Bishops’ titles queried: CEN 1.29.10 p 5. January 29, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, House of Lords.comments closed
Should the government grant courtesy titles to the husbands of the women members of the House of Lords, titles should also be given to the wives of bishops, the Bishop of Chester suggested to Parliament on Dec 14.
The question of courtesy titles arose in the Lords in response to a question from Baroness Deech to the Government asking if it “will make proposals relating to the titles used by the husbands?”
Lord Bach the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Justice responded the “Government have no plans to alter the existing arrangements in relation to the use of courtesy titles or styles for the husbands of women Members of the House of Lords.”
Baroness Deech responded this was “disappointing” in light of the government’s commitment to the principles enunciated in the Equality Bill “wending its way through this House.”
“If a male Peer’s wife is always a Lady, why should not the same courtesy be extended to the husband of a woman Peer,” she asked.
The situation was “anomalous” Lord Bach admitted, but he said the Government was “not aware of any great anxiety or urgent desire for change.”
Baroness Trumpington rose and told the chamber that her late husband “loved being called m’lord” and noted that his not having a title “added a certain frisson to staying in an hotel together.”
Lord Bach responded he was “absolutely delighted to hear that story” and hoped the other female members of the House of Lords “will bear it in mind.”
The Bishop of Chester, Dr. Peter Forster rose and told the Lords, “the House will be aware that the wives of Bishops need to be considered as well, as they do not have any title. If the Minister was minded to resolve the anomaly without addressing the concerns potentially of Bishops’ wives, he might have a deputation of them on his doorstep, which is not a prospect I should wish on him.”
“The right reverend Prelate has scared me off already,” Lord Bach said, “so we will very much bear in mind what he says.”
He added in response to further questions, the Government was not of a mind to change the honours system of knighthoods, damehoods and knights bachelors as they “play a well respected, understood and valued part in our national life.”
Archbishop calls for President to resign: CEN 1.22.10 p 8. January 26, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Nigeria, Politics.comments closed
Archbishop Akinola
Archbishop Peter Akinola has joined Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and other civil society leaders in calling for Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua to step down from office.
However, Northern Muslim leaders have resisted the call for the ailing President to hand over power to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, a Southern Christian. Analysts warn that unless Nigeria’s National Assembly quickly resolves the succession crisis a military coup is likely in Africa’s most populous nation.
Currently in a Saudi Arabian hospital for treatment for renal failure, President Yar’Adua has made only one public statement in the last nine weeks, and is rumored to have suffered brain damage. However, the president declined to hand over executive authority to his vice-president upon his departure to Jeddah for medical treatment.
The constitutional crisis caused by Yar’Adua’s refusal to hand over power was a “contradiction of the position of Mr. President himself. He has always been an apostle of the Rule of Law. The constitution is very clear as to what is to be done if the president is not around. The constitution has made a provision. What we should do is to ensure we follow it,” Archbishop Akinola said.
“There is a vacuum in the leadership of this country and it is not right. We should just follow the constitution. Period,” he told local media.
On Jan. 12, Nobel Laureate and long-time political critic Wole Soyinka led a march through Abuja, calling for a campaign of civil disobedience and nationwide strikes to compel Yar’Adua to step down.
The former Bishop of Akure, Emmanuel Gbonigi also backed the strike call, saying “political leaders did not care about what was happening in the country.”
“We cannot continue like that and it is necessary for us to do something to let them know that we are hurting. In order to prevent a bloody revolution, it is necessary to accept what Soyinka has said. If it is possible for him to organise one, he should let me know and I will join him,” he told the Lagos Sun.
Since the end of military rule in 1999 the presidency and vice presidency have rotated between the north and south, between a Muslim and a Christian. President Obasanjo was a Christian from near Lagos, and his vice president was a Muslim from the north. His handpicked successor, Yar’adua is a Muslim Fulani from the north who is the surviving brother of Obasanjo’s deputy when he was military dictator in the 1970s. Obasanjo also selected Yar’adua’s vice president, Jonathan, a Christian Ijaw from the southern Delta.
Under the constitution, Yar’adua’s withdrawal should make Jonathan the chief of state. However a Jonathan presidency would upset the current balance of power. The longer the crisis remains unresolved, the more likely the military will seize power, analysts warn.
Controversy rages of Haiti’s ‘devil pact’ accusation: CEN 1.22.10 p 7. January 25, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Haiti, Syncretism.comments closed
Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster and onetime presidential candidate, has sparked controversy in the United States for his comments blaming last week’s Haitian earthquake on the country’s pact with the devil.
Robertson, who in 2005 linked Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States to the country’s legalization of abortion and its moral decadence, suggested Haiti’s sufferings were self-inflicted.
Following a fund raising segment for victims of the Haiti earthquake broadcast on The 700 Club on Jan 14, Robertson said “something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French,” he said “and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story, and so the Devil said OK it’s a deal. And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they’ve been cursed by one thing after another and are desperately poor.”
Haiti is in “desperate poverty,” he said, and “we need to pray for them a great turning to God and out of this tragedy. I’m optimistic something good may come but right now we’re helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable,” Robertson said.
While the theology behind Robertson’s observation has been roundly criticized, the “pact to the devil” he described was a reference to the Bois Caïman ceremony that took place at the start of the Haitian Revolution in 1791.
At a meeting in the Caïman forest outside the modern city of Cap Haitien a group of slave leaders gathered in 1791 to plan a revolt against the island’s white planters and free mixed-race population.
The conspirators closed their meeting with the invocation of prayers by a voodoo priest, Dutty Boukman, who allegedly urged slaves to “throw away the image of the god of the whites who thirsts for our tears and listen to the voice of liberty that speaks in the hearts of all of us.”
The ceremony was concluded by the sacrifice of a pig, whose blood was mixed with human blood and drank by the celebrants, who offered oaths of secrecy and loyalty. While over 95 per cent of Haiti’s population is Christian, a majority are said also to believe in Voodoo—and the imagery of Haiti’s curse through its pact with the devil is recounted in times of national turmoil.
The response to Robertson’s comments from American religious leaders was uniformly negative. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler observed that Robertson’s remarks were “theological arrogance matched to ignorance.”
Rice University sociologist Michael Lindsay, who interviewed Robertson for Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, told Christianity Today the controversial broadcaster “continues to distinguish himself as American evangelicalism’s most flamboyant spokesperson. When tragedies strike, people naturally ask questions about why bad things happen to the innocent, and millions of Americans see the hand of God or the devil at work in natural calamities,” Lindsay said.
“But few religious leaders today draw the kinds of explicit connection as Pat Robertson has done with the Haitian earthquake. Robertson’s comments reflect as much his rhetorical flourish and skill as a ratings booster as they do his theology.”
Canadian charity denies anti-Semitic claims: CEN 1.15.10 p 6. January 22, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Canada, Church of England Newspaper, Israel.comments closed
A church charity defunded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) last month after accusations it was anti-Semitic has defended its political activism in the Middle East, arguing that anti-Zionism is not equivalent to anti-Semitism.
