The Rev. Justin Hoye was struggling to figure out what, if anything, to say on Sunday to his parishioners at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church about the new turmoil facing the local Roman Catholic diocese.

Days before, news had broken that Bishop Robert Finn and the diocese had been indicted on criminal charges for failing to report a priest found to have pornographic photos of children, including children of his congregants. The priest is accused of having taken more such photographs in the months before church leaders turned them over to law enforcement.

Father Hoye, after reaching out to priests in neighboring parishes ”” all of whom expressed the same uncertainty ”” decided not to address the matter directly from the pulpit but to offer a homily on man and God that emphasized forgiveness.

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Just before the American-led strikes against Libya in March, the Obama administration intensely debated whether to open the mission with a new kind of warfare: a cyberoffensive to disrupt and even disable the Qaddafi government’s air-defense system, which threatened allied warplanes.

While the exact techniques under consideration remain classified, the goal would have been to break through the firewalls of the Libyan government’s computer networks to sever military communications links and prevent the early-warning radars from gathering information and relaying it to missile batteries aiming at NATO warplanes.

But administration officials and even some military officers balked, fearing that it might set a precedent for other nations, in particular Russia or China, to carry out such offensives of their own, and questioning whether the attack could be mounted on such short notice.

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A spokesman for the Somali militant group al-Shabab is threatening Kenya with suicide attacks like those that killed 76 people in Uganda last year.

Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told a news conference in Mogadishu on Monday that Kenya must pull its troops out of Somalia. Lines of Kenyan troops poured into Somalia over the weekend. Kenyan officials say the country has the right to defend itself from Somalia’s most powerful militant group.

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Almighty God, who didst inspire thy servant Luke the physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of thy Son: Graciously continue in thy Church the like love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of thy Name; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Stir up, O Lord, the wills of thy people and kindle our understanding; that we may discern the way to a just and ordered society, where all may work and all may find a just reward, and thy people may serve thee and one another in peace and goodwill, in the spirit of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Harold Anson

At that time Jesus declared, “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

–Matthew 11:25-30

With sadness we acknowledge the death of the Rt. Rev. A. Donald Davies, first Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. Bishop Davies died in the early hours of Sunday, Oct. 16, at the age of 91. A Requiem will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 21, at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Granbury, Texas.

Bishop Davies was preceded in death by his wife of almost 70 years, the former Mabel Roberts, and a son, Allan David Davies. He is survived by four children: Dona Davies; Timothy Davies and his wife, Anita; Mark Davies; and Mary Townsend and her husband, Richard; as well as 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

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Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission (EPGM) has announced that it will officially disband as a mission networking organization serving the Episcopal Church, according to an Oct. 15 news release.

The decision to disband was made at EPGM’s annual meeting, held at the Everyone Everywhere 2011 conference in Estes Park, Colorado, and approved by consensus of the attending membership organizations, the release said.

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Thus [we hear from today’s Living Church article that] Bishop Henderson previously worked with Mr. J. B. Burch when Bishop Henderson served on the former “Title IV Review Committee” (of which Bishop Waggoner was the chair). And in that capacity, Bishop Henderson tells us, “he did preliminary work on the Bishop Lawrence information . . .”.

What are we to make of this? It indicates that the so-called allegations of “abandonment” against Bishop Lawrence were on the docket of the former Title IV Review Committee until that body ceased to operate as of July 1, 2011. But if that is the case, they must have been presented with the allegations in June 2011 or earlier — possibly (as I indicated in an earlier post) as long ago as last September.

One wonders why it took so long for Bishop Lawrence to be informed of the allegations made against him, if that chronology is true….

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A draft of a report to be released next month calls for the creation of a statewide office in Pennsylvania to oversee the representation of poor people in the criminal justice system, concluding that the current system “labors under an obsolete, purely localized system, a structure that impedes efforts to represent clients effectively.”

