she both encourages and benefits from. In our own day, scientists themselves appreciate more and more the need to be open to philosophy if they are to discover the logical and epistemological foundation for their methodology and their conclusions. For her part, the Church is convinced that scientific activity ultimately benefits from the recognition of man’s spiritual dimension and his quest for ultimate answers that allow for the acknowledgement of a world existing independently from us, which we do not fully understand and which we can only comprehend in so far as we grasp its inherent logic. Scientists do not create the world; they learn about it and attempt to imitate it, following the laws and intelligibility that nature manifests to us. The scientist’s experience as a human being is therefore that of perceiving a constant, a law, a logos that he has not created but that he has instead observed: in fact, it leads us to admit the existence of an all-powerful Reason, which is other than that of man, and which sustains the world. This is the meeting point between the natural sciences and religion. As a result, science becomes a place of dialogue, a meeting between man and nature and, potentially, even between man and his Creator.

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According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures, Utah has grown in population from 2,233,169 in 2000 to 2,784,572 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 24.69%.

According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of Utah went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 1924 in 1998 to 1612 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 16% over this ten year period. Please note that if you go to the link toward the end of this sentence and enter “Utah” as the name of the diocese and then “View Diocese Chart” underneath on the left you can see in pictorial form some of the data from 2009 which shows a slight increase in ASA from 2008-2009. The hard numbers for these new 2009 numbers are not yet available so far as I am aware.

The Diocese of Utah’s website may be found here.

A number of you know I (a) like politics and (b) follow it quite closely. From time to time it crops up as an element of focus on the blog, and the midterm elections 2010 is one of those times. There is no flawless indicator, but my favorite as some of you may remember is Intrade, since it involves real people and real money (and it has a very fine track record). By far the most revealing graph I have found is this one:

What does this mean? Think anti-incumbency and a disgust with business as usual in Washington at a minimum–KSH.

Several prominent Israelis expressed concern over a statement by the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, which said Jews cannot use the Bible to justify injustices.

But tensions increased when a U.S. bishop told reporters at the synod that Jews could no longer regard themselves as God’s “chosen people” or Israel as “the Promised Land,” because Jesus’ message showed that God loved and chose all people to be his own.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said Oct. 25 that the final message of the Synod of Bishops reflected the opinion of the synod itself, while the remarks by Melkite Bishop Cyrille S. Bustros of Newton, Mass., were to be considered his personal opinion.

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Bishops from the Middle East, summoned by the pope to the Vatican, ended their two-week meeting with a statement that called on Israel to end its “occupation” of Arab lands and to stop using the Bible to defend injustices.

The dwindling numbers of Christians living in the Middle East was to be the principal reason for the meeting called by Pope Benedict XVI, but the joint communiqué also warned Israel about “injustices” against Palestinians.

The synod’s message said that “re course to theological and biblical positions which use the word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable,” in an apparent reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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The doors of the historic Trinity Episcopal Cathedral will open once more Sunday for worship following a three-year, $7 million restoration project of the downtown church.

There will be no splashy dedication ceremony of the Gothic church that has anchored a city block next door to the State House since 1847. The cathedral will simply begin its new fall worship schedule with four Sunday services, including a new 4 p.m. choral evensong and Eucharist, said Doak Wolfe, Trinity’s director of communications and associate for liturgy and music.

Morning services will be at 8, 9 and 11:15 a.m., with the Rev. Charles M. Davis Jr., acting dean of the cathedral, presiding. The Rev. Robert G. Riegel will preach at the 9 and 11:15 services.
“There is no big celebration planned,” said Wolfe. “We are just going to live into this reopening of the cathedral.”

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So maybe it’s true that talk is the reason having a sister makes you happier, but it needn’t be talk about emotions. When women told me they talk to their sisters more often, at greater length and about more personal topics, I suspect it’s that first element ”” more often ”” that is crucial rather than the last.

This makes sense to me as a linguist who truly believes that women’s ways of talking are not inherently better than men’s. It also feels right to me as a woman with two sisters ”” one who likes to have long conversations about feelings and one who doesn’t, but who both make me happier.

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A package shipped from Yemen and bound for the United States on a cargo jet that was intercepted in Britain on Friday contained an explosive device powerful enough to bring down the plane, British authorities said on Saturday.

“I can confirm the device was viable and could have exploded,” British Home Secretary Theresa May said. “The target may have been an aircraft and had it detonated the aircraft could have been brought down.”

A day after two packages containing explosives addressed to synagogues in Chicago were discovered, one in Britain and the other in Dubai, setting off a broad terror alert, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security, said that the plot “has the hallmarks of Al Qaeda.” Officials on three continents, meanwhile, continued to search for other potentially dangerous packages shipped from Yemen.

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(Please take a careful look at this graphic to see the extent of banks exposure to this problem–KSH)

Even before some of the nation’s biggest mortgage lenders were forced to suspend foreclosure proceedings because of faulty paperwork, it was becoming clear that the Obama administration’s year-old effort to pump life into the housing market was falling short.