Kairos: Canadian Ecumenical Justice, a coalition of church groups including the Anglican and Presbyterian churches and the Mennonite Central Committee that seeks to affect “social change through advocacy, education and research programs” denounced the government cuts, saying politics should play no part in aid funding decisions.
On Nov 30 the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced it would not be renewing its financial support for the agency for “after completing due diligence it was determined that its projects does not meet CIDA’s current priorities.”
The defunding decision led to protests from Anglican Church of Canada which said the decision would have a “devastating impact on Canadian education programs and Kairos international partners, many of whom face human rights and humanitarian crises.”
On Dec 14 the Canadian Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney told the Global Forum to Counter Anti-Semitism meeting in Jerusalem that the Harper government had “defunded organizations … like Kairos for taking a leadership role in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign” against Israel.
Kairos responded on Dec 18 that this “charge against Kairos is false. Kairos did not lead this campaign. In 2007, Kairos took a public position opposing sanctions and a boycott of Israel.”
“Criticism of Israel does not constitute anti-Semitism,” Kairos charged, adding that the minister’s comments “raises very disturbing questions about the integrity of Canadian development aid decisions” and questioned whether future funding requests would be “based on political rumour rather than on due diligence, development criteria and CIDA’s own evaluation process.”
In his new year’s address Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz urged the government to restore funding to Kairos. “We believe the cut of CIDA funding for KAIROS denies hope for millions of people throughout the world and damages our reputation among the nations,” he said, adding that he had made a “personal appeal to the Minister of International Co-operation” for a restoration of funding.
However the Jerusalem based think tank, NGO Monitor, stated Kairos “is a main supporter of the anti-Israel divestment movement in Canada, coordinating this agenda on behalf of member church groups.” Citing a 2008 paper released by Kairos entitled “Economic Advocacy Measures: Options for KAIROS Members for the Promotion of Peace in Palestine and Israel,” NGO Monitor reported the Kairos paper included a document from the Palestinian NGO Sabeel, which calls for divestment from companies that are complicit in Israel’s “illegal and immoral behavior” and “apartheid practices.”
While Kairos seeks to promote social change, NGO Monitor stated it “promotes a political agenda” at odds with Canadian government policy on Gaza.
Militants attach churches: CEN 1.15.10 p 8. January 22, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of the Province of South East Asia, Islam, Persecution.comments closed
Police inspect All Saints Taiping after it was firebombed in the wake of the Malaysian Supreme Court "Allah" ruling
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
Eight churches and a convent school have been attacked by Islamic militants in Malaysia in the wake of a High Court ruling overturning a government ban on Christians using the word “Allah” to describe God.
All Saints Anglican Church in Taiping in the northern state of Perak and Good Shepherd Anglican Church in Miri in Sarawak on the island of Borneo were among the Catholic, Lutheran and Pentecostal churches attacked by militants between Jan 8-10. Prime Minister Najib Razak has denounced the attacks, and promised government assistance in rebuilding the Metro Tabernacle church in suburban Kuala Lumpur, which was badly damaged by petrol bomb on Jan 8.
The attacks follow a Dec 31 High Court ruling overturning a ban on Christians using the word ‘Allah’ to refer to God. The government has seized Malay-language Bibles that use ‘Allah’ for God, and has sought to close the country’s Catholic Herald for using the word in its publication.
The government has appealed the court ruling, arguing that making ‘Allah’ synonymous with God will confuse Muslims and aid in their conversion to Christianity.
However, lawyers for the Catholic Church have argued that the Arabic word ‘Allah’ has been used in Christian Bibles for the past millennia and its use in Malay to refer to God is not sectarian. The government’s fear of confusion and potential conversion, they argue, is not shared by other Muslim nations, including neighboring Indonesia where Christians and Muslims both use the word ‘Allah’ to refer to God.
The ‘Allah’ dispute has political repercussions for the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak whose United Malays National Organization (UMNO) party leads the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition of fourteen political parties, including the Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress.
In Sept 2008 Razak’s predecessor as prime minister and UMNO party leader Abdullah Badawi instituted the “1Malaysia” campaign to promote national unity, ethnic tolerance, and government efficiency. Since taking power in April, Najib Razak has sought to broaden the coalition’s political base.
Muslims comprise approximately 60 per cent of the country’s population and are predominantly ethnic Malays, while Christians comprise 10 per cent of the population of 28 million.
Opposition MP Charles Santiago told the Press Association the attacks showed that “after 52 years of living together, nation building and national unity is in tatters. The church attacks shattered notions of Malaysia as a model secular Muslim nation in the eyes of the international community.
“Malaysians are now living in fear of a racial clash following the church attacks and rising orthodox Islamic tones in the country,” Santiago said, while opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim blamed the attacks on the UMNO’s “incessant racist propaganda” over the ‘Allah’ issue.
All Saints Church in Taiping, the first Anglican Church consecrated in the Federated Malay States in 1887, was attacked by a petrol bomb on the night of Jan 8. Police report the bomb failed to ignite the Gothic wooden church, which had survived the Second World War unscathed,
Across the country in Sarawak on the northern coast of Borneo, the windows of Good Shepherd Church in Miri were smashed by bricks during the night of Jan 9. The Rev. Donald Jutie told the Utusan Borneo newspaper that upon arriving for church on Sunday morning, he found the windows of the sacristy and choir room, as well as windows in the parish hall smashed.
He told the Borneo Post his congregation was “nervous but we want very much to act like nothing had happened to our church. We have been living in harmony. It is sad for such a thing to happen if indeed it is related to what had been happening in West Malaysia.”
“We really don’t want to speculate on the incident and we don’t want to blame anybody as we don’t know who is behind this,” he said
Anger as church is demolished illegally: CEN 1.15.10 p 6. January 21, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Episcopal Church of the Philippines, Property Litigation.comments closed
St Peter's, Sabangan before its demolition
The expropriation and demolition of an Episcopal church to build a municipal leisure center was an abuse of government power and a theft of church property, the Supreme Court of the Philippines has held.
On Dec 15, the Supreme Court overturned a Court of Appeals ruling upholding the 2006 seizure of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Sabangan by employees of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). The case has been closely watched in the Philippines by civil society leaders, who saw the case as a particularly egregious example of political corruption and abuse of government power.
In 2006 a representative of local congressman Rep. Victor Dominguez approached the priest in charge of the Anglican parish seeking to buy the land in order to build a leisure center for the town with public funds in advance of local elections. The church declined to sell, but some weeks later engineers from the DPWH arrived at the church and began to tear it down, saying the church was squatting on public land.
A local court issued an injunction against the DPWH pending a hearing on the ownership of the land, but the DPWH ignored the court order and demolished the church and built the leisure center with government funds, touting it as the congressman’s gift to the community.
Originally a parish of the Philippine Independent Church (IFI)—in 1958 St Peter’s was turned over to the Episcopal Diocese of the Northern Philippines and was the church home of 50 families in the small mountain town.
