ISIS sympathizers pose a terrifying dilemma for law-enforcement officials, who have to sift through droves of online aliases engaged with propaganda—whose owners might live in America or abroad—to identify people who credibly wish to harm the United States. The accounts may not be accessible because of encryption, the FBI agents working the Mississippi case told me, and leads can go dark. Americans expect their government to prevent violence before it happens: Their shared national nightmare is the plot that goes undiscovered before an attack or the known sympathizer who gets away. Faced with such high stakes and uncertainty, the FBI is left to teeter between catching people before they act and walking along with them until they violate the law.

The most remarkable thing about Jaelyn and Moe is that theirs was a largely straightforward case. In less than three months, the FBI had crafted a powerful indictment against them. Theoretically, when the Bureau comes across two kids like Jaelyn and Moe—lost, in love, and grasping toward a dark future—agents could try to set them on another path, reaching out to their families and communities. In reality, though, that’s not what the country has asked them to do.

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Last month’s chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held Syrian town may have caught the world’s — and President Trump’s — attention, but it was not the only recent suspected use of a nerve agent by Syrian government forces.

On three other occasions in the months leading up to the attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, witnesses, doctors and human rights investigators say, government attacks left scores of people sickened with similar symptoms, like foaming at the mouth, shaking and paralysis — including two attacks in December, little noticed at the time, that killed at least 64 people.

New information about the additional attacks appears in a Human Rights Watch report released Monday, bolstering New York Times reporting on those episodes and placing Khan Sheikhoun in the context of wider evidence that the Syrian government continues to use chemical weapons despite its 2013 agreement to give them up.

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The argument that procreation within marriage is unimportant in relation to the growth of the kingdom of God is thus mistaken. Christian marriages are one of the main means by which the kingdom is populated.

The converse is also true. As Mary Eberstadt argues in her book How the West Really Lost God, a good case can be made out for saying that the decline of the Church in the West has been the result of the collapse of traditional family structures. As she puts it ‘family decline in turn helps to power religious decline.’[14] What this means is that those who are really interested in the growth of the kingdom of God should be seeking to support and encourage the traditional family and in particular the importance of having children rather than downplaying their significance.

Thirdly, there is nothing objectionable in principle in the argument that the Holy Spirit guides the Church through the witness of Scripture to discern truths that are not contained in Scripture itself. Scripture does not address every specific issue and situation which the Church faces during the course of its history and so the Church requires guidance by the Spirit which goes beyond what Scripture explicitly says although in accordance with it. [15]

However, in any given case it needs to be shown that the Church is actually being guided to discern truth. This means a persuasive case needs to be made out as to why what we know on the basis of Scripture leads us to view a new issue or situation in one way rather than another. In relation to the issue of same-sex marriage a case would need to be made out as to why the witness of Scripture leads us to believe that the Church should celebrate same-sex marriages in those jurisdictions, such as Scotland, where they are legal. As we have seen, the report fails to make out such a case. The report fails to show that there is anything at all in Scripture that points us in this direction.

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The General Assembly is being asked to consider two key issues.

Authorise the Legal Questions Committee to undertake a further study on the legal implications of conducting same-sex marriages and report back to the General Assembly in 2018. *
Invite the Church to take stock of its history of discrimination at different levels and in different ways against gay people and to apologise individually and corporately and seek to do better.

In releasing the report the Convener of the Theological Forum, the Very Rev Professor Iain Torrance, said: “The Report addresses what has been a long running argument in all the churches.

“In years past there has been an idea that in time one side in this argument would emerge as the sole victor.

“We don’t think like that now.

“That is why we are arguing for what, last year, the Forum called ‘constrained difference’.

“This is saying that within limits we can make space for more than one approach.

“It is closely similar to what the Archbishop of Canterbury calls ‘mutual flourishing’.

“This is a centrist report, aimed at encouraging mutual flourishing.”

Read it all and make sure to see the whole report found at the link at the bottom.

As a Christian, I have often wondered about my failures of self-control. Why is it that I can know what I want to do, carefully plan to do it, and then do something completely different—something unhelpful and often directly opposed to my beliefs? As Paul wrote, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rom. 7:15). To make matters worse, for the longest time I had no idea how to change the situation other than to try again and hope for the best.

In this context, I discovered social science research on self-control—and it turns out there’s a lot of it. Studies on self-control have boomed in the past two decades, and self-control is a really good thing to have. Research has found, for example, that people with more self-control live longer, are happier, get better grades, are less depressed, are more physically active, have lower resting heart rates, have less alcohol abuse, have more stable emotions, are more helpful to others, get better jobs, earn more money, have better marriages, are more faithful in marriage, and sleep better at night. But psychologists, sociologists, and other scientists aren’t just interested in self-control’s practical benefits. They want to know what it is, how it works, and why some people seem to be better at it than others.

Let’s start with definitions. Self-control regulates desires and impulses. It involves wanting to do one thing but choosing to do another. We substitute responses to a situation, like wanting to eat a bag of chips but instead picking up an apple. That definition may seem obvious, but thinking about self-control this way helps us avoid less accurate or more vague ways of thinking about self-control, like “being a good person.” We use self-control to regulate what we think, what we do, and even how we express our emotions. Willpower is the emotional and mental energy used to exert self-control.

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ZENIT spoke with Father Tarcisio Giuseppe Stramare of the Congregation of Oblates of Saint Joseph, director of the Josephite Movement, about Tuesday’s feast of St. Joseph the Worker….

ZENIT: What does “Gospel of work” mean?

Father Stramare: “Gospel” is the Good News that refers to Jesus, the Savior of humanity. Well, despite the fact that in general we see Jesus as someone who teaches and does miracles, he was so identified with work that in his time he was regarded as “the son of the carpenter,” namely, an artisan himself. Among many possible activities, the Wisdom of God chose for Jesus manual work, entrusted the education of his Son not to the school of the learned but to a humble artisan, namely, St. Joseph.

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Neuvaine à Saint Joseph, du 11 au 19 mars 2016 :https://t.co/bbpEy1aK1g pic.twitter.com/4bCY5uwmwx

— Saints du Carmel… (@carmesdumidi) March 9, 2016

O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the spouse of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Happy and blessed feast of Saint Joseph pic.twitter.com/hTj1SLMCLe

— Florian Kolfhaus (@FlorianKolfhaus) March 19, 2016

O God our Father, who hast taught us that our citizenship is in heaven, and hast called us to tread a pilgrim’s path here on earth: Guide us, we pray thee, on our journey through this world to the Celestial City; defend us from the perils that await us in the way; give us grace to endure faithfully to the end; and at the last bring us to thy eternal joy; through the mercy of thy Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou who leadest Joseph like a flock! Thou who art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before E’phraim and Benjamin and Manas’seh! Stir up thy might, and come to save us!

–Psalm 80:1-2