A special session of the general synod of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone will be held in November in Asunción, Paraguay to respond to the Nov 12, 2010 vote by the Diocese of Uruguay to quit the province and seek alternative metropolitan oversight.

In a statement released on behalf of the province by the Bishop of Bolivia on June 12, the Rt. Rev. Frank Lyons reported the May 16-18 provincial executive council meeting agreed to bring forward by two years the next meeting of synod to respond to the diocese’s request.

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The current battle over raising the federal government’s debt ceiling is driven not by careful consideration of the economics but by ideology and brinkmanship. Democrats refuse to consider serious spending reform. Republicans reject higher taxes. Many tea-party types would rather see America’s government default than compromise on spending. The result is a perilous stand-off””and a growing danger that America will have to make drastic short-term spending cuts, or even find itself forced into a technical default.

A parallel dynamic is playing out in the euro zone, where the debate about how to deal with Greece’s debt crisis has descended into a high-stakes stand-off between Germany, which wants the maturities on Greek bonds to be extended, and the ECB, which resists any debt restructuring… The hope is still that Europe’s leaders will come up with a face-saving compromise at their summit on June 23rd-24th. But the longer the confrontation continues, the greater the risk of an accident: a chaotic Greek default and exit from the euro.

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Coming soon to the Internet: website addresses that end in “.bank,” “.Vegas” and “.Canon.”

The organization that oversees the Internet address system is preparing to open the floodgates to a nearly limitless selection of new website suffixes, including ones in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. That could usher in the most sweeping transformation of the Domain Name System since its creation in the 1980s.

More than 300 suffixes are available today, the bulk of them country-code domains, such as “.uk” for the United Kingdom and “.de” for Germany.

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Dozens of U.S. cities and towns are being bruised by the deepening Greek debt crisis even though they are thousands of miles away and don’t own any of the country’s bonds.

From a skating rink in Everett, Wash., to New York City’s schools to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, interest rates on some bonds have soared since late May and could rise even further because money-market investors are less willing to buy some of the $17 billion in municipal bond deals backed by Dexia SA, a Belgian-French bank shaken by its exposure to government debts in Greece.

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Physics teaches us that bubbles are spherical because that is the lowest energy state. Whether this applies to the shape and energy of journalists, I will leave you to decide. Also whether bubbles – in terms of being blown, floating along, being popped at any time – relates to newspapers in our current climate, we can discuss over lunch.

Is journalistic life a free floating immoral bubble or is there such a thing as ”˜moral journalism’, which is grounded in gravitas? ”˜Moral journalism’ is not, I believe, an oxymoron like ”˜healthy tan’ or ”˜Sun reader’ (perhaps that is unfair…) or even, remembering the 1980s software, ”˜Microsoft Works’. I am using the phrase not so much about articles of scandal, or unethical ways of gathering news (though the latter is newsworthy itself at the moment concerning phone hacking): I am concerned with weighty, profound writing which draws on a hinterland of accumulated moral thinking.

This is the journalism to be encouraged…

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Fathers are never far from the headlines, from controversies around teenage fathers to reports on how good fathers have such a positive influence on the development of their children. All this coverage shows that we instinctively recognise the importance of fathers to us individually and to society as a whole. So we shouldn’t be surprised that this emphasis on, and honouring of, good fatherhood is a reflection of the way in which God deals with the human race.

I have always believed in my head that God loves me unconditionally but it was only when I became a father myself that I began to understand it with my heart. From the moment when I first set eyes on my first child, now aged ten, my love for her was so immediate and strong that I would have done anything to protect her – and still would. And that set me wondering about the love of God: if I, with all my faults, could love like that, then maybe I could understand in a new way how it is possible for God to love me like this.

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Heavenly Father,
you entrusted your Son Jesus,
the child of Mary,
to the care of Joseph, an earthly father.
Bless all fathers
as they care for their families.
Give them strength and wisdom,
tenderness and patience;
support them in the work they have to do,
protecting those who look to them,
as we look to you for love and salvation,
through Jesus Christ our rock and defender.
AllAmen.

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Praise be to thee, O God the Father, who didst create all things by thy power and wisdom, and didst so love the world as to give thy Son to be our Saviour.

Praise be to thee, O God the Son, who wast made man like unto us in all things, sin except, and wast delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification.

Praise be to thee, O God the Holy Spirit, who dost lead us into all truth, and dost shed abroad the love of God in our hearts.

All praise and glory be to thee, O God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for ever and ever.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

–Ephesians 4:1-7

Budde has served as rector of St. John’s, Minneapolis since 1993 and has guided that congregation through significant membership and financial growth, two capital campaigns and comprehensive ministry development. Since 2001, she has served as a conference leader for CREDO, an organization committed to clergy wellness and vocational renewal. She was a leader of the Diocese of Minnesota’s Commission for Mission Strategy and has served that diocese as dean of the Minneapolis Region, General Convention deputy, on the Standing Committee, and in support of diocesan multi-cultural ministries. She speaks fluent Spanish and has a long history of work among Spanish-speaking people. A well-regarded preacher, teacher and conference leader, Budde is the author of Gathering Up the Fragments: Preaching as Spiritual Practice, published in 2009. She holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in theology from the Virginia Theological Seminary and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester, N.Y., where she majored in history. She has been married to Paul Budde for 25 years, and has two sons, Amos, 23, and Patrick, 20.

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Some churches are objecting to Alabama’s tough new law that aims to clamp down on illegal immigration, saying it violates Christian principles in the heart of the Bible Belt.

Leaders of the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church all have criticized the law as running counter to biblical teachings about caring for neighbors, helping visitors and showing hospitality to strangers. Episcopal Bishop Henry N. Parsley of Birmingham said the law “will make it impossible to love and be hospitable to our neighbors as we ought to be.”

“It is a profoundly disappointing decision and a sad moment for our state,” he said in a statement late Wednesday.

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Congratulations to them.