Let’s have a more civil discussion on abortion
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The ultimate stupid defence
From here:
Shareef Abdelhaleem, the final member of the Toronto 18 to be sentenced for his crimes, has been handed a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years.
Abdelhaleem, 35, was sentenced Friday just before noon for his role in a homegrown terror plot to detonate bombs at the Toronto offices of CSIS, the Toronto Stock Exchange and an Ontario military base. He was found guilty last year of participating in a terrorist group and intending to cause an explosion.
Ahead of his sentence, Shareef delivered a 23-minute rambling speech, in which he claimed he never intended to harm anyone. He also said that Canadians have been silent on the blatant injustice of his case.
He asked the judge to sentence him as if he were a “white Catholic and not a Muslim.”
Shareef has no idea what he is asking for: a white Catholic who threatened to blow up CSIS and the Toronto Stock Exchange would merit a lynch mob outside the courtroom with guest appearances from Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to egg them on.
Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem denied permit to remain in Israel
Bishop Dawani is being accused off colluding with the Palestinian Authority in shady land dealings. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen but, considering the strident anti-Israel bias of the Western Anglican Church, I’m surprised he had a visa in the first place.
From here:
Bishop Dawani, his wife and daughters had successfully renewed this permit, as required, in 2008 and 2009. On 24 August 2010, Bishop Dawani went to renew the permit with the Ministry of the Interior and was informed in writing that permits for himself, his wife and daughter would not be renewed because of allegations pending against the Bishop. The letter, in Hebrew, included the following: “Bishop Suheil acted with the Palestinian Authority in transferring lands owned by Jewish people to the Palestinians and also helped to register lands of Jewish people in the name of the Church.” There were further allegations that documents were forged by the Bishop. The letter also stated that Bishop Dawani and his family should leave the country immediately.
The Jerusalem Inter-Church Center secretary, Yusef Daher, thinks that Israel doesn’t respect Christians – an odd perspective, considering Israel is the most religiously tolerant nation in the Middle East and is surrounded by rabidly anti-Christian nations who routinely murder Christians. What Daher really means is that Israel has little use for politically motivated pro-Palestinian Anglican prelates whose main contribution to the Israeli people is to criticise them.
“There is a feeling among church leaders that Israel has no respect for Christians or Christian leaders,” Daher said Tuesday (March 1). “There is no respect for the request of the issuing of residency visas.”
Mass extinction could eradicate 75% of life on earth
From here:
Earth may be on the brink of a sixth mass extinction on the scale of the apocalyptic event that wiped out the dinosaurs, a study claims.
The researchers say that unless action is taken now to reverse the harmful effects of human activity on eco-systems, a full-blown mass extinction could occur within a few centuries.
Recovery from such an event, which could eradicate more than three-quarters of all life on Earth, may then take millions of years…………………………
Scientists believe humans are causing the sixth mass extinction by fragmenting habitats, introducing non-native species, spreading diseases, killing species, and changing the climate.
But Professor Barnosky said it was not too late to prevent the loss of species reach an extinction ‘tipping point’.
‘So far, only 1 per cent to 2 per cent of all species have gone extinct in the groups we can look at clearly, so by those numbers, it looks like we are not far down the road to extinction. We still have a lot of Earth’s biota to save.
‘It’s very important to devote resources and legislation toward species conservation if we don’t want to be the species whose activity caused a mass extinction.’
Obviously Professor Barnosky is not offering a scientific opinion when he says it’s “very important to devote resources and legislation toward species conservation”. Scientifically, it’s no more important that a species lives than it dies; science merely observes what happens. A theist might lament that God’s creation is being decimated but would have confidence that God is able to look after his creation in spite of man’s determination to muck it up. Professor Barnosky is probably not a theist, so he should stick to science and keep his value judgements to himself.
Lefties, eat your hearts out
According to the Huffington Post, out of the top 30 cable news programs, the first eleven places are occupied by Fox News. And number 10 is a repeat of number one, The O’Reilly Factor, at a different time.
- The O’Reilly Factor
- Special Report With Bret Baier
- Hannity
- Glenn Beck
- Fox Report With Shepard Smith
- On The Record With Greta Van Susteren
- Your World With Neil Cavuto
- America’s Newsroom
- Studio B
- The O’Reilly Factor (11:00 p.m. repeat)
- America Live
- The Rachel Maddow Show
- Happening Now
- The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell
- Fox & Friends
- Anderson Cooper 360 (10:00 p.m.)
- The Ed Show
- Piers Morgan Tonight
- Hardball With Chris Matthews
- The Situation Room
- Parker Spitzer
- Nancy Grace
- Anderson Cooper 360 (11:00 p.m.)
- John King USA
- CNN Newsroom
- The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell (11:00 p.m. repeat)
- Morning Joe
- The Daily Rundown
- MSNBC Live
- Andrea Mitchell Reports
Patient and holy listening
From here:
At the end of a dialogue held Feb. 24 to 27 in Dar es Salaam, the bishops expressed a commitment to “continued engagement” and announced plans to meet again. They encouraged other bishops to develop similar networks for dialogue and mission.
“We have been engaged in a process of patient and holy listening, as Anglicans, coming from a wide diversity of contexts and theological positions, who have chosen to listen to one another,” the bishops said in a joint document called A Testimony of Grace, released March 1.
