From here:

“As the leaders all of the main Churches in Northern Ireland, we met in Armagh last evening with the Secretary of State to highlight our strong concerns regarding the continued Stormont impasse. We discussed with him the urgent need for the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly to address issues such as welfare reform mitigations, health and education policy, as well as the urgent economic and wider issues surrounding Brexit. In particular we conveyed our strongly held and shared conviction that the devolved institutions need to be restored before the 21 October to avoid unacceptably wide–ranging abortion legislation being imposed on Northern Ireland. The protection and the dignity of all human life is of vital importance, both women and unborn children – both lives matter.

“We believe that our Northern Ireland political parties have it in their own hands to do something about this. They all need to take risks, especially for the most vulnerable in society, and make the compromises necessary to find an accommodation that will restore the devolved institutions.”

CoI News: Church Leaders meet Secretary of State on Northern Ireland political impasse: The leaders of Ireland’s main Churches met the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Rt Hon Julian Smith MP, in Armagh yesterday evening to express their… https://t.co/fOvZU6LltY pic.twitter.com/yTTzYeJB40

— Church of Ireland (@churchofireland) October 10, 2019

The Rev. Fred Ochieng, Vicar of Emmanuel Church in the Shaurimoyo Parish in the Anglican Diocese of Maseno South, Kisumu-Kenya, invited those present to take steps to form relationships with brothers and sisters in his area. “Pray for us,” he said. “Be our friend. Relationships are more important than anything. Consider coming for a mission. Be a sender. Consider supporting us financially.” Ochieng stressed that while his congregation is seeking to be self-sustaining, they need assistance to move in that direction. He invited attendees to support theological training for their clergy. “Support one of our clergy to go to (the theological training in) Marsabit.”

Thirteen guests spoke that evening including

Bishop Probal Dutta, Bishop of Grace Trust, India
The Rev. John Chol Daau, Episcopal Church of South Sudan
Bishop Daniel Wario Qampicha, Diocese of Marsabit, Kenya
Bishop Stephen Kaziimba, Diocese of Mityana, Uganda
Bishop Seth Ndayirukiye, Bishop of Matana, Burundi
Bishop Francis Matui, Bishop of Makueni, Kenya
The Rev. Bernard Bisoke Balikenga, Provincial Youth Coordinator, Anglican Church of the Congo
Bishop Johnson Gakumba, Diocese of Northern Uganda
The Rev. Fred Ochieng Onyango, Vicar, Emmanuel Church, Shaurimoyo Parish in the Anglican Diocese of Maseno South, Kisumu-Kenya
The Rev. Canon Dr. Rebecca Nyegenye, Provost of All Saints Cathedral, Kampala, Uganda
Bishop George Kasangaki, Diocese of Masindi-Kitara, Uganda
Bishop Joseph Kibucwa, Diocese of Kirinyaga, Kenya

“I’ve got to give our bishop credit,” said the Rev. Gary Beson, Rector of St. Timothy’s, Cane Bay, after the evening presentation. “He’s really emphasized ‘Biblical Anglicanism for a Global Age.’ (My wife) Sue and I were having dinner with Fred (the Rev. Fred Ochieng of Kenya ) and Qampicha (The Bishop of the Diocese of Marsabit, Kenya) the other night. They said, ‘There’s not another diocese in the US as interested in what’s going on in the world as you are.’”

Read it all and note that the full audio presentation is available (and do enjoy the pictures).

Right now, the Roman Catholic Church leaders are in the midst of a three-week long meeting discussing the future of their ministry in the Amazon. Among the issues the synod is investigating are how church leaders should respond to chronic priest shortages, the role of women in official church leadership, and environmental degradation.

Under the previous popes, John Paul II and Benedict the XVI, synods—or meetings convening all of the top brass of the Catholic church—were largely symbolic, says Christopher White, the national correspondent for the Catholic publication Crux. Not so with Pope Francis.

“His two synods on the family wrestled with, among other issues, communion. And in the end, after two synods and two years of deliberation, Pope Francis issued a document that allowed for a cautious opening to communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, which did move forward the Church’s pastoral teaching on that particular issue,” said White.

White suggested that the Amazon synod may conclude with similar progress.

“Among the many issues that they’re going to be discussing in Rome over the next three weeks is perhaps relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests because there is such a shortage of priests in the particular region of the Amazon. And they’re grappling with what to do about it,” he said.

White joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the real or symbolic importance of synods, what makes the Amazon region particularly vexing to the Church, and why Protestants should stay abreast of an important Catholic meeting.Read it all.

The Catholic Church is currently meeting to discuss how to better minister in the Amazon region. One of the biggest issues on the table: climate change and environmental degradation https://t.co/jpeVVurGuy

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) October 10, 2019

What do you think are the major issues in the way that love is (mis)understood in contemporary culture?

Today love has become virtually a religion in the West – an all-embracing belief system that answers questions of ultimate purpose. The reasons behind love’s exaltation are well described German sociologists Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim:

Love is glorified largely because it represents a sort of refuge in the chilly environment of our affluent, impersonal, uncertain society, stripped of its traditions and scarred by all kinds of risk . . . weighed down by expectations and frustrations, ‘love’ is the new centre round which our detraditionalised life revolves.^[1]

So love, in itself becomes what life is all about. The ‘shape’ of that love will tend to be universalist and inclusive, almost a type of liberation theology, freeing people to be themselves. The philosopher Simon May has an incisive analysis of the high expectations that love now carries:

the more individualistic we become the more we expect love to be a secular journey for the soul, a final source of meaning and freedom, a supreme standard of value, a key to the problem of identity, a solace in the face of rootlessness, a desire for the worldly and simultaneously a desire to transcend it, a redemption from suffering, and, a promise of eternity. Or all of these at once.^[2]

A key idea here is the anthropological optimism at the heart of much modern love. By this I mean how love is assumed to be within easy reach of anyone with little cost to the self. Yet this is a recent development and is far removed from how love is understood within Scripture and Christian tradition.

Read it all.

The academic position has been filled by Dr. Patrick Mitchel. He will take up a new role of Lecturer in Theology. pic.twitter.com/9UYRc5iOOI

— IrishBibleInstitute (@IrishbibleInst) April 18, 2016

For example, a few years ago I attended a workshop for Anglicans. At one point in our conversation we were sharing our images of God: how we understand who God is and what he is like. As people chimed in I was struck by one thing in particular: a lack of appeal to Scripture. People were happy to suggest that we can come to know God as we embrace our grandchildren or take a walk by the lake. No one seemed to think, however, that it was important to begin with the Bible—God’s own self-revelation—if we’re going to talk about God.

We hear Saint John say something like, “God is love,” and we assume that God’s love is like whatever our experience of love is. Or, worse yet, we might believe that whatever our experience of love is, is God. That is what I mean by sentimentality — when it comes to a truthful knowledge of God, things like Scripture, reason, and tradition take a back seat to my own feelings and experience.

Stanley Hauerwas, never one for mincing words, once said that the greatest enemy of the Christian religion is not atheism but sentimentality: “You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.” Part of his, no doubt overstated, point here is that bad liturgy leads to bad ethics. Liturgy matters. The hymns we sing, the prayers we pray, the sermons we preach, the language we use, the reverence with which we come to Holy Communion, it all matters. You wouldn’t want to end up murdering your best friend, would you?

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” As I said, we hear a passage like this from Saint John and we are prone to both sentimentality and moralism. Sentimentality because we think we know what love is from our own experience and moralism because we think loving one another comes naturally to us and that we’re already off to a good start.

Both of these ditches lead to our peril. But Saint John makes a way through for us and that way is the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Read it all.

“If we want to understand what Christian love is, we must begin not by talking about ourselves but by talking about the God who loves and whose love looks like Jesus Christ and him crucified for the remission of our sins.”https://t.co/MmRffwN5wk

— Fr Jonathan R Turtle ☩ (@turtology) October 10, 2019

In late June, the leaders of China and the United States announced at the G-20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, that they had reached a détente in their trade war. U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that the two sides had set negotiations “back on track.” He put on hold new tariffs on Chinese goods and lifted restrictions preventing U.S. companies from selling to Huawei, the blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giant. Markets rallied, and media reports hailed the move as a “cease-fire.”

That supposed cease-fire was a false dawn, one of many that have marked the on-again, off-again diplomacy between Beijing and Washington. All wasn’t quiet on the trade front; the guns never stopped blazing. In September, after a summer of heated rhetoric, the Trump administration increased tariffs on another $125 billion worth of Chinese imports. China responded by issuing tariffs on an additional $75 billion worth of U.S. goods. The United States might institute further tariffs in December, bringing the total value of Chinese goods subject to punitive tariffs to over half a trillion dollars, covering almost all Chinese imports. China’s retaliation is expected to cover 69 percent of its imports from the United States. If all the threatened hikes are put in place, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports of Chinese goods will be about 24 percent, up from about three percent two years ago, and that on Chinese imports of U.S. goods will be at nearly 26 percent, compared with China’s average tariff rate of 6.7 percent for all other countries.

