“Catholic teaching maintains that marriage is a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman joined in an intimate partnership of life and love—a union instituted by God for the mutual fulfillment of the husband and wife as well as for the procreation and education of children.

“Partnerships of committed same-sex individuals are already legal in California. Our state has also granted domestic partners spousal-type rights and responsibilities which facilitate their relationships with each other and any children they bring to the partnership. Every person involved in the family of domestic partners is a child of God and deserves respect in the eyes of the law and their community. However, those partnerships are not marriage—and can never be marriage—as it has been understood since the founding of the United States. Today’s decision of California’s high court opens the door for policymakers to deconstruct traditional marriage and create another institution under the guise of equal protection.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

In regard to this decision of the court, the Catholic Bishops of California have said that "Catholic teaching maintains that marriage is a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman joined in an intimate partnership of life and love-a union instituted by God for the mutual fulfillment of the husband and wife as well as for the procreation and education of children."

This teaching of the Church follows forth from the teaching of Jesus Christ: "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?" (Matthew 19: 4-5)

At a moment in our society when we need to reinforce the strength of marriage and family this decision of the Supreme Court takes California in the opposite
direction. This action challenges those in society who believe in the importance of the traditional understanding of marriage to deepen their witness to the unique and essential role that marriage between a man and a woman has in the life of society.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

The California Supreme Court ruled today that in California all people have the constitutional right to marry and raise a family, regardless of sexual orientation. Below is the text of a statement from Bishop Marc in response to the ruling: I welcome the ruling of the California Supreme Court affirming the fundamental right of all people to marry and establish a family. All children of God should be afforded the same rights under the law, and this decision recognizes that all Californians, regardless of sexual orientation, have equal access to one of our fundamental human institutions. This decision gives our church another opportunity to partner with our state to ensure that all families have the support they need to build relationships that strengthen our communities, state and country. Jesus tried to free his disciples from a narrow definition of what it means to be his follower. In Matthew 10:42, Jesus says “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” God affirms the good in the world outside the boundaries of religious creeds and dogmas. In this spirit, we also affirm and rejoice in this decision by the California Supreme Court precisely because we are Christians. Clearly, this momentous decision will have ecclesial implications for the Episcopal Diocese of California. I intend to be in prayerful consultation with the people of our diocese to see how we can use this decision to strengthen our support of our lesbian and gay sisters and brothers, and our witness to God’s inclusive love. The Diocese of California will issue an appropriate statement in due course.

--The Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus is Bishop of California

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships

In the cloistered world of Episcopal seminaries, time sometimes seems to stand still as clergy-in-training gather in stone chapels to pray in ways familiar to their forebears centuries earlier.

But the semblance of timelessness can be deceiving.

Some of the 11 seminaries affiliated with the Episcopal Church are slashing core programs, while others report rapid growth in enrollment. Still others are reexamining conventional wisdom about what it takes -- and how much it costs -- to shape a faithful priest.

The Episcopal method of training clergy "is a very expensive way to do theological education," said Daniel Aleshire, executive director of the Pittsburgh-based Association of Theological Schools. "There is significant financial stress in the Episcopal seminary system."

Centrist and liberal seminaries are facing especially hard times....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a report today on a conflict between solving crimes and protecting privacy. It's called "familial searching." Police can now take DNA from a crime scene and compare it to millions of DNA samples in a government database. If there is even a partial match, that could lead to the criminal by way of his or her family members if their DNA is in the database. And they could be completely innocent. Should that practice be legal? Lucky Severson reports.

Unidentified Man (working in lab): Stick it right back in there. Okay, and we'll close it up right there. And this is the same thing, these are ...

LUCKY SEVERSON: Three years ago, Pearl Wilson's son Charles died in a Maryland prison while awaiting sentencing for rape. But for his mother, her son lives on.

PEARL WILSON: My son lives in me and I in him, and his blood is my blood, and my blood was in him.

