Daily Archives: February 16, 2016

(ABC) 17 years later, Columbine killer Dylan Klebold's mother Sue breaks her silence

Sue Klebold, the mother of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold, told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer that when the Columbine tragedy happened, she couldn’t stop thinking about the victims and their families.

“I just remember sitting there and reading about them, all these kids and the teacher,” Klebold said in an exclusive interview that will air in a special edition of “20/20” Friday at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

“And I keep thinking– constantly thought how I would feel if it were the other way around and one of their children had shot mine,” she continued. “I would feel exactly the way they did. I know I would. I know I would.”

Read it all and the full 20/20 videos are worthwhile if you are ready for the INCREDIBLY difficult subject matter.

Posted in * Culture-Watch, * International News & Commentary, America/U.S.A., Children, History, Marriage & Family, Violence

[Hastings Observer] African bishops pay visit to town

..The Rt. Revd Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Freetown, whose diocese covers Hastings, Sierra Leone, and the Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Tucker, Bishop of Bo met the Mayor and members of the Hastings Sierra Leone Friendship Link in the Mayor’s Parlour at Hastings town hall on Tuesday (February 9th ).

The Bishops were breaking their journey from Canterbury, where they have been on a course, to Chichester by calling in at Hastings. Chichester Diocese is closely linked to the Anglican churches in Sierra Leone and West Africa generally.

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, Anglican Province of West Africa, Anglican Provinces

Sierra Leone News: Anglican diocese takes ebola prevention to schools

The Anglican Diocese of Freetown with support from the Trinity Church in the United States of America is providing Ebola prevention kits to its Mission Schools in the country…

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, Anglican Province of West Africa, Anglican Provinces

[NZ Whanganui Chronicle] Decision Time for Anglican parishioners

…Whanganui Anglicans are expressing “understandable concern” about a rethink of how their services are delivered, Christ Church vicar Stuart Goodin says.

A local governance team has come up with a set of 11 proposals, including transition to just one parish, possibly with all services held at Christ Church in Wicksteed St and St Chad’s church moved to the same central property.

St Laurence’s in Aramoho, St Barnabas’s in Durie Hill and St Oswald’s in Westmere would be sold.

Under the proposals, All Saints’ in Whanganui East and St Luke’s in Castlecliff may be revamped. And services may be held at St Peter’s in Gonville while Christ Church is earthquake strengthened.

Change is needed because Anglican congregations are ageing and diminishing and resources are stretched. The changes would ensure a steady future for the denomination in the district.

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, Anglican Provinces

Bishop Rennis Ponniah's Ash Wednesday Pastoral Letter

..The Year of Jubilee for Singapore indeed became the year of the Lord’s favour for many of our parishes and deaneries. The Diocese was immensely blessed financially and responded to this blessing by cancelling the building-related loans of some of our deaneries and parishes that totalled about S$ 2 Million. This sparked a ripple of joyful praise and glorious freedom in God across the Diocese.

I also thanked God for significant growth and movement in different parts of our Diocese. God’s work in Nepal has been truly outstanding. Over the last year, since the double earthquake, the number of people worshipping the Lord in the Deanery of Nepal has grown from 9,000 to about 12,000 through baptisms and confirmations. A wonderful experience of amazing Kingdom advance! We learn yet again that ”˜hunger for God’ and ”˜desperation’ are the vital antecedents for Revival.

That brings me to my invitation to one and all to make this season of Lent a time of intentional prayer and fasting. “Lent” has already begun with Ash Wednesday falling on the third day of the Lunar New Year on 10th February this year. It will last for 40 days (not including Sundays) and lead up to the celebration of Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. It is a reflective period when we ”˜re-live’ the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Cross dominates our thoughts and our emotions, leading us to deep contrition, deep awareness of God’s grace, deep surrender and deep desire for God and His glory.

