An essential element of Greece’s recovery plan has been to collect more taxes from a population that has long engaged in tax avoidance. The government is owed 45 billion euros in back taxes, tax officials in Athens said, only a fraction of which will ever be recovered.

To understand the difficulty, just talk to Nikos Maitos, a longtime official in Greece’s financial crimes investigation unit.

When he and a team of inspectors recently prowled the recession-hit island of Naxos for tax evaders, a local radio station broadcast his license plate number to warn residents.

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Should the Episcopal Cathedral of Philadelphia be allowed to destroy two historically recognized buildings it owns, and build a 25-story apartment, office, and retail complex in their place, in order to finance cathedral repairs and expand its ministry?

That is the question coming Friday before the Philadelphia Historical Commission, which deadlocked on the issue May 11 when it first arose. The four representatives of the Nutter administration voted in favor of demolition of the properties on the 3700 block of Chestnut Street, while all four independent members opposed the plan.

In an unusual step, Alan Greenberger, deputy mayor for economic development, endorsed the demolition and development in a letter passed out to commissioners just before the hearing.

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Maybe the economy is a political black hole, sucking every other issue into an impossibly dense void.

Maybe Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are just private, cautious men by nature.

For whatever reason, neither President Obama nor his Republican challenger is talking much about religion these days ”” neither about his own faith nor that of his opponent, or the social issues that motivate religious voters.

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Lord Jesus, as God’s Spirit came down and rested upon you,
May the same Spirit rest on us,
Bestowing his sevenfold gifts.
First, grant us the gift of understanding,
By which your precepts may enlighten our minds.
Second, grant us counsel, by which we may follow
in your footsteps on the path of righteousness.
Third, grant us courage,
by which we may ward off the enemy’s attacks.
Fourth, grant us knowledge,
by which we can distinguish good from evil.
Fifth, grant us piety,
by which we may acquire compassionate hearts.
Sixth, grant us fear,
by which we may draw back from evil
and submit to what is good.
Seventh, grant us wisdom,
that we may taste fully the life-giving sweetness of your love.

–Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274)

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so many things in vain? –if it really is in vain. Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Thus Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be every one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no man is justified before God by the law; for “He who through faith is righteous shall live”; but the law does not rest on faith, for “He who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us–for it is written, “Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree” — that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

–Galatians 3:1-14

“Germany should reflect quickly but deeply, and act,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said late last week.

Few Germans, however, share that sense of urgency. With German unemployment at a 20-year low and falling, and the country’s economy continuing to grow despite the debt crisis, not many Germans see the crisis as a threat to their way of life.

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Our burdens of shame and guilt have been nailed to the cross. Evangelicals have always insisted on that message as central to proclaiming the gospel. Again, a variety of images capture this emphasis””debt-repaying, ransom, sacrifice, enduring divine wrath against sin. But all these images have this in common: They point us to the fact that on the cross of Calvary, Jesus did something for us that we could never do for ourselves as sinners. He engaged in a transaction that has eternal consequences for our standing before a righteous God. N. T. Wright is well known for prodding evangelicals to think new thoughts about Pauline theology, but he is very clear on the need to preserve the classic evangelical emphasis on the meaning of the Atonement for individual sinners. At Calvary, Wright says in The Crown and the Fire: Meditations on the Cross and the Life of the Spirit, “Jesus, the innocent one, was drawing on to himself the holy wrath of God against human sin in general, so that human sinners like you and me can find, as we look at the cross, that the load of sin and guilt we have been carrying is taken away from us.”

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The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is preparing to publish its daily liturgical prayer book, as part of its mission to incorporate Anglican traditions within the Catholic Church.

Father James Bradley, communications officer for the jurisdiction, told CNA on June 5 that the “Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham,” which contains the order of daily prayer and readings, “shows a deep respect for the Anglican tradition, and gives it space to flourish” in the Catholic Church.

Announced in the ordinariate’s “Portal” publication on June 1, the book is due out “in a month or two” according to Monsignor Andrew Burnham, Assistant to the Ordinary.

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The annual three-day gathering, presided over by the Primus, the Most Rev David Chillingworth, will be asked to vote on whether to back the controversial Anglican Covenant, a set of principles drawn up after the rows over [non-celibate] gay priests.

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Ahead of Assembly 2012, members of the Anglican Church in North America College of Bishops gathered in Ridgecrest, N.C. The meeting began with Morning Prayer and a time of Bible study and was undergirded by the theme of spreading the transforming love of Jesus Christ.

The bishops in attendance prayerfully considered and approved the election of a new bishop, The Rev. Stephen Wood, rector of St. Andrew’s Church-Mount Pleasant, S.C. Wood has been serving as vicar general for the Diocese of the Carolinas, a diocese in-formation within the Anglican Church in North America.

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Faced with slowing growth in its advertising business, Facebook is considering throwing open its social network to children, in the hope that their parents will pay for games and other content on the site.

The plan is also designed to limit the company’s legal risk over the already-widespread use of the site by minors, millions of whom might be on Facebook after lying about their age.

News that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, pictured, is considering legitimising and expanding the use of the site by children comes as Facebook shares fall further below their flotation price. The stock slipped below $27 in early trading in New York yesterday, compared to the $38 at which they were sold to new investors two-and-a-half weeks ago, as investors continued to fret about slowing advertising income from its website and the even narrower options for monetising traffic on its mobile site.

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Click here to see a pictorial representation of some of the statistics for the parish mentioned in the previous posting.

[Former rector Jay] Lawlor, 42, who was cleared in a jury trial of the assault charge, served at St. Luke’s for 21 months. The payout was equivalent to more than a three-year severance package.

Lawlor’s 2010 compensation was $125,000, which included $85,000 in salary, plus housing and benefits.

That year, the church had a $630,650 operating budget and $1.9 milllion in investments at the end of the year, according to records shared last year with the Gazette.

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“I voted for [Walker] in 2010 because I realized we have to do something about the deficit. I voted for him in the recall because I don’t believe recall elections are meant for what they’re doing with it,” said Katy Tomlanovich, who teaches at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. She said recall elections should be reserved for politicians who commit gross malfeasance, not for those who make unpopular decisions.

Tomlanovich said she plans to vote for Obama in November but cast a ballot for the Republican on Tuesday. “Scott Walker is actually doing something about [spending], and I think he should be allowed to serve the rest of his term.”

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Everyone seems to have an opinion on what the vote in Wisconsin means for national politics.

But beyond the issue of whether Scott Walker’s survival puts Wisconsin in play in November, his victory represents an example of the way politicians in our most pressed states are sorting themselves as they confront this long fiscal downturn. Increasingly they fall into two camps: those willing to undertake tough reforms in the face of severe fiscal restraints that don’t appear likely to improve anytime soon, and those who continue to put off the difficult decisions even as their states’ balance sheets deteriorate and investors grow wary of their budget instability.

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Scott Walker became the nation’s first governor ever to survive a recall election ”“ and it was not as close as many predicted. With over 99-percent of the vote counted, the Republican Walker led Democrat Tom Barrett 53-to-46 percent, with Brookfield kidney specialist Hari Trivedi getting the other one-percent.

Walker’s victory margin was slightly bigger than when he first defeated Barrett in 2010.

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While there is scepticism whenever those who represent Caesar in the political realm invoke God, [and there is great wisdom in the consequent reticence displayed by politicians] it has been possible for the Queen with her very different role to be steadily more explicit in her Christmas broadcasts about her own lively faith in Jesus Christ which sustains her work.

The cost of this call and way of life is so great that it is proper to regard it in sacrificial terms. As a notable republican said to me the other day ”“ “I don’t believe that we should ask anyone to do the job”

But the job has been done with conspicuous dedication over the past sixty years. The Queen embodies the truth at the heart of our life as a nation that the kingdom of God and a humane society is built, yes by raw political power and programmes but also and perhaps most profoundly by the human touch, loving and unwearied service, attention to others.

Christian monarchy today embodies not a set of policies or the pinnacle of a hierarchical social order but a life, a fully human life, lived in the presence and calling of God who dignifies all humanity. Such a life which is open to us all is the essential ingredient from which the Kingdom; God’s plan for the human race, grows.

The spectacle of such a life properly evokes loyalty.

Reread it all should you care to do so.

Last week warnings that Syria’s conflict could spread rang out in the halls of the UN and world capitals. US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said she’s worried about a scenario where “the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies… in involves countries in the region it takes on increasingly sectarian forms and we have a major crisis not only in Syria, but in the region.”

That concern was echoed Sunday by Akmaluddin Ihsan Oglu, the head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, who warned that Lebanon could slip into civil war once again if the clases continue. “We want all sides in Lebanon to seek their country’s higher interest, which is peaceful coexistence between its people,” he said.

Tripoli’s hilltop district of Jabal Mohsen is where the first embers of a spreading fire could land.

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Any Anglican theology of law is bound to use both pre- and post-Reformation authors such as Gratian, Aquinas, and Hooker. At the beginning of his Decretum, Gratian offers two important definitions: “What is put in writing is called enactment or law, while what is not collected in writing is called by the general term ”˜custom.’” Aquinas used this distinction to posit a difference between divine law and natural law, both of which are unchanging, and human or positive law, which can be revised. Following Aquinas, Hooker maintained the same. Canon law is human law and insofar as it achieves a good end, the law itself is good. Should canon law fail in this, it must be revised. It is precisely here in a discussion of the good that canon law invokes other canons, namely, the canon of Scripture. If Scripture contains “all things necessary to salvation,” then canon law should be written to aid the Church in attaining these same divinely revealed ends.

Canon law is thus evangelical through and through. A church’s witness to the wider society begins with its own, internal witness. In this way, canon law is constructive, even in its punitive functions. The purpose of ecclesiastical discipline is never to punish but always to restore. The violation of canon law is a matter of no small importance in the Church, just as the violation of civil law is a matter of importance in the State. Only the arbitrary use of authority allows law to be violated in an ad hoc fashion. In the State this is called tyranny; in the Church it is called abuse. A church that cares nothing for canonical infractions also cares nothing for restoration. A church without confession is a church without repentance, and such a church is also without forgiveness, for it stands in need of lawful and righteous judgment. How can there be justice if there is no law?

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The majority of Catholics in Ireland do not attend Mass regularly and significant numbers do not believe in key tenets of the church’s teaching, according to an Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll.

The poll results, which come as Ireland hosts the 50th Eucharistic Congress of the Catholic Church this week, show belief in the church is strongest in rural areas but falls off significantly in urban areas.

Despite the fallout from clerical sex abuse scandals, a significant proportion of the country ”“ including non-Catholics ”“ believe the church has had a broadly positive influence on Ireland.

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Exactly 30 minutes into the problem-solving the researchers interrupted each group. They entered the room bearing a plate of cookies. Four cookies. The team consisted of three people, but there were these four cookies. Every team member obviously got one cookie, but that left a fourth cookie, just sitting there. It should have been awkward. But it wasn’t. With incredible consistency the person arbitrarily appointed leader of the group grabbed the fourth cookie, and ate it. Not only ate it, but ate it with gusto: lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths. In the end all that was left of the extra cookie were crumbs on the leader’s shirt.

This leader had performed no special task. He had no special virtue. He’d been chosen at random, 30 minutes earlier. His status was nothing but luck. But it still left him with the sense that the cookie should be his.

This experiment helps to explain Wall Street bonuses and CEO pay, and I’m sure lots of other human behavior. But it also is relevant to new graduates of Princeton University.

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My Canadian colleague did some digging and found the following, instructive excerpt from the collected works of Ms. [Barbara] Marx Hubbard:

“Although we may never know what really happened, we do know that the story told in the Gospels is that Jesus’ resurrection was a first demonstration of what I call the post-human universal person. We are told that he did not die. He made his transition, released his animal body, and reappeared in a new body at the next level of physicality to tell all of us that we would do what he did. The new person that he became had continuity of consciousness with his life as Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly life in which he had become fully human and fully divine. Jesus’ life stands as a model of the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis.”