The DPWH argued that a former IFI vicar had deeded the land to the town and the church also had ceased to occupy the land during the 1960s, but the Presiding Bishop of the IFI testified that the land had been in continuous use by the IFI and Episcopal Church. The bishop of the neighboring diocese of Northern Luzon, the Rt. Rev. Renato Abibico, reported that he was reared in Sabangan and attended St Peter’s as a child.
The Chancellor of the Philippine Episcopal Church, Floyd Lalwet told the Supreme Court the municipal court in 2006 had ordered the DPWH to “refrain from disturbing” the parish’s “peaceful possession” of the property, but the DPWH came “like a thief in the night.”
Demolition workers arrived “in the darkness of night and in the midst of a strong typhoon” and continued their work in “broad daylight on several occasions until the church building was completely demolished off the ground,” he said.
In the court documents, Lalwet said Rev. Gregorio Nacatab, Jr., the vicar of St. Peter’s, was told in 2007 “not to conduct worship services anymore” and to leave the “subject premises” by Congressman Dominguez.
The court held the diocese was “entitled to a judgment in its favor in the forcible entry case because of uncontested evidence that [the DPWH] entered the land by strategy and stealth or force” and found the government had acted unlawfully in taking the church land.
Clergy stipends ‘are adequate’, MPs told: CEN 1.15.10 p 5. January 21, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The current level of parish clergy stipends are adequate to provide for their financial needs, the church commissioners have claimed.
In a Jan 6 statement given to Parliament, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Sir Stuart Bell, responded to a written question submitted by the member for the Vale of York, Anne McIntosh (Cons.) asking what “steps are being taken to ensure that the stipend for parish priests is sufficient for them to perform their duties?”
Sir Stuart stated the Central Stipends Authority (CSA) believed the “current stipend levels are adequate” for parish clergy. He noted that in addition to a cash stipend, the clergy remuneration package “includes the provision of housing, payment of council tax, water charges and maintenance costs, a non-contributory pension, removal grants and, in high risk areas, subsidised insurance.”
Additional grants of assistance were made by the Church Commissioners, via the Archbishop’s Council to provide “additional stipend support to the least well-resourced dioceses,” he added.
The CSA was guided by the “principles of adequacy, flexibility and equitability,” Sir Stuart said, noting that each year it set a National Minimum Stipend and “strongly encourages dioceses to ensure that no full-time stipendiary minister is paid below this level.”
Clergy stipends are set by dioceses and the Church Commissioners, the November 2008 annual report of the CSA said. It recommended that for 2009/10 a National Stipend Benchmark—the stipend at which most fulltime incumbent status clergy should be paid—of £22,250 and a National Minimum Stipend of £20,230, representing an increase of 3 per cent on its 2008/09 recommendations. The average value of church provided housing in 2008 was £12,380, the CSA stated.
In 1984 the National Stipend Benchmark was £6,836 and the National Minimum Stipend was £6,500. The purchasing power of the average clergy stipend has risen faster than inflation and the growth of the retail price index (RPI), but has not kept pace with wage growth in the secular workforce. As of 2008 the national average stipend was 31.6 per cent higher than the rate of increase of the RPI, but 10 per cent below the increase in national average income.
Leading theologian Edward Schillebeeckx dies: CEN 1.22.10 p 8. January 19, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Roman Catholic Church.comments closed
| First published in The Church of England Newspaper’s Religious Intelligence section.
One of the leading Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century, Fr Edward Schillebeeckx OP has died. The Edward Schillebeeckx Foundation reports the Belgian-born Dutch scholar died on Dec 23 in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. He was 95. |
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The Archbishop of Canterbury told The Church of England Newspaper that Fr Schillebeeckx “was perhaps the theologian who for many – inside and outside the Roman Catholic fold – most typified the theology of the Vatican II era.”
Edward Cornelius Florentius Schillebeeckx was born on Nov. 12, 1914, in Antwerp, Belgium, the sixth of 14 children. He attended a Jesuit-run secondary school and entered the Dominican Order in 1934. After military service he was ordained to the priesthood in 1941, and in 1946 undertook post-graduate studies at the Sorbonne and Le Saulchoir in Paris—a Dominican house of studies, where he encountered the “new theology” of Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu that would later play an important role in the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
In 1958 Schillebeeckx joined the theological faculty of the Catholic University of Nijmegen and soon became a leading adviser to the Dutch bishops during the four sessions of Vatican II.
When plans for the Council were announced, Schillebeeckx coauthored a statement signed by seven Dutch bishops that anticipated nearly all of the progressive reforms that arose from the council (1962-1965) on liturgy, ecumenism, interfaith initiatives, and the role of the laity in the church.
During the council he joined with fellow theologians Hans Küng, Karl Rahner and Congar in launching the theological journal Concilium, and assisted in the preparation of the “New Dutch Catechism” published in 1966. However, the Vatican persuaded the Dutch bishops not to give their imprimatur to translations of the catechism, and voiced disapproval of its teachings.
Fr. Schillebeeckx’ “range was exceptional – from the theology of the ministry and sacraments to complex philosophical discussions and, in his later work, extensive engagement with current biblical scholarship,” Dr. Williams said
However, “this last, although it pervaded his largest and most widely read books, was in some ways the least satisfactory aspect of his work in the eyes of less sympathetic readers (not least in the Vatican), representing as it did a paradoxically uncritical attitude to certain trends in New Testament scholarship that appeared to weaken the central doctrinal affirmations of classical Christology,” the Archbishop of Canterbury said.
Fr Schillebeeckx “weathered the storm of controversy and public censure with exemplary grace and patience. He was a man of genuine humility and quiet centredness in his Dominican vocation, not at all happy to be cast as another Hans Küng. As such he was all the more compelling a critic of unreflective habits of thought and ecclesiastical subculture,” Dr. Williams said.
“His ideas about ordained ministry represent a particularly valuable contribution to ecumenical discussion, as an attempt to reshape the theology of ordination on a clearer biblical basis. And his early work on Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God stands as a fine synthesis of the best sort of renewed Catholic thinking about the centre of Christian existence,” the archbishop said.
Anger as 57 are massacred in the Philippines: CEN 1.15.10 p 6. January 19, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Episcopal Church of the Philippines, Politics.comments closed
| First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Episcopal Church of the Philippines has called for swift government action in prosecuting those responsible for the election-related massacre of 57 people in the Philippine province of Maguindanao on the southern island of Mindanao. |
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The murder of 57 people by gunmen was “totally unacceptable, unlawful, unjust, and inhuman,” the Bishop of the Diocese of the Southern Philippines said.
On Nov 23 a convoy of six vehicles left the town of Buluan proceeding to the provincial capital of Shariff Aguak. The vice-mayor of Buluan, Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu had invited 37 journalists to accompany his family and campaign workers to cover his filing of papers in the provincial capital to stand for election as governor.
Andal Ampatuan Jr, son of the outgoing governor, Andal Ampatuan Sr., and a candidate for election to his father’s post, allegedly threatened Mangudadatu — the scion of a rival political clan — with death if he contested the governor’s position. The presence of the journalists and his family, Mangudadatu believed, would prevent attempts at blocking the filing of candidacy papers.
