“It is heartbreaking that even if they agree to pay a substantial settlement fee to keep their buildings, members of St. Philip’s are also being forced to separate from their Anglican family as a condition of the property settlement. Freedom of religion is at the heart of this matter and no congregation should have to stipulate that it will separate from its current body as part of a monetary property settlement,” said the Most Rev. Robert Duncan, Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America and Bishop of Pittsburgh.

“Sadly, the separation mandate seems to be specifically designed to hurt both the local diocese and the North American province. If the settlement is approved by St. Philip’s, we urge the Court to strike any provisions of the settlement that abridge First Amendment rights.

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Members of St. Philip’s Church in Moon will vote tonight on a proposed settlement with the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh that would allow them to keep their property but would also require them to cut ties with the rival Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh for at least five years.

The Rev. Eric Taylor, rector of St. Philip’s, said the proposal was the best option for his parish. Since the 2008 split in the original Episcopal diocese, the property of dozens of parishes that voted to leave the denomination and follow Archbishop Robert Duncan into the new Anglican Church in North America has been tied up in legal disputes. The settlement would leave St. Philip’s independent.

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The Rt. Rev. W. Andrew Waldo has called the Rev. Tommy H. Tipton, rector of Holy Cross Faith Memorial Church on Pawley’s Island, to serve the diocese as Canon to the Ordinary.

Tipton has served Holy Cross as rector since 1999….

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Any government in which the Brotherhood has a greater role would be less supportive of U.S. interests, says David Schenker, a Middle East adviser in the Defense Department under President George W. Bush. Senior leaders of the Brotherhood have pledged to end Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, he says.

The organization has been a revolutionary opposition group in Egypt since its founding in the 1920s, opposing corruption and advocating a conservative form of Islam in government. It inspired al-Qaeda and the Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas, which the State Department considers a terrorist group.

Over the years, radical elements of the Brotherhood have tried to initiate armed rebellion in Egypt. President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by a Brotherhood cell, leading to Mubarak’s rise and a crackdown on the group

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To be honest, with regard to the first comments, I do not understand…[Professor Tina Beattie’s] perplexity. It seems quite simple: it means that a goodly number of Anglicans and their clergy will be entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. Moreover, surely their arrival will only enrich the diversity of the Catholic Church, as they bring their own traditions, or “patrimony”, of liturgical worthiness, pastoral sensitivity and biblical engagement. They will speak an idiom clearly understood by Anglicans, who may then, we pray, feel moved to explore further the path to full communion by means of this familiar idiom.

Here, one suspects, is her problem. The Ordinariate reveals clearly that for the Catholic Church ecumenism is not about ongoing “dialogue” for its own sake. It is about encouraging and convincing Christians to enter into full communion with the Church, from which they are estranged due to actions centuries ago. If it means anything regarding the relations between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church it is that the Church has only one goal, ultimately, for ecumenical dialogue with Anglicans: that they return to the Church. This may disturb many Anglicans, for sure, but that is no reason to stop the progress of ecumenism.

Her second comments raised the eyebrows as she describes the actions of Ordinariate Catholics as “Protestant”. How it can be Protestant to enter into Communion with the Catholic Church is beyond me!

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Anglican archbishops concluded their six-day summit in Ireland on Sunday (Jan. 30) by issuing statements on a host of international issues, including violence against women in Africa, political chaos in Egypt, and the murder of a gay rights activist in Uganda.

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was among the two dozen senior bishops, or primates, gathered in Dublin who also sought to clarify their roles in governing the increasingly fractious Anglican Communion.

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“Southern Sudan, because of the decades of war, has so little infrastructure,” explains Bill Hammink, who overseas USAID in Sudan. “They are really starting construction here, starting from scratch in many ways.”

Hammink says the new road will cut the costs of imports from Uganda, on which Southern Sudan depends, and boost trade. That’s critical for an economy facing high prices, high unemployment and almost complete dependency on oil.

The goal of the United States and other donors is to prevent the failure of another state in Africa.

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The documents posted at the close of the recent Primates’ Meeting in Dublin tell the story. The takeover of the Instruments of Communion by ECUSA, aided and abetted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is now complete. Anything of substance was carefully avoided at Lambeth 2008; the proposed Covenant itself was derailed at ACC-14 in Jamaica, and then carefully defanged by the newly reorganized Standing Committee; and now the Primates’ Meeting has let itself descend into irrelevance — with the primates of the churches having most of the Anglican Communion’s membership absenting themselves, and refusing to prop up the pretense of normalcy any longer….

There is not a word in any of the statements released from Dublin today about the commitment that ECUSA’s House of Bishops was supposed to make, and which bishops such as +Bruno, +Shaw and the Presiding Bishop herself have so deliberately flouted ever since — along with the General Convention of the whole Church. It is abundantly clear, based on the statements from Dublin, that the Primates who gathered there are not going to follow through with their commitments at Dromantine and Dar es Salaam. So ECUSA has prevailed, and will have its way.

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Norma Castro laid the familiar figure on the counter before her, next to a basket of poblano peppers. Then, ignoring the twangy bachata music that blared from a nearby market stall, she furrowed her brow, delicately plucked it up and admired it.

