Rowan Williams pleads with the Vatican on women bishops

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Rowan Williams, ever in search of the impossible dream, is in Rome:

The archbishop of Canterbury today pleaded with Roman Catholics to set aside their differences with Anglicans over the issue of female bishops, insisting there was more uniting the denominations than dividing them.

Rowan Williams was giving a lecture in Rome before Sunday’s meeting with the pope, their first encounter since the Vatican’s surprise announcement of a special institution for traditionalist Anglicans wanting to convert to Catholicism.

In his address at the Gregorian University, Williams said the Anglican communion was proof that churches could stay together in spite of their differences.

Where has Rowan been for the last 3 years? The Anglican communion is proof that the church can’t stay together once internal differences become as stark as they are now.

I understand that once Rowan has convinced the Pope of the benefits of women bishops he will be travelling to Saudi Arabia to plead the case for women imams.

Philip Pullman re-writes the Crucifixion

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From the Telegraph:

Philip Pullman, the author of His Dark Materials, has written his own version of the New Testament in which the story of Jesus is given a “different ending”.
The writer has penned an alternative Bible passage imagining a different fate for Christ, who was executed by the Romans.

“He has written what would have happened if Jesus had had a fair trial,” a friend told The Daily Telegraph’s Mandrake column.

“He knows it will be controversial, but he has some serious points to make.”

Pullman is due to read his “account” of Christ’s last days at the Globe theatre on Thursday as part of an event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Reprieve, an organisation which campaigns for the rights of prisoners.

Books by Pullman, who is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, have been criticised by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. His critics often cite an interview in which he reportedly said: “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”

The fantasy novels His Dark Materials, with their religious allegories, have been seen as a direct rebuttal of The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis, the late Christian author, which have been criticised by Pullman.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has, however, proposed that His Dark Materials should be taught as part of religious education in schools.

There is nothing surprising about this since Pullman is an atheist, supporter of the British Humanist Society and actively pursues an anti-Christian agenda, saying things like, “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”

One does wonder, therefore, why Rowan Williams thinks Dark Materials should be taught in schools as religious education; I can only surmise that Rowan, having not quite managed to single-handedly destroy the Anglican Church, is looking for some help.

To be serious – really – I should have thought that Graham Taylor’s Shadowmancer, which is explicitly Christian, would have been a better recommendation for Rowan to make. Perhaps it hits too close to home: the villain, Reverend Obadiah Demurral, is an Anglican vicar.

The World Council of Churches on Stem Cells

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From here

The issue at stake here for those in the poorest regions of the world is one of health justice. About 90 percent of the world health budget is being spent on 10 percent of the world population. The issue, put starkly, is this: why are so few resources poured into curing the most basic, preventable diseases, when so many resources are dedicated to stem cell research? This applies to all forms of stem cell research, from adult stem cell research through to embryonic stem cell research. This problem is compounded by fears that unregulated stem cell treatment will proliferate in nations that do not have the legal and regulatory infrastructure to cope. The need for ova in embryonic stem cell research has given rise to a new form of exploitation of women.

As expected the issue is not one of protecting the unborn made in the image of God, but of health justice (a nerve jangling phrase), the principle that the equal distribution of the benefits derived from experimenting on the unborn is more important than their destruction.

Dr Fabian Salazar Guerrero from Latin America challenged his listeners: “The problems discussed in this consultation have world dimensions. But those in the poorest regions of the world are excluded from discussions. This exclusion kills in a long agony”.

This was the most perversely misguided paragraph: surely being excluded from the discussions of a coterie of bombastic self-righteous scientists, ethicists and theologians would be cause for rejoicing; to be present would have been a long agony.

Atheist campaign targets children

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The idea that a child can be brought up in a belief-neutral setting is nonsense. This new atheist venture is, in truth, a bid to proselytise an anti-God faith message to children:Add an Image

The group behind a controversial atheist bus-poster campaign is urging parents not to label their children with their own religious faith.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has launched a series of billboard advertisements in capital cities.

The posters are part of a campaign to challenge state-funded faith schools.

But a representative of the Christian Schools Trust questioned who would “fill the vacuum” if parents did not pass on their fundamental beliefs.

Professor Richard Dawkins, who has part-funded the BHA campaign in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, says labelling children as “religious” is a form of brainwashing.

“I hope this poster campaign will encourage the government, media and public to see children as individuals, free to make their own choices, and accord them the liberty and respect they deserve.”

The BHA said the billboards were going up to coincide with Universal Children’s Day on Friday.

Doing my bit for climate justice

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The Anglican Church at its finest:

Let the bells ring out for climate justice

The 13th of December is the defining moment for faith organizations and churches to conduct a church service and ring bells, sound conch shells, or beat drums or gongs 350 times.

