Almighty God, who has taught us in thy holy Word that the law was given by Moses, but that grace and truth came by Jesus Christ: Grant that we, being not under the law but under grace, may live as children of that Jerusalem which is above, and rejoice in the freedom of our heavenly citizenship; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
–Jacob Mountain
Now they had forgotten to bring bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” And they discussed it with one another, saying, “We have no bread.” And being aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember?
–Mark 8:14-18
If you want to understand better why so many states””from New York to Wisconsin to California””are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.
It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?
Every state in America today except for two””Indiana and Wisconsin””has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods.
Church of Our Saviour, Oatlands, which reached an amicable property settlement Feb. 20 with the Diocese of Virginia, has bought a 24-acre site for its new home, only a mile north of its current location in rural Loudoun County. The parish will buy Oaksworth Farm, a former Christmas-tree farm and vineyard, for $1,870,000, said the Rev. Elijah White, rector of Our Saviour since 1977.
U.S. officials are becoming increasingly resigned to the possibility of a protracted stalemate in Libya, with rebels retaining control of the eastern half of the divided country but lacking the muscle to drive Moammar Gaddafi from power.
Such a deadlock ”” perhaps backed by a formal cease-fire agreement ”” could help ensure the safety of Libyan civilians caught in the crossfire between the warring sides. But it could also dramatically expand the financial and military commitments by the United States and allied countries that have intervened in the six-week-old conflict, according to U.S. officials familiar with planning for the Libyan operation.
Canada is a very different country than the U.S., something Canadians haven’t come to appreciate until relatively recent years. It is more secure in its identity, not subjecting its students to daily pledges of allegiance, raised eyebrows or worse in questioning a U.S. military intervention (rallying around the flag is a Canadian virtue, certainly, when we’re agreed the cause is just, although even then there will be vocal objections widely seen to be legitimate and worthy of a hearing).
Fundamentally, though, the difference between these two countries sharing the northern portion of North America are these. Americans cling to a quite false belief in the power of individualism, with the right to be left alone that accompanies that libertarian spirit, though every significant advance in the American Experience, from the Revolution to the Internet, has been sponsored by the state. Canadians, with no such illusions about the necessity of collective action, chose for their guiding national principal not the defiantly self-interested “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” but “peace, order and good government.” In essence, to be American, according to that country’s founding spirit, is to have the right to do as one pleases. To be Canadian is to consider the implications for others of the things one does. And so civility is our guiding principle.
That is not an argument for the superiority of one culture over others….
Abboud al-Zomor ”” the former intelligence officer who supplied the bullets that killed President Anwar el-Sadat and is Egypt’s most notorious newly released prisoner ”” waxes enthusiastic about ending the violent jihad he once led.
“The ballot boxes will decide who will win at the end of the day,” Mr. Zomor said during an interview in his large family compound in this hamlet on Cairo’s western edge. “There is no longer any need for me to use violence against those who gave us our freedom and allowed us to be part of political life.”
In its drive to create a perfect Islamic state, his Islamic Group and other groups like it were once synonymous with some of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Egypt. But they are now leaping aboard the democracy bandwagon, alarming those who believe that religious radicals are seeking to put in place strict Islamic law through ballots.
Along with nationwide prayers on Sunday the Church has also organised a two-day retreat for drivers where they can reflect upon their attitude when they get behind a wheel.
Aggressive and bad driving make a significant contribution to the high death-rate on Polish roads, one of the worst in the developed world. A survey by the by the OECD-affiliated International Transport Forum for 2009 found there were 12 deaths on Polish roads for every 100,000 inhabitants while the UK clocked up just 3.9 despite having more cars and a greater road network than Poland.
“Many of us behave like pagans when we’re driving,” said Father Marian Midura, the organiser of the prayer day, which has the support of the national police. “Even though we hang rosaries, carry images of saints and have the early Christian sign of the fish on our cars we do not respect other drivers.” Priests will also beseech people to avoid drink driving, another contributing factor to the death rate.
The Vatican is scrambling ahead of a Friday deadline to finalize new rules for how the Holy See will monitor the movement of funds in and out of Vatican walls and punish money launderers.