SEVERSON: Though Charles is dead his DNA still sits in a databank. By law DNA has to be gathered from all felons. Some states even take it from arrestees. The DNA profiles remain there indefinitely.

Ms. WILSON: I'm worried about them continuously holding my son's DNA in that database.

Read the whole piece.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

There were many remarkable aspects to Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to America. Among those not remarked upon, however, were two that stand out:

1) the degree to which Benedict’s message matched Pope John Paul II’s message in the latter’s profound 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), and

2) the degree to which that message continues to resonate with so many Americans struggling to find and bring truth to our post-modern culture, including non-Catholic Americans.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Of the 36 Anglican churches in the City of London, only 12 should stay open for worship with full-time clergymen, a commission under Lord Templeman recommended in 1994. The rest might be put to other ecclesiastical use or "appropriate secular purposes".

How close we often run to disaster. The plan might easily have been implemented, leaving only four parishes in the whole City to administer the remaining dozen churches.

Worse things had already befallen City churches. Wren churches had been demolished in Victoria's reign to improve the traffic flow: St Benet Gracechurch in 1868, St Mary Somerset the year after, St Dionis Backchurch in 1878, St Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street in 1887, St Olave Jewry in 1888.

As it happened, Bishop David Hope of London did not implement the Templeman report, and his successor, the present Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, proved to be in favour of preserving all the City churches for active worship.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

As gay and lesbian couples made plans to marry, activists opposed to the California Supreme Court's decision legalizing same-sex marriage said on Friday they would escalate efforts for a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexuals.

An amendment to the state constitution would override Thursday's decision, which superseded state laws from 1977 and 2000 that defined marriage as a union between a man and woman.

Californians could vote in November on an amendment cementing that definition in the state constitution.

"It's expected that certification for the ballot will occur in early June," said Randy Thomasson, head of Campaign for Children and Families. "The ruling should be stayed in deference to the people who have demanded the right to decide this issue on the ballot."

Thomasson expects a backlash against the court's decision because it is at odds with the traditional definition of marriage, approved by voters in a 2000 statewide referendum.

"People know deep in their hearts it is only for a man and woman," Thomasson said.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ Pentecost letter to the bishops of the Anglican Communion was not the anticipated communication in which he reportedly would ask bishops to predicate their attendace at the Lambeth Conference this summer upon their willingness to accept the recommendations in the Windsor Report.

A spokesman said Archbishop Williams had modified his plan to write to bishops whose stated positions ran contrary to the colleagial gathering of equals he envisions for Lambeth. Instead, Archbishop Williams has been in telephone contact with a number of bishops, asking that they honor the integrity of the meeting, the spokesman told The Church of England Newspaper.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Abp of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Lambeth 2008

Campaigners are staging a demonstration outside Rochester Cathedral today against the Bishop of Rochester’s stance on gay rights.

The protest has been planned to coincide with International Day Against Homophobia (Idaho) and will see members of the county’s gay community gather at the cathedral from noon.

Ray Duff, one of the organisers, said: “Dr Michael Nazir-Ali has regularly opposed gay rights measures; for example, adoption by gay and lesbian partnerships.

“He has himself received threats because of his conversion from Islam to Christianity. Lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) people fully condemn such threats unreservedly.

“Thus, we, the LGBT community in Kent and the UK, will urge the bishop to now extend his support and sympathy to the LGBT community, who have suffered for centuries because of Church homophobia.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Inside Mifflin Hall at Fort Lee, Va., 11 students gather in a room that could pass for a pre-med class. A model skeleton stands on wheels in one corner; a partially dissected plastic torso rests on a table in the rear. The instructor, Sgt. 1st Class Alisa Karr, begins the lesson with a review of the body's bones.

But these soldiers are not studying anatomy to become medics. They are learning to care for the dead.

When these 11 students graduate from training at the U.S. Army's Mortuary Affairs Center, they will earn the title 92M — military code for mortuary affairs specialist. Some of those who have volunteered to work with the dead will serve at collection points in Iraq and Afghanistan; others will work in the port mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. They will help recover, identify and prepare the remains of fallen soldiers.