How can you and I enter the spirit of Lent and emerge stronger pilgrims and disciples of the Lord? Allow me to suggest a 3-pronged approach:…

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Posted in * Christian Life / Church Life, Church Year / Liturgical Seasons, Lent

Cairo: Breaking Bread Together


On Saturday, February 13th, the Prayer Week for Christian Unity began in Egypt. Leaders from a number of denominations gathered at All Saints’ Cathedral at the center of Cairo in Zamalek to pray and worship together. Leaders from the following churches were present:

The Anglican Communion
The Armenian Catholic Church
The Armenian Orthodox Church
The Catholic Church
The Coptic Evangelical Church
The Coptic Orthodox Church
The Egyptian Council of Churches
The Greek Orthodox Church
The Middle East Council of Churches

These many leaders prayed and sang together and gave short messages on the meaning of “rolling the stone together”, in reference to removing the stone from the tomb of Jesus. Some of these messages highlighted the many different stones that must be removed in life, others spoke to the stones that so often guard our hearts, and others still showed how these stones can be used to build bridges.

The service was accompanied by the All Saints’ Cathedral Choir and attended by a large number of people.

By praying and worshiping, all to the same purpose, these diverse denominations were brought together in unity. At the height of the service, bread was broken amongst all the great leaders present. As the service concluded, this much-blessed bread was passed out to many of the congregants. The service was a powerful reminder that sometimes the strength of the Church can arise from even division itself when churches come together in loving, passionate, and world-changing unity.

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, Anglican Provinces, The Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East

Request for Prayer from the Diocese of Egypt

Our dear friends,

Please pray for Bishop Ghais Abd El-Malek, our retired bishop of Egypt and the former President Bishop of Jerusalem & the Middle East. Bishop Ghais has been critically ill for almost a month now during which he was hospitalized three times. Pray also for Mrs. Fawzia Ghais and the family as they take care of him.

Thank you for your prayers!

Yours in Christ,

+Mouneer

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, Anglican Provinces, The Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East

(FT) Gideon Rachman-The revival of US isolationism

Why is the Middle East in flames and Russia on the rampage? In both Europe and the Middle East, it is common to hear the blame placed on Barack Obama. The US president, it is charged, is a weak and disengaged leader who has allowed international events to get out of control. Many Americans ”” both liberals and conservatives ”” make the same accusation. Sarah Palin, darling of the American right, has called Mr Obama “capitulator-in-chief”. Roger Cohen, a New York Times columnist, has blamed Syria’s agony on the “fecklessness and purposelessness” of the Obama administration.

Those who yearn for a more muscular US foreign policy often assume that Mr Obama will prove to be an aberration ”” and that the next president will “put America back in the game”. But that could well be a misreading of the underlying direction of US politics and foreign policy. The current frontrunners in the presidential election campaign ”” Donald Trump on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats ”” have embraced ideas that are isolationist, in all but name. If those ideas prevail, they would make Mr Obama look like a super-engaged internationalist.

Even if Mr Trump and Mr Sanders never get close to the White House, the popularity of their campaigns, and their influence on the more mainstream candidates, suggests that there is now a strong constituency in the US for a retreat from globalism: repudiating international military and economic commitments.

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Posted in * Culture-Watch, * Economics, Politics, * International News & Commentary, America/U.S.A., Ethics / Moral Theology, Foreign Relations, Globalization, Office of the President, Politics in General, Theology

John Piper–Should Christians Tolerate False Religious Beliefs?

Now the new tolerance does not start with the assumption that there is such a thing as objective truth or objective right and wrong or objective beauty and ugliness. And, therefore, it does not start with the assumption that any given viewpoint or belief is objectively better than one that believes something different, because there is no objective truth or morality out there for an idea to conform to. And so the old tolerance becomes impossible. Tolerance no longer means defending a person’s freedom to tell me I am wrong, but now means renouncing the right to tell anyone they are wrong. The very concept of labeling a person’s idea as wrong or defective or harmful or evil is considered intolerant.