Pope Benedict XVI late last year bowed to the demands of the international financial community and announced the Vatican would create a watchdog to police its bank’s opaque finances and bring to justice anyone who commits financial misdeeds on Vatican territory. As the watchdog formally comes into power on Friday, regulators and banks in Italy and abroad will be watching closely to see if the new measures have teeth.
Among them, officials have drafted a measure that would require all Vatican departments to inform the watchdog when they transfer funds inside the Vatican or abroad, disclosing the sender, recipient and nature of the transaction, according to a person familiar with the matter. It isn’t clear if that will be introduced along with other rules on Friday, as it is still being reviewed, the person said.
Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson declared his side performed like “champions” to beat West Ham.
The Premier League leaders recovered from 2-0 down to win 4-2 with striker Wayne Rooney getting a hat-trick.
“We played like champions,” said Ferguson. “It was a real championship performance as far as I’m concerned.”
From the start, we need to think about how to think about growing old””and, in particular, how to think not simply of aging but of human aging. This will require that we learn from but also move beyond what has become the standard way to think about aging. Scholars study both why we age and how we age. The first seems to invite talk about a purpose, the second a mechanism. The first is more germane to my inquiry here.
Why do we age? The dominant answer today is that of evolutionary biology. We age because nature has relatively little stake in keeping us alive beyond our reproductive years. Insofar as we may speak of our lives having a point, it is to be carriers of DNA. Having passed that on to the next generation, we are dispensable. Any genetic trait harmful enough to cause death before the reproductive years will have difficulty surviving the filter of natural selection. Those who have such traits are less likely to reproduce, less likely to be effective carriers and transmitters of DNA. And, by contrast, natural selection will have relatively little effect on harmful genes if those harms appear only in the post-reproductive years.
The Churches Conservation Trust charity was set up in 1969 to receive from dioceses historic churches which the Church of England considers are no longer required for worship and maintain them. The churches remain consecrated and can be used for occasional services.
The new scheme launched in Lincolnshire is the Archway Project.
“The Archway Project uses historic churches to bring together creative artists and local volunteers as part of our continuing work to place churches firmly at the heart of communities,” said Loyd Grossman, chairman of the Churches Conservation Trust, opening the project at Alford Manor House, Alford, on Thursday, March 24.
Teach thy Church, O Lord, we beseech thee, to value and support pioneering and courageous missionaries, whom thou callest, as thou didst thy servant James Lloyd Breck, to preach and teach, and plant thy Church in new regions; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
O Lord, take thou full possession of my heart, raise there thy throne, and command there as thou dost in heaven. Being created by thee, let me live to thee. Being created for thee, let me ever act for thy glory. Being redeemed by thee, let me render to thee what is thine, and let my spirit ever cleave to thee alone; for thy name’s sake.
–John Wesley (1703-1791)
On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God.
–Psalm 87:1-3
The Bishop of Burnley wants to increase the number of churches in Lancashire taking part in Back to Church Sunday.
Last year only 33 of the 250 churches in the Blackburn Diocese took part in the initiative, aimed at getting former parishioners back into the pews.
The Right Reverend John Goddard also called for more of the Christian denominations to join the celebration.
While most Christian ministers’ earliest influences are religious mentors and the Bible, Michael Hill’s involved rock music.
That’s what first impressed the Rev. Dr. Frank Larisey, pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Orangeburg, about the current Bishop of Bristol, England.
“When he was about 17 or 18, he was in a band that opened for The Who,” Larisey said. “He was a good lead guitarist.”
The man who Larisey calls “one of the best speakers I’ve heard in my life” will bring his message, “What Happens When You Get It?” to the Church of the Redeemer beginning with a potluck dinner at 7 p.m. Friday, April 1. Hill will also give the sermon during the 8 and 10:30 a.m. worship services Sunday, April 3.
Without using the word, we were acknowledging that in such a context, we are multi-faith. When people of different faiths are found together, in a conference, neighborhood, or nation, they are best described as multi-faith, representing different faiths.