The 92Ms have cared for the majority of the more than 4,500 military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. They operate under a code of conduct that's part scientific and part symbolic....

I happened to catch this story this week during a run via NPR's story of the day podcast--very worthwhile I thought; see what you make of it.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Iraq War

Is it neat, or is it slightly odd that in this Los Angeles community -- it's called Pasadena -- a suburban mix of nice restaurants and well-tended front lawns, there is a home wedged in with the other houses where the entire front yard is edible?

It's true. At 631 Cypress Avenue, there is not one thing that cannot be eaten. Nothing. Kale, chives, pepper, pinapple, guava, Swiss chard, even edible flowers along the side of the house, and into the back yard.

It is Jules Dervaes' fifth of an acre. His little family farm, in the midst of American suburbia, his way of breaking free without really going anywhere.

"We eat rich, I'm telling you," said Dervaes. "And the way we live, it just seems like something you would dream of."

The "we" he speaks of are his kids, who grew up on the farm. Three out of four of them have stayed on into their 20's and 30's, and they don't have other jobs either because what they don't eat, they sell.

Read it all or watch the video (link here).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy

Pope Benedict, speaking a day after a California court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage, firmly restated on Friday the Roman Catholic Church's position that only unions between a man and a woman are moral.

Benedict made no mention of the California decision in his speech to family groups from throughout Europe, but stressed the Church's position several times.

"The union of love, based on matrimony between a man and a woman, which makes up the family, represents a good for all society that can not be substituted by, confused with, or compared to other types of unions," he said.

The pope also spoke of the inalienable rights of the traditional family, "founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, to be the natural cradle of human life".

Read it all.

Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths) • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

In the few years since Mandela has retired from official engagements, the former Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Peace Laureate and outspoken flayer of duplicitous politicians, has taken his place as South Africa’s moral conscience. Everyone wants to catch his eye or exchange a few words with him or prompt his famous giggle, and Tutu himself is the first to admit likes the attention.

The waitress takes our order and we both opt for grilled Cape salmon, the great cleric having changed his mind on the oxtail. At first Tutu seems pretty much unchanged since I last interviewed him a decade ago. Then, as head of the commission, he had the emotionally and physically taxing responsibility of wading through, in a series of public hearings between 1996 and 1998, the barbarities of apartheid.

He also had to make hugely sensitive decisions on granting amnesty for crimes, and on assessing the respective weight of human rights violations committed for or against such an inhumane system, a balancing act that infuriated both the African National Congress and white rightwingers. Then, towards the end of the assignment in 1997, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and yet the dynamic force of his personality helped to carry the country and himself through those difficult days, just as it had in the worst days of apartheid.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of South Africa

As Marcia Macy chatted with her dog walker in the driveway of her Wheaton home Thursday, a young Muslim man passed her and hooked a plastic bag containing a Quran on her doorknob.

Unlike most religious solicitors, the man didn't try to speak with her or engage her in debate. He simply left her a 378-page paperback English translation of the holy book of Islam.

"I'd read it just to see what it says, but I believe in Jesus, not Allah," said Macy, a longtime Christian. "They have a right to do it . . . but I feel pretty strong in my faith."

If Macy reads the text, she will have fulfilled the goal of the Book of Signs Foundation. The Addison-based Muslim organization says that since July it has distributed more than 70,000 free English Qurans to homes in the Chicago area and another 30,000 around Houston.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Note: please be cautioned that this may not be appropriate for certain blog readers.

Group readings of Dolly Doctor at high school are an Australian rite of passage. Most teenagers know exactly how to flip from the cover of the magazine straight to the sex and body advice column at the back. In schoolyards across the country, girls, and sometimes boys, can be found nervously giggling at the questions but eagerly awaiting the answers. "Is my period normal?", "What's a wet dream?" and "Can I get pregnant the first time?"

