BOB FAW, correspondent: Nearly every day, as he has for most of his adult life, Ron Hansen attends Mass. For this deacon at Saint Joseph of Cupertino parish in California, the ceremony brings both comfort and renewal.

RON HANSEN: I find nourishment in it. It’s a way of being quiet for a while and to let my mind focus on just communication with God.
FAW: Hansen’s religious sensibility isn’t limited to rituals like this. It also infuses all eight novels written by this highly acclaimed author.

(to Hansen): You really do see writing as a kind of sacrament then, don’t you?

HANSEN: Yes, it’s a witness to what God is doing in the world. We’re supposed to worship and praise, and I can’t think of a better way of worshiping and praising than to write poetry or fiction.

Read or watch it all.

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Alexander Crummell, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to those who were far off and to those who were near. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land evangelists and heralds of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

O Heavenly Father, grant us so to love thee with all our heart and mind and strength, and our neighbour for thy sake; that the grace of charity and brotherly love may dwell in us, and all envy, harshness and may die in us; according to the perfect love of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

–Acts 13:52

When I preach to you, I have been trying to always let you see the historical context of the readings as well as try to explain what they mean. I have tried to bring you truths about the Gospels that have sometimes in the past been ignored because there was fear that if people knew these things they would lose faith. It seems to me that one of the greatest problems of fundamentalism today is the devotion to the literal word of the Bible . The Catholic church teaches and has always taught that the Bible is inspired, and I have come to believe it is, but not as literal truth. What is inspired for me is the whole direction or movement or ”˜way’ of Christ that is described to us, stripped of its historical prejudices and the psychological quirks of the men who wrote it. At the very core of Scripture there is truth and beauty and God’s inspiration that allowed these people to put down their developing thought. I do think it is unfortunate that we have frozen these early writings as inspired and that many beautiful writings from Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas are not considered so. It makes me feel that after a certain date in time, we are led to believe that there is nothing more that God wanted to say. And yet I believe he speaks to us every day in very many voices and ways.
So yes, many of the sayings of Christ are hard! But I don’t think you will find any of them that devalue the human person, that denigrate whole races of people, that tell women to be subject to men, that threaten all sinners with hell. No! Jesus’ words in Scripture do the opposite. The prodigal son is welcomed by the Father, the Gentiles are accepted and even praised, women are treated with respect and kindness, sinners are told that they can be saved. Most of the culturally difficult verses are found in the Epistles, not the Gospels where the early church was trying to understand what Jesus words and his death and resurrection all meant. And they did that through the lenses available to them in their own time. Fr. Mike in my discussion with him of faith and doubt told me this: Theology is called : faith seeking understanding ”but faith which comes first in that formula, is a matter of the heart.” The heart has its reasons of which the mind knows not.” I think our heads often trip us up.” As a congregation we need to first listen to our hearts, then be open to discussing, questioning, and letting our doubts out so that we will not be like those who had to leave Jesus and return to their former ways, but instead answer with Peter: Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God!

And this is the disturbing but Good news I bring you today.

Before you click please guess his denomination, then go and read it all.

In 1992, there was one person on disability for every 35 workers. It is now about one for every 16 workers.

If disability had stayed at the pre-recession growth trend, unemployment would be at least 1% higher, and perhaps as much as 2%.

Bottom line is that true unemployment is closer to 10% and perhaps significantly more. We just don’t know. Underemployment is still in the range of 16%. And that does not count people who have a job for which they are far overqualified and who are making much less money than they would if they could find a job in their chosen field. I should note to all those people who think I am being overly pessimistic that John Williams at Shadow Stats, who uses the US government methodology from 30 years ago, tells us that U-6 unemployment is around 23%. The difference is in how you create the model. The feds keep changing the rules, and it should be no surprise that with each new rule the number of people officially counted as unemployed drops. And if you can’t find a job, whether you are officially unemployed or not, it’s no fun.

Read it all.

Herewith the blurb about it:

The clock is ticking. Every second, it seems, someone in the world takes on more debt. The idea of a debt clock for an individual nation is familiar to anyone who has been to Times Square in New York, where the American public shortfall is revealed. Our clock (updated September 2012) shows the global figure for almost all government debts in dollar terms.

Does it matter? After all, world governments owe the money to their own citizens, not to the Martians. But the rising total is important for two reasons. First, when debt rises faster than economic output (as it has been doing in recent years), higher government debt implies more state interference in the economy and higher taxes in the future. Second, debt must be rolled over at regular intervals. This creates a recurring popularity test for individual governments, rather as reality TV show contestants face a public phone vote every week. Fail that vote, as various euro-zone governments have done, and the country (and its neighbours) can be plunged into crisis.

