While the public eye is focused on the troubles of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia – which announced Friday that it would close four high schools, and shutter or merge 44 elementary schools – the struggles of St. James Episcopal and Leiper Presbyterian are illustrative of the demographic trends that likewise have battered mainline Protestant congregations.

“Across the board, it’s increasingly tough sledding,” said David Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, which studies trends in faith life.

The congregations often face dwindling membership and aging buildings. Finances are shrinking, no thanks to the floundering economy, and that hinders the offering of programming that can attract young families, Roozen said.

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On Dec. 21, 2012, the Mayan calendar reaches the end of its 5,126 epoch. That’s a cause of consternation among some end-times adherents, and amusement among some descendants of the Maya.
Fresh from having survived one end-of-the-world prediction””a two-stage affair covering 2011’s drop-dead dates of May 21 and Oct. 21””we now plunge into the countdown for End Times 2012.

Should you be inclined, you can use your smart phone to check how many days are remaining before a date that was carved into rock by a pre-Columbian civilization.

You can blame””or credit””the Maya for the commotion. Or, more likely, their New Age adherents.

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Too many criminals are sent to prison and punishing them in public instead could be more effective, the Bishop of Liverpool said today.

The Right Reverend James Jones, the Anglican bishop for prisons, said it was simply not enough to lock up criminals.

He added that community payback schemes could act as a deterrent for others and help to reduce reoffending.

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Former Anglican monk and bishop, Robert Mercer, has been received into the full communion of the Catholic Church by Monsignor Keith Newton through the Personal Ordinariate of
Our Lady of Walsingham.

On Saturday 7 January, Mgr Newton celebrated Mass according to the Book of Divine Worship at the historic church of St Agatha’s, Portsmouth, by kind permission of the Reverend John Maunder, who cares for the Traditional Anglican Communion faithful in that area.

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Phil Blackwell, pastor of Chicago Temple (United Methodist Church) in Chicago, said the opinion legalized the lottery online, but it did not change the fact that the Illinois lottery is “cynical, short-sighted and cowardly.”

Blackwell characterized the thinking of Illinois lawmakers this way: “‘Since people are going to throw away their money on gambling anyway, let’s get as much of it as we can.’ Unlike levying a ‘sin tax’ on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes, by devising and promoting the lottery the state government is the pusher of the ‘sin’ itself, dedicated to producing more and bigger losers in order to make it pay.”

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The ‘Commission on Assisted Dying’ is a self-appointed group that excluded from its membership anyone with a known objection to assisted suicide. In contrast, the majority of commissioners, appointed personally by Lord Falconer, were already in favour of changing the law to legitimise assisted suicide. Lord Falconer has, himself, been a leading proponent for legitimising assisted suicide, for some years.

The commission undertook a quest to find effective safeguards that could be put in place to avoid abuse of any new law legitimising assisted suicide. Unsurprisingly, given the commission’s composition, it has claimed to have found such safeguards.

Unlike the commissioners, we are unconvinced that the commission has been successful in its quest….

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Entertaining as all that has been, it has made fans and the media rethink the way they judge and cover their sports stars. Reporting that a player was including the Lord in his postgame analysis has long been widely thought of as trite and inappropriate, something to simply skip over when typing in the quotes.

Tebow’s five fourth-quarter comebacks and his four overtime victories ”” each more improbable than the last ”” and his steady, genuine, yet somehow unassuming insistence on bringing God into the conversation has forced an uncomfortable question upon those who want to make it only about what happens between the lines.

In a sports season filled with unsavory stories ”” NFL and NBA labor wars, child sex abuse scandals at Penn State and Syracuse, and a baseball MVP accused of using steroids ”” Tebow is seen by many as a sports star who really could be a role model.

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The Vatican has acknowledged that it used Wikipedia to produce biographies of 22 new cardinals that were sent out to journalists.

The biographies were copied from the Italian version of the user-edited online encyclopedia, word for word in some cases, and without attribution.

One clue was that many new cardinals were described as being “Catholic”.