But now it is adults who are gasping at what they read. Dolly Doctor and its counterpart in Girlfriend magazine came under scrutiny last month at the Senate's inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the contemporary media environment. The inquiry was set up to address parents' growing concerns about their children's exposure to sexual material via advertising, pop culture and the internet, and the rendering of them into sexual objects.

But in focusing on these magazine Q&A columns, the inquiry has taken a strange turn. Several senators, particularly the Tasmanian Liberal Stephen Parry, argued they were not appropriate reading material for younger teens. In particular, sexual questions were cause for alarm.

Read it all.

I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Children • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

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The Trinity School for Ministry Board of Trustees announced today that the Rev. Dr. Justyn Terry has accepted an enthusiastic call by the board to become the new Dean and President, succeeding the Rt. Rev. Dr. John H. Rodgers, Trinity’s second Dean and President, who left retirement to serve as Interim Dean/President beginning in August 2007.

Chairman of the Board of Trustees the Rev. Canon David Roseberry said, “The Lord has blessed us indeed, as Justyn will assume the awesome responsibility of Trinity’s vital role as a bearer of an orthodox evangelical witness in North America.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

Michael Pollan writes that the food business once lamented what it called the problem of the “fixed stomach”—it appeared that demand for food, unlike other products, was inelastic, the amount fixed by the dimensions of the stomach itself, the variety constrained by tradition and habit. In the past few decades, however, American and European stomachs have become as elastic as balloons, and, with the newly prosperous Chinese and Indians switching to Western diets, much of the rest of the world is following suit. “Today, Mexicans drink more Coca-Cola than milk,” Patel reports. Roberts tells us that in India “obesity is now growing faster than either the government or traditional culture can respond,” and the demand for gastric bypasses is soaring.

Driven by our bottomless stomachs, Roberts argues, the modern economy has reduced food to a “commodity” like any other, which must be generated in ever greater units at an ever lower cost, year by year, like sneakers or DVDs. But food isn’t like sneakers or DVDs. If we max out our credit cards buying Nikes, we can simply push them to the back of a closet. By contrast, our insatiable demand for food must be worn on our bodies, often in the form of diabetes as well as obesity. Overeating makes us miserable, and ill, but medical advances mean that it takes a long time to kill us, so we keep on eating. Roberts, whose impulse to connect everything up is both his strength and his weakness, concludes, grandly, that “food is fundamentally not an economic phenomenon.” On the contrary, food has always been an economic phenomenon, but in its current form it is one struggling to meet our uncurbed appetites. What we are witnessing is not the end of food but a market on the brink of failure. Those bearing the brunt are, as in Malthus’s day, the people at the bottom.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition

I acknowledge and respect the equal dignity of all - regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. There is no place for the harassment or persecution of anyone for whatever reason.

We are thankful that in this country there is freedom of meeting and expression for all.

The Bible and the Church teach that the proper expression of our sexuality is in the context of marriage. This has to do with God’s purposes in creating us, respect for persons and the importance of the family as a basic unit of society.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships

Like many other young couples, Aimee and Jeff Harris spent the first years of their marriage eagerly accumulating stuff: cars, furniture, clothes, appliances and, after a son and a daughter came along, toys, toys, toys.

Now they are trying to get rid of it all, down to their fancy wedding bands, although finding takers has been harder than they thought. Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May.

“It’s amazing the amount of things a family can acquire,” said Mrs. Harris, 28, attributing their good life to “the ridiculous amount of money” her husband earned as a computer network engineer in this early Wi-Fi mecca.

The Harrises now hope to end up as organic homesteaders in Vermont.

“We’re not attached to any outcome,” said Mrs. Harris, a would-be doctor before dropping out of college, who grew up poverty-stricken in a family that traces its lineage back through the Delanos and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Mayflower settler, Isaac Allerton.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy

As oil soared to a record-high $127 a barrel on Friday, Saudi Arabia's leader rebuffed appeals by President Bush to increase oil production, saying they did not see enough demand to warrant increased output.

