The United States will likely suffer the loss of its triple-A credit rating from another major rating agency by the end of this year due to concerns over the deficit, Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecasts.
The trigger would be a likely failure by Congress to agree on a credible long-term plan to cut the U.S. deficit, the bank said in a research note published on Friday.
After decades of drift, denial and inaction, Rhode Island’s $14.8 billion pension system is in crisis. Ten cents of every state tax dollar now goes to retired public workers. Before long, Ms. Raimondo has been cautioning in whistle-stops here and across the state, that figure will climb perilously toward 20 cents. But the scary thing is that no one really knows. The Providence Journal recently tried to count all the municipal pension plans outside the state system and stopped at 155, conceding that it might have missed some. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission is asking questions, including the big one: Are these numbers for real?
“We’re in the fight of our lives for the future of this state,” Ms. Raimondo said in a recent interview. And if the fight is lost? “Either the pension fund runs out of money or cities go bankrupt.”
We are witnessing the emergence of something profound: Humans, historically divided by geography, culture and creed, are beginning to connect and collaborate on a scale never seen before. The driving force behind this creative wave are digital tools and networks that allow new forms of collaboration and knowledge creation.
What starts out as social networking is evolving into social production. We’ve witnessed how self-organizing groups, leveraging social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia, have launched revolutions throughout the Arab world and created the most important reference work in the English language in less than 10 years.
In spite of all the potential to innovate surrounding blogs, forums, wikis and social networks, there are legions of detractors. And no institution is more skeptical about the benefits of social media than education. But there are also few institutions that have more to gain from social media.
Kevin Schombert, a student with Down Syndrome, was crowned homecoming king this weekend at Urbana High School in Frederick County.
Schombert is a manager for the school’s basketball team and a huge sports fan.
While the overall U.S. economy seems to be stuck in neutral, there are a few bright spots. One of them is charitable giving to the arts, which was up more than 5 percent last year.
But a new study cautions that much of that support serves audiences that are wealthier and whiter than the country as a whole.
The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.
Assumptions that the Great Republic must inevitably spiral into economic and strategic decline – so like the chatter of the late 1980s, when Japan was in vogue – will seem wildly off the mark by then.
Telegraph readers already know about the “shale gas revolution” that has turned America into the world’s number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia….
Ask the parishioners of Grace Episcopal Church about disappointment and they will tell you how it was turned on its head. They will tell you about small gestures and generous spirits. They will share a legend in the making, a story to be told generations from now, to grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
They will tell you about the day the Earth cracked, a building closed and the people of the church were forced to find sanctuary elsewhere, how a great disappointment turned into a reward that transcended church walls and breached religious and racial ideologies.
The Rev. Canon J. Michael A. Wright, rector of Grace, took note of the symbolism. “Our walls are in need of repair, and what we’ve discovered is that other walls have come down.”
Today our two dioceses made history. Never before have two dioceses in the Episcopal Church “junctioned” together. So, today we begin a new journey to create a new Diocese in northern Wisconsin.
Bishop Russ and I will meet face to face next week to begin to outline our next steps. Following that meeting I will meet on Wednesday with our (Eau Claire) LIFT task force to futher develop these initiatives.
Then on the Friday before the week end of our November 4-5 Hudson Convention, I will meet with the Diocesan leadership (Standing Committee, Executive Committee and Trustees).
Those meetings will set the stage for our Annual Convention in Hudson, where we will begin to move into the next steps for creating a new Diocese. We will have 13 months to continue on as separate Dioceses, then on January 1, 2013 we will become a NEW Diocese with a new name and with a new sense of identity. All of this will also require validation from our July 2012 General Convention, and our national Executive Council.
Nashotah House is one of two orthodox Episcopal seminaries in the country, and the only one of 11 that shapes students in the Anglo-Catholic tradition that emphasizes the church’s Catholic, rather than Protestant, history and culture.
Students come, they say, for any number of reasons: the classical education, with its emphasis on Hebrew and Greek languages; the quasi-monastic culture; the sense of community; the focus on prayer and liturgy.
“This just matches more with my piety,” said Forrest Tucker, 31, a father of four and one on the way, who lives with his family in married-student housing on campus.
“You get into the spiritual rhythm of life here, and it becomes a very important part of your life,” he said.
