"Archbishop Williams said that Anglican provinces are “a bit reluctant” to engage the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant in greater detail..."
A very good summary of the Archbishop of Caterbury's little chat, yesterday, to the delegates in Gaidethia, can be found at ANGLICAN JOURNAL.
Personally, I've pretty much lost all interest in what the primates, their spin doctors and talking heads have to say about gay people and transsexuals. The game is over. It has been over since it became obvious that the US legal system was not going to hand TEC's property and pastoral responsibilities to the schismatics. The only thing left now is for the Anglican Communion to sort out what this means for individual provinces, individual dioceses and, above all, individuals. The only way that this process can go smoothly and with the minimum of damage to the credibility and pastoral effectiveness Anglicanism is if the AB of C and the ACC let go of the Covenant and their desire to control the situation. At the moment the ACC is a dam holding back the waters. If they continue to stop the natural flow, when the dam breaks the exploding torrent will cause all sorts of damage. It is always better to let water find its own level and shape.
Click on the pic to make this work! If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, the dots will remain only one color, pink. However if you stare at the black '+' in the center, the moving dot turns to green.
A church in Newcastle is to offer solar-powered baptisms. Heaton Baptist Church's Life Centre has had solar panels installed on the roof, which will be used to warm the water for people being baptised. The panels will also be able to provide heating for the baptistry of the adjoining church. Most of the £1m cost of the new centre, which has two halls, rooms for small groups, a crèche, and offices for church staff, came from donations. Heaton Baptist Church baptizes dozens of people each year, including an annual summer baptism in the rather cooler waters of the North Sea at Whitley Bay. Mark Elder, Heaton Baptist Church's senior pastor, said: "I love it when ordinary people meet with our amazing God, and nowhere is this more evident than in the life-changing waters of baptism." |
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The swine flu virus that has sparked fear and precautions worldwide appears to be no more dangerous than the regular flu virus that makes its rounds each year, U.S. officials said Monday.
The flu has been blamed for 26 deaths: 25 in Mexico and one in the United States, according to the World Health Organization.
Still, Napolitano noted, the seasonal flu results in "hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations" and roughly 35,000 fatalities each year in the United States. There are still concerns that the virus could return in the fall, in the typical flu season, as a stronger strain.
"We are cautiously optimistic that this particular strain will not be more severe than a normal seasonal flu outbreak," Napolitano said.
Backing the 4 May 2009 'day of action' calling for undocumented migrants in the UK to have the opportunity to become citizens, Simon Barrow, co-director of the religion and society think-tank Ekklesia, commented:
"We need to understand that people movements are a fact of modern life. The problems around migration are caused by injustice and prejudice, not people. Poverty, violence, racism, human rights abuses, economic dislocation and environmental destruction uproot the vulnerable and enable criminality to prosper. These are what we should be targeting, not the vulnerable themselves."
Barrow says the Strangers into Citizens campaign - backed by senior church leaders and others - represents a "vital step in the right direction" toward a just migration policy. He adds that "welcome for the stranger, hospitality for the oppressed and justice for all regardless of nationality or ethnicity are moral imperatives deeply rooted in the Christian tradition, alongside those of other faiths and good faith."
More on Strangers into Citizens: http://www.strangersintocitizens.org.uk/
Director Ron Howard has accused the Vatican of trying to hamper the filming of his new movie, Angels & Demons, starring Tom Hanks. The movie sequel to author Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code features symbolist Robert Langdon helping to rescue four kidnapped cardinals. But Howard said the Vatican exerted its influence "through back channels" to prevent filming near certain churches. A Vatican spokesman said the director's claims were purely a publicity stunt. Howard told a news conference: "When you come to film in Rome, the official statement to you is that the Vatican has no influence. Filming barred "Everything progressed very smoothly, but unofficially a couple of days before we were to start filming in several of our locations, it was explained to us that through back channels and so forth that the Vatican had exerted some influence." Last summer, Rome's diocese confirmed it had barred producers from filming inside two churches because the movie did not conform to the church's views.
The director also claimed the Vatican got an event related to the film's premiere in Rome cancelled. "There was supposed to be a reception or screening here in Rome that had been approved and I suppose that the Vatican had some influence over that," he said. Speaking to the Associated Press the Vatican spokesman, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, refused to comment on Howard's allegations about church interference, saying his charges were purely designed to drum up publicity for the film. Science vs religion Catholic critics were unhappy with The Da Vinci Code which suggests that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children, creating a royal bloodline that Church officials kept secret for centuries. But Howard challenged them to see the new movie before condemning it. "My only frustration as a film-maker is that we actually reached out a couple of times, to sort of offer opportunities for bishops and others just to see the film. And those opportunities have all been declined," he said. "So far all the criticism, all of the complaints about the film have been coming from people who haven't seen it." Over the weekend, a 102-year-old Italian bishop was quoted in the Italian media calling the film "highly denigrating, defamatory and offensive to Church values". However, the storyline of Angels & Demons does not raise questions about Jesus Christ - it is billed as a "science vs religion" thriller that deals with an attempt to hijack a papal election. Howard's adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, which was panned by critics, earned more than $750m (£505m) at the box office worldwide. Angels & Demons will be released in the UK on 19 May. |