"The Saudi government has reiterated their policy that Saudi Arabia is willing to put on the oil market whatever oil is necessary to meet the demand of Saudi Arabia's customers," said Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Bush made the plea as U.S. motorists suffer rapidly rising prices at the pump, soaring to a record average of $3.787 for a gallon of regular gas, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report. The average a year ago was $3.114. Bush made a similar unsuccessful appeal to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in January.

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil producer and a member of OPEC, the Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries, which controls more than 40 percent of the world's crude oil supply. Saudi Arabia's oil minister Ali al-Naimi said in South Korea on Thursday that the record oil prices are a result of turmoil in financial markets, not from a shortage in supply.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources

The Supreme Court's ruling is a "frightening departure" from long-held norms about marriage and family, said Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

"I am saddened that people are comparing this favorably to the historic decision in California that reversed the ban on interracial marriages," Mouw said by e-mail. "That courageous decision was a wonderful step forward in the cause of justice. This verdict is not that at all. It undermines what many of us firmly believe is the very foundation of a healthy social order...."

The Rev. Susan Russell of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena said she is thrilled that her church, which has been blessing same sex unions for 15 years, will soon be able to offer official wedding rites.

"It is a very exciting day," said Russell, who had her union with her partner blessed at All Saints last year. But she acknowledged the continuing efforts to outlaw same-sex weddings.

"It is not the end of the story by any means," she said, noting the court's decision means homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection under law. "But it is a huge step nonetheless."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships

In Cuba, 75 dissidents were arrested five years ago, most of whom are still in prison. Some of their wives formed a group called "Ladies in White" and have had demonstrations at their church every Sunday. A smaller number of them acted on their own last month, using bolder methods, attracting the attention of Cuban officials.

It is a difficult question--what is the best way to oppose a dictator? Listen to it all from NPR and see what you think.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Go here, then click on the cartoon for today, then scroll back to the cartoon for May13th. LOL.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • US Presidential Election 2008 • * General Interest • Humor / Trivia

Late last month, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon made a somewhat unlikely appearance at the biennial Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College here. The author of "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" (2007) -- in which the protagonist discovers that an evangelical cabal in the U.S. has launched a holy war between Muslims and Jews in Israel in order to hasten the Second Coming -- found himself addressing a crowd of devoted Christians.

In some ways, the Dutch Reformed Calvin College is as homogeneous as the names of its professors (many of which end in -inga, and -einstra). Catholics are not allowed to teach there; neither are members of most other Protestant denominations. Faculty members are required to sign three confessional creeds -- the Heidelberg Confession, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dordt -- which include the doctrines of predestination (God has predetermined all events) and election (God has chosen some to be saved from eternal damnation and others not).

One could speculate that adherence to these doctrines could foster a certain apathy toward matters in the outside world. ("I can't do anything to change the course of events, so why bother?") But there is another major theological tenet that the folks at Calvin hold dear: the belief that the Gospel not only saves souls upon death but redeems minds and bodies in the here and now.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture

Transnational companies, many of whom have their headquarters in Britain, are legally and illegally withholding billions in taxes from some of the poorest countries in the world, Christian Aid says.

The money would be more than enough to meet all the UN Millennium Development Goals, states the development charity’s report, Death and Taxes, which was launched on Monday at the start of Christian Aid week. It estimates that 1000 children die each day from causes that the lost revenue could have alleviated.

Companies argue that they have a legal duty to minimise or avoid tax. But the report says that, although tax avoidance is legal, responsible companies should not seek aggressively to avoid the taxes that are needed to pay for the essential welfare services and infrastructure in developing countries.

Illegal tax-evasion schemes, such as transfer mispricing and false invoicing, account for $160 billion a year in lost revenue, it says. This figure reflects the research of Raymond Baker, a senior fellow at the US Center for International Policy. Donations from countries and aid agencies are “peanuts” compared to the wealth that has left poor countries in tax evasion.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Most Americans believe the choice to end one's life is a personal decision and that physician-assisted death should be legal, according to a new survey.