Check it out–a terrific resource.
Have compassion, O Lord, upon all who are careless about eternal things and are living without thee and without hope. Send to them the light of thy Holy Spirit to teach them their great need, and in thy tender mercy bring them to the knowledge of thy love, through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.
In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet to Zerub’babel the son of She-al’ti-el, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehoz’adak, the high priest, “Thus says the LORD of hosts: This people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?
–Haggai 1:1-4
Just when the eurozone governments thought it could not get worse for Europe’s single currency, it did.
Shell-shocked EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Saturday were already reeling from the worst Franco-German rift for over 20 years and a fractious failure to resolve the problems that have brought Greece, and the euro, close to the brink.
But then a new bombshell hit as a joint report by the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that, without a default, the Greek debt crisis alone could swallow the eurozone’s entire €440 billion bailout fund – leaving nothing to spare to help the affected banks of Italy, Spain or France….
EU ministers were wrangling on Saturday over bolstering their banks, with some officials saying broad agreement was nearing but others warning that Spain, Italy and Portugal were objecting because of concerns over the costs involved.
“There is 24 against three – Italy, Spain and Portugal,” said one euro zone diplomat. “They think it’s too expensive. They don’t want to pay it.”
The Bishop of the Koforidua Diocese of the Anglican Church, Right Reverend Francis Benjamin Quashie, appealed to the GMA and the Fair Wages and Salary Commission to be flexible in their positions, and rather meet to enable them to reach amicable settlement of their differences.
Rt. Rev. Quashie made the appeal when he celebrated mass at the Out Patients Department of the Koforidua Regional Hospital on Tuesday, to mark St. Luke’s Day.
Whereas the historical record of Pelagius’s contribution to our theological tradition is shrouded in the political ambition of his theological antagonists who sought to discredit what they felt was a threat to the empire, and their ecclesiastical dominance, and whereas an understanding of his life and writings might bring more to bear on his good standing in our tradition, and whereas his restitution as a viable theological voice within our tradition might encourage a deeper understanding of sin, grace, free will, and the goodness of God’s creation, and whereas in as much as the history of Pelagius represents to some the struggle for theological exploration that is our birthright as Anglicans, Be it resolved, that this 105th Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta appoint a committee of discernment overseen by our Bishop, to consider these matters as a means to honor the contributions of Pelagius and reclaim his voice in our tradition And be it further resolved that this committee will report their conclusions at the next Annual Council.
Submitted by the Rev. Benno D. Pattison, Rector, the Church of the Epiphany
In this post, I want to lay out for all to see the conflicts (in addition to those I have already made manifest) which should disqualify still other members of the Board from proceeding any further in examining the claims made against Bishop Lawrence. Let us start with his colleagues — the bishops who sit on the Board besides its President, the Rt. Rev. Dorsey Henderson.
The Rt. Rev. Ian Douglas, Bishop of Connecticut, is presuming to judge whether, by leading his Diocese to remove its accession to the Canons of General Convention, Bishop Lawrence has thereby “abandoned” communion with ECUSA. Bishop Douglas should accuse himself of that charge, because he now leads a Diocese which has never acceded to the Canons of General Convention, but only to the Church’s Constitution….
Only 28% of parishes and missions reported that their finances were “excellent” or “good” in 2010. In 2000, the proportion in excellent or good financial condition was much higher (56%) than it was in 2005 or 2008 (32% and 33%, respectively) and than it is now. The proportion in serious or some financial difficulty almost doubled from 2000 to 2005, increasing from 13% to 25%; it remained unchanged in 2008, and increased to 28% in 2010.
Quietly released this week with no notice–a catastrophic ASA decline over the last five years of 16%.
The worldwide split in Anglicanism over gay issues has become linked to the concerns of some Church of England members concerned at the prospect of women bishops.
The Anglican Mission in England (AMIE), which was set up this year, shares some global Anglican leaders’ concerns over the gay question, but is also keen to help Anglicans who cannot accept women bishops.
And if it cannot reach agreement with the C of E, AMIE says members will look to the worldwide Anglican movement Gafcon for leadership.
On the Sabbath morning of Nov. 5, less than three weeks after the release of Sgt. First Class Gilad Shalit in a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, Jews in synagogues throughout the world will read a Torah portion concerning Abraham’s early journeys. The text recounts how invaders conquered the city of Sodom, taking Abraham’s nephew Lot as a captive, and the way Abraham raised an army to rescue him.