On the road to the capital near the village of Ampatuan, 100 gunmen stopped the convoy along with two other cars on the road, killing all those they found. The women traveling in the convoy, including Mangudadatu’s wife, aunt and two sisters, and the female reporters were raped and tortured before they were killed.
Before she died, Mangudadatu’s wife sent him a text message, reporting the attack. She texted that Andal Ampatuan Jr was leading the attack and had struck her, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported. Mangudadatu later identified his wife’s body, telling the Inquirer the killers had “speared both of her eyes, shot both her breasts, cut off her feet, fired into her mouth.”
On Nov 24, Philippine president Gloria Arroyo declared a state of emergency in Maguindanao, relieving local military and police commanders in the province, and ordered the army to disarm gunmen under the control of Ampatuan clan.
Andal Ampatuan Jr surrendered three days later to President Arroyo’s chief adviser in the region and the Department of Justice has created a panel of special prosecutors to handle cases arising from the massacre.
The Ampatuan clan has controlled Maguindanao since 1986 when Andal Ampatuan Sr was appointed by President Corazon Aquino to govern Shariff Aguak following the ouster of President Ferdinand Marcos. In 1998 Ampatuan Sr moved from mayor of the provincial capital to state governor, with his son groomed to take over his father’s political fiefdom in the Muslim majority province.
A political ally of President Arroyo, the Ampatuan clan has traditionally delivered crucial swing votes to candidates in the ruling administration coalition.
The Maguindanao Massacre was a consequence of the Arroyo administration’s “well-known deliberate cultivation and patronage of the Ampatuan political warlord clan and dynasty as its main instrument for political control in Maguindanao province,” the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research’s Soliman Santos said.
The main base of operations for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Maguindanao province’s political bosses, the Ampatuan clan had been permitted by the government to amass political power and wealth in return for providing support for the central government in its war against Muslim separatists, Santos said.
In a statement released last month, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of the Southern Philippines, the Rt Rev Danilo Bustamante, lamented that the Philippines had become a nation where “the fruit of moral decadence has gone far and deep; where abusive authority reigns supreme with powers over life and death, the damage is unfathomable and truly reflective of the culture and dynamics that is prevailing in the region.”
Bishop Bustamante urged President Arroyo to “lay aside political exigencies and alliances and bring all the perpetrators of this heinous crime before the bar of justice.”
“With swift justice delivered,” the bishop said, “the door to peace in Mindanao can be pursued with even greater vigour and relentlessness.”
South Africa must “continue to fight AIDs”: CEN 1.15.10 p 5. January 19, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper, Health/HIV-AIDS.comments closed
| First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Archbishop of Cape Town has urged South Africans to mark the death of the country’s former health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, by recommitting the nation to fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS. |
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Dubbed “Dr No” by political opponents and the press for her opposition to the use of anti-retroviral drugs, Dr Tshabalala-Msimang was a controversial figure in post-apartheid South Africa and had backed the AIDS policies of former President Thabo Mbeki, who expressed doubts about whether HIV caused AIDS.
Installed as health minister in June 1999, Dr Tshabalala-Msimang rejected the dominant view of HIV/AIDS treatment, and in 2000 championed a diet of raw garlic, lemon peel, olive oil and beetroot to fight HIV. Opposed to the use of anti-retroviral drugs in the belief that they had baleful side effects, as health minister she was slow to implement the government’s 2003 Operations Plan for Comprehensive Treatment and Care for HIV/AIDS. Two years after the government introduced the public health anti-retroviral drugs programme to combat the disease, only 104,600 people were being treated with ARVs in South Africa, out of the 837,000 the World Health Organisation estimated needed the treatment.
Professor Francois Venter, president of the HIV Clinicians Society of Southern Africa, stated that the minister’s “family should be allowed to grieve in privacy.”
“Equally, political leaders should keep eulogizing to a bare minimum, to respect the large number of people who died unnecessarily of HIV or who suffered at the hands of a decimated health system,” he said.
In a Dec 16 statement released after her death, Archbishop Makgoba noted Dr Tshabalala-Msimang’s service to the African National Congress during the apartheid era, while “others tell of a Member of Parliament and Deputy Minister of Justice who strove to pursue gender equality and ensure that Constitutional commitments found effective expression through significant legislative landmarks.
“However, more recent chapters carry a tale that is at best ambiguous,” Archbishop Makgoba added, as “it is with aching hearts and deep regret that we recall those policies on HIV and AIDS which were for so long pursued by our former President and his health minister. We also honour the countless thousands who in consequence died during this time, and stand in solidarity alongside those who grieve their all too often untimely loss.”
However, God continues to work for good in all circumstances, the archbishop said, asking that South Africa mark the late health minister’s death as a “milestone on our journey, a signpost towards a future with an AIDS-free South Africa. Let us go on from here determined to fight this scourge, and – through honesty and respect for ourselves, for our own bodies, and for others – let us take whatever steps are necessary to achieve this,” Archbishop Makgoba said.
Episcopal Church ‘out of tune with members on immigration’ : CEN 1.08.10 p 7. January 15, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Immigration, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
| First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The official stance of the Episcopal Church on immigration is not representative of the belief of the people in its pews, a survey conducted on behalf of the non-partisan Washington think tank, the Center for Immigrations Studies (CIS) reports. |
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The survey of over 42,000 Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical or born-again Protestants, and Jewish voters found a sharp disconnect between the official stance of their religious communities and the beliefs of individual members.
“Because religious communities often do not represent the public policy views of their members, if there is a full-blown immigration debate next year, it will be all more contentious,” Steven Camarota of the CIS said.
While religious leaders have pressed the government to relax the country’s immigration laws, permitting more immigration and providing opportunities for existing illegal immigrants to gain citizenship, an overwhelming majority of American religious voters believe the current level of immigration is too high and favour stricter enforcement of current laws.
One out of eight US residents, or 38 million people, are immigrants, while over the past decade 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants have settled in the US each year.
A supporter of the Interfaith Statement in Support of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, the Episcopal Church has backed “comprehensive immigration reform,” which calls for a significant increase in the number of legal immigrants to the United States.
At its July 2009 General Convention, the Episcopal Church called for the removal of sanctions against illegal immigrants. Resolution B006 called for the “millions of undocumented immigrants who have established roots in the United States” to have “a pathway to legalization.”
The resolution argued that immigrants fill jobs that American workers will not do, and are often better workers than native-born Americans as “workers who are US citizens often quit after only a few days of work.”
The Episcopal Church’s stance is shared by the United Methodists, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church, and is closely aligned to the views of the US Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops whose website states there should be a “broad-based legalization” for those “in this country without proper immigration documentation.”
In a poll conducted on behalf of the CIS by the Zogby International in November, voters surveyed were asked to identify their religious beliefs and to respond to eight questions on immigration policies in the United States.
In contrast to many religious leaders, most members think immigration is too high. Among Roman Catholics: 69 per cent said immigration is too high, 4 per cent said too low; for Mainline Protestants including Episcopalians: 72 per cent said it is too high, 2 per cent said too low; while 78 per cent of evangelical or born-again Protestants said it is too high, 3 per cent said too low.
Religious voters also reject the proposition that more unskilled workers are needed to do the work that Americans will not do. Over 69 per cent of Roman Catholics, 73 per cent of Mainline Protestants, and 7 per cent of evangelicals said there was a need to increase immigration to fill unskilled jobs.
Pluralities of religious voters believe that stricter enforcement of current laws is the proper way forward. Asked to choose between stricter enforcement to encourage illegal immigrants to return home versus allowing them to find pathways towards legalization in the US, overwhelming majorities favored sending illegal aliens home. Roman Catholics 64 to 23 per cent; mainline Protestants 64 to 24 per cent; and evangelicals 76 to 12 per cent.
Camarota said that while the findings were “stark” there were “not so surprising.” “Voters have always been skeptical of high levels of immigration and opposition to legalization is long-standing, as the debates over “comprehensive immigration reform” in 2006 and 2007 made clear,” he said.
Church leaders often “identify strongly with the plight of illegal immigrants and people in other countries who wish to come here” and “make it plain that they believe that legalization is the only moral option,” yet they “do not themselves face foreign job competition,” Camarota said.
Bishop denounces youth club bombing: CEN 1.08.10 p 6. January 15, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Ireland, Terrorism.comments closed
| First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Church of Ireland’s Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, Dr Ken Good, has denounced the bombing of a youth club in Londonderry, which analysts fear might be part of a new round of republican violence in Northern Ireland. |
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On Jan 4 a petrol bomb damaged the Fountain Youth club on the Fountain Estate. The vandals also threw paint across the club and damaged a mural.
Project Manager Janette Warke told Ulster TV she was concerned about the attack, “particularly when things were going so well and we were doing a lot of good cross community work, we see this as a sectarian attack on our club and on our community.”
On Jan 5 Bishop Good released a statement saying the “Fountain Youth Club does much valued work in its local community. Those who lead it, as well as its members, are to be commended for the constructive role they play within the Fountain estate. This attack on a work that is for the good of the community is to be deplored.
“The use of petrol bombs has the potential for serious damage to property. Much more seriously it endangers life. Every part of the community is committed to peace and safety for all and will stand against this attack,” he said.
While the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has not yet confirmed the attack as motivated by sectarian passions, Northern Ireland has witnessed an upsurge of sectarian violence in the past year along parts of the border, Belfast and Derry. In the past two years, 20 PSNI officers, mostly Catholics, have been forced to move home after being targeted by republican dissidents, while on Dec 31 the PSNI discovered a 400 kg bomb, only partly manufactured, under the new M1 flyover at Newry, Co Down.
Antigua cathedral is closed down: CEN 1.15.10 p 8. January 15, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of the Province of the West Indies.comments closed
| First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Cathedral of St John the Divine in Antigua has been shuttered by the Diocese of North Eastern Caribbean and Aruba for repairs. Last month portions of the floor collapsed while school children were touring the 161-year-old cathedral. One teacher was injured when the flagstones gave way. |
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An engineering survey found the building to be unsafe, and an appeal has been launched to restore the landmark structure.
Originally built in 1681 on a hill in the centre of the island’s capital, St John’s, the first cathedral, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1745. The cathedral was rebuilt, but destroyed a second time by earthquake in 1843. The third incarnation of St John the Divine was built in 1845 in the neo-Baroque style and has withstood hurricanes and earthquakes due to its unique construction — the interior of the building is encased in pitch pine to support the stonework and keep it watertight.
While the exterior of the building remains in good repair, settling of the ground under the cathedral has led to its current crisis, clergy in Antigua tell The Church of England Newspaper.
Uganda backs down on anti-gay bill: CEN 1.22.10 p 8. January 14, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of the Province of Uganda, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue.comments closed
| First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has acceded to the private entreaties of church and world leaders and will block the proposed ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ before his country’s Parliament. |
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Speaking to members of the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) legislative caucus on Jan 13, the Ugandan leader rejected the controversial bill that would have toughened the East African nation’s sodomy laws.
“I told them that this bill was brought up by a private member and I have not even had time to discuss it with him. It is neither the government nor the NRM Party’s” bill, he told legislators, according to Ugandan press reports.
“This is a foreign policy issue and we have to discuss it in a manner that does not compromise our principles but also takes care of our foreign policy interests,” the president said.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Alan Harper and other world leaders had pressed President Museveni to block the bill, introduced on Oct 14 by MP David Bahati of the NRM. In their annual joint Christmas statement, Uganda’s Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox churches voiced their public disapproval of a coercive approach to the issue of homosexuality, while top church leaders are understood to have pressed their views upon the president in private meetings.
Bahati’s bill sought to re-write British colonial era vice laws, establishing a legal definition of homosexual acts and provide for their criminalization. Consensual homosexual acts between adults would be subject to penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment, while “aggravated homosexuality”—homosexual relations with a minor or homosexual acts committed by an HIV-positive individual—would be a capital crime or merit life imprisonment.
On Nov 15 President Museveni indicated he was sympathetic to Bahati’s concerns, but signaled he would not endorse the bill as written, telling a youth awards banquet that Uganda “used to have very few homosexuals traditionally. They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either because it was clear that is not how God arranged things to be.”
In November church leaders the Uganda and Britain came under sharp criticism from gay activists for inaction. The Rev. Sharon Ferguson, Chief Executive of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) said the bill was “unjust, cruel and can only strike terror in the hearts of LGBT people, their families, friends and supporters”
She added she was “particularly distressed that many Christian groups including Churches in the Anglican Communion in Uganda appear to be supporting the proposals.” The Archbishops of Canterbury and York also came under sharp attack from activists in Britain for not publicly denouncing the bill.
On Nov 6 the Church of Uganda said it was studying the bill and had no official comment, but reiterated its long-standing opposition to the death penalty. Senior Ugandan church leaders told The Church of England Newspaper that their views on the bill would be communicated privately to the president and government leaders.
Ugandan church leaders took umbrage at the suggestion that the only moral way to proceed in response to the legislation was to mount a Western-style publicity campaign, warning that an aggressive campaign of censure and ridicule would be counterproductive in Uganda.
One senior cleric told CEN “the Church of Uganda is not passive about current issues, but we have chosen not to be publicly confrontational. People will work behind the scenes to influence current events and discuss issues with the players rather than go to the newspapers. For example, you will never know when the Archbishop meets with the President. This is the way we Ugandans do things, which is different from the West.”
In the wake of the president’s comments, Bahati told the local media he hoped to redraft the bill to accommodate the president’s concerns while being faithful to Uganda’s social and religious heritage.
Faith leaders offer prayers for Haiti: CEN 1.14.10 January 14, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England Newspaper, Disaster Relief, Haiti.comments closed
| First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has joined other world leaders in offering his prayers and support for the people of Haiti in the wake of the earthquake that devastated the Caribbean island on Jan 12. |
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“I am profoundly shocked and concerned to hear about the devastating earthquake in Haiti,” Dr. Rowan Williams said on Jan 14.
