European officials ended a two-day financial summit Saturday with no new concrete plans to help support euro-area countries that are having difficulty repaying their debts, as deep divisions remained about the best course for the coming weeks and months.
On Saturday, the officials discussed but failed to agree on a proposal to tax financial transactions. Greece is likely to run out of cash by mid-October if it does not receive billions of euros of bailout money, potentially setting off a financial contagion that could hop from bank to bank and country to country.
But European officials remain undecided on whether Greece has done enough of the spending cuts and reforms that it had promised to carry out as a condition of taking the money.
No indication of a discussion of critical current issues. Just some fluff about an apparent ‘mission trip’ by the House of Bishops to some churches in South America.
Mission trips are very important, but it seems that the HoB is avoiding the issues facing ECUSA.
No. 1: “On Saturday, Sept. 17, the members of the House of Bishops and the HoB spouses/partners group, which is meeting concurrently, visited various sites of mission and ministry in and beyond Quito.”
I’ve always wondered in this new age of ecclesiastical sexual morality, in which it sometimes seems as if churches change their rules as they go along (and then scramble their theologians and ethicists into the sky to provide cover), what is really endorsed.
Could a bishop who’s a single guy bring his current girlfriend to the bishops’ meeting? What would the other bishops say? “Way to go, fella!” Or: “Naughty–and not what we had in mind at all.” And could he bring a different girlfriend to the next meeting? If not, why not? Would people frown at PDA in the hallways?
Or is “partners” now being used among the politically correct and the cognoscenti to mean “married”? Are there footnotes (or rubrics in traditional red) to spell out these subtle rules and distinctions? Now that gays can marry, do all “partners” have to be married or only heterosexual partners?
Is anyone else puzzled by these changes (which to some of us seem to be coming too fast to keep up with)?