Irrespective of the insight that this remarkable passage gives us into the cast of mind at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Marx Hubbard’s blundering through Scripture and Christology does suggest one path to which the Episcopal critter prayers can lead. When the biblical metaphors used by the Lord (“people of your pasture” and “sheep of your hand”) are taken to imply that there is no substantial difference between human beings and the animal kingdom, then the temptation to transhumanism–the deliberate manipulation of the human condition through biotechnology–intensifies. As we can “improve” beef cattle, chickens and turkeys by manipulating breeding, we can make “better” human beings: transhumanized human beings, cyberhuman hybrids who are immortal. Prometheus, call your office. Aldous Huxley, how did you see this coming 80 years ago, when you were finishing “Brave New World”?

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Loving God, may thy Name be blest for the witness of Ini Kopuria, police officer and founder of the Melanesian Brotherhood, whose members saved many American pilots in a time of war, and who continue to minister courageously to the islanders of Melanesia. Open our eyes that we, with these Anglican brothers, may establish peace and hope in service to others, for the sake of Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

O God the Holy Ghost
Who art light unto thine elect
Evermore enlighten us.
Thou who art fire of love
Evermore enkindle us.
Thou who art Lord and Giver of Life,
Evermore live in us.
Thou who bestowest sevenfold grace,
Evermore replenish us.
As the wind is thy symbol,
So forward our goings.
As the dove, so launch us heavenwards.
As water, so purify our spirits.
As a cloud, so abate our temptations.
As dew, so revive our languor.
As fire, so purge our dross

–Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose.

–Galatians 2:19-21

Watch and listen to it all.

When Bishop FitzSimons Allison announced his retirement as the head of the Mere Anglicanism Conference, many discussions followed about how to best honor his commitment to both this international forum and his decades of work for the Diocese of South Carolina. Meetings and phone conversations between Bishop Mark Lawrence, Dean Peet Dickinson, and Dean William McKeachie resulted in the realization there was no real landmark in the Diocese named in honor of Bishop Allison. +Fitz is an outdoorsman and a lover of conversation, debate, and friendship, and a place that could somehow combine these personality traits seemed the most desirable. The decision was made that renovating the courtyard within the Cathedral close and dedicating it to him would be an appropriate gesture….

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To declare a lifelong dedication is to take a huge risk, to embark on a costly venture. But it is also to respond to the promise of a vision that brings joy.

And perhaps that is the challenge that this Jubilee sets before us in nation and Commonwealth. St Paul implies that we should be so overwhelmed by the promise of a shared joy far greater than narrow individual fulfilment, that we find the strength to take the risks and make the sacrifices ”“ even if this seems to reduce our individual hopes of secure enjoyment.

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A U.S. drone strike killed al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi , a U.S. official confirmed Tuesday.

Mr. al-Libi was in a house in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region that was destroyed Monday by a drone strike, intelligence officials said.

Mr. al-Libi’s death is a major blow to the terror network, which has lost a string of top leaders at the hands of the American drone program. The U.S. sees the strikes as a key weapon against al Qaeda and the insurgents, despite Pakistan’s repeated demands that the strikes stop.

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Via email:

Please keep the family of the Rev. Canon Hollis H. Buchanan in your prayers. He died on June 1, 2012.

Father Buchanan, a 6th generation native Floridian, was born on September 16, 1927 in Tampa, FL. He was a graduate of the University of Florida and Seabury Western Seminary. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1954, served as a chaplain in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force Reserve, and spent his life serving his Lord and the Episcopal Church. He served as a priest in Miami, FL, Winter Park, FL, Vero Beach, FL, Florence, SC, and Summerton, SC, retiring from active ministry in 1992.

In the Diocese of South Carolina he served at St. Matthias, Summerton from 1984-1992, at All Saints, Florence from 1979-1984. He was named an honorable Canon for the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul in 1993.

In his retirement, he continued to serve part-time as a priest in Leesburg, FL. He is survived by his two sons, William and Robert (wife Cindy); three grandchildren, and one nephew. He was predeceased by his parents, Herbert and Lena, his brother, Kenneth, and his daughter, Valencia. A Memorial Service will be held at 10 a.m. on June 20 at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 1603 E. Winter Park Rd., Orlando, with interment of ashes immediately following at St. Richard’s Episcopal Church, 5151 Lake Howell Rd., Winter Park, FL. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Episcopal Relief and Development Fund or your local Humane Society.