For centuries, across the world musical instruments like bells and drums have been used to warn people of imminent danger – but also to call people to religious service, marking important moments in worship and seeking to connect to God. Sunday 13 December marks the height of the talks at United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

At 3 p.m. – marking the end of a high profile ecumenical celebration at the Lutheran Cathedral in Copenhagen, the Church of Our Lady where the Archbishop of Canterbury will be preaching – the churches in Denmark will ring their bells, and Christians around the world are invited to echo them by sounding their own bells, shells, drums, gongs or horns 350 times.

I suppose any auditory extravagance is acceptable in the cause of climate justice, whatever that is, so I am inviting others to join me in flatulating 350 times on the 13th of December; it will take concentration, but it’s worth it because Canadian winters are really cold.

Taking Christ out of Christmas has a Nazi precedent

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Something to think about before you wish someone a Happy Holidays:

Nazi Germany celebrated Christmas without Christ with the help of swastika tree baubles, ‘Germanic’ cookies and a host of manufactured traditions, a new exhibition has shown.

The way the celebration was gradually taken over and exploited for propaganda purposes by Hitler’s Nazis is detailed in a new exhibition.

Rita Breuer has spent years scouring flea markets for old German Christmas ornaments.

She and her daughter Judith developed a fascination with the way Christmas was used by the atheist Nazis, who tried to turn it into a pagan winter solstice celebration.

‘Christmas was a provocation for the Nazis – after all, the baby Jesus was a Jewish child,’ Judith Breuer told the German newspaper Spiegel. ‘The most important celebration in the year didn’t fit with their racist beliefs so they had to react, by trying to make it less Christian.’

Rowan Williams: salvation through taxation

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Rowan Williams, in a last ditch effort to attract people back to the Anglican Church, has suggested that they should pay more taxes:

Higher levels of tax would be good for society, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Rowan Williams said that taxation should not be seen as a way of stifling business or redistributing wealth but helping to make the world a better place in which to live.

He called for new levies to be introduced on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and an end to the idea that unlimited economic growth is desirable.

Dr Williams claimed that the “fantasies of unlimited growth” had led to a “vicious cycle” in which consumers are encouraged to buy more goods, which also uses up limited energy and raw materials.

Instead, he said the economy should be geared towards creating a secure and sustainable environment for families.

As part of this, the archbishop said: “We have to ask about ‘green taxes’ (including ‘green’ tax breaks) that will check environmental irresponsibility and build up resources to address the ecological crises that menace us.

For the Pope picking off disenchanted Anglicans, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Who’s afraid of Katharine Jefferts-Schori?

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According to KJS, the church is filled wtih cainophobics:

Hundreds of worshippers packed into Sacramento’s Trinity Cathedral on Sunday morning to hear the nation’s leader of the Episcopal Church talk about the need to embrace change.

“Changing isn’t the problem,” said Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in her message. “Our fear and anxiety about it is.”

This is the same condescending drivel that both the ACoC and TEC have been peddling for years. KJS can’t seem to grasp that the problem is not that people are afraid of the changes she is making, but that they disagree with them.

In 2010, the ACoC will have a deficit of $500k after reducing its budget by $450k

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The Anglican Church of Canada has cut its 2010 budget by $450,000 in order to reduce the deficit to $500,000. The General Synod Treasurer, Michael George explains this startling turn of events:

General Synod is facing financial pressure on several fronts. Proportional giving from the dioceses has been steadily decreasing over recent years. The overall decrease is partly due to recent economic circumstances, but a more pervasive problem is the reduction in parish size and attendance. General Synod is currently working to get a better understanding of the levels and expectations of proportional giving from dioceses.

Now what could possibly be the reason for the reduction in parish size and attendance? Could it be because the ACoC has invented a sub-Christian religion which is masquerading as Christianity; or because the demented Michael Ingham has deposed one of the most renowned theologians of our time –  J. I. Packer – while his boss, Fred Hiltz does nothing to stop him? Or is it because bishops in the more liberal dioceses hound and persecute their orthodox priests until they are driven out – in the name of inclusion. Or, perhaps it is because the ACoC has a pillage and burn strategy towards those who disagree with them, suing everyone in sight.

What could it be?

I think – to adapt a proverb wrongly ascribed to Euripides – that it’s because “Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad”.

Sad news: Liberation Theology is not dead

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It lives on in the World Council of Churches: luckily, the WCC itself is almost dead:

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty years ago, many critics have been quick to sign liberation theology’s death certificate. Most of them did so because they understood it to be an apology of bygone Soviet-style socialism. It seems, though, that this death certificate has been issued prematurely.

It is true that liberation theologians – some more than others – used Marxist categories for socioeconomic analysis and for a critique of capitalism’s evils. However, the core of liberation theology has never been Marxism.

If the core of Liberation Theology is not Marxist, we would expect to find it agitating for the “liberation” of the oppressed in left-wing dictatorships like China and Cuba; instead, it plays the prancing sycophant to them – because it really does have Marxism, not Christianity at its core.