While discussions have not been solely focused on sexuality, the bishops said the sensitivity of the topic required them to approach it with “mutuality and humility and prayer in listening and in speaking as we seek together for God’s wisdom.”
What a load of old bollocks. Does anyone seriously think that the early church would have taken hold of peoples’ imagination, conquered empires and founded civilisations by “a process of patient and holy listening”?
No? Me neither.
Stating the obvious
But I suppose it’s right and proper that the Pope does so.
The Jews are not to blame for Jesus’ crucifixion: since he died to atone for the sins of all, we are all to blame.
From here:
The Jews are not to blame for the crucifixion and death of Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI said today.
In extracts released from his forthcoming book on Jesus of Nazareth, the Pope completely exonerates the Jewish people of any culpability of the death of Christ.
He directly confronts the controversial text of St Matthew’s Gospel in which ‘the Jews’ demand the execution of Jesus and shout to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate: ‘Let his blood be on us and on our children.’
The passage has been described even by Catholics as a ‘rallying cry for anti-Semites down the centuries’.
But the Pope says the Gospel writer meant the mob in the courtyard and not the Jewish people in general.
As such the crowd was representative of the whole of sinful humanity, he said.
Then he explains that the blood of Jesus was not ‘poured out against anyone, it is poured out for many, for all’.
Archdeacon David Selzer and the Nazis
In its battle with ANiC over church property, the Diocese of Ottawa acquired St. Alban’s Church and ANiC retained St. George’s. Not inconsiderable sums of money were also exchanged, with the diocese coming out well ahead – not that the diocese is primarily interested in money. Not at all.
The Diocese of Ottawa has no congregation to put into St. Alban’s, so it is moving a shelter for the homeless there instead. The only problem is, the residents who live close to St. Alban’s don’t want to live next door to a homeless shelter.
Archdeacon David Selzer, exhibiting the kind of tact that distinguishes many ACoC priests, made the point that the residents had no basis for complaining by comparing them to Nazis. The Ven. David Selzer doesn’t live in that neighbourhood himself, of course, nor does he plan on moving there – even after the property values plumment.
From here:
OTTAWA – An Ottawa Anglican Diocese official is comparing neighbourhood opposition to the relocation of a downtown homeless centre and comments by those opposing it to “Nazi Germany.”
After a heated meeting with area residents Monday night, archdeacon David Selzer is “appalled” by comments describing the homeless.
“There was a huge degradation of people using Centre 454 as human beings,” said Selzer.
“People were saying we ought to get rid of these people, carted away. It sounded like Nazi Germany.”
Centre 454 — currently at 216 Murray St. — serves 250 people daily and operates during the day.
Many downtown residents are opposing its move to St. Alban’s Church at 454 King Edward Ave — where it operated from 1976 to 1999. In 2000, the centre moved to its current spot, but that lease expires at the end of January 2012.
Coincidentally, Archdeacon David Selzer appears to have no inclination whatsoever to make any comparisons between the North American abortion industry and the Nazi holocaust – even though the comparison is rather apt. That is because he is staunchly pro-abortion – making him, also, staunchly hypocritical.
The Rev. David Selzer, the rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd and an outspoken supporter of abortion rights, is leaving Buffalo to start a new ministry in Ottawa.
Selzer, who is 56, will be joined by Pastor Ann Salmon, 51, also of Good Shepherd, to lead a joint congregation of Anglicans and Lutherans in Ottawa, the first of its kind in Canada.
Selzer and Salmon, along with their spouses and children, will be honored Aug. 24 at the church at a special ceremony.
Selzer came to Good Shepherd in November 1995 and became a vocal advocate for abortion rights in Western New York, offering a contrasting viewpoint to local Catholic leaders who are opposed to abortion………
He served as chairman of the board of Planned Parenthood (now Planned Parenthood of WNY) and was the moderator for the WNY Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
The Fall was really a rejection of stewardship
According to the Anglican Church of Canada:
The first crisis of human stewardship came with our first ancestors’ decision to test the sovereignty of God by consuming the only fruit in the garden reserved exclusively to the Creator. Rejecting stewardship and embracing the illusory promise of sovereign possession of the garden, they initiate a continuing pattern of exploitation, entitlement, violence and destruction that plagues human participation in the life of the earth. There is only one essential stewardship question: Will we make use of resources entrusted to us to serve God’s mission, or for purposes that we ourselves devise or that are thrust upon us by an economy that depends absolutely on growing consumption to sustain it?
The ACoC must be really desperate for money if it has resorted to a more literal interpretation of Adam and the apple than the most fervent fundamentalist.
The usual interpretation of the unhappy events in the Garden of Eden is that Adam rebelled against God by disobeying the one thing God asked him not to do: eat the apple from the tree of life. Adam ate because he wanted to become like God and when he did, sin entered the universe, polluting it and us until the end of time.
Not so for the Anglican Church of Canada: for them it’s all about the apple. It’s God’s apple, you see – he really likes apples – and we pinched it from him: thus began the evil of capitalism.
All this reminds me of what my dog must be thinking when he licks yellow snow and I pull him away: “master wants to lick it himself”.