Although the draft, 151-page report is highly critical of the current state of indigent defense in the commonwealth — Pennsylvania is the only state that provides no funding to defend the poor — it suggests that the statewide office incorporate the current county-by-county structure of the public defenders’ offices.

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In many an Episcopal diocese a constant undercover struggle for control goes on between High-Church and Low-Church factions. When a special convention of the diocese of Chicago met last September to elect a successor to the late Bishop George Craig Stewart, this struggle came into the open. Chicago traditionally has a High-Church bishop, though its richest parishes (St. Chrysostom’s, St. James’s, St. Paul’s in Chicago; Holy Spirit, Lake Forest; Christ, Winnetka) are Low-Church. High-Church candidate was a handsome monk, the Right Rev. Spence Burton, Suffragan Bishop of Haiti. Low-Church candidate was a handsome rector, Dr. Dudley Scott Stark of St. Chrysostom’s. In 17 ballots, neither could muster a majority. Nor could a middle-reader, Dr. Harold L. Bowen of St. Mark’s, Evanston.

After the convention adjourned, Dr. Bowen came out for a compromise candidate: the Rev. Wallace Edmonds Conkling, rector of St. Luke’s, Germantown, Pa., who was described as a “liberal Catholic”””the liberal to satisfy Low-churchmen, the Catholic to appease High-churchmen. Last week the convention met again, chose Father Conkling on the second ballot. For the first time in the history of the diocese, the bishop-elect did not accept at once, said he would first have to go to Chicago and survey the situation.

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The Rev. Patrick Augustine grew up a member of Pakistan’s often oppressed Christian minority, but he had to come to the United States to learn humility. As he’s done at every stop on his career, Augustine, rector of La Crosse’s Christ Episcopal Church on Main Street, has devoted himself to working for peace and reconciliation between people of different faiths.

Though a member of a tiny minority – Christians account for less than 2 percent of the Pakistani population – Augustine was accustomed to privilege.

Read it all.

Mecca, we have a problem.

It is not America, nor Europe, and no, it is certainly not Israel.

The problem is Christian persecution. Some 14 centuries after the prophet Mohammed wrote, “Christians are my citizens, and by God, I hold out against anything that displeases them,” Christian persecution has become the norm in too many Muslim-majority nations.

A few days ago, 25 Christians were killed in Egypt after state television falsely accused them of creating violence ”” while they peacefully protested violence against their churches. Rather than fight for the rights of Christians, the Muslim mob attacked them.

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The Church of England cleared another legislative hurdle to appointing women bishops, but traditionalist opponents warned on Monday the move was not a foregone conclusion.

Some Anglican provinces already have women bishops, including Australia, the United States and Canada, but the ordination of women and homosexuals as bishops as well as same-sex marriages remain the most divisive issues facing the Anglican Communion, which has 77 million members worldwide.

The Church of England has voted in principle for women to be consecrated, and draft legislation is currently being looked at by its 44 dioceses, or groups of parishes, as part of its long legislative process.

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Despite the marketing pitch from the armed forces, which promises to prepare soldiers for the working world, recent veterans are more likely to be unemployed than their civilian counterparts.

Veterans who left military service in the past decade have an unemployment rate of 11.7 percent, well above the overall jobless rate of 9.1 percent, according to fresh data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The elevated unemployment rate for new veterans has persisted despite repeated efforts to reduce it.

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I share these two experiences alongside a comment I came across years ago: every church and every member of the clergy, over a span of time, needs to belong to a denomination. I serve as a district superintendent, and I am aware of the church’s imperfections, and my own. I watch over 69 local churches and a few assorted institutions within our geographical boundaries, and we are at work on the development of a new church plant and the development of a missional church network. At any given time about 3-5 of these churches are in real crisis: they are in need of outside intervention, mediation, conflict resolution and spiritual guidance. A denomination, at its best, provides a framework for the protection of the clergy in a workplace and supervision of even the most powerful clergy leaders. In addition, a denomination works out the implications of a missional strategy in an area that is more nuanced than simply whatever the market can bear.

I share these experiences at a time when there is much rhetoric around moving energy, resources and attention to the local church. I love the local church. It is the basic context for the mission of making disciples for the transformation of the world. At the same time, the local church will, on occasion, be stronger as it accomplishes mission that is beyond its own capacity, and as it is accountable to a wisdom that is outside its own day to day movements.

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J.B. held the equivalent position with the Review Committee under the previous version of Title IV. As “Lay Assessor” to the Review Committee, he did the same work that the “Church Attorney” now does for the Disciplinary Board. While in that position, he did preliminary work on the Bishop Lawrence information, so he is already more than familiar with that information and the task which is now ours.

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Watch it all.

It speaks volumes for the state of America’s political dialogue that a new book defending nation-building mentions the word “Islam” in passing just twice, not counting footnotes or index. Robert Kagan reviews Prof. Jeremi Suri’s little tome entitled Liberty’s Surest Guardian: Nation-Building From the Founders to Obama in Sunday’s New York Times….

It is astonishing that Prof. Suri, who holds an important chair at the University of Texas at Austin, could publish a book on the subject without so much as a nod towards the cultural, religious, and sociological issues that make democracy in the Muslim world a vastly different proposition than in Italy. And it is just as lamentable that Robert Kagan would lump the Catholic Philippines of 1900 together with the Muslim Afghanistan of 2011, as if such issues made no difference at all.

To Kagan, Suri, and most of the nation-builders, religion does not make a difference, for they all come out of a school of “political philosophy” that believes (with Thomas Hobbes) that religion is useful for socializing the masses but never to be taken seriously, and that what human beings really care about is individual self-preservation.

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A specter haunts America: downward mobility. Every generation, we believe, should live better than its predecessor. By and large, Americans still embrace that promise. A Pew survey earlier this year found that 48 percent of respondents felt that their children’s living standards would exceed their own. Although that’s down from 61 percent in 2002, it’s on a par with the mid-1990s. But these expectations could be dashed. For young Americans, the future could be dimmer.

Along with jobs, the 2012 presidential election could be fought over this issue. “Can the Middle Class Be Saved?” worried a recent cover story in the Atlantic. Pessimism rises with schooling. In the Pew poll, 54 percent of respondents with a high-school diploma or less felt their children would do better; only 35 percent of graduate school alums agreed. “A kind of depression has set in,” writes Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. “We’ve lost our mojo, our groove.”

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Children’s minister Sarah Teather said the trials would start next summer and run for two years. The scheme will cost £5 million for the vouchers plus set-up costs.

“The overwhelming evidence from all the experts is that a child’s development in the first five years of their life is the single biggest factor influencing their future life chances, health and educational attainment,” she said.

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As a Christian and a leader, what does it mean to use technology well?

As a follower of Christ, I have to be diligent at following him in all facets of my life. The fastest growing new area of existence is the virtual existence. I have had to increase my awareness of the presence of God when I use technology, the Internet especially. I discovered a couple of years ago, much to my chagrin, that when I would go online for extended periods of time, I would unconsciously shut off the part of my brain that searched for God. Somehow I decided that God wasn’t there; I wasn’t looking for him. But now I try to incorporate into my virtual existence all of the things I do in my physical existence in practicing the presence of God. I found that online, it can happen just as well as it can in real life. The barriers online that don’t exist in real life have to do with embodiment””not being able to be with the other person that you’re engaged with face to face. That kind of challenge is an added dimension that makes practicing the presence of God online harder. As I say in my book Digital Disciple, there are tremendous opportunities for connection online, but every connection comes attached with the danger of isolation. So we have to work on moving toward those connections and not ignoring the nature of those dangers. If we believe that God is who God says God is, then we have to believe that God is in all things, including the things that humans have created, like virtual reality.

Read it all.