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Food security and climate change were singled out as the key subjects for global advocacy, with commitments also for the Anglican Alliance to support regional advocacy on migrants and refugees, and peace-building in countries affected by conflict.

Relief is the third pillar of the Alliance’s work. The Anglican Alliance has been mandated to support communities affected by all types of conflict, natural and conflict-related. And it should help develop Anglican expertise in supporting people with disabilities in emergencies.

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Since 2010 a group of self-confessed pirates have tried to get their beliefs recognized as an official religion in Sweden. After their request was denied several times, the Church of Kopimism ”“ which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols ”“ is now approved by the authorities as an official religion. The Church hopes that its official status will remove the legal stigma that surrounds file-sharing.

All around the world file-sharers are being chased by anti-piracy outfits and the authorities, and the situation in Sweden is no different. While copyright holders are often quick to label file-sharers as pirates, there is a large group of people who actually consider copying to be a sacred act.

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Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servant William Laud, we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O Blessed Jesus, who by the shining of a star didst manifest thyself to them that sought thee: Show thy heavenly light to us, and give us grace to follow until we find thee; finding, to rejoice in thee; and rejoicing, to present to thee ourselves, our souls and bodies, for thy service for evermore: for thine honour and glory.

–Edward Hawkins

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

–Genesis 3:6-10

Changing demographics, a declining and aging membership, and economic pressures forced the congregation to make some tough decisions, and rather than close completely or move to the suburbs, it voted to merge with another historic Toledo church, Trinity Episcopal downtown.

Friday’s service, being held on the Feast of the Epiphany, in some ways marks the completion of a circle for the two congregations.

“It’s interesting that St. Mark’s began as a mission Sunday school of Trinity Church, actually beginning in the rectory of Trinity Church in 1888,” said Ohio Bishop Mark Hollingsworth, Jr., who will preside at the evensong service.

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[Bishop John McKee ‘Kee’] Sloan, a soft-spoken man known for his work with the disabled in summer programs at Camp McDowell, has a firm grasp of how he wants to lead the diocese.

“The diocesan office should not be detached, remote, long-distance,” Sloan said. “It has to be more hands-on, with trust and affection.”

Sloan assumes the reins as a diocesan leader after watching for years as liberals and conservatives battled over issues related to the growing acceptance of openly practicing homosexuals as priests and bishops. That caused defections and ill feelings.

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It’s Sunday morning and evangelical churches are packed.

Pastors are preaching, Bibles are being read and churchgoers are singing.

In Spanish.

While the Catholic church is still the principal religion for Latinos, a growing number are bucking tradition and moving toward… [evangelicalism] — particularly among the younger generation.

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Listen to it all.

Introductory note–In this series of op-ed articles, three authors explore a range of perspectives on the question of whether physicians should engage patients on the topic of spirituality.

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Listen to it all should you wish to.

Read it all. Those of you who are able, do pray for the Mere Anglicanism conference next week.

There are jobs for philosophers. But the irksome perception persists that a philosophy degree is only slightly more useful than an English degree, and so it was thought that a panel such as this might give frightened philosophers, many of whom came to this conference in search of gainful employment, some hope.

Philosophers: If you are pinning hopes of gainful employment on blogging, don’t.

But the three men on the panel have done so, and splendidly, with varying degrees of national recognition for their thoughtful punditry on political and cultural issues. Besides Sullivan, who has a Ph.D. in political philosophy and is known for his writings on conservatism and gay marriage, the other participants included Slate blogger Matthew Yglesias, who majored in philosophy at Harvard, and Grist magazine writer/blogger David Roberts, who has a master’s in philosophy.

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Via email:

The elected officers of the Diocese and Diocesan Corporation were extremely pleased today to learn that the Texas State Supreme Court has granted our motion for direct appeal. The Court has agreed to reconsider the February 2011 decision by the 141st District Court, which would result in the surrender of all property to representatives of the New York-based Episcopal Church.
The Diocese’s written brief is due to be filed with the Court by Feb. 6. The opposing parties may respond by Feb. 27, after which the Diocese will have about two weeks to reply. A hearing date has not been set.

