TitusOneNineTitusOneNine2008-05-17T21:13:44ZCopyright (c) 2008, Kendall HarmonExpressionEnginetag:kendallharmon.net,2008:05:17Statement By The California Catholic Conference Of Bishops’ Regarding The Court Decisiontag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125532008-05-17T21:10:00Z2008-05-17T21:13:44ZKendall Harmon
“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.
]]>Statement on California Supreme Court decision by Archbishop of San Francisco George H. Niederauertag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125522008-05-17T21:07:00Z2008-05-17T21:08:51ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>Statement of the Episcopal Bishop of California on Yesterday’s Court Rulingtag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125512008-05-17T20:56:00Z2008-05-17T20:57:35ZKendall Harmon
--The Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus is Bishop of California
]]>Episcopal Seminaries Struggle With Coststag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125502008-05-17T20:49:00Z2008-05-17T20:50:59ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>Religion and Ethics Weekly: Familial DNA Testingtag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125492008-05-17T20:44:00Z2008-05-17T20:46:26ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>Paul Kengor: Veritatis Benedictustag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125472008-05-17T20:43:00Z2008-05-17T20:44:13ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>Christopher Howse: After the fires of Londontag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125462008-05-17T20:35:00Z2008-05-17T20:38:09ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>California ruling prompts challenge and gay nuptial planstag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125452008-05-17T20:33:00Z2008-05-17T20:35:29ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>Canterbury Calling: Archbishop on the Phone for Lambethtag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125432008-05-17T17:57:00Z2008-05-17T17:59:02ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>Gay rights campaigners to protest at Rochester Cathedraltag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125422008-05-17T17:48:00Z2008-05-17T17:55:15ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>Science, Symbolism Mix in Army Mortuary Trainingtag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125412008-05-17T17:44:00Z2008-05-17T17:47:58ZKendall Harmon
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....
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).
]]>Pope restates gay marriage ban after California votetag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125372008-05-17T14:56:00Z2008-05-17T14:59:23ZKendall Harmon
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".
]]>Lunch with the FT: Desmond Tututag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125362008-05-17T14:46:00Z2008-05-17T14:53:41ZKendall Harmon
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.
]]>In Illinois, Qurans given out for freetag:kendallharmon.net,2008:t19/7.125352008-05-17T14:38:00Z2008-05-17T14:54:14ZKendall Harmon
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.