More than 80 percent of adults questioned in the poll by Knowledge Networks said the right to die should not be decided by the government, church or a third party, yet only 50 percent of Americans over 60 and less than 25 percent of younger people said they have a living will.

"People put that off. They're in denial and they have their heads in the sand," said Dave Bunnell, editor-in-chief of ELDR magazine, which commissioned the poll.

read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Life Ethics

Today's Supreme Court decision on same-gender relationships is important because it reflects our baptismal vow to "strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being" and our commitment to justice and mercy for all people.

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has been a leader in working for the rights of all people in the State of California, and that work is honored in today's ruling. The canons of our church, under "Rights of the Laity" (Canon 1:17.5), forbid discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, disabilities or age. We affirm equal rights for all.

We will continue to advocate for equality in the future and will do so at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which will meet in Anaheim in 2009.

I celebrate and give thanks for this decision of the court and look forward with joy and excitement to a future of justice and mercy for all people in the State of California and the Episcopal Church.

To paraphrase St. Paul, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, gay nor straight in Jesus Christ our Lord.

--(The Rt. Rev.) J. Jon Bruno is Bishop of Los Angeles

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships

In another action that drew charges of canonical impropriety, Schori recently called and oversaw a convention in California that purported to continue or reconstitute the TEC Diocese of San Joaquin and accept as temporary shepherd former Northern California Bishop Jerry Lamb - despite the possibly void deposition of Bishop Schofield.

This action was clearly a precursor to TEC’s move in late April to file a lawsuit claiming the property of the seceded diocese - though the Dar es Salaam communiqúe called for an end to a resort to lawsuits among opposing Anglican parties. The suit, which is focused on direct holdings of the diocese rather than individual parish properties, names Bishop Schofield as the primary defendant, as trusteeship of the property of the San Joaquin diocese is vested in the bishop, under California law.

Meanwhile, there has been an uptick in litigation against individual parishes seeking to leave TEC for reasons of theological conscience. Unlike her predecessor, Frank Griswold, Bishop Schori rejects the idea that a diocese may negotiate a financial settlement allowing a departing congregation that intends to remain Anglican to keep its church property. That she is pressing her view, and that the national church is now more actively joining in court battles, with the help of Schori’s ubiquitous Chancellor, David Booth Beers, is evident in reports of church property disputes across the country. (See more in the latest issue's “Focus” section.) Adding insult to injury, the P.B. recently defended her church’s litigiousness by comparing the faithful who seek to retain parish property to child abusers. In both cases, she said, “bad behavior” is involved that must be confronted.

The question of Schori’s own “bad behavior” was, however, the subject of a memo that was circulating at deadline among a consortium of church leaders. Prepared by an attorney, the memo concluded that sufficient legal grounds exist for bringing Schori to ecclesiastical trial on 11 counts of violating TEC regulations. The memo was not optimistic, though, that the current political and legal climate in TEC would allow a presentment of the P.B. to go forward.

Read the whole long article.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Latest News • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues

A bell ringer broke his collarbone after becoming entangled in a rope at the top of a church tower.

Tony Merry was hoisted 3ft off the belfry floor when the rope caught his trousers. Stuck fast in the cramped upper reaches of St Mary's Church in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, he had to be rescued by firefighters and paramedics. They used a pulley to lower him through a trap door 15ft above ground and down on to a stretcher below.

Recovering at home yesterday, Mr Berry, 58, said: "Nothing like this has ever happened before – it gave me a real shock. I think a bunch of keys got caught in the rope and I was pulled about 3ft off the floor. The shock made me black out and I lost consciousness and fell to the ground and bashed my shoulder. The paramedics gave me morphine to help with the pain and then I was conscious throughout the rescue."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry