[/i] Proposals to absorb the services of two specialist health watchdogs into the Care Quality Commission to save half a million pounds per year have been criticised by the Mission and Public Affairs (MPA) Council.

In its response to a Department of Health Consultation, the MPA Council warns that “there are operational risks involved in transferring the functions” from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) as “theses functions require both considerable executive expertise and detailed non-executive scrutiny”.

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The Roman Catholic Church is currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of the start of the Second Vatican Council, in October 1962; but the 47 years since its close have been riven with controversy about its application. Has the Roman Catholic Church gone far enough in pursuing the spirit of openness that was experienced in Rome during the Council’s three years of debate? Or does the cultural and social revolution since the mid-’60s require an approach more deeply rooted in the certainties of the past? The former is the question asked by most lay Roman Catholics, and, indeed, most in the hierarchy, when talking in general terms; the latter question tends to be expressed when it comes to putting any reforms into practice.

The vernacular liturgy is the most obvious change brought about by the Council, but more significant, perhaps, has been a thorough change of attitude….

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The United States Postal Service chose Washington National Cathedral’s Bethlehem Chapel to issue its Holy Family Forever stamp on Oct. 10. The stamp depicts the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt after Christ’s birth. The family appears in silhouette against a deep orange sky with the brightly shining Christmas star ahead of them. Joseph leads a donkey on which Mary and the infant Jesus ride.

The contemporary artwork on the stamp, now available nationwide, is a departure from some of previous Christmas stamps featuring traditional artwork of Mary and Jesus. Indeed, the 1980 USPS Christmas stamp showed the Madonna and Child in Bethlehem Chapel’s Epiphany stained-glass window.

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…the cracks in Vines’ message run far deeper than his arguments; his hermeneutical approach to the whole question is deeply flawed. Vines is approaching Scripture as though it were a puzzle to be solved. His impassioned plea that we not declare good what Genesis declares evil, that man should be alone, raises serious questions about the role of gay people in the Church, but the answer he seeks has clearly determined his engagement with the text.

If Scripture is merely a code to be broken, then we can enter into it by ourselves, armed with lexicons and concordances, to declare its true meaning. But a deeper reflection will reveal that this leaves us with no defense against our own prejudices and the ways in which we have been shaped by our culture. It would seem that Vines has absorbed the problematic attitudes of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to St. Athanasius’ De Incarnatione, offers words Vines would do well to heed: “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”

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Yida, the largest refugee camp in South Sudan, stretches for miles. It is home to more than 64,000 of the 206,000 refugees from the Republic of Sudan who have fled the bombing and violent attacks against civilians by the Khartoum government since June 2011. Yida camp itself was bombed Nov. 10, 2011, killing 12 refugees.

Only 20 kilometers from the volatile border between Sudan and South Sudan, Yida camp sees a constant stream of nearly 200 new refugees a day, coming from the Nuba Mountains region (South Kordofan State) in Sudan. Rebel groups in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states have united against the Khartoum government’s army, Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which indiscriminately attacks rebels and civilians in those areas.

“They kill everybody, Christians and Muslims. They burn houses, churches, and schools. They kill people. They drop bombs. Just two days ago soldiers came to my area [in the Nuba Mountains] and killed one person and burned houses,” said the Rev. Ameka Yousif, a pastor who has lived in Yida camp since February. “[In the Nuba Mountains] when people see the planes, they run and hide. Bombing is happening almost every day.”

Read it all and do not miss the picture.

I was recently struck by some photos and reports I saw on the al-Arabiya network, the most respected news outlet in the Middle East. There was a starving child in Yemen, a burnt-out ancient souk in Aleppo, Syria, car bombs in Iraq and destroyed buildings in Libya.

What links all these images is that the destruction and the atrocities were not perpetrated by an outside enemy. The starvation, the killings and the destruction in these Arab countries were carried out by the same hands that are supposed to protect and build the unity of these countries and safeguard their people. Who, therefore, is the real enemy of the Arab world?