“As the news comes through, we are learning more about the tragic loss of life, injury suffered and terrible damage to the country. We stand alongside all the people in Haiti affected by this terrible disaster in prayer, thought and action as the situation unfolds. We pray for the rescue of those still trapped and look towards the rebuilding of lives and communities.”
On Jan 12 at 4:53 pm, a magnitude 7 earthquake rocked the capital of Port-au-Prince, and was quickly followed by two aftershocks registering 5.9 and 5.5 on the Richter magnitude scale.
The Red Cross reports that as many as 3 million people may have been affected by the quake, according to the Red Cross, while initial estimates of the death toll range from 10,000 to 100,000. The quake’s epicenter was 10 miles outside the capital and is reported to have leveled much of the city. The Presidential Palace and most government buildings were leveled, while the United Nations headquarters was also decimated and the head of the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission in country is presumed dead.
Power and telephone service has been disrupted across most of the country making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage. Haiti’s endemic political turmoil, poverty, and the four hurricanes that decimated the country in 2008, have also left it ill-equipped to respond to the disaster.
Reports from the Diocese of Haiti, the Episcopal Church’s largest diocese, report wide scale destruction. An American religious order, the Sisters of Saint Margaret, report that their convent, Holy Trinity Cathedral and its church school, the Bishop’s residence, St. Vincent’s School for Handicapped Children and the diocesan seminary have been destroyed.
Bishop Zache Duracin is reported to have survived the earthquake, though his wife was injured. New York’s Trinity Wall Street parish reports that the Dean of the Seminary, the Rev. Oge Beauvoir and his wife, Serette, are alive and have gathered with other survivors at a university football field as those structures still standing are unsafe to enter.
In his Jan 14 statement, Dr. Williams stated “in this time of catastrophic loss and destruction, I urge the public to hold the people of Haiti in their prayers, and to give generously and urgently to funding appeals set up for relief work.”
Tanzanian Bishop quits to stand for Parliament: CEN 1.14.10 January 14, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Tanzania, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.comments closed
| First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
A leading Tanzanian bishop, the Rt Rev Gerard Mpango, has resigned as Bishop of Western Tanganyika to contest a parliamentary seat in the country’s October general election. |
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Bishop Mpango will stand as a candidate for the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi party (the Party of the Revolution in Swahili) in the Kasulu East constituency.
Announcing his candidacy last month before a meeting of party leaders and tribal elders, Bishop Mpango said his decision to run came in response to the pleas of members of his diocese. He pledged that if elected, he would use his seat in Parliament to fight corruption and to support the government’s plans for economic development.
Under Tanzanian canon law, Bishop Mpango would have had to retire as bishop in 2012, when he turned 65. He had stood for election in Feb 2008 as primate and Archbishop of Tanzania following the end of Archbishop Donald Mtetemela’s term of office.
However, following a contentious session Bishop Mpango was blocked from running for office, as he would have been unable to complete a full five-year term of office before reaching the mandatory retirement age, and on Feb 28, 2008, the synod elected Dr Valentino Mokiwa, Bishop of Dar es Salaam as the fifth Primate for the Province.
In recent years the Tanzanian House of Bishops has been sharply divided by personal and regional jealousies. The Anglican Communion’s wider political fight over human sexuality has found a place within Tanzania’s internal disputes, with some bishops breaking ranks with their colleagues and soliciting financial support from liberal dioceses in the US, although the Tanzanian House of Bishops has formally broken with the Episcopal Church.
Bishop Mpango had skillfully negotiated the shoals of Anglican politics, being a supporter of Forward in Faith and a participant in the 2008 Gafcon conference, while also forging links and financial ties with ‘gay-friendly’ parishes in the United States.
Roman theology of saints attacked by Sydney bishop: CEN 1.08.10 p 7. January 13, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Roman Catholic Church.comments closed
| First published in the Church of England Newspaper.
The Roman Catholic Church’s theology of saints is un-biblical, the Bishop of North Sydney, Dr Glenn Davies has argued, as it creates extra-Biblical criteria of holiness that subordinates divine actions to human works. |
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Writing on the website of Anglican Media Sydney in the wake of the Vatican’s announcement that Pope Benedict XVI had confirmed a second miracle attributed to Mary MacKillop — leading to her likely canonization as Australia’s first Roman Catholic saint — Dr Davies, the Australian head of the Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion (EFAC), questioned the theology of sainthood espoused by the Catholic Church.
“To award [MacKillop] with sainthood for these achievements and two alleged miracles is to misunderstand what the Bible describes as the qualifications of a saint,” he wrote on Dec 22.
Under Catholic canon law, two miracles must be officially attributed to an individual for that person to be canonized. In 1993 the Vatican held that Mother Mary MacKillop — the founder of the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Nineteenth century Australia — was responsible for miraculously curing a woman who had leukemia in 1961, after the women prayed for her intercession.
On Dec 19 Pope Benedict confirmed her second miracle, after the Vatican held that a woman suffering from inoperable lung cancer in 1995 was cured by Mother Mary’s intercession. The dying woman was given a relic of Mother Mary’s to wear and the sisters of the order prayed for her, and the woman was healed of her cancer.
Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson said news that the Vatican had the second miracle “paved the way for her to be declared Australia’s first saint.”
“Born in Melbourne, and fired by a deep desire to serve God and to help alleviate the plight of the poor, Mary was an ordinary person who lived a holy life,” he told reporters, while Sister Anne Derwin of Sisters of Saint Joseph, said the canonization would “inspire future generations both in Australia and throughout the world”.
Dr Davies was less sanguine. “Now no one wishes to belittle Mary MacKillop’s achievement in Australia — the founding of a religious order and her work among the poor with the establishment of an orphanage, a women’s refuge and a home for older women.
“It is not the woman but the theology behind this move with which Anglicans would disagree,” he said. “Anyone whose sins have been forgiven by God, through faith in Jesus Christ, is a saint,” he said, as it is not the “achievements of a person’s life, but rather the gift of God through Christ, that makes us saints.”
The Catholic Church’s canonization process “obscures the importance of God’s description of his people and replaces it with a human analysis of miracle working. Who can prove that the reported miracles were actually the work of Mary MacKillop?” Dr Davies asked.
The New Testament describes all Christians as saints, he observed. Being a saint is a “title that God has bestowed upon us through our union with Christ, and we should therefore own it with pride,” Dr Davies said.
Archbishops hit out at Harare bishop: CEN 1.08.10 p 6. January 13, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop of York, Church of England Newspaper, Zimbabwe.comments closed
| First printed in the Church of England Newspaper.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have denounced police collusion with the schismatic former Bishop of Harare, Dr Nolbert Kunonga, in cancelling Christmas in Zimbabwe. |
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On Dec 27 Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu released a statement saying they condemned “unequivocally any move to deny people their basic right to worship. To prevent people from worshipping in their churches on Christmas Day – unable to receive the church’s message of hope – is a further blow to civil liberties in Zimbabwe.
“Such unprovoked intimidation of worshippers by the police is completely unacceptable and indicative of the continued and persistent oppression by state instruments of those perceived to be in opposition” to the regime of strongman Robert Mugabe the archbishops said.
With the support of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), Dr Kunonga has waged war against the majority of members of his former diocese who are loyal to newly elected Bishop Chad Gandiya. While a high court judge has ordered the two sides to share the church properties pending a final resolution of their dispute in court and on Dec 14 a second court issued an order to the ZRP to desist from attacking Christians, Dr Kunonga has resumed his campaign of violence with the support of the security services. The state-backed Harare Herald on the third Sunday of Advent a priest aligned with Dr Kunonga attacked a parishioner at St Mary’s Cathedral in Harare.
Winterton Zimunya told the Herald the violence at the cathedral began when worshippers refused an order from Kunonga loyalists to vacate the premises. “Priests from the other faction [then] threw a table towards people standing at the entrance,” followed by a Kunonga priest beating him on the head with a knobkerrie.
In an email to supporters in the West, Bishop Gandiya reported that on the fourth Sunday of Advent “the police were at it again” and had prevented congregations from worshipping.
Bishop Gandiya was forced to hold a confirmation service outside the cathedral and a member of the cathedral staff was “arrested Sunday evening after having been abducted and beaten by thugs belonging to Kunonga. He was only released yesterday afternoon” while a churchwarden at a second parish was “arrested and beaten by the police and released the following day.”
On Christmas Eve the bishop said he received a telephone call informing him that a churchwarden had been jailed “for opening the church building so that Mothers’ Union members could hold their normal Saturday worship and meeting. The police, I am told, are already going round our churches telling people not to come to church or else they would be arrested.
“We are all surprised and angered by the deteriorating situation caused mainly by the police, who are disregarding court orders and now manning our churches preventing our people from going in to worship,” he said.
“My flock is greatly harassed, battered, tired and very angry but they soldier on, keeping the faith and encouraging each other,” Bishop Gandiya said.
Churches join criticism of Uganda’s ‘anti-gay’ bill: CEN 1.08.10 p 6. January 13, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of the Province of Uganda, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue.comments closed
The draconian penalties in Uganda’s proposed ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ have come under sharp criticism from the Christian Churches of Uganda.
In its December 17 Christmas message, the Uganda Joint Christian Council, a coalition of the country’s Anglican, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, said that while its individual member churches had not yet issued formal statements on the proposed bill, all were opposed to the harsh penalties proposed for the suppression of vice.
On 14 Oct MP David Bahati of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) tabled a private-members bill before parliament entitled the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ that would stiffen Uganda’s sodomy laws. The proposed law has come in part in response to concerns over growing child-sex tourism in East Africa and the highly publicized arrests of two NGO workers, as well as with the perception that Uganda’s culture is under siege by the West.
Bahati’s bill seeks to establish a legal definition of homosexual acts that would provide for their criminalization. Consensual homosexual acts between adults would be subject to penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment, while “aggravated homosexuality”—homosexual relations with a minor or homosexual acts committed by an HIV-positive individual—would be a capital crime or merit life imprisonment.
Article 13 of the bill imposes a seven year term of imprisonment or fine for promoting homosexuality, while organizations found guilty under the law would be closed down. Failure to inform would be an offence under the act punishable by imprisonment.
The proposed bill has drawn sharp criticism from overseas governments, NGOs and church groups. On Dec 24, the Archbishop of York Dr. John Sentamu told Radio 4’s Today Programme that he was “opposed totally to the death penalty” and was “not happy when you describe people with the kind of language you find in this Private Member’s Bill, which seems also not only victimizing but diminishment of individuals.”
On Dec. 14 Dr. Rowan Williams told the Telegraph the proposed penalties were of “of shocking severity” and “makes pastoral care impossible. It seeks to turn pastors into informers.”
In its Christmas message, released under the signature of the Uganda Joint Christian Council’s chairman, Metropolitan Jonah Lwanga of the Uganda Orthodox Church, the churches said they were “particularly concerned” about “ritual murders, corruption, homosexuality, road accidents and reckless life styles.”
All three churches were agreed that “homosexuality is a detestable act.” While the social mores of some societies now viewed it as a “fashionable way of life” this did not change the fact that it was a “biblically unacceptable practice.”
The churches had been “following the ongoing debate on the current bill on homosexuality that is being considered by Parliament,” noting that “we ourselves are currently studying the Bill and have not yet adopted a common position on all the issues.”
However, the churches were agreed upon the need to suppress vice and supported laws prohibiting “homosexual practices including same-sex marriage.”
The proposed penalties were unacceptable, as “we do not, as matter of principle, support the death penalty or other forms of extreme punishment such as life imprisonment as proposed in the Bill,” the said.
The “problem of homosexuality cannot be addressed by the law alone,” the churches noted, adding that Uganda’s Christian Churches were “concerned about the spiritual wellbeing of all members of the human family, including those who find themselves trapped in questionable lifestyles such as gays and lesbians.”
Coercion was not the solution, the churches concluded, appealing to “all parties to seek sustainable solutions to this problem. This would, among other things, involve teaching, mentoring, counseling and rehabilitation of all victims who are within reach,” the Uganda Joint Christian Council said.
New call for lesbian bishop to be blocked: CEN 12.18.09 p 6. January 2, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Consultative Council, Church of England Newspaper, Los Angeles.comments closed
A communiqué released at the close of the first meeting of the newly constituted Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (UFO) has backed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s call for the Episcopal Church to reject the election of a partnered lesbian priest as suffragan bishop of Los Angeles.
On Dec 8 the commission said it was their “fervent hope that ‘gracious restraint’ would be exercised by the Episcopal Church” and the election of Canon Mary Glasspool be rejected.
Meeting in Canterbury from Dec 1-8 the commission set out five “immediate tasks.”
To reflect on the “Instruments of Communion”; to define what an Anglican Church might be; to promote the Anglican Covenant; to study the ‘reception’ process for innovations in the life and witness of the church; and to look at how local ecumenical agreements affected the wider communion.
The brain child of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the UFO commission builds upon the previous work of Inter-Anglican committees on ecumenical relations and doctrine and the Windsor Continuation Group.
Critics have charged the commission has come rather late in the game to have any meaningful affect on preserving the communion.
The formal communiqué also makes reference to the “Anglican Communion Office” and the “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” two legally non-existent bodies. Under Archbishop George Carey, attempts by the staff of the Anglican Consultative Council to operate under the name of the “Anglican Communion Office” were discouraged.
Under Archbishop Rowan Williams the ACC staff have taken on the working name of “Anglican Communion Office”, but as the review of the finances of Lambeth 2008 noted, this was not its legal identity, but a nickname.
The communiqué’s statement that the new commission will report to a hitherto unknown body called the “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” refers to the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council a staffer said.