The timing of this Torah reading is an absolute coincidence, an unplanned synchronicity between the religious calendar and breaking news. Yet the passage also offers an essential explanation, one almost entirely ignored in coverage of the Shalit deal, for Israel’s anguished decision to pay a ransom in the form of more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including the perpetrators of terrorist attacks on civilians.
Also in his remarks, [Bishop Stacy] Sauls spoke about how in September when he came to work at the Episcopal Church Center in New York he found a “demoralized staff” that was fearful, overly regulated, distrustful and that felt their creativity was stifled. He said he has begun to refer to the staff as “missionaries” in keeping with the church’s corporate identity as the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society “because it suggests something about the reason for our being.”
“I want them grounded, not in a place, but in an endeavor and that endeavor is to participate in the mission of God and to lead others to participate in the mission of God,” he said.
Can an Anglican theologian from Britain revive an 80-year-old Catholic social justice theory and provide a solution to America’s economic woes and political polarization?
Philosopher and political thinker Phillip Blond thinks so, and he’s giving it everything he’s got.
Blond, who has been a counselor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, just wrapped up a two-week U.S. tour to pitch his retooled version of “distributism,” a theory that argues that both capitalism and government are out of control.
Newcastle Anglican Bishop Brian Farran is calling for major reforms to the New South Wales prison system, saying the imprisonment rate is unacceptably high.
He will raise the issue in his opening address at the 50th Synod of the Anglican Diocese, which gets underway at Maitland Town Hall this morning.
Catholic leaders said they could not rejoice at the death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, but they recalled some of his more brutal moments and speculated on the future of Christians in the region.
“Gadhafi brutalized people for 42 years. He lived by the sword and, therefore, it’s not surprising that he would die by the sword,” said Habib Malik, associate professor of history at the Lebanese American University, Byblos campus.
“The manner of his death was gruesome and, no matter how evil a person might have been, such an ending is never something to rejoice about; however, he is now dead and his people are justifiably relieved and hopeful about starting a new chapter in their history,” he said.
O thou who hast taught us that we are most truly free when we lose our wills in thine: Help us to attain to this liberty by continual surrender unto thee; that walking in the way which thou hast prepared for us, we may find our life in doing thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
–Gelasian Sacramentary
Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Phile’mon our beloved fellow worker and Ap’phia our sister and Archip’pus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may promote the knowledge of all the good that is ours in Christ.
–Philemon 1:1-6
Expectations remained high on Friday that European leaders were trying to craft a bolder solution to the region’s financial crisis, despite clear signals from French and German officials that they have sharp differences heading into an important weekend summit in Brussels.
As ever, the focus is on Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who have made a habit of cobbling together deals to present to their European Union colleagues. But forging an agreement now is harder than before, as Paris and Berlin face core differences over how to maximize the euro zone’s financial rescue fund and how far the European Central Bank should intervene in the bond markets, either on its own or through the bailout fund.
Already the two leaders have announced that Sunday’s summit, which had already been delayed to allow more time for negotiations, would be followed by another summit meeting as early as Wednesday. That announcement, paradoxically, seemed to buoy stock and bond markets, apparently because the Europeans at least appeared to be focusing intensely on resolving the crisis.
The [International Anglican Liturgical] consultation heard two important papers. The Rev. Dr. Simon Jones of Merton College, Oxford, raised the issue of requiring that one party be a baptized Christian (in the context of unashamedly revenue-driven television and internet ads by the Church of England). The Rt. Rev. Mdimi Mhogolo, Bishop of Tanganyika, Tanzania, lamented the suppression of indigenous customs of marriage through laws modeled on those of the United Kingdom. Both papers raised serious questions about how the Church engages with culture while at the same time not abandoning a Christian-based liturgy.
One of the thorniest problems for Anglicans is our concern, inherited from England as part of the medieval Western Church, to contract a marriage at the same time as celebrating the marriage. In the Byzantine tradition vows are not part of the official liturgy; marriage is celebrated by crowning and blessing, and not contracted by vows. Of course, in most Western countries, the requirements of canon law passed into state law, and the exchange of vows is not an optional extra, but a legal necessity.