In 30 years of serving the Episcopal Church in ordained ministry, I’ve encouraged people to be honest with me, to tell me what they think . . . and some folks have. I have at one point or another been told that I am too liberal, not liberal enough, too conservative. and not conservative enough. Maybe I am; I might be any one of those things at any one moment on any one issue, but surely I can’t be all of those things at once, all the time. I think the real truth of it is that as Episcopalians, and as Americans, we are encouraged to think for ourselves, which means that we will inevitably disagree from time to time. Sometimes when we disagree it is convenient to choose up sides and label who’s on my team and who’s on yours. Then we have not only a disagreement but also a competition, with winners and losers; we can make almost anything competitive….

I’ve heard Bishop [Henry] Parsley say several times that he is “radically moderate,” which I think is an apt description of him. I think my grandfather used to tell us to be “moderate in all things, including moderation.” Perhaps unlike my radical friend Henry, I can only be moderately moderate””trying to find the middle ground most of the time, hoping to bring together people who have the freedom to disagree so that we can talk to each other without attaching labels or calling names or tearing apart the Church we love so that together we can join together to serve God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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From here:

Bishop Michael had two conversations with Archbishop Rowan who was well aware of the diocese’s situation regarding recent court decisions. Bishop Michael asked him if he would consider casting his eye around the communion for a possible interim appointment for St John’s, Shaughnessy. Archbishop Rowan said that he would and when he bid Bishop Michael farewell he told him that “thoughts were forming.” Since then, he has been very busy preparing for his African trip. Bishop Michael has followed up on the conversation with a letter.

Stuff and nonsense, Mr. Gerns. A complaint is made up of allegations. Allegations are charges — claims that what is stated is true. Bishop Lawrence has been charged by persons undisclosed with “abandonment of communion” under Canon IV.16. Had he not been so charged, the Disciplinary Board for Bishops would never have gotten involved. (And by the way, Mr. Gerns: just how does a Bishop go about abandoning his Church by “inaction”? Wouldn’t that happen only if the Church in question first abandoned that particular Bishop, and he did “not act” so as to follow them?)…

More stuff and nonsense. The charges have already been filed — that is how the Board gets to investigate them. (What? — you thought they acted only on rumors, and not charges? Well, actually, the Canon lets them act on anything that comes to their attention. But in this instance, as Bishop Henderson stated, they are acting on complaints brought by persons unknown — to us, but not to the Disciplinary Board — within Bishop Lawrence’s Diocese.)

And the charges will not get “filed” again. Instead, by a simple majority vote of its members, the Board will either certify that “abandonment” has occurred, or it will not. There will be no further investigation. There will be no “attempts at reconciliation.” And there will certainly be no hearing, because the Canon (IV.16) does not provide for one.

Read it all (being sure to follow the link to Mr. Germs piece to which it is responding).

“The Macintosh is Catholic,” wrote [Umberto] Eco. “It tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach ”” if not the kingdom of Heaven ”” the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons.”

Nearly two decades later, the hagiographers producing eulogies for Steve Jobs produced evidence that Eco was close ”” but that he needed to soar past Rome and around the globe to India and Japan. In essay after essay, journalists have argued that the so-called “cult of Mac” was driven by the Apple leader’s “Zen-like” state of mind.

It seems those iMacs, iPods, iPhones, iPads and MacBooks really were religious objects after all, with their gleaming surfaces of glass, aluminum and white or black plastic. There must have been a grand scheme behind that yin-yang minimalism.

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Check it out.

Almighty God, we praise thy name for thy bishop and martyr Ignatius of Antioch, who offered himself as grain to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts that he might present unto thee the pure bread of sacrifice. Accept, we pray thee, the willing tribute of our lives, and give us a share in the pure and spotless offering of thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God, who hast made the earth so fair, and written thy glory in the heavens: Help us inwardly to respond to all that is outwardly true and beautiful, so that as we pass through things temporal we may never lose the vision of the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Make me to know thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me, for thou art the God of my salvation; for thee I wait all the day long. Be mindful of thy mercy, O LORD, and of thy steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, or my transgressions; according to thy steadfast love remember me, for thy goodness’ sake, O LORD! Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

–Psalm 25:4-10