Many Arabs would say it is Israel ”” their sworn enemy, an enemy whose existence they have never recognised. From 1948 to today there have been three full-scale wars and many confrontations. But what was the real cost of these wars to the Arab world and its people? The harder question that no Arab wants to ask is: what was the real cost of not recognising Israel in 1948 and why didn’t the Arab states spend their assets on education, healthcare and infrastructure instead of wars? But the very hardest question of all is whether Israel is the real enemy of the Arab world and the Arab people.

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What has been less appreciated about Vatican II, though it is as significant as the halting steps on governance, is that it took account of the world outside the church. The church validated for the first time the principle of religious freedom and rejected all forms of civil discrimination based on religious grounds. Thus ended an era of cozy church-state relations that began in the fourth century with Emperor Constantine.

Before the council, Catholics were not only forbidden to pray with those of other faiths but also indoctrinated into a disdain or even contempt for them. (This was, of course, a two-way street.) Now, for the first time, Catholics were encouraged to foster friendly relations with Orthodox and Protestant Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims, and even to pray with them. The council condemned all forms of anti-Semitism and insisted on respect for Judaism and Islam as Abrahamic faiths, like Christianity.

These epochal decisions have been carried out imperfectly, not surprising for an institution as large, lumbering and complex as the Catholic Church….

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A legal row between Cadbury and a small confectioner over the use of the colour purple on packaging was “demeaning”, a senior Essex church figure has said.

The Meaningful Chocolate Company redesigned its purple advent box after a warning from its lawyers.

The advice followed Cadbury’s victory in a dispute with rival Nestle over its rights to purple packaging….

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O thou who sendest forth the light, createst the morning, and makest the sun to rise on the good and the evil: Enlighten the blindness of our minds with the knowledge of the truth; lift up the light of thy countenance upon us, that in thy light we may see light, and, at the last, in the light of grace the light of glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626)

Now when Festus had come into his province, after three days he went up to Jerusalem from Caesare’a. And the chief priests and the principal men of the Jews informed him against Paul; and they urged him, asking as a favor to have the man sent to Jerusalem, planning an ambush to kill him on the way. Festus replied that Paul was being kept at Caesare’a, and that he himself intended to go there shortly. “So,” said he, “let the men of authority among you go down with me, and if there is anything wrong about the man, let them accuse him.” When he had stayed among them not more than eight or ten days, he went down to Caesare’a; and the next day he took his seat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought. And when he had come, the Jews who had gone down from Jerusalem stood about him, bringing against him many serious charges which they could not prove. Paul said in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I offended at all.” But Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, “Do you wish to go up to Jerusalem, and there be tried on these charges before me?” But Paul said, “I am standing before Caesar’s tribunal, where I ought to be tried; to the Jews I have done no wrong, as you know very well. If then I am a wrongdoer, and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death; but if there is nothing in their charges against me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar.” Then Festus, when he had conferred with his council, answered, “You have appealed to Caesar; to Caesar you shall go.”

–Acts 25:1-12

Wow. A 13 pitch at bat. That is three walk off hits in two days. If you love baseball, this is some start to the Postseason–KSH.

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Please pray:
For peace in Syria and an end to bloodshed. For God’s rich mercies on the suffering people.
For safety and protection for the churches and wisdom and vision for church leaders.
To empower the Church to reach out to the suffering, to share the divine cure of the gospel, and to speak the word of the Lord in all boldness.
That the Lord would send wise, God-fearing counsellors to the decision-makers in all parties in the country.

Powerful and heart-rending–read it all.

As a result of Vatican II, the Catholic Church opened its windows onto the modern world, updated the liturgy, gave a larger role to lay people, introduced the concept of religious freedom and started a dialogue with other religions.

“It was a time of a new hope, when everybody was proud that we are able to convoke such a council and having a real renewal of the Catholic Church,” says Hans Kung, who was the youngest theologian at Vatican II.

But the changes provoked a backlash, and many Catholics today say the council’s renewal momentum has been stopped in its tracks.

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