Now, before you click the link, note that for each country when you click on it you get the following: Public Debt, Public Debt/Person, Population, Public Debt as a % of GDP, and Total Annual Debt Change. Please guess these numbers for your own country and then go and check it out (the country to country comparisons are fascinating).

For years, armed militias have been stalking the lush forests in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, committing all sorts of atrocities against villagers. And now one of the most war-ravaged countries in the world has another looming problem: an emerging rebel group.

“A notorious group of human rights violators” is how the U.N. human rights commissioner describes the group, known as the March 23 Movement, or M23.

Reportedly led by a Tutsi warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court, M23 has been accused of rape, murder and child-soldier recruitment.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Nonetheless, the question remains: Why haven’t these blatant acts of prejudice become a cause célèbre? I can think of at least three reasons.

First, some Christians may be hesitant to speak out because, in this instance, the prejudice is coming from Jews. Given the long and depressing history of anti-Judaism in Christianity, some Christians may, in their gut, be tempted to feel: “Yeah, this is disgusting, but in a way we’ve got it coming.”

Second, most Christians in the Holy Land are passionately pro-Palestinian, for the obvious reason that many are Palestinians themselves. Some Christians in the West sympathetic to Israel are therefore reluctant to take up their causes, however deserving in themselves, for fear of weakening the Israeli position.

Third, the travails of a handful of Trappist monks in Israel — or Dalit and tribal Christians in India, or Nigerian Christians menaced by the Boko Haram, or the 150,000 new Christian martyrs every year generally — simply have a hard time breaking through the media filter in the West, perhaps especially in the United States, where it’s now all 2012 elections all the time.

Read it all.

We need to consider that for students, the social and professional circles vastly overlap, which makes it more difficult to separate what’s permissible and what isn’t. This is not to absolve students who cheat, but it’s something to consider. Students often live in the same place they go to class, which is essentially their workplace. Their friends are also their colleagues, and their “bosses” (professors and TAs) are often their friends. All this blending makes can make lines of conduct a bit more indistinct.

None of this is meant to make light of the problem of cheating, or to imply that it’s excusable. But if we want to prevent such things from happening again, we need to think about not just the students, but also the system in which they live and operate. Thus, professors need to work on being crystal clear in instructions. Telling students, for instance, “speak to no one other than the professor or your TA about any aspect of the exam” leaves no gray areas. All that said, it will be interesting to see how things at Harvard shake out ”¦

Read it all.

Germany should leave the euro zone if it is not prepared to take a more decisive lead in helping the euro zone’s weaker nations escape a spiral of increasing indebtedness and economic decline, veteran financier George Soros said on Saturday.

Soros said Europe faced a prolonged depression and an acrimonious end to the European unification project if steps were not taken to help its southern nations grow their way out of the debt crisis by collectively assuming some of their debt and relaxing its German-led insistence on austerity.

“Germany should either lead in developing a growth policy, political union and burden-sharing, accept the cost of leadership, or leave through an amicable arrangement,” Soros said in an interview with Reuters television in Vienna.

Read it all.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is an intimidating interviewee. It’s not so much the worry about keeping up with the brain that invented the world wide web; it’s that when you Google him (in the circumstances, there seems no shame in this method of research), you soon find he has compiled a list of answers to questions that journalists have asked too many times before.

No, he patiently explains on his website, he did not invent the internet; the web is an application that runs on the internet like a fridge uses the power grid. And no, he states, he does not have mixed emotions about his refusal to “cash in” on his invention ”“ “You can’t propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it.” Nor will he tell you much about his personal life because “what is on the web on this page and my home page is all there is”.

“I thought once I’d put a question on the web, I’d never have to answer it again. And I thought once I got a photographer to take some darn photos of me and put them on the web, then I’d never have to be photographed again,” he says when we meet at his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Was I wrong!”

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, as he prepares to leave Lambeth Palace, has sought to quell any claims that Christians in this country are suffering persecution. “We have been hearing quite a lot about the dangers of ‘aggressive secularism’,” he wrote in the introduction to his new book, “But our problem ”¦ is not simply loud voices attacking faith (and certainly not ‘persecution’, as some of the more highly coloured apologetic claims)”.

