A cheque from Anglican church-goers to Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral following a burglary has been welcomed as “a moving gesture of friendship”.
Leaders from the Catholic landmark say they were “overwhelmed” to receive nealy £1,000 from Liverpool Cathedral after the break-in last week.
In a statement posted on Facebook, they said: “We were overwhelmed this week to receive a very special donation from our close neighbours and friends, Liverpool Cathedral.”
In the tug of war between religious freedom and nondiscrimination rights, the weight seems to be pulling toward the latter.
At least that’s the view of 17 religious leaders ”” including LDS Church Presiding Bishop Gérald Caussé ”” who addressed their concerns with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ recent report in an Oct. 7 letter to President Barack Obama, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.
The report, titled “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles With Civil Liberties,” comes down squarely on the side of civil liberties for individuals, the letter says, and “stigmatizes tens of millions of religious Americans, their communities, and their faith-based institutions, and threatens the religious freedom of all our citizens.”
Regardless of what you might choose for yourself, why should you deny others the right to make this choice? For those suffering unbearably and coming to the end of their lives, merely knowing that an assisted death is open to them can provide immeasurable comfort.
I welcome anyone who has the courage to say, as a Christian, that we should give dying people the right to leave this world with dignity. My friend Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has passionately argued for an assisted-dying law in Britain. His initiative has my blessing and support ”” as do similar initiatives in my home country, South Africa, throughout the United States and across the globe.
In refusing dying people the right to die with dignity, we fail to demonstrate the compassion that lies at the heart of Christian values. I pray that politicians, lawmakers and religious leaders have the courage to support the choices terminally ill citizens make in departing Mother Earth. The time to act is now.
Where the new atheists go wrong, Mr Eagleton says, is in failing to see the symbiotic relationship between the Western world, with all its technological and cultural prowess, and the advent of global jihadism. To back up that point, he might have been expected to focus on America’s cold-war role in south Asia, supporting holy war in Afghanistan and treating President Zia-ul-Haq, who took Pakistan down an Islamist path, as a strategic ally. Instead he chose an example a little further to the east:
In the earlier decades of the 20th century, the rolling back of liberal, secular and left-nationalist forces in the Muslim world by the West for its own imperial purposes (it supported the massacre of half a million leftists in Indonesia, for example) created a political vacuum in that vital geopolitical region into which Islamism was able to move.
In other words, to the new-atheist characterisation of militant Islam as “all their fault”, a new, gratuitous form of evil in the world which must simply be resisted rather than understood or analysed, Mr Eagleton counter-proposes something more like “it’s all our fault.” He is not, of course, the only leftist thinker to make that argument.
Mr Eagleton is eloquent when he elaborates on the enduring power of faith as a source of cohesion and inspiration in most human societies. But both he and his new-atheist adversaries can sometimes fall into the trap of bunching together different forms of religion. Religion can do (and mostly does) the commendable job of connecting people’s everyday lives and actions with great imperishable truths, without inspiring them to go out and kill themselves and other people. Indeed it can often be a powerful restraint on people’s impulse to engage in that sort of act. The discussion only becomes interesting when you acknowledge that religion can have diametrically opposing effects, in different circumstances, and ask why this is so.
Ken Millen was born in 1930 and grew up here on North C Street, a neighborhood of treeless blocks along the Wishkah River, which occasionally swallows a chunk of a deteriorating house and carries it away.
“Ol’ Ken lived there all his life,” said Lauri Penttila, nodding down the alley toward a blue-and-white 900-square-foot house, which recently was fitted with new windows, siding and a roof.
“I thought I knew him pretty well,” Penttila said. “Until now.”
Much of the city shares that feeling.
The common wisdom, as research verifies, is that most men want sons. That’s starting to shift. Some men, like me, fear becoming fathers to sons.
At the website for the NPR radio show “On Being,” the writer Courtney E. Martin observes of many younger middle- and upper-middle-class fathers-to-be, “I’ve noticed a fascinating trend: They seem to disproportionately desire having a girl instead of a boy.” An informal Facebook survey she took yielded these results: “I wanted a girl mainly because I felt it was harder to be a boy in today’s society. If I have a boy I will embrace the challenge of raising a boy”¦who can learn the power of vulnerability even as male culture tries to make him see it as weakness. But, frankly, I hope that when I have a second child, it’ll be another girl.’” This was emblematic of a lot of the responses, which revealed that men felt more confident, or “better equipped,” co-parenting “a strong, confident daughter.”
Ms. Martin says that her own husband was relieved to have daughters instead of sons. He says: “”˜I haven’t felt like I fit into a lot of the social norms around masculinity”¦. I’m much more interested in the challenge of helping a girl or young woman transcend sexist conditions. It feels more possible and more important, in some ways.”
Bob Dylan, 1962. Photograph by Don Hunstein. pic.twitter.com/8jcatNJY3G
— History In Pictures (@HistoryInPix) October 14, 2016
I could go on and on. Dylan’s work is immense, and his lyrics are deeply dense, packed with references, allusions, and multiple layers of meaning. Books can and have been written about them.
What is clear is that Dylan’s work is deeply shaped by the Bible, and by the Biblical worldview. Not just in the superficial sense that it keeps referring to it and echoing its themes, but also in the more profound sense that Dylan’s own worldview is deeply Biblical. It is spiritual, first and foremost, viewing the spiritual world “first” as the bridge through which we live in the material world, which itself only sends us back to the spiritual world. And it is deeply Biblical in its longing for God, whether it is encountered as art or as the Spirit or as Jesus Christ himself, as the answer to our existential quandaries, as our companion ”” and as our Savior. If you’re going to be faithful to Bob Dylan as an artist, you can’t miss that dimension of his work which ”” for those who have ears to ear ”” is everywhere.
O God, who by thy Holy Spirit didst move Teresa of Avila to manifest to thy Church the way of perfection: Grant us, we beseech thee, to be nourished by her excellent teaching, and enkindle within us a lively and unquenchable longing for true holiness; through Jesus Christ, the joy of loving hearts, who with thee and the same Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.
St Theresa of Avila: mystic, Doctor of the Church, reformer of the Carmelite Order with St John of God.
(15 Oct) pic.twitter.com/JuFqix805e— Fr Brad Sweet (@BradBradsweet) October 15, 2016
O God, who hast willed that the gate of mercy should stand open to the faithful: Look on us, and have mercy upon us, we beseech thee; that we who by thy grace are following the path of thy will may continue in the same all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now I know that the LORD will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the LORD our God. They will collapse and fall; but we shall rise and stand upright. Give victory to the king, O LORD; answer us when we call.
–Psalm 20:6-9