Commenting on the news, Bishop Jack L. Iker said, “We are delighted with the decision of the Texas Supreme Court to grant our request for a direct appeal in the lawsuit brought against us by The Episcopal Church. It is very rare for a direct appeal to be filed in the first place, and it is even rarer for the Supreme Court to grant one. It is clear that the Court understands that key questions of the constitutionality of Texas statutes, trust codes, and property laws are at issue in this litigation.

“It is our hope and expectation that the Supreme Court, using neutral principles of law, will rule in our favor.”

With one Episcopal church property appeal from the Church of the Good Shepherd in San Angelo already before the Court, it is even more significant that the court has moved so swiftly to take up our case. This announcement encourages us to believe that the Court finds merit in our case, and it renews our hope of an early conclusion to litigation that has already consumed almost three years and millions of dollars in legal expenses.

“It is gratifying,” said Fort Worth attorney J. Shelby Sharpe, who heads the diocesan legal team,“ that the court has granted the petition for direct appeal in this critical religious freedom case. We look forward to the court’s ultimate decision, which should be helpful to other courts facing similar issues.”

I am back at it today after a time for a more Christmas and Epiphany focus and some (needed) time with family. There is a lot of catching up to do–KSH.

Last month, an expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada, chaired by Udo Schuklenk, a professor of bioethics at Queens University, released a report on decision-making at the end of life. The report provides a strong argument for allowing doctors to help their patients to die, provided that the patients are competent and freely request such assistance.

The ethical basis of the panel’s argument is not so much the avoidance of unnecessary suffering in terminally ill patients, but rather the core value of individual autonomy or self-determination. “The manner of our dying,” the panel concludes, “reflects our sense of what is important just as much as do the other central decisions in our lives.” In a state that protects individual rights, therefore, deciding how to die ought to be recognized as such a right.

The report also offers an up-to-date review of how assistance by physicians in ending life is working in the “living laboratories” – the jurisdictions where it is legal. In Switzerland, as well as in the American states of Oregon, Washington and Montana, the law now permits physicians, on request, to supply a terminally ill patient with a prescription for a drug that will bring about a peaceful death. In The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, doctors have the additional option of responding to the patient’s request by giving the patient a lethal injection.

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The banged up Steelers simply didn’t have enough this year; Tim Tebow played especially well.

The U.S. job market is showing signs of a sustained recovery. But the country’s prolonged struggle with unemployment will leave scars that are likely to remain for years, if not generations.

The latest labor-market snapshot, out Friday, gave cause for continued, if tepid, optimism. U.S. employers added 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 8.5%, its lowest level since early 2009.

But economists gathered here [in Chicago] for the American Economic Association’s annual convention took a longer and generally dimmer view. Even if recent progress continues, the recession already has had a lasting effect on a generation of workers. Worse, the crisis has laid bare problems in the U.S. labor market that won’t quickly recover when the economy eventually rebounds. And the longer that unemployment remains high, the greater the risk that it will create structural problems that will endure.

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Iran’s rulers are feeling the heat. The Islamic Republic was forced to prop up its currency on Jan. 4, just days after the U.S. imposed tough new sanctions to goad it into abandoning its nuclear weapons program. A European curb on Iranian crude imports would add to pressure on Tehran ahead of elections in March.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a problem. But more sanctions may not be a solution. If China doesn’t co-operate, they may just end up distorting oil markets.

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O Almighty God, who hast compassed us about with so great a cloud of witnesses: Grant that we, encouraged by the good example of thy servant Julia, may persevere in running the race that is set before us, until at length, through thy mercy, we may with her attain to thine eternal joy; through Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God, who didst manifest thy only begotten Son to the Gentiles, and hast commanded thy Church to preach the gospel to every creature: Bless all thy servants who are labouring for thee in distant lands. Have compassion upon the heathen and upon all who know thee not, and lead them by thy Holy Spirit to him who is the light of the world, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord.