ROSEMONT, PA: Multiple Lawsuits Dog Mainline Anglo-Catholic Parish

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
August 4, 2010

No single parish in The Episcopal Church faces more lawsuits or has been in litigation longer than the Church of the Good Shepherd, an Anglo-Catholic parish along Philadelphia's historic, blue blood mainline.

It started more than eight years ago, in 2002, when Fr. David. L. Moyer, the priest of the congregation at that time, confronted then PA Bishop Charles E. Bennison over what the bishop did or did not believe about 'the faith once for all delivered to the saints.'

It was a historic faceoff. Bennison either refused to answer the questions or sidestepped answers about such fundamental doctrines as the bodily resurrection of Jesus, homosexuality, Christology and much more. Meantime Bennison developed a Visigoth rite for people of indeterminate sexuality to marry in the cathedral (mercifully no one ever used it) and made heretical statements that Jesus was a sinner who forgave himself. It's hard not to imagine that he topped Arius for heresy. It was Bennison who famously said men wrote the Bible and therefore could rewrite it.

Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org

`Madeleine Brindley’                          `WalesOnline’   THE NHS should stop funding chaplaincy services and put the money towards frontline services instead, it has been claimed. A campaign has been launched to persuade the Welsh Assembly Government to set up a charitable trust to fund religious and faith services for patients. Alan Rogers, a member of the National Secular Society, believes that NHS money would be better spent on clinical services for patients.   Read more:        http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health-news/2010/07/28/welsh-secular-campaigner-urges-nhs-to-stop-funding-chaplains-91466-26944766/  

`Pakistan Christian Post’   Karachi: July 25, 2010. (PCP) Dr. Nazir S Bhatti, President of Pakistan Christian Congress PCC, commenting on proposed draft legislation of a Catholic, Shahbaz Clement Bhatti, Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs, Government of Pakistan, against hate preaching, printing, publishing and distribution of hate material said that it is implementation of UNHRC Resolution “Defamation of Religion” prior to confirmation by UN and a conspiracy against 20 million Pakistani Christians.

Read more:      http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/headlinenewsd.php?hnewsid=2166  

`Rebecca McQuillan’                      `Herald’   The Catholic Church will never celebrate same-sex unions – “not now, not in the future, not ever” – even if the law changes to allow religious celebrants to conduct gay marriages, the Bishop of Paisley, Philip Tartaglia, has told the Prime Minister.   The bishop has written to David Cameron, quoting comments the Prime Minister made during a Gay Pride reception at 10 Downing Street in June. Cameron said then: “I am pleased to announce that we are taking a further step, and I think a good step and a right step – ­and I say this as someone who believes in marriage, who believes in civil partnership, who believes in commitment –­ and that is to say that if religious organisations, if churches, if mosques, if temples want to have civil partnerships celebrated at religious places of worship, that should be able to happen and we should make that happen.”   Read more:        http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/bishop-on-same-sex-marriage-not-now-not-ever-1.1043092  

`Hariati Azizan’       `The Star’   PETALING JAYA: Parents, be careful. It may not be Justin Bieber’s latest music video that your children are watching on the Internet. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has received 202 complaints for obscene content on Malaysian websites and personal blogs as of June 16 this year. Read more:        http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/7/25/nation/6732469&sec=nation

`The Christian Institute’   Tens of thousands of school pupils were suspended from English schools last year for attacking their teachers or classmates, according to shocking new statistics. Almost 17,000 of these suspensions involved primary school pupils aged 11 and under, and over 63,000 of them involved children in secondary schools. The Department for Education’s statistics also revealed that there were 1,240 cases of children aged four and under being suspended for a variety of reasons during 2008/09. Read more:       http://www.christian.org.uk/news/over-80000-suspensions-for-violence-at-school/      

Live with each other, Rowan Williams urges Lutherans

by Ed Thornton
The Church Times
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=98369
August 3, 2010

Assembled: the opening eucharist in Stuttgart LWF/ERICK COLL

THE Archbishop of Canterbury warned Lutherans last week of the "variety of traps" that Churches can fall into.

Dr Williams had been invited to address the Lutheran World Federa­tion (LWF) Assembly, in Stuttgart, Germany. The traps, he said, in­cluded conducting "inter-Church quarrels in a spirit that sends out a clear message of unwillingness to live with the other and be fed by them"; consuming time and energy in "what we like to think of as service to the needy, while ignoring our own need and poverty"; and imagining "that by faithfully performing the liturgy we embody the reality of the Kingdom, whether or not we are being trans­formed into a community of mutual nourishment".

Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org

`LifeSiteNews’ WASHINGTON, D.C., July 28, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a 3-0 decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, DC, ruled that the National Motto, “In God We Trust,” is constitutional and does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.   Quoting the 1970 decision in Aronow v. United States, the Court wrote: “It is quite obvious that the national motto and slogan on coinage and currency ‘In God We Trust’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion.”   Read more:       http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10072812.html

One of the hot debates in academia is now reaching the courts. The question: Do universities discriminate against religious conservatives? Some professors and students say they do, but it's not an easy charge to pin down.

When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a "closeted faith."

"They just do not want to bring up that they are religious in an academic discussion. There's somewhat of almost a culture of suppression surrounding discussions of religion at these kinds of academic institutions," Ecklund says.

She says the scientists worried that their colleagues would believe they were politically conservative — or worse, subscribed to the theory of intelligent design. Ecklund says they all insisted on anonymity.

Read or listen to it all.

`Daniel Martin’                       `Mail’ A horrifying picture of the extent of Broken Britain has been painted by an international report which exposes our moral failure on family values.   The study found we have the worst record on teen pregnancy in Europe and more children living in one-parent families than any other European country.   More of our single mothers are unemployed and on benefit than anywhere else in the continent, largely because we hand out so much in benefits.   Read more:        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297268/Britain-European-capital-broken-homes.html?ITO=1490  

By Jim Hoft, First Things

DON’T ASK – DON’T TELL- DON’T REPORT– Had you heard this yet?   The Wikileaks leaker is a radical gay activist nut who was upset over a recent break up… So he leaked over 90,000 classified military documents.   Do you think this might be an important piece of information in the Wikileaks scandal? Apparently, our corrupt journolist state-run media doesn’t think it’s important. Or maybe they’re just hiding it from the public?   …No they wouldn’t do that.   Read here

`Dean Byrd’                      `LifeSiteNews’ July 30, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) published byAmerican Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) offers the following conclusion: "Adolescents who have been reared in lesbian-mother families since birth demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment (p. 28)."
 
Authors Gartrell and Bos generalize their findings to the lesbian population at large, claiming their research offers "implications for – same-sex parenting" (p. 28). Making an enormous scientific leap, they conclude that their study provides scientific proof that there is "no justification for restricting access to reproductive technologies or child custody on the basis of the sexual orientation of the parents" (p. 34-35). 
 
Read more:      http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10073012.html  

`Marcia Segelstein’                       `World Magazine'   You may well wonder—as I often do—how we have reached such a low point in our culture. Divorce rates soar. Abortion is not only condoned by society, it’s common. Fewer and fewer children grow up living in the same household with both their mother and father. Marriage dwindles in importance and is at risk of losing its meaning altogether.   The answer I come back to time and again is that as a society we have turned away from God. This is hardly an original thought. Many have decried for years the fact that God is being slowly (or maybe not so slowly) but surely driven from the public square. We blame the secularists and the cultural elite, the mainstream media and the ACLU. But maybe we have only ourselves to blame.   Read more:      http://online.worldmag.com/2010/07/30/does-americans-faith-run-only-skin-deep/  

As we await a judge's decision on Prop 8, some observations on the voting internals in California by a gay activist:
I recently headed a team that analyzed data from polls conducted by the No on 8 campaign during the run-up to the election. Our analysis sheds new light on what fueled the Proposition 8 victory.

One big question after the election: Who moved? Six weeks before the vote, Proposition 8 was too close to call. But in the final weeks, supporters pulled ahead, and by election day, the outcome was all but certain.

After the election, a misleading finding from exit polls led many to blame African Americans for the loss. But in our new analysis, it appears that African Americans' views were relatively stable. True, a majority of African Americans opposed same-sex marriage, but that was true at the beginning and at the end of the campaign; few changed their minds in the closing weeks.

The shift, it turns out, was greatest among parents with children under 18 living at home — many of them white Democrats.

The numbers are staggering. In the last six weeks, when both sides saturated the airwaves with television ads, more than 687,000 voters changed their minds and decided to oppose same-sex marriage. More than 500,000 of those, the data suggest, were parents with children under 18 living at home. Because the proposition passed by 600,000 votes, this shift alone more than handed victory to proponents.

You can find the announcement here for the dioceses which are taking part in the Fingerpainting and Playdough exercises for the Anglican Communion. It's like the wardens of a prison announcing "group hugs for everyone day." Just embarrassingly silly and trivial.

But let's go ahead and break down in what provinces those dioceses are located:

Hong Kong, Jamaica and Toronto
Hong Kong -- Province of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui
Jamaica -- Province of the West Indies
Toronto -- Province of The Anglican Church of Canada

Delhi, Mumbai, New York and Derby
Delhi -- Province of The Church of North India
New York -- Province of TEC
Derby -- Province of Church of England

Western Tanganyika, Gloucester and El Camino Real
Western Tanganyika -- Province of Tanzania
Gloucester -- Province of Church of England
El Camino Real -- Province of TEC

Peru, Mexico and Southeast Florida
Peru -- Province of the Southern Cone
Mexico -- Province of La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico
Southeast Florida -- Province of TEC

So -- here's what we've got. Out of 12 participating dioceses, three are flaming revisionist TEC dioceses. Two are Church of England. One is Anglican Church of Canada. Half, then, of the announced participating dioceses are made up of those three Provinces. Then you have one diocese apiece from Hong Kong, West Indies, Southern Cone, Tanzania, Mexico, and North India.

Sweet.

From the Telegraph

A transsexual woman who was convicted of waging a creepy five-year spying campaign against her neighbour has escaped jail – after a judge decided that it would be too dangerous for her.

Jan Krause, 46, who was born male, became "obsessed" with innocent nurse Carol Story, 53, and her three children, and declared she was on a "war footing" following an argument over a noisy central heating system.

Krause made the family's lives a misery as she recorded their comings and goings between 2004 and 2009, taking pictures and keeping a diary, containing over 600 entries detailing their movements.

Details of Krause's diary included times when the Story family opened and closed their curtains, with observations in the journal reading: ''Ms Story must be in the shower now'', "Ms Story just left the property in her BMW'' and ''number 11 is empty of people.''

She deliberately smashed into a family member's car and would often stand outside their luxury £500,000 home in the leafy village of Hartford, near Northwich Cheshire – on one occasion whilst wearing a balaclava, dressed in all in black.

Read here

Priest-in-charge

by Elizabeth Kaeton
http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/2010/08/priest-in-charge.html
August 2, 2010

I've been noticing an interesting trend in the church of late.

There seem to be a lot of clergy "in transition" these days.

That's not so unusual this time of year. Clergy - especially those with children - often make their move in the late Spring / early Summer. Good for the kiddies to start the new school year.

In this economy, clergy are often looking at dismal financial forecasts and making their move before the new program year begins.

Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org

When Religion Goes to the Dogs

By BILL MUEHLENBERG
http://www.dispatch.com/
August 3, 2010

There are great and precious promises given to us in Scripture. One such word of assurance and hope is found in Matthew 16:18 where Jesus says that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. That is reassuring to know, but sometimes one has to ask if the church itself is not doing a great job of undermining the faith.

That is, while we expect the enemies of the church to ceaselessly war against us, what is really alarming is when so-called Christian leaders themselves manage to sabotage the work of the church. In the past I have pointed out various examples of some Christians being their own worst enemies when it comes to delivering sharp blows against the faith.

Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org

When the going gets tough, the tough, um, go drinking. That's the word from a new Gallup poll showing that 67% of Americans are hitting the bottle, the most since 1985. Another sign of challenging economic times: more and more of those rounds are happening in the kitchen, not at the corner pub.

A new report by Mintel International, a market-research firm, shows that a growing number of Americans are guzzling down wine and spirits at home as opposed to in bars and restaurants, and many are trading down to cheaper brands as they seek fiscally conscious ways to party in a sluggish economy.

Read it all.

What do you think?

I have to smile a bit -- Benhase [I assume that he is the one who outlined the key points in this bit of diocesan propaganda] begins with talk about how diverse we all are, since that would be priority one according to his faith, and then moves on to how we Episcopalians don't agree. Those are, it seems, the two big distinctives that it is most important to mention first about the identity of an Episcopal Church.

The rich irony is that, of course, our congregations are some of the very least diverse congregations that one can find in all of America. The seeker churches, the Pentecostals, the RCs and [God forbid] the Baptists are far and away more "diverse." The main diversity that we have been able to drum up is that we fancy ourselves as progressive elites. Other than that, we are just a bunch of older, white, well-off men and women who, judging by the text on the Georgia website are also increasingly pretentious.