The parties to this trade war may yet step back from the abyss. There have been over a dozen rounds of high-level negotiations without any real prospect of a settlement. Trump thinks that tariffs will convince China to cave in and change its allegedly unfair trade practices. China may be willing to budge on some issues, such as buying more U.S. goods, opening its market further to U.S. companies, and improving intellectual property protection, in exchange for the removal of all new tariffs, but not to the extent demanded by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, China hopes that its retaliatory actions will cause enough economic pain in the United States to make Washington reconsider its stance.

The numbers suggest that Washington is not winning this trade war. Although China’s economic growth has slowed, the tariffs have hit U.S. consumers harder than their Chinese counterparts. With fears of a recession around the corner, Trump must reckon with the fact that his current approach is imperiling the U.S. economy, posing a threat to the international trading system, and failing to reduce the trade deficit that he loathes.

Read it all.

Instead of narrowing the trade gap, the imposition of tariffs has coincided with a widening of the U.S. trade deficit with China: by nearly 12 percent in 2018 and by about another 8 percent in the first eight months of this year.https://t.co/SOSQ5ipG1d

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) October 9, 2019

You can listen directly here or download it there.

The Woman of Samaria at the Well, c.1560 (oil on c Postcard https://t.co/1Eu2wUIOEW #woman #art #fineart pic.twitter.com/OeHhnlQQyA

— She in Art (@She_in_Art) May 16, 2019

Brooklyn’s Prospect Park is dog heaven. On sunny Saturday mornings, the park’s open green space, Long Meadow, fills with hundreds of canines frolicking during off-leash hours. The dogs’ owners hover nearby like watchful parents who, when playtime ends, head over to the nearby farmers’ market or go out for brunch. Later in the day, they might make time for doggie yoga or the pet bakery before coming home to their pet-friendly apartment buildings, many featuring dog baths and groomers.

Roughly 600,000 dogs live in New York City, along with half a million cats. About half of U.S. households own a pet, which adds up to at least 77 million dogs and 54 million cats. Generationally, millennials are the most enthusiastic pet owners, with some 70 percent boasting of having at least one pet.

What you’re less likely to see, especially in America’s largest cities, are children. Pets are now more common than kids in many U.S. cities. San Francisco, for example, is home to nearly 150,000 dogs but just 115,000 children under age 18. Farther north, Seattle has more households with cats than with kids. Nationwide, pets outnumber children in apartment buildings. In New York neighborhoods like Long Island City and Williamsburg, wealthy singles have the highest number of pooches per capita.

In a recent Atlantic essay, Derek Thompson wrote about how “America’s urban rebirth is missing a key element: births.” Manhattan’s infant population is projected to halve in 30 years. High-density cities are losing families with children over age six, while growing their populations of college-educated residents without children. Indeed, the share of children under 20 living in big cities has been falling for 40 years.

Young professionals’ four-legged friends have replaced those babies.

Read it all.

Are Cities Going to the Dogs? Millennials favor pet ownership over children in America’s increasingly unaffordable cities. https://t.co/WzshhqNff1 via @michael_hendrix pic.twitter.com/BLKXdV7iX2

— City Journal (@CityJournal) October 9, 2019

O Lord, Who hast taught us that the way of man is not in himself, and hast mercifully promised to keep the feet of Thy saints: direct our thoughts and inspire our actions, we humbly pray Thee, to the good of Thy Church and the fulfillment of Thy eternal purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

A beautiful caricature of Joseph Armitage Robinson, vicar of All Saints’, Cambridge 1888-1892. This cartoon featured in Vanity Fair in Dec 1905 under the banner “Men of the Day”. Come in on Saturday and see his church for yourself 10:00-17:00 #HeritageOpenDays #OpenCambridge pic.twitter.com/yX0RLA17Zs

— All Saints Cambridge (@AllSaintsCam) September 10, 2018

A Song of Ascents. Of David. O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.

–Psalm 131

“To hope is not only to believe in God, but to believe and be certain that He loves us and means well to us; and therefore is a great Christian grace.” pic.twitter.com/ZQowBve6gg

— FrDavid AbernethyCO (@pghoratory) October 9, 2019