The chairman of the commission is the Primate of Burundi, Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi, and its members include: Bishop Georges Titre Ande of the Congo, Prof. Dapo Asaju of Nigeria, Canon Paul Avis of England, Bishop Philip Baji of Tanzania, Canon John Gibaut of Canada, Bishop Howard Gregory of the West Indies, Dr. Katherine Grieb of the Episcopal Church, Canon Clement Janda of the Sudan, the Rev. Sarah Rowland Jones of Southern Africa, Dr. Edison Muhindo Kalengyo of Uganda, Bishop Victoria Matthews of New Zealand, Canon Charlotte Methuen of England, Dr Simon Oliver of England, Bishop Stephen Pickard of Australia, Dr Andrew Pierce of Ireland, Canon Michael Poon of South East Asia, Dr Jeremiah Guen Seok Yang of Korea, Bishop Tito Zavala of Chile and members of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s staff.
Anger as funding is taken away from Anglican charity: CEN 12.18.09 p 5. January 2, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Canada, Church of England Newspaper, NGOs.comments closed
The Anglican Church of Canada has urged its members to lobby parliament and the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to restore funding to Kairos: Canadian Ecumenical Justice, a church affiliated social justice organization.
On Nov 30 a spokesman for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said that “after completing due diligence it was determined that [KAIROS’] project does not meet CIDA’s current priorities.”
Last week the Canadian House of Bishops and Council of General Synod passed resolutions “deploring” the decision, and urged the government to reconsider.
A coalition of 11 church groups including the Anglican and Presbyterian churches and the Mennonite Central Committee, Kairos seeks to affect “social change through advocacy, education and research programs in: Ecological Justice, Economic Justice, Energy and Extraction, Human Rights, Just and Sustainable Livelihoods, and Indigenous Peoples.”
However, NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based monitoring agency noted Kairos used government funds to promote an anti-Israel “political agenda.”
CIDA rejected the NGO’s application for a C$7 million/four-year grant, a decision that “terminates a 35-year history of cooperation between CIDA and KAIROS and its predecessor organizations.” Kairos said.
“Many of the issues we deal with are sensitive, from the point of view of the current government,” Kairos executive director Mary Corkery told the Toronto Star.
“There are people who would say all of the issues we deal with are sensitive issues. That’s the point. They’re issues that are absolutely crucial to people’s survival in the South, and people in the North are often contributing in one way, directly or indirectly.”
However, NGO Monitor reported that Kairos had crossed the line separating education and political advocacy. During the Dec 2008 Gazas conflict, KAIROS wrote to Prime Minister Harper alleging that “[o]ne and a half million people living under illegal occupation…have no escape from being bombed as punishment for violent acts they did not commit.”
NGO Monitor accused Kairos of blaming Israel for Palestinian violence and noted that in a second letter to the prime minister, the NGO had claimed “Canada has an obligation to speak out against this collective punishment of the people in Gaza,” and criticized the Canadian government’s stance in opposing UN Human rights Council resolutions attacking Israel.
Hamas’ rocket “attacks in no way justify this siege” of Gaza, Kairos argued, accusing Israel of perpetrating war crimes against the Palestinians.
NGO Monitor also accused Kairos of being a “main supporter of the anti-Israel divestment movement in Canada, coordinating this agenda on behalf of member church groups.”
The Anglican Church of Canada, however, argued that if the funding cut was not reversed it would have a “devastating impact on Canadian education programs and Kairos international partners, many of whom face human rights and humanitarian crises. Their work includes monitoring the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan, holding government accountable for military abuses in Indonesia, and supporting women’s rights in Colombia.”
Bishop calls for Climate Change data inquiry: CEN 12.18.09 p 4. January 1, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Environment.comments closed
The Bishop of Chester has backed the call made by the former Chancellor the Exchequer, Lord Lawson, for an independent inquiry into the CRU data affair.
“I think an independent inquiry into the CRU emails would helpfully clear the air,” Dr. Peter Forster told The Church of England Newspaper, in the wake of allegations that researchers at the Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia had falsified data to support claims of global warming.
Last month an unknown individual posted thousands of emails and data from the CRU onto the internet. The CRU has verified its security was breached and that the emails are genuine.
Journalists and scientists skeptical of the claims of man-made global warming have reviewed much of the data from the CRU, the world’s leading scientific source for the claims of global warming, finding that the proponents of global warming have privately admitted amongst themselves that global temperatures have actually declined for the past decade.
The emails also allegedly contain an admission from one prominent global warming scientist that he used a statistical “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures, while other emails have been interpreted to show that scientists ‘cherry-picked’ data to support the theory of global warming.
Dr. Chris Jones, CRU research head has stepped down pending an investigation into allegations of scientific fraud.
Last month the former chancellor, Lord Lawson, who serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), called for an independent inquiry into the CRU data affair. Bishop Forster, who serves as trustee of the GWPF, told CEN he supported an “open scientific enquiry into the pace and extent of climate change, and possible influences upon such changes.”
On Dec 11, the GWPF criticized the Met Office for its “political intervention” in Copenhagen. The Met Office claims that preliminary temperature data for 2009 show that global temperatures continue to rise and that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed, however the data supporting this claim will not be released until next year. A spokesman for the Met Office said the preliminary estimates had been released in order to influence the negotiations in Copenhagen.
The director of the GWPF, Dr. Benny Peiser said his organization was concerned that the Met Office had overstepped its scientific remit, which is to “provide balanced advice and empirical data, and not to lobby politically.”
There has been no statistically significant warming trend for the last decade, climate scientists at the GWPF said. “The world’s major scientific journals agree that since 2001 the global average temperature has been constant. We live in a warm decade and the world is reacting to that warmth but, contrary to predictions, the world isn’t getting any warmer at the moment,” Dr David Whitehouse, the GWPF’s science editor, said.
Danish Church votes to enter full communion with Porvoo Churches: CEN 12.18.09 p 6. January 1, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of Denmark, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Porvoo.comments closed
The ecclesiastical council of the Church of Denmark, (Den Danske Folkekirke) has endorsed the Porvoo Agreement, and will enter into formal communion with the Church of England, Church of Ireland, Church in Wales, Scottish Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Churches of Nordic and Baltic states.
In an announcement distributed to the country’s 2200 congregations last week, the church’s governing ecclesiastical council, with the approval of its 12 bishops, endorsed the 1996 agreement that provides for inter-communion between the Anglican and Nordic Lutheran Churches.
Denmark participated in the talks that led up to the signing of the accord, but declined to endorse it in 1996. Council president Paul Verner Skærved told the Kristelig Dagblad he was glad the national church had finally lived up to its responsibilities of being a significant player in the European community of churches.
The Rt. Rev. David Hamid, the suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe noted that arrangements for the public signing of the declaration had yet to be finalized, but the decision by the Danish Church to accept the Porvoo Common Statement was a “major ecumenical breakthrough.”
The state church of Denmark, the Danish National or People’s Church is a Lutheran church in the Lutheran tradition whose head is the Queen, Margrethe II of Denmark. Administrative authority rests with the government through its Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, while the Danish parliament, the Folketinget is the church’s highest legislative authority. The Church has no metropolitan archbishop, and the bishop of each of the church’s 12 dioceses exercises spiritual authority over his charges.
As of January 2008, 82.1 per cent of Danes are members of the Church of Denmark, official statistics report, though less than 5 per cent are regular churchgoers.