Well, “persecution” is a powerful word, and few would dispute that genuine persecution is happening to Christian minorities in other countries, a plight that Dr Williams has done much to publicise. It seems ludicrous to compare the appalling treatment of the Christian minority in Pakistan or Iraq to slights suffered by Christians in Britain, where Christianity remains the Establishment religion, albeit one with weakening links to the Establishment.

There is, however, something curious and faintly unpleasant happening in Britain: Christianity seems tacitly understood to be the one faith that can safely be ridiculed or denied expression in the workplace. The complexity of that situation has been highlighted by the four British Christians who last week took their cases to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that they have been discriminated against at work because of their religion.

Read it all.

An Eton-educated former oil executive has emerged as the unlikely frontrunner to succeed Rowan Williams as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

Justin Welby has been a bishop for less than a year, but senior Anglican sources claim the committee responsible for making the appointment is preparing to overlook his inexperience to recommend him for the Church of England’s top job .

It would mark a meteoric rise and defy the odds that have placed John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, as the favourite among the public and bookmakers.

While the crown nominations committee will not make a final decision until it meets in secret later this month, sources say senior figures on the panel view the Bishop of Durham as the outstanding candidate….

Read it all (requires subscription) and you can read some basic information about Bishop Justin Welby there.

Greeted with initial fanfare by investors and economic officials, the unlimited bond-buying plan that the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, announced Thursday ran into immediate political problems in the crucial countries of Germany, Spain and Italy.

In Germany, despite Chancellor Angela Merkel’s support for Mr. Draghi and the independence of the Central Bank, political and news media reaction was scathing, with accusations that the bank, in seeking to stabilize the euro currency union, was subverting its mandate to fight inflation and forcing debt upon euro zone members.

“A Black Day for the Euro,” “Over the Red Line” and “Pandora’s Box Opened Forever” were some of the German headlines, with the normally sympathetic Süddeutsche Zeitung headlining an editorial: “The E.C.B. Rewards Mismanagement.” Even the German Bundesbank, officially part of the European Central Bank, put out a statement commenting acidly that the plan was “financing governments by printing bank notes.”

Read it all.

Dr Williams criticises the way the economy has been run during the financial crisis, saying that public life has become tainted by a “myth” that it is possible to guarantee financial security.

“A mythology of control and guaranteed security, combined with the fantasy that unlimited material growth is possible… has poisoned social and political life across a growing number of countries.

“No theologian has an automatic skill in economics; but there is an ethical perspective here, plainly rooted in theology, that obliges us to question the nostrums of recent decades, and above all persistently to ask the awkward question of what we want growth for, what model of well-being we actually assume in our economics.

Read it all.

A certain brand of optimism had been required for James Franklin to forgive his father, to forget their past. But now it was being tested. In his father’s new home, Franklin listened to his father’s new wife deny his father’s sins against him, his sister and their mother.

Then Franklin’s father, also named James, stopped her. It was true, he said. He had done awful things to his former wife and their two children. A proud, stubborn man who was now defeated and dying, Franklin finally admitted this to his son. He was painfully frail, an oxygen tank by his side, cancer attacking his spine and lungs. Still, a sense of righteousness filled the younger Franklin. He wanted his mother and sister to feel it too.

Within a month, his father would be dead. But not before Franklin recruited him to visit their old home in Langhorne, Pa., where his father’s alcoholism and violence had ruined a marriage and nearly destroyed his family.

Read it all.

Look, Lord, an empty vessel that needs to be filled. My Lord, fill it.

I am weak in the faith; strengthen me.

I am cold in love; warm me and make me fervent, that my love may go out to my neighbor.

I do not have a strong and firm faith. At times I doubt and am unable to trust You completely. O Lord, help me. Strengthen my faith and trust in You.
I have insured all my treasure in Your name.

I am poor; You are rich and You did come to be merciful to the poor.

I am a sinner; You are upright.

With me there is an abundance of sin; with You a fullness of righteousness.

Therefore I will remain with You, from whom I can receive but to whom I may not give. Amen.

–Martin Luther (1468–1546)

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

–Matthew 5:13-20

Read it all.

In May 1970, President Richard Nixon was one of 75,000 people gathered to hear evangelist Billy Graham preach in Knoxville, Tenn. When they passed the collection plate, Nixon realized he didn’t have any money. So he borrowed some cash from a friend.

The friend? None other than Billy Graham.

