The most recent entry in this niche is Spiritual Water. The Virgin Mary bottle, for example, has the Hail Mary prayer printed on the back in English and Spanish. Spiritual Water helps people to “stay focused, believe in yourself and believe in God,” says Elicko Taieb, the Florida-based company’s founder who was formerly in the pest-control business.
Following public criticism, several embarrassing cases resurfacing from the past and a painstaking subsequent review of procedure, the Church of England has published its “model protocol” for handling child protection cases.
Meeting at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Chicago, Dec 5-7, the 50-member group known as the Chicago Consultation urged leaders of the Episcopal Church to permit the blessing of same-gender relationships and to remove barriers that keep gay candidates from being elected as bishops, according to a news release from the group.
They were forbidden from voting because St. John’s vestry decided last week to not pay its dues to the Diocese of San Joaquin. “We didn’t want the money going to some group other than the Episcopal Church.”
Homophobia is the fear that I cannot exist and flourish as who I really am if others come out of the closet about being LGBT. So understood, homophobia is an instance of the false conviction that I cannot be as big as I really am (cannot stand up to full stature) unless others pretend to be smaller than they really are–a thesis that is ancient, dishonorable, and directly counter to the Gospel!
Daily Reading for December 12 Contrary to all our fond hopes, you seized upon precisely this kind of human life and made it your own.
Glass, attorney who represents congregations and individual Episcopalians who wish to remain in the Episcopal Church, and another person who requested not to be identified told ENS that Bishop Schofield threatened the personal livelihoods and congregational finances of priests who opposed his efforts to lead the diocese out of the Episcopal Church.