Tim Noah in Slate: In years past, Americans scorned societies starkly divided into the privileged and the destitute. They were repellent. Is it my imagination, or do we hear less criticism of such societies today in the United States? Might it be harder for Americans to sustain in such discussions the necessary sense of moral superiority?
The day began with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist keeping the feast of James Coleridge Patteson and the Martyrs of Melanesia, after which the bishops gathered with the bishops of their province for conversation on a variety of topics.
Damon Linker belives all political candidates should answer a series of questions concerning their religion such as these: How might the doctrines and practices of your religion conflict with the fulfillment of your official duties? How would you respond if your church issued an edict that clashed with the duties of your office?
A few minutes later “Amanda” … our waitress … came up to the table to say that she’d encouraged Michael to come talk to us because she’d found him crying in the kitchen after listening to our conversations. She was raised Catholic but it “didn’t fit” anymore and she wanted to know where she should go to find an Episcopal Church.
Gary Wills writes: Pope Benedict XVI is the best-dressed liar in the world. And in England he presided over the best set-designed lie imaginable. He beatified the nineteenth-century Oxford theologian John Henry Newman, presenting him as a docile believer in papal authority, an enemy of dissent, and a rebuke to anyone who questions church authority.
Australian Anglicans have committed themselves to three years of debate before a decision is taken on whether to embrace an international covenant designed to preserve the unity of their church.
In the debate over this resolution, the Rev. Dan Martins, who was elected yesterday as Bishop of Springfield, said that if the convention voted in favor of blessing LGBT relationships, members would be “covering ourselves in shame.” This is a word that has been thrown in the faces of LGBT people for most of their lives, and it goes well beyond stating a theological disagreement.
It is indeed a great and extraordinary grace of God to have an unwavering faith in the constant presence of his Almighty Spirit; yet the Spirit is present, though our faith may be weak; and his grace is given, though we are most unworthy of it; and the more feeble the instrument, the more evidently is the work, if work there be, seen to proceed from God, who will not suffer our unworthiness to hinder this operation of his Spirit in the hearts of his people.