“A number of presidents have looked to you for spiritual sustenance over the years,” Nixon later wrote to the famous preacher, “but I suspect I was the first to hit you up for a loan.”

Read it all.

Anglicans in Christchurch are talking about sharing a cathedral with the Catholics, a move that would have worldwide ramifications….

Rebuilding Christchurch’s two wounded cathedrals into one ‘unprecedented’ Anglican-Catholic super-cathedral is under discussion at top levels in the Anglican Church.

The Sunday Star-Times understands the possibility of an ecumenical, or joint, cathedral to unify the two churches has been discussed behind closed doors for months.

Read it all.

The Cape Coast Diocese of the Anglican Church on Tuesday launched its 30th anniversary celebration at Cape Coast in the Central region.

Activities marking the celebration include donations to the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital, the Heart Foundation, clean-up exercise, a youth forum, love feast, quizzes as well as a route march.

The celebration which is on the theme “Serving Our Present Age, Our Calling to Fulfill” will be dedicated to youth development and human welfare in general.

Read it all.

Sermon Outline

–The Role of Religion in Society
–Post-Secular Society
–5 Models of how faith and politics interact
–4 biblical models (drawn from Romans) for church/state relationship

Sermon Application

–What interaction do you think should exist between faith and politics?
–Should your faith inform you politics?
–What is the danger of your politics informing your faith?
–How should Christians be engaged in the public square?
–What do you do?

Watch it all.

The Nigerian army says it has killed seven suspected members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in a gun battle in the north of the country.

A spokesman said a further 13 people were arrested after an attack on an army checkpoint in Maiduguri.

Earlier, Nigerian police said they would mount a 24-hour guard of mobile-phone installations following Boko Haram attacks on masts in the north.

Read it all.

In the coming days, the calendar will bring the anniversaries of two signal events. One, of course, is Sept. 11, a Tuesday this year, as it was in 2001, when Al Qaeda terrorists in four hijacked planes killed more than 3,000 Americans. With public memorial services and private tears, those deaths will be recalled and mourned.

The other anniversary is of the visit President George W. Bush made to a Washington mosque just six days after the attack, where he spoke eloquently against the harassment of Arabs and Muslims living in the United States and about the need to respect Islam.

This act of leadership and statesmanship, however, has all but vanished from the national collective memory. It deserves, instead, to be noted and heeded and esteemed.

Read it all and make sure to read the whole speech also.

Part one is here and part two is there. An excerpt:

In the broadcast, your ”˜Thought for the Day’ extolled listeners to ”˜live life to the full and trust in God, that he will guide and sustain us’. Is this how you lead your life and have you always trusted in God, without question?

Yes, I do try to follow this example. I have never lost my Faith, even in what I might regard as the dark days. I have to say that I have had great happiness in living within the life of Christ.

You may find what I am about to say rather strange on this topic. However, when I attend the funerals of fellow priests, I am struck by the way in which people suddenly find out what good they have done in the support of others and the great out pouring of love that happens on these occasions. It is the love of Christ which keeps us going.

Read the whole thing.

Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has been acquitted of apostasy and released, ending a saga that drew international attention and saw him spend more than 1,000 days in jail in the face of a death sentence — simply for being a Christian.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reported Saturday (Sept. 8) that Nadarkhani, in jail since 2009, was acquitted of apostasy — that is, converting from Islam to Christianity — but found guilty of evangelizing Muslims. CSW said Nadarkhani was sentenced to three years in prison for that latter charge, but released due to time already served. Nadarkhani said he never was a Muslim.

Read it all.

Catholics in England and Wales are being invited to pause for a moment of prayer every first Friday of the month as an act of faith and public witness.

The invitation has been made by Rt Rev Kieran Conry, Bishop of Arundel and Brighton and Chair of the Bishops’ Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis. Speaking ahead of Home Mission Sunday, which falls on 16 September 2012, he said: “On Home Mission Sunday we reflect on our role in the mission of the Church. A simple way that we can contribute to this and grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ, is to pray publicly during the day.

“I would like to invite every Catholic, especially during the Year of Faith, to pause for a moment of prayer of praise and thanksgiving at 3pm if possible, or perhaps when you break for lunch, on the first Friday of every month. Whatever you are doing, as your responsibilities allow, stop, perhaps close your eyes, bow your head and prayerfully and silently meditate on the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross out of love for you and everyone. You might even want to set your mobile phone to ring at 2.55pm to remind you to pause for prayer.”

Read it all and there is a link to resources for possible use for those who respond to the invitation there.