Behold, the baby Jesus ”” away from his manger, and in Brooklyn, no less.

For the next half-hour, Ms. Castro plied the skills of a tailor and a surgeon on the infant, a footlong plaster statue. She draped it in layers of shimmering blue silk with gold brocade trim, carefully sewed shut the seams, then gently crowned the infant with a plastic golden halo.

She performs this service for hundreds of statues each year around this time, as Mexican Roman Catholics prepare to celebrate the Feast of Candelaria, or Candlemas, which marks the presentation of the infant Jesus at the temple ”” and the end of the holiday season ”” 40 days after Christmas.

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“While the recovery is underway, it is not the recovery we wanted,” Strauss-Kahn said in a speech at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. “It is a recovery beset by tensions and strains – which could even sow the seeds of the next crisis.”

He said two main dangers have emerged out of the recovery: imbalances between countries; and imbalances within countries.

“We see a worrying development: the pre-crisis pattern of global imbalances is re-emerging. Growth in economies with large external deficits, like the U.S., is still being driven by domestic demand. And growth in economies with large external surpluses, like China and Germany, is still being powered by exports. As the IMF warned in the years leading up to the crisisand as the G-20 has emphasizedthese global imbalances put the sustainability of the recovery at risk,” Strauss-Kahn said.

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It is now time for Mr. Mubarak, 82, to go, and President Barack Obama should say so clearly. In order to preserve an American reputation for not being just a fair-weather friend and to maintain relations with other such leaders, the United States should offer Mr. Mubarak refuge, making it clear that it is a means of helping Egyptians find a felicitous, non-violent solution.

The Egyptian army can then preserve order, as it has traditionally, until early, free and democratic elections can be held to choose Mr. Mubarak’s successor.

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The Australian federal election campaign of 2010 was the perfect illustration of the contemporary problem of leadership. And it’s this: we want a leader we can trust, but we aren’t ready to trust anyone. Or to put it another way: we want a leader who is real, but we aren’t prepared to believe anything they say.

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Check out the slideshow here.

Ohio public school teachers would pay a larger share of their retirement costs, work until they’re older and see pension benefits cut under changes approved Thursday that aim to keep their primary pension fund solvent by saving $10.9 billion.

The State Teachers Retirement System board approved a host of changes to the benefit program that serves the bulk of the pension fund’s 470,000 members. The changes must be approved by lawmakers and the governor.

Spokeswoman Laura Ecklar said the package marks the end of a two-year effort to find a way to keep the pension fund afloat for the long haul.

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Everliving God, we rejoice today in the fellowship of thy blessed servant Brigid, and we give thee thanks for her life of devoted service. Inspire us with life and light, and give us perseverance to serve thee all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end.

O God our Father, who hast sent thy Son to be our Saviour: Renew in us day by day the power of thy Holy Spirit, that with knowledge and zeal, with courage and hope, we may strive manfully in thy service, and ever live as faithful soldiers and servants of thy Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!

–Galatians 4:19

The last six decades of Middle Eastern history can be neatly divided into three phases: The first began with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 revolution in Egypt, the second with the Arab world’s humiliating loss in the 1967 war with Israel and the third with the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

A fourth phase likely started over the weekend in Egypt. But whether the political “reform” movement in Cairo’s streets turns out to be a positive or negative turn for the region””and for the U.S.””depends much on Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed ElBaradei and, to a lesser extent, Barack Obama. If history is any guide, it may take months, if not years, to know precisely the outcome.

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It isn’t just that so many Protestants exalt preaching above other pastoral arts. The challenge is preaching itself. Pro­claiming the gospel demands an interplay of highly developed emotional-spiritual-physical-intellectual qualities. Walking naked down Main Street while playing a harmonica is nothing compared to the personal exposure required to talk about God for 20 minutes to a group of people who have been, all week long, avoiding even the barest mention of God.

An additional difficulty is the uniquely auditory nature of the Christian faith. There may be much to be said for quiet, apophatic spirituality. But Paul says that faith “comes from hearing”””through the ear, not the eye. Public, verbal testimony is the fount of all Christian belief and practice. In a culture in which words are cheap, how do we produce even a few people with the guts to witness to so strange and countercultural a gospel, which begins with, “And God said . . .”? Nobody enters the full Christian faith without the aid of a preacher. But who becomes a preacher without a skilled teacher?

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The Rev. Dr. Robert Crouse, one of the most influential Canadian theologians of his generation, died Jan. 15 in his rural childhood home on Crouse Road, Crousetown, Nova Scotia, where his family had lived for more than 200 years. He was 80.

He had left the house 70 years before to attend King’s Collegiate School in Windsor, Nova Scotia, where he would later be judged the most brilliant student in its 263-year history. Academic distinction followed, with degrees from King’s, Tübingen, Toronto, and Harvard; and teaching posts at the universities of Harvard, Toronto, Bishop’s (Lennoxville), and Dalhousie. He taught for 32 years at King’s College.

A world authority on Augustine and Dante, he was in great demand internationally as a lecturer. For many years he served as the first non-Roman Catholic visiting professor at the Augustinianum of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. With James Doull he established a school of thought concerning the theological tradition of the ancient and medieval worlds that now has an international following.

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