So the new tolerance is the requirement that nobody pass judgment on another person’s beliefs or ideas as less true, less right, less beautiful. And the reason I say this is a new form of intolerance is that in the new tolerance I am forbidden from expressing my belief that certain things are so; namely, that your beliefs are wrong or harmful ”” dangerous. In fact, the new tolerance sometimes goes so far as not just to forbid the expression of my belief that your belief is wrong, but goes further and forbids me even from believing that you are wrong because, they would say, believing that shows I am hateful and a danger to society and eventually may be locked away or punished in some other way for simply holding a viewpoint. If you want to read more about the development of this new tolerance, then Don Carson’s book The Intolerance of Tolerance is the place to go.

So my answer to the question that was asked is: Absolutely, Christians should be tolerant of other people’s religious beliefs; namely, with the old tolerance, not the new tolerance.

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Posted in * Culture-Watch, * Religion News & Commentary, Apologetics, Ethics / Moral Theology, History, Inter-Faith Relations, Multiculturalism, pluralism, Other Faiths, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion & Culture, Theology

A Prayer to Begin the Day from BF Westcott

Blessed Lord, who wast tempted in all things like as we are, have mercy upon our frailty. Out of weakness give us strength; grant to us thy fear, that we may fear thee only; support us in time of temptation; embolden us in time of danger; help us to do thy work with good courage, and to continue thy faithful soldiers and servants unto our life’s end.

Posted in * Christian Life / Church Life, Church Year / Liturgical Seasons, Lent, Spirituality/Prayer

From the Morning Scripture Readings

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; therefore, as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.”

–1 Corinthians 1:20-31

Posted in Uncategorized

Monday Night mental Health Break–Entreat Me not to Leave You by Dan Forrest

Listen to it all.

Posted in * Christian Life / Church Life, * Culture-Watch, History, Liturgy, Music, Worship, Music, Theology, Theology: Scripture

The Cincinnati Enquirer now has a heroin beat

It started about three years ago with briefs about vigils for people who died from heroin overdoses. Terry DeMio saw them now and then. One day, a coworker at The Cincinnati Enquirer mentioned that someone in her neighborhood had a heroin addiction.

“I just remember thinking there was something to this,” said DeMio, who was then a general assignment reporter.

So she called a hospital system in Northern Kentucky, St. Elizabeth Healthcare, and told the spokesperson about what she was seeing. He connected DeMio with a physician. On one particular day, that doctor told her, about a third of his patients were addicted to heroin or linked to someone who was. It was the first time DeMio heard the term “heroin epidemic.”
She started writing about heroin for both the Enquirer and its northern Kentucky edition, unsure at the beginning if the term epidemic even applied.

Three years later, she’s quite sure.

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Posted in * Culture-Watch, * International News & Commentary, America/U.S.A., Drugs/Drug Addiction, Health & Medicine

History Buzz: Presidents’ Day Quiz: How well do you know our chief executives?

Read it all and see how you do.

Posted in * Culture-Watch, * International News & Commentary, America/U.S.A., History

Valerie Strauss–A Washington's Birthday quiz on the office of President

Read it all and see how you do.

Posted in * Culture-Watch, * International News & Commentary, America/U.S.A., History

Washington’s Birthday Documents (II): George Washington’s First State of Union Address

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:

I embrace with great satisfaction the opportunity which now presents itself of congratulating you on the present favorable prospects of our public affairs. The recent accession of the important state of North Carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received), the rising credit and respectability of our country, the general and increasing good will toward the government of the Union, and the concord, peace, and plenty with which we are blessed are circumstances auspicious in an eminent degree to our national prosperity.

In resuming your consultations for the general good you can not but derive encouragement from the reflection that the measures of the last session have been as satisfactory to your constituents as the novelty and difficulty of the work allowed you to hope. Still further to realize their expectations and to secure the blessings which a gracious Providence has placed within our reach will in the course of the present important session call for the cool and deliberate exertion of your patriotism, firmness, and wisdom.

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Posted in * Culture-Watch, * International News & Commentary, America/U.S.A., History