Worldwide trends indicate that multi-faith is both a current reality and our future. The number of people who claim adherence to the major world religions is growing. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and other post-Enlightenment thinkers predicted the death of God and the decline of religious belief over 100 years ago, but their predictions were premature. In fact, secular thinking has long embraced the idea that religion was the socio-political problem, not so much the solution.
If anything, “God is dead” has been replaced with “God is back.” Economists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, an atheist and a Roman Catholic, wrote a fascinating book in 2008 with that title. In it they noted that while statistics about religious observance are notoriously untrustworthy, most surveys seem to indicate that the global drift toward secularism has halted. Quite a few surveys show religious belief to be on the rise. They reference one source that says that “the proportion of people attached to the world’s four largest religions””Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism””rose from 67 percent in 1900 to 73 percent in 2005, and may reach 80 percent by 2025.”
Marriage rates in England and Wales are at their lowest since records began, new statistics show.
Just 21.3 out of every 1,000 males aged 16 plus were married in 2009, down from a rate of 22.0 in 2008, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
The proportion of women aged 16 plus who were married fell from 19.9 in 2008 to 19.2 in 2009.
The rates were the lowest since calculations of rates began in 1862.
A group of religious non-believers at Fort Bragg is pushing for the U.S. military to make sure they get the same treatment as religious groups.
Polygamy””or more specifically polygyny, the marriage of one man to more than one woman””has been widespread in human history. And it is becoming increasingly common, particularly in Muslim enclaves””including in Paris, London and New York.
A 2006 report by the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights reported that approximately 180,000 people were living in polygamous households in France. For decades, France allowed entrance to polygamous immigrants from about 50 countries where the practice was legal. When the French government banned polygamy in 1993, it tried to support the decohabitation of such couples if a wife wanted to move into her own apartment with her children.
In Britain, where immigration laws have banned the practice for longer, there appear to be about a thousand valid polygamous marriages, mostly among immigrants who married elsewhere, such as in Pakistan. Such families are allowed to collect social security benefits for each wife, although the government has apparently not counted how many are doing so.
Educated 20- and 30-somethings are flocking to live downtown in the USA’s largest cities ”” even urban centers that are losing population.
In more than two-thirds of the nation’s 51 largest cities, the young, college-educated population in the past decade grew twice as fast within 3 miles of the urban center as in the rest of the metropolitan area ”” up an average 26% compared with 13% in other parts.
Even in Detroit, where the population shrank by 25% since 2000, downtown added 2,000 young and educated residents during that time, up 59% , according to analysis of Census data by Impresa Inc., an economic consulting firm.
A funeral is a solemn rite of passage, and since the days of ancient civilization, the eulogy has been a speech of good words for the dead.
That’s changing, say funeral directors, clergy and theologians. Even amid tragedy, today’s eulogy increasingly includes anecdotes that point to the deceased’s foibles and quirks, offering a nuanced character sketch. “More often, people are saying, ‘Let’s be realistic about this person,” says Hari P. Close, a funeral director who worked with the McNeely family.
Unless Christians acted now to defend the church and the true Gospel, liberal forces that preached a false Gospel would prevail within 10 years, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney and General Secretary of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) said in Port Elizabeth yesterday.
Speaking at a meeting of the FCA in St Saviour’s Anglican Church… [this week], Jensen said that the turmoil in the worldwide Anglican Communion which was triggered by the approval of gay marriages and ordination of gay bishops in North America, highlighted an issue that was much broader than homosexuality: it went to the authority of Scripture and the heart of the Gospel. He said the issue was not just a threat to Anglicans but to the church at large.
Two senior priests of the Diocese of Fort Worth have left the breakaway Anglo-Catholic diocese for the Anglican Ordinariate.
On March 8, Bishop Jack Iker announced that his number two man, Canon Charles Hough, and Fr. Louis Tobola had resigned their posts effective March 31.
The bishop noted Canon Hough had served as Canon to the Ordinary for the past 17 years, and he and Fr. Tobola had each served for over 30 years in the diocese. “Though they have not yet resigned from the ordained ministry, they are expected to do so at the time the Ordinariate is established for former Anglicans who wish to come into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church,” Bishop Iker said.