The federal government just reported that 4.2 million homeowners are “seriously delinquent” on their mortgages and some 10.9 million borrowers are underwater, meaning their loans exceed the value of their homes.

To make matter worse, there is the threat of protracted litigation between banks and borrowers because lenders might not have followed the letter of law in processing foreclosure paperwork.

An even bigger source of worry is the $426 billion in so-called second liens — home equity loans, second mortgages and other loans “junior” to the primary mortgage — that sit on the balance sheets of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.

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At least 50,000 Quebecers are expected to gather Saturday for something most rarely do: attend a religious service.

But the Mass at the Olympic Stadium to celebrate the elevation of Brother André, a school porter and faith healer who died 73 years ago, to sainthood is one of many contradictions surrounding religion, and Roman Catholicism in particular, in Quebec.

By most measures, the province is the most secular in Canada. Only 15 percent of Catholics regularly attend church and Quebecers have long rejected the church’s teachings on birth control, marriage and homosexuality….

“In Quebec, people are not specifically anti-Catholicism, but they are anti-clericalism,” said Gilles Routhier, a professor of theology at Laval University in Quebec City. “Brother André doesn’t particularly represent the church’s power. He was a simple, illiterate, modest person. People recognize themselves in Brother André.”

Read it all.

Over the next two years, Obama will have to show that he is a traditionalist on social matters and a center-left pragmatist on political ones. Culturally, he will have to demonstrate that even though he comes from an unusual background, he is a fervent believer in the old-fashioned bourgeois virtues: order, self-discipline, punctuality and personal responsibility. Politically, he will have to demonstrate that he is data-driven ”” that even though he has more faith in government than most Americans, he will relentlessly oppose programs when the evidence shows they don’t work.

… Obama will need to respond to the nation’s fear of decline. The current sour mood is not just caused by high unemployment. It emerges from the fear that America’s best days are behind it. The public’s real anxiety is about values, not economics: the gnawing sense that Americans have become debt-addicted and self-indulgent; the sense that government undermines individual responsibility; the observation that people who work hard get shafted while people who play influence games get the gravy. Obama will have to propose policies that re-establish the link between effort and reward.

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Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry.

The new position was declared in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Department of Justice late Friday in a case involving two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

“We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA,” the brief said.

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The Oct. 22 fire that quickly destroyed the chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary has been ruled accidental.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) announced its findings Oct. 28. ATF’s National Response Team, along with ATF special agents from Falls Church, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., worked with the Alexandria Fire Department to investigate the cause of the fire. The federal response is routine when a fire of this size occurs in a house of worship, the seminary and the ATF said.

The fire began in a trash can left near a heater in the sacristy, Susan Shillinglaw, VTS director of communication, told ENS.

Read it all.

We have heard about Islam, mosques, and freedom of religion a whole lot lately. Much of that conversation has been energized with passions and fears. In light of it all, I find myself really torn by the whole discussion about Islam and the Church’s response. Let me be clear it is fair to be confused by Islam, even concerned by it.

Most of us do not know the difference between Sunni, Shia and Sufi Muslims, or how to read the Quran or each Hadith. In the midst of the current conversation, I offer my own perspective. My experience of Islam is very different than what I most often see in the media here in the US–for two key reasons. First, my experience with Islam really began in Southeast Asia where the Muslims see themselves differently than those in the Middle East.

Second, and more importantly, my focus in Southeast Asia was to share the Good News of Jesus with Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Freethinkers alike. As a result, I am fascinated by the variety of expressions of Islam. There the three main schools, Sunni, Shi’ite and Sufi””which have protestant, catholic and charismatic qualities. They also have their own progressives, secularists, fundamentalists, off-shoots, and cults.

Furthermore, I have a deep assurance that Islam does not stand up well to the witness of Jesus Christ.

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An apparent plot to send two explosive-laden packages by cargo plane from Yemen to the US has focused new attention on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The network was formed in January 2009 by a merger between two regional offshoots of the international Islamist militant network in neighbouring Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The US president’s counterterrorism adviser John Brennan has called it: “the most active operational franchise” of al-Qaeda beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Led by a former aide to Osama Bin Laden, the group has vowed to attack oil facilities, foreigners and security forces as it seeks to topple the Saudi monarchy and Yemeni government, and establish an Islamic caliphate.

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Two packages containing explosive devices originating in Yemen and bound for two places of Jewish worship in Chicago set off a global terror alert on Friday. One package was found at a FedEx facility in Dubai, and another was found early Friday morning at an airport in Britain, sparking a day of dramatic precautionary activity in the United States.

Speaking at the White House Friday afternoon, President Obama called the packages a “credible terrorist threat against our country,” and confirmed that they “did apparently contain” explosives. Earlier reports had said that the device found in Britain did not.

The wide-scale alert spread to the United States on Friday morning, when officials isolated two cargo planes at airports in Newark and Philadelphia and searched them for packages originating in Yemen, and New York police searched a delivery truck in Brooklyn. None of the shipments reaching the United States from Yemen were found to contain explosives.

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